The moment Ramiel shattered the vampire's spine against the pavement, the world seemed to exhale, but the night did not relent.
The rift above Riyadh convulsed, its violet light flickering like a dying star stuttering between existence and collapse. Shreds of dimensional fabric peeled away, each ripple sending a pulse of dread across the battlefield. Though the Arch Noble had fallen, the rift did not quiet. Instead, its glow sharpened into something colder, clearer, more deliberate.
As though the true predator had just awakened.
Rawiya's breath caught. She did not know magic, nor the language of dimensions, nor the weight of ancient wars, but she felt it, the way a human feels an earthquake seconds before the ground splits beneath them. A primal dread, vibrating through every bone.
Ramiel stopped moving.
He stood over the ruined vampire, golden eyes lifted toward the rift, every rune around him freezing mid-orbit.
The entire battlefield seemed to sense the shift.The goblins halted mid-scramble.The wolves fell silent.Even the vampires paused, their shrieks dying in their throats.
Then the sky spoke.
Not in a voice, but in pressure, like an enormous hand pressing upon the city, forcing even the bravest to their knees. Buildings groaned. Windows imploded. The hospital's foundation trembled so violently Rawiya had to brace herself against the barricade.
"What… what is that?" whispered one of Ramiel's soldiers, sweat streaming down his brow despite the cold.
Ramiel's reply was quiet, but every soldier heard it:
"An Ancestor."
The word tasted ancient. Forbidden. Heavy with memory.
Rawiya's pulse tripped.
She did not know the lore of Ramiel's people, but the reactions around her were clear—fear. The Hell Knights, unwavering executioners who slaughtered monsters by the hundreds, suddenly shifted their stance, armor crackling with dark light as though preparing for their final stand.
From within the rift, something stepped forward.
Not a vampire.Not a beast.Not a creature that could be understood by anatomy or nature.
A shape, too tall, too elegant, too horrifying in its symmetry,descended like a phantom stitched from shadow and moonlight. Its presence distorted the air, bending distance, muting sound. Cloaked in dark regal cloth that whispered like smoke, its pale hands dripped with runes older than time. A mask ,smooth, featureless, porcelain-white, hid its face, save for twin crescents where eyes should be, burning with crimson frost.
The Arch Noble vampires had not been the vanguard.They were the announcement.
This was their sovereign.
The Primarch of Blood.
When it landed, sand turned to glass beneath its feet.
Every monster bowed in abject terror.
Every soldier trembled.
Ramiel alone remained still.
Rawiya felt her lungs strain as if the creature's presence were forcing the air from her body. Her vision wavered. Her hands shook for the first time that night.
But Ramiel?
He stepped forward.
Slowly. Deliberately. As though approaching an equal, or a rival carved from his own past.
The Primarch tilted its masked head, studying Ramiel with predatory curiosity. When it spoke, the voice was layered, female, male, whispers, roars, harmonies of contradictions that scraped against the inside of the skull.
"War-King.We smelled your fire from across the void.We felt your thunder.We tasted your defiance in the blood of our spawn."
The mask cracked a thin line across its surface, like a smile carved by knives.
"Tonight, we drink your world dry."
Soldiers raised weapons. Wolves bared teeth. Demon Spiders hissed, their limbs trembling.
Ramiel lifted one hand slightly, signaling them to stay back.
Rawiya swallowed hard. The air around Ramiel thickened, not with heat but with force, as if the world itself was gathering at his feet. His runes, normally bright and disciplined, now whirled like a storm losing patience.
"Primarch," Ramiel answered, voice steady as bedrock. "This world is under my protection."
The masked figure tilted its head further.
"And who," it asked, "gave you dominion?"
Ramiel didn't blink.
"My existence."
The temperature plummeted.
Violet lightning cracked across the sky.
Then the Primarch moved.
It was not speed.It was not teleportation.It was erasure, the space between it and Ramiel simply vanished.
Rawiya gasped as the two collided.
Ramiel's fist met the Primarch's palm.The shockwave shattered every window for kilometers.Cars flipped.Debris shot upward like reverse rain.
The hospital trembled, dust falling from the ceiling like ash.
Rawiya shielded the children with her body on instinct.
The warriors behind Ramiel dug their weapons into the ground to keep from being launched into the sky. Even the Hell Knights staggered, their runic armor flaring like small suns.
Ramiel's eyes burned brighter, gold turning to molten white.
The Primarch's mask spider-webbed, cracks glowing with inner bloodlight.
Then the real fight began.
Ramiel struck with flame, lightning, ice, his spell circles spinning in maddening orbit. The Primarch danced between them, its movements like liquid shadow, every step producing a ripple of blood-red magic. Their blows were too fast for the eye, but their effects were not: chunks of street torn free, buildings bent like paper, infernal sigils burning into the ground.
Rawiya watched in horrified awe.This was no battle of warriors.This was a clash of calamities.
A god of war.And a sovereign of thirst.
Ramiel ducked under a sweep of needle-thin claws that sliced the air itself. The Primarch rose above him, wings unfurling, wings that weren't feather or flesh, but veils of shadow that bled spectral mist.
It dove.
Ramiel countered with a spear of lightning that tore through three buildings behind them.
Rawiya felt her knees weaken.
This power… if it weren't aimed upward, if it weren't constrained, if Ramiel faltered even for a heartbeat
Riyadh would cease to exist.
The Primarch slammed Ramiel into the asphalt, the impact forming a crater. Before it could strike again, a blur of violet fire descended, the Hell Knight commander, roaring with infernal fervor.
"MY KING!"
The Primarch pivoted.One motion.One gesture.
The Hell Knight's armor shredded like cloth. He crashed into a toppled ambulance, breaking it in half.
Rawiya choked on a breath.
These were beings Ramiel trusted, feared by armies, unstoppable by mortal means.Yet this Primarch… toyed with them.
Ramiel rose from the crater, blood on his lip, fire coiling up his arms like serpents eager to be unleashed.
He looked at the injured Hell Knight, at his fallen warrior, then back at the Primarch.
A shift happened.
Subtle.Terrifying.
Not in his stance.Not in his expression.
In his presence.
Rawiya felt it first, a sudden pull in the air, like gravity tightening around a single point.
Even the Primarch stopped dancing.
Ramiel's runes ignited, not in fire, not in lightning, but in pure authority.
When he spoke, the words rumbled through the bones of every living thing:
"You dare touch what is mine?"
The world answered with silence.
Not fear.Obedience.
Ramiel stepped forward, his aura rising like a sun tearing through storm clouds.
Rawiya felt her heart leap, not from terror.
From certainty.
He was not merely a king of warriors.Not merely a commander of monsters.
He was something older.Something the rift feared.Something the Primarch misjudged.
Ramiel raised his hand.
The runes spiraled around his arm, forming a blazing corona of symbols that flickered between existence and myth.
The Primarch hissed.
For the first timeafraid.
Ramiel spoke, his voice like a verdict delivered by the universe itself:
"I do not save worlds."
He lifted his glowing hand toward the rift.
"I claim them."
The sky split with golden fire.
The Primarch screamed.
And Rawiya, pressed against the barricade, whispered as tears stung her eyes:
"He isn't conquering the night…He's rewriting it."
The battle for Riyadh was no longer survival.It was an ascension.And Ramiel was done being merciful.
Ramiel did not pause, not when the Arch Noble vampire's body split the pavement open like a crater, not when the air still trembled with the echoes of his spellfire. He rose from the shattered ground with the calm inevitability of a storm reclaiming its momentum. His runes spun around him like orbiting suns, rotating, flaring, pulsing with lethal rhythm—and the monsters that had not yet fled felt their courage collapse.
Even the vampire lord's remaining brood, shrieking with mindless ferocity, hesitated as the golden glare of Ramiel's eyes swept across the battlefield. Then he moved again. One step. That was all. But the moment his foot touched the broken asphalt, a shockwave of pressure blasted outward—the kind that made goblin spines crack and chimera flesh rupture like rotten fruit. Ramiel inhaled once, and fire blossomed at his command. Like a living halo, the spell-circles flared in layered rings around him, outer rings generating spears of lightning, inner rings conjuring blades of air sharp enough to bisect stone, and the smallest core runes burning with white-hot purification flame.
Every monster within fifty meters combusted in a single synchronized burst, bodies turning to ash mid-screech. In another heartbeat, he was gone, vanishing into a ripple of motion and reappearing atop an overturned ambulance, where a pack of vampires had pinned two wounded civilians beneath the wreckage. His fist blurred, striking the first vampire with a force that snapped its spine backward; his foot landed on the second creature's chest, crushing it into the steel roof like a nail hammered into wood.
A flare of light marked the release of a spell, pure, searing incineration, and both monsters were reduced to bone dust drifting on the wind. He slid down the wreckage with predatory grace, lifting the crushed metal with one hand as easily as peeling back a curtain. "Can you stand?" he asked the terrified civilians, voice low but steady. They never had to answer, his soldiers arrived, two Hell Knights and three Guild medics rushing forward, guiding the injured to safety. Ramiel had already moved on.
All across the burning streets of Riyadh, his subordinates spread like a carefully orchestrated tide of salvation and death. Hell Knights in rune-carved armor carved through remaining monsters to secure safe corridors, moving with terrifying efficiency but gentleness toward survivors. Ethereal Guild healers knelt in the rubble, sealing wounds with glowing sigils, lifting debris with levitation spells, dragging bloodied bodies out of collapsing buildings.
Gehenna wolves formed living barricades, herding fleeing civilians toward extraction points, growling at any threat that dared approach. Demon spiders, monstrous but obedient, scaled ruined buildings to retrieve trapped children and elderly, lowering them gently on silk as strong as woven steel. Some of the homunculi, their bodies sleek and expressionless, carried entire groups on their backs through flame-filled streets, shielding them from falling debris. Despite the carnage above, they worked with cold, unerring precision, every movement designed to save, to shield, to carry life out of the shadows of death.
But Ramiel… Ramiel was everywhere at once. A vampire lord attempted to break from the fray, wings wide with frantic speed, but a spear of condensed light erupted through its chest, pinning it to a distant rooftop. A chimera leapt at a squad of rescuers, Ramiel appeared between them, palms opening as twin shockwaves of golden force blasted the abomination apart. A cluster of goblins tried crawling toward a collapsed shelter, Ramiel landed like a falling star, his rune-circles spiraling outward in a cleansing wave that turned the creatures to charcoal before they could take another breath. He did not falter, did not tire, every breath drove another spell, every step ended another threat.
Through shattered hospital windows, Rawiya watched as he fought like a reaper forged from wrath and order, sculpting the battlefield with every movement. But what struck her deepest was not the destruction he carved through monsters, but the way his subordinates mirrored his strength in their own ways. Hell Knights lifting rubble with armored gauntlets to free trapped mothers. Demon spiders forming protective domes of silk over infants. Wolves dragging the wounded toward medics by the scruff of their clothing. Mages standing in broken glass, healing until their hands shook. Soldiers shouting names, shining light in dark corners, refusing to leave anyone behind.
Ramiel's voice thundered through the mental link his forces shared, sharp and absolute. "Do not let fear claim them. Save every life you can. This night does not belong to the darkness."
And they obeyed, because they believed. Because when Ramiel fought, the world itself seemed unwilling to die.
With each monster he purged, hope clawed its way back into the hearts of the living. Riyadh burned, yes, but beneath Ramiel's shadow, it survived. The night had come hungry and vicious, but Ramiel tore the hunger from its jaws, broke its spine, and cast it into the abyss.
And high above, the last remnants of the rift flickered weakly, as if the nightmare beyond feared to send anything else into a world guarded by a king who conquered darkness itself.
The deeper Ramiel pushed into the ruined districts, the more the night seemed to recoil from him, as if the darkness itself had realized too late that it had chosen the wrong city to devour. Flames licked the collapsed skeletons of buildings, sirens wailed in the distance like dying angels, and thick smoke curled into the sky, yet Ramiel walked through it untouched, a silhouette of incandescent authority. Each step sent faint shockwaves through the pavement, igniting runes beneath his feet that spread like wildfire in geometric patterns, carving radiant sigils into the earth that purified corrupted flesh on contact. Vampiric spawn screeched as the symbols crawled up their bodies like living chains, burning them into drifting ash before they could flee.
Above him, the remains of the rift pulsed weakly, coughing out stray horrors, skinless hounds, shriveled winged carrion-fiends, malformed goblins tumbling from the sky, but Ramiel lifted one hand toward the heavens, and the runes around his arm spun like a spiraling constellation. A vertical beam of golden fire pierced the sky, slicing through the last of the rift's vomited creatures before they even hit the rooftops, burning them to luminous dust that scattered like stars over the rooftops of Riyadh. The city had never seen such light, violent, holy, merciless.
Behind him, his forces moved like organized chaos, a symphony of salvation in the middle of apocalypse. Hell Knights kicked down doors in smoke-choked apartments, pulling coughing families into the open air. Wolves sprinted through alleys, their noses finding survivors under mountains of debris. Guild medics slapped glowing seals onto pressure wounds, their runes flickering with exhaustion but refusing to dim. Demon spiders climbed halfway-up collapsed buildings, drilling holes into concrete so they could hold the structure long enough for people to crawl out.
Miniature gargoyle constructs, barely knee-high, forged of stone and flame—scuttled through broken windows to guide panicked children toward safe zones. Even the emotionless homunculi leaned their bodies over civilians during explosions, shielding them with the unthinking loyalty of engineered protectors.
But Ramiel, he fought alone, not because he needed to, but because the cruelty in the air demanded someone who understood how to answer it.
A malformed giant crashed through a nearby tower—forty feet tall, stitched together from writhing torsos, skulls screaming from its fused ribcage. Its hands were claws of bone and sinew, dripping with acidic venom that melted cars like wax. It roared, the sound shaking the ground, then swiped at a cluster of fleeing civilians.
Ramiel blurred.
One moment he was ten meters away. The next, he stood between the creature and its prey, runes flaring around his shoulders with the brilliance of a newborn star. He caught the thing's massive arm mid-swing, just caught it, halting its momentum with a single outstretched hand. The giant shrieked in pain, its body convulsing as cracks of golden light spidered through its skin. Ramiel's grip tightened, and the limb exploded into a spray of incandescent gore.
The monster reeled back, but Ramiel erupted forward in a streak of molten gold, slamming his palm into its chest. A perfect circle of runes expanded outward from the point of contact—an execution seal. The giant barely had time to wail before its torso detonated, splintering into bone fragments that clattered across the street like broken statues.
He didn't look back to confirm the civilians had escaped. He already knew they had. His senses were woven into the battlefield: every heartbeat, every scream, every breath of fear fed into him like threads of fate he could tug or cut at will.
As the dust settled, Rawiya and her group, still moving under protection, reached the next street where the Hell Knights formed a protective perimeter. Rawiya watched Ramiel from afar, awe and terror mingling in her chest. The way he fought… it was not simply power. It was possession—as though the world itself had chosen him as its instrument and was channeling all its fury through him. His aura stretched across blocks, a mantle of sovereignty draped over a dying city.
Then another quake shook the ground.
More creatures spilling from the rooftops—ghouls, malformed bats, writhing larval horrors—and Ramiel raised both hands. The runes around him aligned like planets entering a divine conjunction. The air warped. Buildings vibrated. Even his subordinates paused to brace themselves.
Ramiel exhaled.
A dome of golden fire erupted outward, silent at its core but roaring at its edge. Every monster within two hundred meters disintegrated instantly, burned out of existence without so much as a scream. Those further out staggered, their flesh blistering, their regeneration stalling. The wave flattened burning cars and extinguished some of the smaller fires, leaving behind a circular crater of purified ground where even the scent of blood had been scrubbed clean.
For a moment, even the city seemed to breathe easier.
The monsters were losing.
Desperately.
Irreversibly.
Ramiel's orders cut through the smoke, crisp and commanding:
"Push forward. Secure the east quarter. Rescue squads, to the underpass—now. Healers, triage in three sectors: violet, red, black. No civilian dies tonight. Move."
And they obeyed without hesitation.
Because behind every order, behind every stride, behind every strike Ramiel unleashed into the nightmare, there was a promise:
He would not let the darkness take this city.Not while he still drew breath.
And for the first time since the rift tore open, the night began to fear him.
Across the burning continents of Earth, as Ramiel carved luminous corridors of salvation through the slaughter, his commanders, each a legend crafted by Imperial alchemy and war, moved like living disasters unleashed with purpose. Half a million Homunculus Hell knights spread across the world in disciplined formations, splitting under these titanic leaders who were bred not merely for war, but for the extinction of anything that dared oppose the throne. Cities cracked under their boots, oceans churned as if recoiling from their power, and the darkened sky glowed with sigils cast from dozens of simultaneous battlefronts.
Alpha Wolgan, the new Imperial Grand Guard, five feet tall but towering in presence like a primordial wolf-god wrapped in humanoid flesh, tore through the enemy legions in Asia. Level 300 strength condensed into a compact, brutal frame, he moved with a predator's certainty—every step a kill, every kill a warning. His claws, no weapons, just bone and will—ripped through armored war beasts as if they were paper dolls. He issued orders in a low rumble that vibrated through ruins:" Protect the civilians. Leave none of the corrupted breathing. "The Hellknights under him followed with absolute loyalty, creating evacuation corridors through cities that had become labyrinths of fire and collapsed steel.
To the west, where the continents still shook from ruptured ley-lines, stood Imperial Grand Vicegerent Beta, real name Nefaris Thera, known simply as Shadow Earth. Level 500, older than half the surviving civilizations, Nefaris manifested as a being neither male nor female, an elemental forged from the dying breath of a usurper dragon. Black curls framed an ageless face, and each movement sent ripples through stone and shadow alike. Earth bowed to them; shadows obeyed them; and the battlefield reshaped itself by their mere presence. Beta stood in the middle of a collapsing European capital, raising one hand. The ground opened like a mouth, swallowing enemy artillery whole, while nearby a wall of shadow hardened into a protective dome sheltering thousands of civilians. "You are safe. Move behind the line," Beta whispered, the voice carrying the calm of centuries. When an enemy titan stomped forward, roaring and swinging a molten cleaver, Beta didn't move. They simply blinked, and a massive spike of compressed continental plate burst upward through the creature's chest, impaling it mid-stride.
North America trembled under the advance of the Hell Guard Commander Gamma, a level 300 force of armored annihilation. Gamma moved like a mobile fortress,plate layered upon plate, each rune-etched and coated in burning sigils of wrath. Every time Gamma swung his massive cleaver-axe, shockwaves peeled asphalt from highways and turned enemy tanks inside out. Behind him, Hell knights formed a phalanx, lifting crushed cars and slabs of concrete to free trapped civilians, while others escorted children and elders through streets Gamma had just cleared with brutal efficiency.
Further south, in the jungles and ruins where guerilla nightmares hid, Hell Knight Commander Sigma painted streaks of silver death. Sigma's precision was legendary, every strike from his long sword found the heart of the strongest beasts. He moved in blurs, cutting enemy commanders before they could even sense his arrival. His Hell knights fanned out to hunt corrupted creatures fleeing deeper into the wilderness, tracking them with unerring instinct, leaving trails of rescued villagers behind.
High above the Eurasian battlegrounds floated Echo, the Hell mage commander, Hirnésa Edhelreth, level 190. Barely four feet tall, short-haired, red-eyed, with a reptilian tail flicking behind her, she hovered like a living spell nucleus. Every gesture detonated arcane storms. Purple meteors rained on enemy constructs, while healing spheres descended like soft lanterns upon the injured. Her voice cracked with youth but carried enough authority to redirect entire battalions:" Get the wounded into the ward-circle! Move! Move!"
Between fronts, Inspector Delta, level 280, operated like a ghost. Their presence was a rumor; their impact undeniable. Delta slipped into corrupted strongholds, severing chains, disabling dark wards, and marking safe routes with sigils glowing faintly blue. Civilians whispered about a shadow in a coat who appeared out of nowhere, lifted rubble with impossible strength, and vanished before they could even say thank you.
Across the Middle East, Enforcer Captain Sierra, level 250, marched with a column of Hellknights forming a living wall around a mass evacuation. Her hammer sent tremors through dunes and concrete alike, smashing apart war-machines built from twisted metal and malevolent spirits. She did not shout; she simply walked forward relentlessly, her troops holding positions with unbreakable discipline.
And in the hospitals built from shattered temples and converted stadiums stood Judge Enigma, level 200, passing silent judgement on corrupted souls who clung to life. Enigma's blade absorbed their sin, turning their bodies to harmless ash, while at his side worked Physician Omicron, level 190. Omicron's hands glowed a soft pale blue as they closed wounds that should have been fatal, stitching flesh with threads of living light."Next patient," Omicron whispered with exhausted calm, even as the ground shook with distant detonations.
Together, these commanders,, Beta, Gamma, Sigma, Echo, Delta, Sierra, Enigma, and Omicron, turned Earth into a battlefield of both devastation and salvation. Half a million Hell knights moved like a single organism under their lead, purging enemy hordes while pulling civilians from the jaws of death. Fires burned across continents, skies split with magical warfare, but wherever a Homunculus commander walked, hope followed like a stubborn shadow.
The world was drowning in war, but under Ramiel's commanders, humanity was not drowning alone.