"Sheba?"
Lucifer's voice was a low rumble, raw with confusion and pain. His ruby eyes raked over her stable composure, yet he saw through her in an instant. She had her teeth buried deep into her lower lip, her fingernails cutting through her palm until crimson beads welled like forbidden rubies. He could tell she was trying so hard to maintain that stern poise before Moist, and he understood why. It was very unlike Moist to show genuine concern so her defenses were very necessary.
He brushed off his hurt, trying to relax his own composure, but was immediately swept through with a flush of protective fury. This was supposed to be their night—the binding of two titans under the blood-red wedding moon. Yet something foul stirred in the Grand Pavilion, a shadow beneath the celebratory veil.
Before Sheba could respond, the air fractured.
Hal appeared beside him immediately. "My lord the priest..." his eyes held terror and Lucifer already felt it.
From the eastern spire of the Hollow Eden, Zebedee triggered the Eclipse Shard under Elisha's possession. She had already sensed the trigger and begun to call Sheba.
A pulse of liquid starlight and pure shadow erupted outward, invisible at first, then blooming like ink spilled across the night sky. The Veil of Eternal Dusk descended.
It struck like a silent cataclysm.
The blood-red flames in the braided sconces guttered and died to sullen embers. The storm-glass chandeliers, which had chimed with remembered thunder, fell mute. Across the pavilion, gasps rippled through the assembly as divine and infernal powers alike unraveled. Witches clutched at their throats as their enchantments flickered out like dying stars. Archfiends roared in outrage, their powers crumbling into ash. Spirit generals staggered, their ethereal forms solidifying into vulnerable flesh. Aliadam felt his blazing fire wither from within. He body grew cold. Cold as his essence dimmed.
The protective wards etched into the black stone columns—ancient runes cracked and faded, exposing the entire hall to the raw currents of the world beyond.
Elisha's song emerged with soft notes at once, not just in Sheba's head but to all their hearing.
Their minds fought to stay unbroken as her carols rang into their ears, causing the weakest ones among them to bleed the more they resisted.
Sheba's emerald enchantress mark on her brow dimmed to a faint glow. The constellations along the hem of her shadow-lace gown lost their celestial fire. Her sorcery, that vast ocean of power she had cultivated through blood pacts and stolen grimoires, receded like a tide pulled by an unforgiving moon. She swayed on the dais, the world tilting violently.
"No…" she whispered, voice hoarse.
Lucifer felt it too—the demonic essence that burned eternal in his veins dulled to a mere spark. His immense strength, capable of scorching all with wrath, now felt like mortal muscle and bone. Yet he was still Lucifer, the Demon Lord forged in the abyss. Demons' minds did not bend easily to external wills, least of all the melodic lures of the ocean folk. He shook his head, clearing the fog, and stepped in front of Sheba, his broad frame a shield of shadow-silk and raw will.
Across the hall, two figures rose like specters from legend.
Moist with calculated cruelty, shed her serene mask. Her white hair spilled like fresh snow under the dying torchlight, her grey eyes gleaming with cold triumph. The glowing runes on her deep umber skin pulsed once before stabilizing, protected by the silver bracelet hidden beneath her sleeve. "At last," she declared, voice carrying like a winter gale through the stunned silence. "The age of unchecked sorcery and demonic tyranny ends here. You will no longer have the opportunity to come against me or the Human Nation."
Beside her, in the far corner, Elisha ascended from her seat, still singing. Pink hair cascaded like dawn-kissed coral around her shoulders, framing piercing blue eyes that burned with vengeful hunger. The silver bracelet from Moist shielded her as well. She was no longer the listless wraith in her chamber of black pearls and drowned roses.
"This is Demon Realm, how dare you?!" lord Varak bellowed, lunging forward with a ceremonial dagger. But without his infernal strength, the blow was clumsy. Moist flicked her wrist, and one of her hidden runes flared. A wave of nullifying curse—drawn from ancient human grimoires—slammed into him, sending him crashing into a pillar.
Elisha's song intensified. The Thralldom Lament poured from her restored throat, a melody woven from cracked echoes of pain and unyielding obsession. It was not the pure, commanding song of her prime; regeneration in the Crimson Abyss had returned her tongue and arm, but the scars remained—fractures that made the notes sharper, more desperate, laced with the salt of betrayal. The Lament burrowed into suppressed minds, seeking cracks left by the Veil.
Most of the hall suffered first. Witches and lesser demons clutched their heads, visions of drowning depths flooding their thoughts. A warlock nearby collapsed, babbling of endless tides pulling him under. Sheba, however, took the brunt. The song hooked into the old temptations—the memories of shared chambers in the Siren Shoal, warm hands on scales under moonlight, whispered promises now poisoned. Her emerald eyes widened in horror as her will fractured.
"Come to me, Sheba," Elisha's voice threaded directly into her mind, seductive and commanding. "You were always mine. The Demon Lord is but a fleeting shadow. Return to the depths where our love once sang in harmony."
Sheba staggered, gripping Lucifer's arm. "Get… out of my head!" But her voice was weak, her sorcery dormant. The hook pulled tighter.
Lucifer roared, the sound still carrying echoes of abyssal wrath despite the Veil. "Elisha! You treacherous siren filth!" He ignored the ache in his chest from Sheba's earlier words—You may have him back tomorrow—and focused on the threat. Sheba was his queen now, bound by the mate bond and marriage. He would protect her, even if it tore him apart. With a surge of residual demonic resilience, he scooped Sheba into his arms and leaped from the dais, crashing through a table of offerings. Moon-blood phials shattered, staining the floor crimson.
Chaos erupted fully.
Moist laughed, crystalline and mocking, as she unleashed her swarm. From shadowed alcoves and within the wedding gift she had so thoughtfully provided, fleshforged golems awakened. Brutal constructs of animated human will and forbidden alchemy, they were patchwork horrors—bodies of stitched flesh over iron bones, eyes glowing with rune-light, limbs ending in blades or crushing fists. Adaptive and hard to kill, they poured into the pavilion like a tide of nightmares. One golem tore into a spirit general, its adaptive blades shifting to counter ethereal strikes. Another seized a witch by the throat, draining what little essence remained.
"Shield your minds!" Lucifer bellowed to his remaining forces. But many were already lost to Elisha's song or the golems' onslaught.
Elisha turned to her true form, her tail propelling her through the air with powerful strokes, as if the pavilion's currents were her beloved shoal. The Lament intensified, focusing on Sheba. The Enchantress Supreme's fiery spirit bent under the weight. Her body went limp in Lucifer's arms for a moment.
"No!" Lucifer snarled. He set Sheba down behind a fallen column and charged Elisha directly. His tuxedo of night-silk tore at the seams as he moved, obsidian lapels flapping like broken wings. Without full demonic power, the fight was brutal and grounded—fists against scales, raw strength against melodic will. He landed a heavy blow to Elisha's side, cracking a few scales, but she retaliated with a shockwave from her tail that sent him skidding across the bloodorchid-strewn floor.
"You cannot have her!" he roared. "She chose the me over your stagnant depths!"
Elisha's blue eyes flashed with madness. "She was stolen from me by your mating mark! I will drag her back, bound and broken if I must. She belongs to me!"
Meanwhile, Aliadam—impassive coin-face now twisted with grief and rage—confronted Moist. His two spirit generals lay fallen, victims of golem claws. He still ached to avenge Vesper and now this. More reason he must definitely destroy Moist.
"Moist!" Aliadam growled, drawing a pair of flame-kissed blades. Stripped of his spiritual essence by the Veil, he fought with pure combat skill—centuries of martial mastery from the Spirit Kingdoms. He moved like living flame himself, blades whirling in deadly arcs. Moist danced back, her shadow-cloak shifting illusions, but one slash caught her arm, drawing umber blood.
"How dare you come after Vesper?" he questioned, pressing the attack. "For that, I will carve your heart out and feed it to the abyss of the Demon Realm."
Moist smirked, grey eyes cold as storm clouds. "Vesper was a loose thread. She was going to come between you and I. You do not expect me to let that happen now do you?" She began weaving an array mid-fight—glowing runes rising from the floor in a complex trap of nullifying chains designed to capture and drain. Aliadam, reliant on combat alone, dodged and struck, but the array closed in. A chain lashed his leg, pulling him down. Moist loomed over him, runes flaring for the final binding. "Come quietly, Aliadam love. Lucifer is not the only one who has a reserved space on my bed."
All hope seemed to gutter like the dying sconces. Golems overwhelmed the remnants of the demon court. Sheba fought the song's pull on her knees, tears of rage streaking her cheeks. Lucifer grappled with Elisha, bloodied and slowing. The Grand Pavilion, once a sanctum of power and union, had become a battlefield of shattered vows and fading lights.
Then, from the shadows of a collapsed balcony, a figure emerged, emersed with blazing fire that burned just like Aliadam's.
An arrow flew true.
It struck Moist square in the heart, erupting in a blaze of white-hot fury that lit the entire pavilion in vengeful light.
Vesper...