Three celestial cycles passed in tense preparation. The loyal gods fortified their domains, called in their servants and followers, and tried desperately to find some way to contact the Father. Meanwhile, Maloch's faction had vanished entirely, retreating to the Outer Reaches where even divine sight could not penetrate.
Cassius spent those cycles with his demon legions, explaining the situation and preparing them for what might come. His commanders—proud beings who had served him since the first days of creation—listened with growing alarm.
"Master," said Xerath, his most trusted lieutenant, "surely there must be another way. War among gods... the consequences could unmake reality itself."
"I know," Cassius replied, his massive form casting shadows across the training grounds. "But I fear the choice is no longer ours to make."
He had been training constantly, pushing his powers to their limits. As God of Demons, his abilities were vast—he could command legions, manipulate reality on a cosmic scale, and if necessary, unmake his enemies from existence. But he had never used his full power in earnest combat against other gods.
None of them had.
"There's something else," Xerath continued hesitantly. "Something the scouts have reported from the Borderlands."
"What?"
"Creatures. Things that... resemble demons, but wrong. Corrupted. They bear no allegiance to you, Master, and they attack everything they encounter."
Cassius felt his essence chill. "Show me."
They flew to the Borderlands—the shifting realm between order and chaos where reality grew thin. There, in a crystalline valley that had once been a place of beauty, Cassius saw what his scouts had discovered.
The creatures were indeed demonic in appearance, but they were wrong in every way that mattered. Where his true demons were disciplined and noble, these beings radiated mindless hunger. Their forms constantly shifted and writhed, as if they couldn't maintain coherent shape. Most disturbing of all, they seemed to be feeding on reality itself, leaving areas of void where they passed.
"Abominations," Cassius whispered. "Someone has been creating false demons."
"But who would—" Xerath began, then stopped as understanding dawned. "Maloch."
"He's not just planning war," Cassius realized with growing horror. "He's planning to corrupt the very nature of divine power itself."
They returned to the Eternal City immediately, and Cassius called an emergency gathering of the loyal gods. When he showed them what he had discovered, the reaction was immediate and overwhelming.
"This is beyond ambition," Thalia said, her crystalline form resonating with distress. "This is abomination against the very principles of creation."
"We have to act," Aurelius declared. "Before this corruption spreads further."
"Act how?" demanded Aethon. "We don't even know where they are."
As if summoned by his words, the air in the chamber suddenly grew thick and oppressive. Shadows began pouring in through the walls—not natural shadows, but hungry voids that devoured light and substance.
"You need not find us," came Maloch's voice from everywhere at once. "We have come to you."
The attack began without warning. The crystalline walls of the Hall of Concordance shattered as massive forms burst through—gods transformed into something monstrous, their divine essence corrupted and weaponized.
Nyx flowed like liquid darkness, her void-nature expanded beyond all previous limits. Where she passed, reality simply ceased. Vex scuttled on dozens of writhing appendages, his corruption spreading in visible waves that turned the starlight walls black. Bane had become a walking catastrophe, his very presence causing the chamber's foundations to crack and buckle.
And behind them came legions of the false demons—mindless, hungry things that threw themselves at everything in sight.
The battle was unlike anything in the history of creation. Gods who had spent eons in peaceful coexistence suddenly found themselves locked in mortal combat, their powers unleashed without restraint.
Cassius fought with desperate fury, his true power finally unleashed. He commanded reality itself, unmaking enemies and remaking the battlefield to his advantage. But for every corrupted god he faced, two more seemed to take their place.
Beside him, Aurelius blazed like a star, his justice made manifest as searing light that burned away corruption wherever it touched. Together, they carved through enemy forces, their combined power greater than the sum of its parts.
But it wasn't enough.
"There are too many!" Lyra cried out as she barely deflected an attack from one of Vex's spawn.
"Where is Maloch?" Aurelius demanded, his radiance flickering as exhaustion began to set in.
As if answering his question, the air above the battlefield tore open, and Maloch himself descended. But the being that emerged was no longer recognizable as the god they had once known.
Maloch had become something beyond corruption—a writhing mass of dark flame and hungry void, his presence so wrong that reality began to unravel around him. When he spoke, his voice came from a dozen mouths scattered across his shifting form.
"Behold," he said, "evolution perfected. I have transcended the limitations of divine form and become something greater."
"You've become an abomination," Cassius snarled, moving to intercept him.
"I've become what we all should be—unlimited, unrestrained, unburdened by the weakness of compassion."
They clashed in the center of the ruined chamber, god-fire meeting corrupted void in an explosion that sent shockwaves through multiple dimensions. Around them, the battle raged on, but Cassius's full attention was focused on the thing that had once been his brother-god.
Maloch's power was immense, augmented by whatever corruption he had embraced. But Cassius had something Maloch had abandoned—purpose beyond selfish ambition. Every strike he landed was guided not just by his desire to win, but by his need to protect everything he loved.
Including Aurelius, who fought desperately against Nyx's endless void just meters away.
The battle seemed to last eons, though it was probably only moments. Gods fell on both sides, their essence scattering like dying stars. The Hall of Concordance, symbol of divine unity, became a charnel house of cosmic proportions.
Finally, in a moment of desperate inspiration, Cassius did something he had never attempted before. Instead of fighting Maloch's corruption, he embraced it—not to be changed by it, but to understand it. And in that understanding, he found its weakness.
"You're not stronger," he told Maloch as their powers locked together. "You're hollowed out. All that corruption, all that hunger—it's not adding to your power, it's consuming it from within."
"Impossible," Maloch raged, but there was uncertainty in his multitude of voices.
"You abandoned what made you divine in the first place," Cassius continued, pressing his advantage. "Love, purpose, connection to something greater than yourself. Without those, you're just... empty."
He reached out with his power, not to destroy Maloch but to show him what he had lost. For just an instant, the corrupted god remembered what he had once been—a being of genuine purpose, loved and loving in return.
The shock of that memory created a moment of vulnerability, and Cassius struck with everything he had.
The explosion leveled what remained of the Hall of Concordance and sent both combatants flying. When the cosmic dust settled, Maloch lay still, his corrupted form slowly dissolving back into its component energies.
But the victory came at a terrible cost.
Cassius tried to rise and found his own essence failing. The battle had drained him beyond his limits, and around him, he could see that the other loyal gods were in similar condition. Too many had fallen, too much divine essence had been scattered.
"Aurelius," he called weakly.
His lover materialized beside him, his golden radiance flickered and dim. "I'm here."
"The others?"
"Alive, barely. But Cassius... we can't sustain this. Another attack like that and we'll all be destroyed."
"Then we need to hide."
"Hide where? They know all our places of power."
Cassius's gaze turned toward the mortal realm, visible through the tears in reality caused by their battle. A desperate plan began to form.
"There," he said. "In the creatures the Father created. They're small, weak, short-lived—but they have something we've lost."
"What?"
"Innocence. And the potential to grow beyond their limitations."
Aurelius understood immediately. "You're talking about possession. About hiding our essence within mortal hosts."
"Not possession. Partnership. We take only those who are just beginning life, who have no established identity to override. We become part of them, guide them, protect them—and in return, they help us remain hidden until we can recover our strength."
"It's never been attempted on this scale."
"Nothing like this has ever been necessary."
Around them, the surviving loyal gods were gathering—Thalia, Lyra, Aethon, and perhaps a dozen others. All were wounded, all were exhausted, but all were listening.
"It could work," Thalia said slowly. "But the risks..."
"Are less than the certainty of destruction if we remain here," Cassius finished. "Maloch's faction will recover before we do. They'll hunt us down one by one."
"And if we can never return to our true forms?" Lyra asked.
"Then we adapt. We find new purpose. We become something different."
It wasn't the answer any of them wanted, but it was the only answer that offered hope.
"How long?" Aurelius asked quietly.
"I don't know. Centuries. Millennia. Until we're strong enough to reclaim what's ours, or until the threat passes."
"And us?" The question was barely audible. "What happens to us?"
Cassius reached out, their essences touching one last time in their true forms.
"We find each other again. However long it takes, wherever we end up—we find each other."
The promise hung between them as the loyal gods began the most desperate gambit in the history of creation—abandoning their divine forms to hide within the minds and souls of mortals, hoping against hope that they could survive until the day they could emerge again.
As Cassius felt his consciousness being drawn toward the mortal realm, toward a newborn human whose mind could barely comprehend language, he held onto two thoughts: the memory of Aurelius's love, and the promise that someday, they would be reunited.
The last thing he saw before consciousness faded was the Eternal City burning, and Maloch's surviving followers picking through the ruins like scavengers.