Kimaris crawled, shadows trailing like spilled ink, his once-mighty form a ruined parody of itself. He knelt, trembling, before the figure cloaked in nothingness.
The voice came, low and crushing, yet strangely calm.
"Kimaris. Report."
The Marquis bowed his broken head.
"All of them… slain. Raum. Aim. Andras. Valefar. Even Balaam… the King of Hell… has fallen."
For a moment there was silence—then a laugh.
It was not cruel, not sharp. It was deep, echoing, like mountains cracking.
"Humans…" the voice mused. "They never fail to impress me."
Kimaris rasped, his voice strained. "The Grandmaster of the Order is dead… And the Key to Hell has been found."
At those words, the figure turned. The weight of his gaze pinned Azazel in place.
"You."
Azazel's chest tightened. The figure's face was pale, his eyes black voids rimmed in ember-light. A single smile curved his lips.
"You must be the Key Guardian."
The boy's grip tightened. His fury boiled as the Devil spoke again.
"After Johann Weyer's death, the Order truly has run out of men worth fearing."
"Shut up!" Azazel roared, his throat raw. "How dare you say my grandfather's name with your filthy lips!"
In his hand appeared a large bronze knife—one of the twin blades once forged from the bronze of the sacred wells. The second had shattered in a war long past, during his life as Maksym, fighting against Mara. They were no ordinary knives. They cut spirit. They had been gifts from Baba Yaha herself.
The moment Azazel touched it, the knife shimmered. It flared into its new form, an ashlight blade, glowing white-amber like molten embers wrapped in smoke.
Azazel's voice was low, shaking.
"This… is for my grandfather."
He dissolved. His body became a swirl of ash. In an instant, he reappeared behind the Devil.
Ashen Step.
The blade plunged.
The ashlight bronze pierced into the Devil's back.
Azazel leaned close and whispered, "For Johann Weyer."
The Devil's body shuddered. And then—he laughed. A slow, amused laugh that crawled through the bones of everyone on the battlefield.
"Impressive," he murmured. "How amusing fate can be. Johann Weyer's grandson… striking at me."
He turned his pale face slightly, smirk curling.
"Perhaps only Lucifer or Baal could match you in power now."
Around him, sparks danced. Sparks that were not flame but something stranger—cracks in the air itself, like starlight bleeding through wounds in the world.
From the ground, the chains that had dragged lesser demons now surged higher. They snapped around the five high-ranking demons that still remained, including Kimaris. The demons writhed, shadows tearing, their power resisting. Still, they remained kneeling.
The Devil only smiled.
"I would enjoy this game more… but time is against us."
A gesture. A single pale finger lifted.
Azazel rushed forward with another Ashen Step, blade raised to strike again. But an unseen force—an unknown power—slammed into him, throwing him back like a child's doll.
Azazel's body flickered into ash and reforming. Again, he charged.
But the Devil only pointed skyward.
The sparks around him stormed, swirling like a hurricane of stars. The chains dragged the high-ranking demons—Kimaris smiled as his serpentine body was yanked toward the cracks in the earth, vanishing into the abyss. All the other kneeling demons also disappeared as the chains dragged them.
The Devil's body itself began to dissolve in that maelstrom of sparks.
And Azazel froze.
The clouds above Rome split apart. Not by light. By something massive, hurtling. A shape blotted out the moon. The air burned with its descent.
An asteroid.
So vast it could probably match some small city in size.
Azazel staggered, his heart hammering. He turned back to the Devil, who was now almost entirely gone, his pale grin the last thing fading into sparks.
And then—
A voice.
[Azazel.]
His blood ran cold. He had grown so used to hearing his grandfather's voice inside his head that at first, he thought it was him. But it wasn't.
It was Aurelius.
[Don't be afraid,] the Grandmaster's voice whispered inside his skull. [Everything is according to your grandfather's plan. You can't stop him now. What you can do… is save the people.]
Azazel stood frozen, helpless, watching the storm of sparks finish swallowing the Devil. Nothing remained.
Only the asteroid.
Falling.