The number of spatial cracks grew thin fractures spiderwebbing across the air above the magma field. Mephisto stared upward, Hellfire beating in his chest like a second heart.
The moment he felt the familiar aura drifting through those fractures, his rage ignited into something else entirely…
Excitement.
That cursed duplication of his had been slaughtered three times by Soren. Three humiliating deaths. That ritual he'd painstakingly built was ruined.
Every setback, every lost opportunity, every delay in his return to Earth traced back to that one doctor.
And now the fool was coming here, crossing the plane boundaries himself.
Mephisto's claws clenched. Absolutely perfect.
Let him stumble through the barrier exhausted, drained, easy to break.
Mephisto was aching for an opponent to tear apart.
The cracks widened, merging into a gigantic warped fissure like a mirror shattering into a thousand pieces. The fractured space fell inward, collapsing into a massive, gaping void.
Through that hole stretched an endless gulf of blackness… and within it, a shard of light flickered.
Blue light.
It Expanded.
Resolved into a shape.
A blue planet, floating in the cosmic dark.
Earth.
"Come on…" Mephisto whispered, trembling with eagerness. "Come on!"
He felt no fear. The energy required to break the space between Earth and the Abyss was monumental. Soren might manage it, but he would arrive drained, weakened, vulnerable.
Meanwhile Mephisto stood here, in his molten throne-room, where the Abyss itself fed him power. The magma augmented him, amplified him twelvefold strength ready to unleash in a single devastating strike.
He could already imagine it…
Crushing Soren.
Harvesting his strange, precious powers.
Carving them into his very being.
Then returning to Earth stronger than ever to conquer it.
The thought made the Hellfire flare hotter.
Back on Earth, something stirred deep inside Everlife Medical Center, though no mortal eye could see it.
The space around Soren vibrated with quiet, crushing intensity. Opening a stable passage to another plane wasn't simple, not even with the Space Gem.
Traveling between distant points in the universe was one thing, piercing the dimensional walls to the Abyss was something else entirely.
But Soren had one advantage, Mephisto's lingering soul-breath from the broken contract.
He poured power into the spell, his own, the medical hall's, and the gem's, forcing the universe to yield. The pressure built until it felt as though reality itself might crack.
Then it did.
A glowing rift tore itself open in front of him, swirling with Abyssal heat and demonic resonance. The moment the portal stabilized, a surge of blistering heat blasted out, carrying a scent of sulfur and molten rock.
Hellfire.
Weak, crude compared to his own, but unmistakably from Mephisto's domain.
"Right place," he murmured.
He dismissed the array, inhaled once, and stepped through the breach.
The transition was instantaneous.
A blistering landscape stretched infinitely in all directions, made of molten seas and boiling air. No sky… just a crimson haze. No horizon, only endless heat and flame.
Soren's body tensed instinctively, senses flaring out, mental power expanding to its limits. He was ready for an ambush, ready for Mephisto to leap at him the moment he arrived.
The moment Soren stepped through the spatial rift, the whole world came into focus in an instant. Beneath the rolling waves of molten fire above him, something murderous lurked.
A strike, perfectly masked inside the heat and glare. A powerful strike meant to cripple someone before they even understood they were under attack.
Mephisto's handiwork.
A razor-thin smile tugged at Soren's lips. I see you.
His body hung there, frozen mid-step, as if too stunned to react.
The magma crushed down over him, swallowing him whole.
Above, Mephisto's laughter split the air, His hidden attack detonated inside the magma, exploding it outward in a violent shockwave. Space itself shivered, the cracks that had just begun to heal tearing back open…
And…. Nothing.
"What…?" Mephisto's laughter cut off.
Through the magma's senses, he felt nothing. No body, Impossible. Had he really obliterated Soren in a single strike?
That wasn't the plan. he'd wanted Soren helpless, a trophy to drag back and torment slowly. Killing him outright felt… wasteful.
At the moment the attack hit, Soren slipped sideways into the fractured layers of space, vanishing between folds of reality. What Mephisto obliterated wasn't him , just an afterimage.
Hidden above the battlefield, watching Mephisto stew in confusion, Soren let the smile he'd been holding bloom fully.
He'd never seen Mephisto's true body before, and yeah the sight was impressive. But that soul signature was identical to the one bound to Johnny's contract.
"Leaving already, Mephisto?"
He spoke lazily, his voice drifting across the warped air.
The demon lord jolted, whirling toward the sound. His eyes locked on the patch of empty air.
Soren stepped out of the void coalescing from transparent shimmer to solid form. His aura remained tightly leashed, an ordinary man standing in a world of monsters.
Mephisto didn't dare take him lightly.