Mephisto's massive form loomed like a mountain of living flame. His molten eyes narrowed, burning hot enough to sear the air.
"Soren! You actually survived!"
Compared to the demon lord's towering body, Soren was barely the size of a spark, a speck of life dwarfed by hell's inferno.
Soren mocking smile curled at the corner of his lips.
Of course Mephisto had tried to ambush him the moment he fell into the abyss. Of course he thought it would work.
"Hmph." Mephisto snorted, flames rippling across his charred armor-like skin. "You're cunning. But forcing open a passage between Earth and the Abyss must have drained you dry."
"You think you can still fight me in your condition?"
He leaned forward, eyes wide with triumphant madness.
"You're life is mine, human."
Good. Let the idiot think that. Mephisto had a nasty habit of teleporting away the moment a fight turned sour, but if he believed Soren was weak, he'd stay right where he was.
Behind Soren, invisible to Mephisto's eye but not to his instincts, a lattice of shimmering spatial runes unfolded like a blooming flower.
Space itself began to condense and tighten.
Mephisto's expression snapped from smug to alarm.
"Wait!"
"Spatial Imprisonment." Soren's voice was soft, almost casual.
The air hardened around Mephisto with a thunderous crack, locking into place like cosmic iron. The demon lord strained, flames bursting from every inch of his massive body but nothing moved.
Not even sound echoed normally, the air had become a cage.
Soren drifted upward until he hovered at eye level with the colossal demon. Mephisto glared up at him, fury smoldering deep in those hellfire pupils.
"Human… how do you still have this much power?!"
"This is impossible!"
But the cage held. Even Mephisto's flames sputtered uselessly against it.
Soren crossed his arms. "Mephisto, I warned you."
"I told you that if you didn't stop meddling on Earth, I'd come to the Abyss and tear your body apart myself… I don't bluff."
For the first time in centuries, Mephisto felt something he had nearly forgotten.
A chill crept through his infernal flesh even as flames raged around him. The space prison didn't bend.
Mephisto roared, a sound of fury and desperation.
He drew on every ember he had stored over eons, igniting himself from the inside out. His flames erupted skyward, painting the void red.
Then his eyes flared brighter, hotter, monstrous.
"EYE OF HELL! BURN!"
His voice dragged the mind toward those blazing pupils. Hellfire and psychic energy fused into a single catastrophic force… the Eye of Hell. A power far beyond his usual Penance Stare.
This didn't judge sin.
It burned souls.
Any creature caught in its gaze wouldn't simply die… it would be consumed from the inside out, reduced to ash in the shape of agony.
Soren's brows tightened. The space cage trembled as if it had been struck by the fist of a god.
Mephisto's smile returned.
He poured more power into the attack, igniting even his mental essence. The hellfire surrounding him surged into a blazing hurricane
The demon lord pushed his strength past its limit.
Determined to burn Soren's soul out of existence.
A searing heat erupted through Soren's body, an instantaneous pain that made him groan. Even with the space barrier isolating him, the emptiness of
Mephisto's hellfire clawed at his soul.
But as quickly as it flared, a counter-flame rose from Soren's own eyes, a fire of similar essence, though far less potent than Mephisto's, yet perfectly attuned to resist the infernal assault. It was enough.
Mephisto's lips curled into a grimace of disbelief.
At first, he felt a twisted satisfaction, this human soul was scorched, but the sensation was fleeting. The hellfire meant to consume him barely lingered.
Each volley of Mephisto's "Eyes of Hell" attempted to ignite Soren's essence, but the flame in Soren's eyes countered the void's incinerating power.
"No… this is impossible!" Mephisto roared, his voice a rumble that shook the magma below. He watched, horror-struck, as the pupils of Soren's eyes ignited with a controlled, burning light, a power that should have been unique to the flame demons of the abyss.
This was the essence of hellfire itself, manipulated by a mortal. The sheer audacity of it twisted Mephisto's face in disbelief.
Soren steadied himself, shaking off the pain from the hellfire's assault.
Mephisto struggled, thrashing within the confines of Soren's spatial prison, but it was clear, he was trapped, and Soren's control was absolute.
Desperation flashed across Mephisto's features.
The Lord of the Abyss could burn through his own body to regain strength, funneling his power through hellfire and mental might, but each surge left him scarred.
Soren had anticipated this. Every desperate burst of energy Mephisto released only strengthened Soren's confidence.
Mephisto's struggles grew frantic, a storm of hellfire and rage, yet Soren remained unshaken. The longer Mephisto lived, the more he clung to his life, the more reckless he became.
That fear of death once his greatest strength, was now his weakness.