Central plaza – wedding venue ruins
Two of the original ten Greater Demons (Nascent Soul peak) landed like meteors, cracking the marble into a crater.
One: a mountain of muscle and molten iron skin, twin war-axes dripping lava.
The other: a serpent-woman with six arms, each holding a cursed blade that screamed when swung.
They grinned at the destruction.
Then they saw Damien Silverthorn standing calmly in the center, silver blade (Isabella) resting on his shoulder.
The demons laughed.
"Another Golden Core insect?"
Damien smiled.
And drew the blade.
A single slash.
The air split.
A silver crescent (fifty meters wide) carved straight through both demons.
They barely blocked.
Axes crossed.
Six cursed blades formed a shield.
The crescent shattered their guard, sent them skidding back twenty meters, heels carving trenches.
Blood dripped from fresh cuts.
The demons' grins vanished.
Damien didn't wait.
He moved.
Not fast.
Perfectly.
Every step calculated, every strike a death sentence.
The iron-skinned demon roared, axes swinging in a whirlwind of molten death.
Damien walked straight through it.
Isabella's blade (his will) parried both axes with one hand, then countered with a thrust that punched clean through the demon's chest plate.
The serpent-woman struck from behind, six blades in a cage of death.
Damien spun, Isabella singing through the air.
Four blades shattered.
The serpent screamed as her arms fell to the ground, severed at the elbows.
Equal footing.
No.
They were toys.
The iron demon charged again, lava erupting from its wounds.
Damien met it head-on.
Blade vs. axe.
Sparks.
Shockwave.
Both fighters slid back three steps.
The serpent regenerated two arms, lunged.
Damien caught her by the throat with his free hand, lifted her clean off the ground.
Isabella's blade rested against her neck.
The iron demon froze.
Damien's voice was calm ice.
"You picked the wrong wedding to crash."
The serpent hissed, venom dripping.
Damien squeezed.
Bones cracked.
Isabella's edge glowed.
One heartbeat of silence.
Then the real fight began again.
Equal footing.
Equal terror.
Neither side yielding an inch.
The sky was no longer sky; it was a bleeding wound.
Ethan Cole Rosewood, the Hellfire Prince, the boy who burned cities for fun, hung in the void like a broken doll.
Five Greater Demons circled him at perfect distance, their Nascent Soul auras pressing down like five collapsing stars.
He had already killed two of the original ten.
Their corpses still burned in the stratosphere, falling as black meteors.
But the remaining five had adapted.
They stopped playing.
The first real blow came from the void-blade demon.
A flash of absolute black.
Ethan tried to twist.
Too late.
The blade carved from left shoulder to hip.
Flesh parted.
Muscle tore.
Bone severed clean.
His left arm spun away into the darkness, fingers still twitching, hellfire licking uselessly at the stump.
Blood jetted in a crimson arc.
He screamed (raw, animal, inhuman).
Before the sound left his throat, the second demon (molten iron claws) was already behind him.
Claws punched through his face.
One hooked under his right eye socket.
Ripped.
The eyeball came free with a sickening pop, optic nerve trailing like wet string.
Half the world went black.
Ethan's remaining eye burned crimson, tears of blood and fire streaming.
He swung blindly.
Caught the iron demon's throat with his one good hand.
Squeezed.
Hellfire poured down its gullet.
The demon's head exploded from the inside.
Three left.
But they didn't give him time to breathe.
Twin kicks, perfectly synchronized.
Left leg: knee shattered inward, tibia and fibula snapping like dry branches.
Right leg: thigh bone pulverized into gravel.
Momentum died.
Ethan fell.
Hundreds of meters.
The wind screamed past what was left of him.
He hit the wedding courtyard like a meteor.
Marble exploded into a crater twenty meters wide.
The impact drove broken ribs through lungs.
Blood filled his mouth.
He lay on his back in the ruins of white roses and gold ribbons, staring up with one ruined eye at the burning sky.
His severed arm lay three meters away, still clutching a fragment of hellfire.
The five demons (now three) descended slowly, wings of shadow and flame blotting out what little light remained.
Their laughter was the sound of graves opening.
One crouched beside him, licked the blood from his cheek.
"Delicious…"
Ethan's lips moved.
No sound came out at first.
Then, barely a whisper, through broken teeth and blood:
"Not… done…"
His remaining hand twitched.
Hellfire flickered weakly around the stump of his missing arm.
The demons laughed harder.
The prince was meat.
The kingdom watched on every cracked screen, every dying phone.
Their Hellfire Angel was broken.
And the monsters were still hungry.
The lead demon raised its claw for the killing blow.
Ethan, broken and bleeding in the crater, could only glare with his one remaining eye.
The claw descended.
Then the air screamed.
Twenty blades (long, silver, glowing with violet runes) appeared from nowhere, hovering in a perfect circle above the courtyard.
Every demon froze.
A shadow dropped from the sky like a black comet.
Kaius "Reaper" Vorn landed between Ethan and the demons, boots cracking the marble, long black coat billowing, eyes cold as the void.
Behind him, twenty elite female agents materialized in formation, each one controlling a single floating sword with pure telekinesis.
No one spoke.
Kai raised one hand.
The twenty swords hummed.
Then moved.
Not fast.
Instant.
Twenty silver streaks.
Twenty demons (the three Greater Demons and seventeen lesser ones that had been closing in) were pinned to the ground, walls, and sky before they could blink.
Swords through throats.
Swords through hearts.
Swords through skulls.
One Greater Demon tried to regenerate.
Kai flicked a finger.
Its own sword spun, carved it from crown to groin, then pinned both halves to the earth.
The second Greater Demon roared, shadow wings flaring.
Kai tilted his head.
All twenty swords turned at once and shot forward.
They carved the demon into a hundred pieces before the roar finished.
The third tried to flee.
Kai snapped.
Every sword detonated into a cage of telekinetic force, crushed the demon into a ball of meat and bone the size of a basketball, then flung it into the burning sky.
Seventeen lesser demons never even got to scream.
In four seconds, the courtyard went from slaughterhouse to graveyard.
Silence.
Kai knelt beside Ethan, expression unreadable.
"Told you I was bringing backup, bro."
The twenty agents landed around them in perfect sync, swords still hovering, ready.
Ethan coughed blood, managed a broken grin.
"Took you long enough… asshole."
Kai smirked, pressed two fingers to Ethan's forehead.
Violet telekinetic energy surged, stabilizing the worst of the bleeding, holding shattered bones in place.
"Shut up and live.
We're not done yet."
He stood, turned to the agents.
"Formation Delta.
We're going hunting."
The floating swords hummed in agreement.
The courtyard was silent except for the crackle of distant fires.
Kai stood over Ethan's broken body, twenty elite female agents in perfect formation behind him.
He raised both hands.
Violet runes flared across every agent's skin.
No hesitation.
Twenty women dropped to one knee in unison, eyes shining with absolute trust.
"Life and death," Kai said, voice calm.
Twenty voices answered as one:
"We offer everything."
The air exploded with light.
Twenty bodies dissolved into streams of pure silver-violet energy, spiraling into the floating swords.
One by one, the blades absorbed their souls, their wills, their power.
Runes etched themselves along the steel.
The swords grew longer, sharper, glowing with living heartbeats.
In seconds, twenty women became twenty legendary swords.
Kai lowered his hands.
The blades arranged themselves behind him like wings (twenty wings of pure vengeance).
Ethan, coughing blood, stared up with his one eye.
"You… formed contracts with all twenty?"
Kai nodded once.
"They volunteered. Said the city needed a miracle more than they needed to breathe."
He looked down at his brother, expression unreadable.
"Take care of your family, Ethan.
I'll handle the rest."
Ethan tried to speak, but Kai was already rising.
The twenty swords lifted him into the air like a dark angel.
He shot toward the burning districts where civilians still screamed.
A single sentence drifted back on the wind:
"Leave none of them standing."
Ethan watched his brother vanish into the smoke, twenty soul-blades trailing behind him like a comet made of wrath.
Then he forced himself to his feet, legs dragging, hellfire flickering weakly.
One arm gone.
One eye gone.
Didn't matter.
His family was waiting.
He started limping toward the ruined wedding hall.
Every step left a trail of blood.
Every step carried a promise.