The dust of Ashen Veil clung to nothing as Delta walked. His boots left no prints on the cracked earth, as though the ground refused to remember his passage. The horizon stretched flat and unforgiving, a wasteland where forgotten prayers went to die. He did not hurry. He did not pause. The blade hung at his side, its chipped edge humming faintly—a sound only the wind heard, and even it fell silent in his wake.
Miles blurred into leagues. Animals sensed him first: a herd of gaunt deer lifted their heads, then scattered without a cry, their shadows fleeing longer than their forms. Birds abandoned the sky overhead, wings beating in frantic retreat. The air grew heavier, as if carrying the weight of unspoken judgments.
He came upon the forsaken temple at dusk. It crouched on a low rise, its stones weathered to stubs, etched with runes from a god long since demoted to myth. Vines choked the entrance, but they parted as he approached—not withered, not torn, simply recoiling like flesh from fire.
Inside, the air smelled of sulfur and regret. A minor demon named Skrix huddled in the altar's shadow, a twisted imp with skin like boiled leather and eyes that glowed with petty malice. It had been bound there centuries ago, a punishment for some infernal slight, feeding on stray prayers that slipped through Hell's cracks.
Skrix sensed the anomaly before seeing him. Its chains rattled, not from fear, but excitement. "A walker," it hissed, voice like scraping gravel. "Unbidden, unclaimed. Come to free old Skrix? Or to serve?"
Delta stepped into the dim light filtering through cracked domes. He said nothing at first, his hooded gaze fixed on the altar's faded sigil—a spiral of Hell's lesser seals.
Skrix slithered closer, chains dragging. "You reek of nothing. No soul-scent, no divine spark. What are you, walker? Hell's lost tool? Heaven's mistake?"
Delta halted. The blade twitched slightly in his grip, as if tasting the air. Then, in a voice like distant thunder rolling over empty plains—low, measured, without inflection—he spoke. "Irrelevant."
The word hung, simple yet absolute. Skrix froze, its glowing eyes widening. Not a threat, not a dismissal, but a statement that unraveled the imp's essence. Irrelevant. As if the demon's entire existence was a footnote in a book no one would read.
Skrix laughed, but it cracked at the edges. "Irrelevant? I am bound by the Lords Below! I know secrets—pacts, weaknesses. Bind me to you, walker. I'll whisper the paths to greater prey."
Delta raised the blade, not in attack, but inspection. The steel caught no light, yet it seemed to draw the shadows inward. "You assume I seek."
The imp lunged, chains snapping taut, claws extended in a desperate bid to possess. Its form shimmered, attempting to merge with Delta's shadow—a standard infernal trick, binding through essence.
The fight was brief, inevitable. Skrix's claws met air as Delta sidestepped without effort, the motion fluid yet devoid of grace, like a shadow shifting under unchanging light. The imp twisted mid-air, hurling a bolt of hellfire—crimson flames that scorched the temple stones black.
Delta did not dodge. The fire licked his cloak, then fizzled, as if embarrassed by its own futility. He swung the blade once—not a slash, but a precise arc that severed the air itself. The edge connected with Skrix's ethereal form, chips in the steel grinding against infernal sinew.
A wet, tearing sound echoed. Skrix howled, body convulsing as its essence frayed. No blood—demons didn't bleed like mortals—but wisps of smoke poured from the wound, carrying screams of a thousand failed pacts. The imp collapsed, chains dissolving into ash.
"You... cannot..." Skrix gasped, form flickering. "What terror are you?"
Delta lowered the blade, its edge now etched with a faint, glowing rune that faded almost immediately. He looked down, voice unchanged. "The answer you did not request."
Skrix's eyes dimmed. In its final twitch, it whispered a report back to Hell's deeper pits—a garbled message of a walker who unbound without claiming, who spoke terror in truths too plain.
Delta turned and walked out. The vines did not reclaim the entrance. They withered entirely.
In the pits of Hell's outer circles, the message arrived like a chill wind through eternal flames. Lesser demons gathered around flickering scry-pools, murmuring. "He unbound Skrix without pact," one rasped. "Spoke as if we are... nothing."
Humility crept in, uninvited. The Lords Below stirred uneasily, for the first time questioning their bindings.
Above, in the mortal wastes, a traveler—a merchant fleeing drought—spotted the temple from afar. Smoke rose, but no fire. He approached cautiously, finding only ruins and a faint echo in the air, like words half-heard.
He fled northward, carrying the first distorted tale: a silent slayer who spoke doom to demons.
Delta continued west, the horizon bending slightly in his path. The blade felt heavier, though he showed no strain. Behind him, the temple crumbled entirely, stones folding inward as if erasing their own history.
And so the path unfolded—not chosen, not rebelled against, simply walked.