Iblis did not end them in the swamp. He bound the three wounded hags in chains of burning violet light, dragging their screeching, bloated masses out of the muck. He forced them to crawl through the mud they once ruled, back toward the village square of Downwarren.
The villagers who had stayed behind—the old, the young, and the observers—gathered in a silent circle. Their eyes widened as they saw the "Ladies of the Wood" reduced to bleeding, pathetic piles of rot. The terror that had ruled Velen for centuries was replaced by a grim, cold justice.
Thomas stood before the gasping hags, his violet eyes glowing with the surgical intellect of the Reaper.
"The age of the parasite is over," he declared, looking at his people. "Behold your gods. See how they bleed."
The square of Downwarren was silent, save for the wet, labored breathing of the three broken hags. Bound in chains of violet light, Whispess, Weavess, and Brewess lay in the mud, their true forms—bloated, sagging, and covered in the filth of centuries—laid bare for all to see.
Thomas stepped forward. He did not wear his demonic mask of terror; he stood as a man, yet his presence commanded more authority than any king the villagers had ever known. He looked at the Crones not with hatred, but with a cold, judicial pity.
"You were the stewards of this land," Thomas said, his voice carrying to the edge of the forest. "You held a power that was born of the Source, however diluted. But you forgot the most fundamental law of existence."
He turned to look at his new army—the Beelzebub warriors and Leviathan sorcerers—who stood tall, their demonic forms humming with residual energy.
"Greater power comes with greater responsibility," Thomas declared. "To hold the strength to change the world is to hold a debt to those within it. You did not lead; you fed. You did not protect; you preyed. You abused the Source, and for that, the Source reclaims you."
The villagers watched, breathless. In the Witcher's world, power was usually synonymous with cruelty. Knights bullied peasants, mages played with kings, and monsters ate the weak. But here was a being of apocalyptic strength speaking of responsibility.
Thomas reached into the air. The violet energy condensed, forming a massive, ethereal executioner's blade that shimmered with the combined light of Lucifer and the Reaper.
"In the name of justice, I sentence the Ladies of the Wood to the void," he announced.
With three swift, blinding strokes, the blade fell. The heads of the Crones rolled into the Velen mud. There was no explosion of dark magic, no final curse—only a sudden, profound stillness. The greasy weight that had hung over the province for a thousand years simply... vanished.
Thomas stood over the remains, his gaze steady. "The pact you made with me is not a shackle. It is a gift. Use it to build what they destroyed. Use it to be guardians, not predators."
The villagers looked at their branded palms, then back at the man standing in the center of the square. The terror that had gripped them since he first fell from the sky began to melt away, replaced by a fierce, burgeoning loyalty. To them, he was no longer a "demon" in the stories told to frighten children. He was something else entirely. He was a sentinel.
A hush fell over the crowd as a young girl, the first one Thomas had saved, stepped forward and knelt. Not out of fear, but out of recognition. One by one, the warriors and the sorcerers followed suit, lowering their heads.
"Our Guardian," the blacksmith whispered, the red smoke of the Beelzebub pact swirling gently around his shoulders.
The Cult of the Sovereign was no longer a desperate gamble for survival. It was a movement.
Thomas looked out over the village, which was finally free of the suffocating stench of the hags. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in deep purples and bruised oranges—the same colors as his own infernal energy.
"The world as you knew it has ended," he said, his voice echoing with the calm authority of the Demon Lord. "The light of the old gods has faded, but the darkness of the monsters will not take its place. We stand in the space between. We are the transition."
He raised his hand, and the violet barrier he had placed around the village flared one last time before settling into a permanent, subtle shimmer.
"From this day forward, you are the Cult of Dusk," Thomas declared. "Like the twilight, we are the heralds of a new dawn, and the final warning to those who thrive in the dark. We are the shadow that protects, and the fire that judges."
The villagers repeated the name, the words feeling like a warm hearth against the cold reality of Velen. They were no longer the "Sheep of the Bog"; they were the acolytes of the Cult of Dusk.
Thomas, or Iblis to those who had seen his true face, watched as his Leviathan mages began to use their staves to pull the rot out of the soil, purifying the earth itself. His Beelzebub warriors began to stack the stone for what would become the foundation of their first temple—not a place of sacrifice, but a Fortress-Cathedral that would serve as a beacon for every lost soul in the North.
The Cult of Dusk had its name, its power, and its purpose. And deep in the woods, the Witcher whose medallion had melted against his chest was finally closing in on the village, guided by the scent of ozone and the strange, new light on the horizon.