The city burned around them.
Lucifer's boots cracked the pavement as he stepped forward, crimson shadows snaking across the broken street. Nythra's molten glow bathed the ruins in sick firelight, her scars bleeding heat that warped the air. Between them, the sigil pulsed like a beating heart, the portal behind it widening with each drop of blood spilled.
They didn't wait.
Lucifer moved first, shadows stretching into spears that ripped forward in a black tide. Nythra raised her arm, the cracks across her skin flaring bright, and swung. The spears shattered against her molten aura, bursting into shards that hissed into the stone. She lunged through the smoke, faster than a thought, her jagged wing slicing downward.
Lucifer twisted aside. The wing ripped a gash through the ground where he had stood, molten fire spraying from the wound in the earth. He caught her wrist as it came past, pulling her forward and driving his knee into her ribs.
