The demon lieutenant's glaive tore through the air, black flames spilling from its edge. Reinhardt barely parried, his greatsword ringing like a cracked bell. Sparks flew as the impact hurled him backward, his boots carving trenches in the stone.
"Reinhardt!" Sid shouted, racing forward. His heart thundered, the demon core pulsing hot enough to scald his veins.
The lieutenant snarled, its voice a storm of gravel and hate. "You cannot resist us. You were born from the Abyss. You will return to it."
Its claw lashed out — too fast. Sid raised his arm on instinct. The strike connected, and agony tore through him. For a moment he thought his arm was gone. But when he looked, his skin wasn't flesh anymore. It was burning with black fire, scales of Ravh'Zereth's abyss crawling up his shoulder.
"No—" Sid staggered, clutching himself. The daemon core inside him pulsed louder, drowning everything out. It wasn't just power — it was hunger.
"Yes," Ravh'Zereth's voice rumbled in his skull. "Let go. Feed the Abyss. Burn it all."
Sid dropped to his knees, his vision blurring. The battlefield twisted around him. Gods and demons clashed in the sky, but all he could see was fire and void, endless screaming darkness. His squad's voices were muffled, distant.
Then another presence stirred. Warm. Steady. Like the heartbeat of the universe itself.
"Stand, child."
Aureon's voice rang clear inside him, echoing through the chaos. "You are not his vessel. You are mine."
The demon core and the divine spark clashed within him, tearing his body apart. Black fire warred with golden flame across his skin, searing, burning, unmaking him. Sid screamed, every nerve ablaze.
The lieutenant loomed closer, glaive raised to strike the finishing blow.
And then it happened.
A burst of light erupted from Sid's chest — not demon fire, not shadow. It was gold-white, pure and endless, brighter than the sun, but heavy with eternity. The battlefield froze. Every soldier, mortal, demon, divine construct, turned their eyes toward him.
Time itself faltered. The lieutenant's blade stopped mid-swing, suspended in the air. The flames on the horizon went still, the crashing waves frozen as if painted on glass.
Sid stood, bathed in Aureon's light. His wounds sealed instantly, but his flesh shimmered unnaturally, half-shadow, half-radiance. His eyes burned twin suns — one black, one white.
The demon lieutenant recoiled, its roar strangled into silence. Even it could not move under that impossible glow.
"Impossible…" it whispered, trembling. "That light cannot exist. Not in this realm. Not in you!"
Sid raised his hand. The golden-white fire flowed freely now, neither demon nor divine, but something in between — a union that should never have been. It wrapped around him like armor, pulsing with the rhythm of eternity.
He spoke, and his voice was layered — his own, Aureon's calm resonance, and Ravh'Zereth's thunderous fury entwined.
"I am both," Sid said. "And neither."
With a single gesture, the lieutenant's glaive dissolved into dust, swallowed by the godfire. The demon screamed as the light consumed it, not burning, but erasing — stripping it from existence entirely. When the radiance faded, nothing remained but silence and a scorched crater.
The battlefield held its breath.
Gods. Demons. Mortals. All stared at Sid.
They had seen the impossible. A flame that should not exist.