The moment twelve percent left Astaroth's mouth, something shifted.
Not in the air. Not in the pressure.
In him.
The illusion broke.
Because it was an illusion.
All the blood Dark had seen?
All the bruises. The winces. The backward steps.
Lies.
Astaroth's smile faded—not out of anger, but honesty.
He rolled his shoulders once, and the air around him turned static. The crackling stopped being energy.
It became intention.
His eyes dimmed—not losing power, but becoming still. Focused. That smile he always wore? Gone. What stared at Dark now wasn't curiosity or entertainment.
It was clarity.
Astaroth: ...That's enough.
The words struck harder than any blow. No rage. No yelling. Just the voice of something that no longer wanted to pretend.
Dark lunged.
Full speed.
Claws lit with burning ethereal fire. His wings pulsed with fury, his body igniting like a meteor forged from the afterbirth of war.
But this time—
Astaroth didn't move.
Dark hit him square in the chest.
And nothing happened.
No stagger. No grunt. Not even dust.
Dark's claws stopped on contact like they'd struck something older than physics. Like they touched the edge of a truth not meant to be torn. Then—
Astaroth raised his hand.
And slapped Dark once.
Just once.
The sound didn't register until ten miles away.
Dark's body vanished. No blur. No trail. Just gone.
Then—
BOOM.
A mountain in the far west exploded.
Stone rained down like celestial debris, fire spiraled from its core, and a mushroom cloud of ash bloomed across the battlefield. The force alone cracked the tectonic plates beneath the world.
Astaroth lowered his arm.
Astaroth: Enough flailing.
From the mountain's shattered edge, Dark crawled up.
Half his face missing.
One eye evaporated.
His shoulder had been erased—not blown off, erased.
But he was standing.
Because of course he was.
Even with chunks of his body regenerating on the spot—so fast the skin was stitching before the blood landed—he still looked up and laughed.
A snarl.
A grin of absolute, defiant hatred.
Dark: (spitting teeth) Fuck you.
Astaroth blurred.
Not visually. Existentially.
He appeared mid-air and brought both fists down. They didn't glow. No magic laced them. Just brute, ancient, ungodly force.
Dark blocked—
And the ground broke beneath both of them. No crater.
A sinkhole.
Miles wide.
As the terrain gave out, Dark's claws shattered. His arms bent backward. Bone pierced skin.
And still, he retaliated.
A spinning kick—one that carried enough kinetic force to bend magnetism—slammed into Astaroth's neck.
The Emperor didn't budge.
But Dark spun again. And again. Three more hits—each one harder than the last.
Astaroth didn't raise a guard.
He simply stepped forward.
Every step multiplied the weight in the air.
10x.
Then again.
10x.
Again.
Every time Astaroth struck, it wasn't a move—it was momentum, layering on top of itself like pressure building in a collapsing star. And every time he did?
Dark healed faster.
Faster than light. Faster than meaning. The moment his skin split, it returned. The moment a rib cracked—it grew back before it finished breaking.
It was flow. Not skill. Not technique.
Instinct.
The bloodlust of a demon who had died once and refused to do so again.
Dark screamed and wrapped the sky around his body—compressing the very weather into a blade of distortion. He spun, vanished, reappeared behind Astaroth and drove the blade straight into his spine.
It shattered.
Dark's fingers bled.
And Astaroth...
Astaroth turned.
No smile.
Just silence.
Then he breathed in.
And the air caught fire.
Literally.
Every breath pulled flame from reality itself—dragging heat from corners of the world that didn't even know they were hot.
He exhaled.
And Dark was gone.
Thrown through space. Not distance. Space. Time bent. For one second, he was in the Empire.
Then the void.
Then—
He slammed back into the earth. Hard.
Dark: AGHHHH—
Bones—gone. Vision—gone.
But life?
Still there.
Because his heart, broken and stitched, still beat. Each thump echoed like a war drum trapped beneath the ribs of something that refused to die.
Dark pulled himself up.
Claws red with his own blood. Eyes blind. Chest heaving.
And he roared.
Not from pain.
From spite.
Dark: I'll kill you.
Astaroth: You cannot.
Dark: I fucking will.
Astaroth raised one hand.
Flicked a single finger.
The wind split.
Dark's right leg exploded off his body.
Gone. Like it never existed.
He dropped. Breathing hard.
Astaroth: I said... enough.
Dark pushed up again—no leg.
He grew it.
Right there.
In front of Astaroth.
Bone first. Then sinew. Then muscle. Skin. Nail. Toe. It regrew in under a second.
Dark: Then finish it.
Astaroth paused.
For the first time, his eyes narrowed—not in anger.
In respect.
He floated back.
Astaroth: No.
Astaroth: You haven't yet reached what's beneath that flame.
Dark: I don't care what's beneath it.
Astaroth: I do.
He cracked his neck once.
Astaroth lifted both hands—not in preparation, not in defense, but in command.
The sky darkened further. Not like nightfall.
Like erasure.
The clouds didn't form—they evacuated. Light itself stuttered. Colors lost contrast. The reds turned grey. The gold of the distant sun dimmed to a dying ember. Even the ground began to shiver—not quake—shiver—like it knew what was coming was not for land or flesh to endure.
Then—
Astaroth clenched.
Both fists.
And the world responded.
The air tore open.
Not a rip. Not a sound. A screamless scream. Reality folded on itself like wet paper crumbling beneath weight it couldn't describe. All sound flattened. Birds that hadn't fled earlier disintegrated in place—turned to ash without fire. Trees nearby inverted, roots rising, bark peeling inward until they vanished.
And Dark?
He felt it before he saw it.
His skin stretched tight across his bones, not from injury—but from pressure that tried to rewrite the rules of density. His blood boiled without heat. His lungs exhaled without breath. His vision warped—Astaroth wasn't just standing anymore.
He was consuming.
Not in action, but presence.
A force that no longer needed form to impose itself.
Astaroth stepped forward.
Each step left behind not a footprint—but a hole. A cut in the world's memory. Where he stepped, the ground no longer existed. It wasn't scorched. It wasn't crushed. It was forgotten.
Dark watched.
Breathing hard.
His chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, cracked ribs snapping into place and breaking again each time he moved. His left eye was a blur of crimson haze. His wings were nothing but twisted bone and scorched nerves.
But still—
He lowered his stance.
Readied himself.
Even now.
Even against this.
Astaroth's voice followed next. Calm. Even.
Astaroth: You heal faster than I strike. You adapt faster than I increase. But you're still not ready.
He raised one arm.
And pointed a single finger at the sky.
Dark blinked.
Just once.
And the sky bled.
A black star ignited above them, spinning in reverse, dragging the clouds upward into a vortex that made the world look like it was being unzipped. Thunder didn't crack—it howled, like it was being dragged across the surface of something alive.
From that star came a beam.
Not light.
Not energy.
But force.
A column of reversed gravity. Flame. Sound. Weight.
It dropped down like the finger of a god that regretted ever letting existence grow this loud.
Dark didn't dodge.
Couldn't.
Didn't try.
The beam hit.
And the entire wasteland ceased to exist.
Not scorched.
Erased.
Kilometers of terrain just—gone. A perfect circle of absence, like the world itself had been bitten into by a concept too ancient to be described.
Silence followed.
Then—
Something moved in the center.
Charred. Bloody. Broken.
But walking.
Dark.
His skin was peeled back to muscle. One arm gone. Legs uneven. Chest cratered from the force of a sun collapsing in reverse. He shouldn't have been breathing.
But he was.
And he wasn't screaming.
He was smiling.
A crooked, vicious, bloody smile through cracked lips and missing teeth.
Dark: (gasping) That all you got?
Astaroth didn't answer.
He stepped forward again.
And swung.
No build-up. No name.
Just swing.
And the sky tilted.
Dark blocked.
With no arm.
Just instinct.
He grew his arm mid-movement and used it to block.
The clash sent ripples through space. Mountains in the distance cracked. Oceans twitched. Somewhere, a moon lost its rotation.
Dark was flung.
But mid-air, he corrected.
Wings flared.
Not wings.
Blades.
His wings had reshaped into spires of dark crystal, jagged and shrieking with unstable magic. He spun. Twisted. Launched them.
Six in total.
They screamed through the air, each one slicing apart the sky with sonic velocity.
Astaroth raised his hand.
Snapped.
Every blade stopped mid-air.
Held.
And then turned.
Back at Dark.
Dark didn't dodge.
He caught two.
Let four hit.
They impaled him—shoulder, leg, thigh, stomach. He roared through the blood. Used the momentum to charge forward.
Blades still inside him.
He collided with Astaroth mid-roar, one claw tearing into the Emperor's jawline, dragging sparks and blood across the bone.
Astaroth stumbled—
Actually stumbled.
Dark didn't let it pass.
He drove both fists into the Emperor's chest and released a gravitational detonation that collapsed the air into a pulsewave of raw destruction.
The blast pushed Astaroth back.
Three steps.
Astaroth looked down.
His armor cracked.
Then he looked up again.
No grin.
No words.
Just wrath.
Astaroth: Twenty-one percent.
Dark's heart skipped.
His bones—what was left—began to tremble.
Not from fear. From pressure.
Astaroth vanished.
Then appeared behind him, spinning once, and drove his fist through Dark's back, bursting out his chest with a sound like chains snapping in slow motion.
Dark coughed.
Tried to speak.
Astaroth leaned in.
Astaroth: Let's see what demon blood is really worth.
He ripped his hand upward, tearing through Dark's shoulder, shredding the muscle from the inside out. Blood and bone rained in sheets.
Dark didn't fall.
He twisted.
Grabbed Astaroth by the arm—the same arm that ripped him apart—and bit down.
Astaroth flinched.
Not in pain.
In disbelief.
Dark tore a chunk of the Emperor's flesh and spat it out.
Dark spat the remnants of Astaroth's flesh from his mouth, his expression twisted in bloodstained disdain.
Dark: You taste like shit.
Before the insult could land, the Emperor moved with the grace of a god flicking away a speck of dust. One flick of Astaroth's finger sent Dark hurtling into the air like a broken puppet caught in a divine gust. His body spun upward, weightless, useless—and time around him began to slow.
It wasn't just slowed movement. It was perception stretched thin, warped at the edges. Suspended in that surreal silence, Dark saw him.
Astaroth.
The Emperor hovered above with terrifying calm, one arm raised, his blade angled downward with cold finality. The weapon didn't shine. It didn't hiss. It merely existed—as if it had always been meant for this moment.
Dark: (thinking) Why is he holding back? I don't understand... How strong is he, truly? Am I... really this weak?
Panic bloomed in his chest like poison. He tried to move—tried to lift an arm, shift a claw, anything.
Nothing.
His muscles betrayed him. His breath locked inside his lungs.
Dark: (thinking) Why the hell... can't I move?!
He closed his eyes, forcing stillness into the chaos clawing at his ribs. He dove inward, deeper than instinct—into the core of his power. Into the Summoning Veil.
Dark: Igor. Malik. Raz. Shield me.
And they answered.
Three bursts of shadow collided with reality as his Champions manifested in perfect synchronicity. Igor emerged first, greatsword raised, a monolith of silent wrath. Malik followed with a snarl, dark energy crackling along his arms. Raz knelt at the vanguard, a hand pressed to the ground, casting a veil of protection around their master.
The world snapped back into motion.
And then—impact.
Astaroth's descending strike collided with their combined defense, unleashing an explosion that shattered the sound barrier and swallowed the battlefield in smoke and static. Dust spun violently in every direction, cloaking the clash in a veil of roaring chaos.
But when it cleared—
They were still there.
The three stood firm, weapons drawn, shoulders squared. The attack had been blocked. Perfectly. Flawlessly.
Dark descended behind them, his body landing with controlled grace, his expression weary but composed. Igor and the others flanked him without a word, ready to fight again if needed.
Then Astaroth landed.
The ground didn't crack—it caved. A crater bloomed beneath his feet, the sheer force of his descent grinding the earth into trembling submission. He rose from the debris with regal poise, his gaze fixed upon Dark.
Astaroth: Dark... thou who wouldst claim the title of Seventh Emperor...
His voice was no longer a statement. It was a declaration, steeped in centuries of command.
Astaroth: Verily, thou art formidable indeed. Steel and shadow, forged in defiance... I see it now.
He took a breath, the air itself pulling tighter as if bound to his will.
Astaroth: In three days' time, summon forth thy strength. Gather thy cursed brethren... and meet me at the Supreme Palace in Hell. There, beneath the gaze of forgotten gods... we shall settle this in blood.
Without waiting for a reply, the Emperor vanished.
Not in flash or flame.
But in silence.
Dark stared at the space where he'd stood, the heat still lingering like smoke from an ancient fire. His form began to return to human—slowly, reluctantly. His wings, still twitching with dark magic, folded behind his back.
Dark: ...Whoa. What the hell just happened?
He exhaled, eyes flicking to the horizon.
Dark: Wait... I just realized—these wings... I can fly now. Huh...
The tension left him all at once. With a groan, he let himself drop flat onto the warm dirt, limbs heavy, lungs burning.
Dark: Where the hell even am I...?
Beside him, Igor knelt—lower than the others, head bowed in a gesture of pure, solemn loyalty. His armor scraped faintly as he bent even deeper.
Igor: My Emperor... I await thy command.
Dark glanced at him, a tired smile barely forming beneath the dried blood.
Dark: Hey, Igor... take me home. I'm too fucking exhausted for this shit.
Igor rose without hesitation.
Igor: As thou commandest, my Emperor.
A bolt of lightning cracked through the sky, ripping space apart at its core. In a burst of searing white, the four vanished.
—
The camera shifts.
Silence.
Then—
A bolt of light slammed into the earth just outside the gates of the Dark Empire. The energy dispersed, and from its center emerged four figures: Igor, Malik, Raz... and Dark, limping forward.
His armor was fractured. His skin pale. His breath shallow.
But he walked.
He walked because that's what emperors do.
The villagers saw him first.
Then the children.
Then the mothers. The soldiers. The shadows.
Doors swung open.
And then the cheering began.
Tears and chants echoed across the valley. Dozens, hundreds of voices rose to the sky like an anthem that had been waiting for its moment.
Their Emperor... had returned.
Alive.
Victorious.
To Be Continued....
End Of Arc 6 Chapter 8.