False alternative ending, if Brax wins final boss battle:

Horatio staggered backwards clutching his broken chest with one hand, thick red blood leaking through his fingers, and looked around at his fallen comrades.

Alex lay sprawled on his front nearby, his white hair obscuring his face. He wasn’t breathing No more phoenix feathers to resurrect him this time.

All their strongest fighters were down, along with everyone else. Walter’s weapons littered the ground smashed and shattered around him. Tyler had been torn in two. Ursula was still alive for the moment, but she just lay curled up in a ball in her robes, crying softly to herself.

But worst, worst of all, there lay Ceres in a crumpled heap on her side, in a puddle of her own blood, mouth open, eyes staring unseeing.

The bottom dropped out of Horatio’s stomach. He was falling, further, further still, down through the bottom of the pit of Tartarus, into the unfathomable depths of the blackness that lay below, into the darkest sorrow of the belly of the world.

Dead. She’s dead. No. I have nothing left to live for any more.

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The demon form of Brax laughed with all of its mouths, a cacophonic cackle that grated on Horatio’s mind even in his despair.

‘DO YOU SEE NOW, SELLSWORD?’ Brax spoke in his ears, or perhaps it was just into his mind, as if reading his thoughts. ‘THERE IS NO HOPE FOR YOU. THERE NEVER WAS ANY HOPE. EVERYTHING RETURNS TO ME IN THE END. I AM YOUR DEATH. I AM YOUR DAMNATION. I AM YOUR END. I WILL DRAG YOU DOWN INTO HELL WITH ME AND YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE!’

Horatio looked down at the Clarent Sword in his hand that wasn’t holding his chest.

It was just a simple sword, with an ordinary metal cross-piece hilt, and an ordinary grip.

And now, even the blade, which previously had burned red with magical Qindian fire, was simply an ordinary, dull steel grey.

I failed, Horatio thought. I had my chance to be the hero of my own story, and I blew it. I wasted it. I failed.

There was a terrible roar, and Horatio raised his eyes one last time to see one of the Demonk King’s Brax’s clawed hands, reaching out towards him.

The hand grasped him tightly, and one of the claws pierced his heart, and that was the last thing that Horatio knew.

YOU LOSE

THE END

GAME OVER