“You say the world did this to you. Then why aren’t you angry? Why don’t you feel hate?” An elderly voice called out from the fog.

Hale watched in amazement as the fog shifted and condensed into a man. He was elderly and about 6 feet tall but no other details could be discerned. Hale almost forgot about the pain from his back and lungs.

“How… why are you… who are you?” Hale asked through a moan of pain.

“I was known as The Violet Demon. The previous owner of ‘ hidden knowledge’. Why are you here?” The fog man retorted.

“I was betrayed.”

“We share that in common.” The man sighed, remembering his own life. “I lived for hundreds of years, but what is currently happening to your body is a first.”

“What does that mean? What’s happening to my body?”

“You may yet live. But I am sacrificing what's left of my soul to keep your entanglement stable. Prove to me you deserve to live.”

“Please, if you can save me. I’ll… I’ll do anything!” Hale pleaded.

“That’s not proof. Let me fix your worldview first and then try again. Godhood is not the end of the path to godhood. It’s the beginning. I was at the cusp of becoming a divine god! My gaze alone could shatter the minds of tiny godhood realms.”

This shook Hale’s understanding of the world. Someone who could kill gods with a glance? People at the resonance realm were already so powerful. How strong was this man in front of him?

“And you, a simple awakened. You were never supposed to awaken. If it wasn’t for that mirror artifact pumping you full of radiation you never would have aligned with our concept. You’re a fraud.”

Hale was silent. What could he say to such a revelation? The concept he had come to feel close to wasn’t even supposed to be his. Maybe he really was masquerading as an awakened this whole time.

“If you want to live, you must learn to embrace your concept. You are stupid and weak. Don’t be. Now show me proof.”

Hale was still for a few moments. Embrace his concept? He had already felt it start to change him, if truly gave in who would he become?

“You still hesitate.” The Violet Demon reached out and grabbed Hale’s hair and pulled it so they looked in each other's eyes, “Why are you holding yourself back? You have been conditioned by society. Play by the rules, don’t hurt others, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie. And you let those little people dictate what you do? There are no gods, only very powerful beings. So, if you can’t be a god, be a demon. You have nothing else to lose. I mean, you’ve already died.”

Hale’s eyes glittered as he understood his words. Why was he limiting himself to being a chess piece of the Crests, of the conglomerate of the pact of separation. But, Hale still felt something, it was akin to empathy.

“As long as you’re alive you can always repent. But, if you’re dead there's nothing. There is no afterlife, just non-existence. The world is pain and death. Your struggle to stay a decent person was wasted.”

“As long as I live I can always repent.” Hale whispered out without knowing it. His struggle was wasted. No one was good. Cayden was proof of that. Hale felt anger. He felt rage. He had thought back to Ava’s words days back. He knew people were keeping secrets from him yet he did nothing. He just played his part, and in the end was literally stabbed in the back.

Hale pushed down the pain and with weak movements he stood up, now looking at the man eye to eye for the first time. His eyes were steely with determination. He would never play by the rules again, never be used again. “When I reach the end of the path I’ll repent. Until then, I won’t just be a demon, I’ll be the devil.”

“Much better.” The Violet Demon’s body was beginning to dissipate. “The god’s blood is like nothing I have ever seen before. A living artifact. And it's bonding to you, filling in the holes in your heart, digging in and grabbing a hold on your bones. It seems to like the concept in your aura. Sadly the artifacts aura is too powerful, it’ll only buy you three years of life before it radiates you into an abomination.”

Hale was amazed by the man’s explanation but soon became dejected. But the man continued, “You have to reach godhood in that time. Then you can reform your body and fix your wounds. If I was still alive I could have fixed that with a wave of my hand, but now, it's taking everything I have left to keep you alive until it's done bonding with you. We only have a few moments left before I truly dissipate.”

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Hale felt bad for him. It seemed he had been here a long time, waiting for something but ended up giving away this last fraction of his soul to save him. “How can I thank you?”

“Having the chance for my concept to birth a new god is enough.” His body had now begun to completely dissipate. His disembodied voice rang out just before his soul fully dissipated, “If you ever meet the one with the concept of authority, separate their head from their shoulders for me.”

And with that, The Violet Demon was gone. His soul sought shelter in his concept for possibly hundreds of years and Hale had just watched an ancient being die. He was by his own admission someone stronger than gods, but he quietly disappeared from the world forever. No one else would know, it seemed anticlimactic.

-

In the land of stars nearly 24 hours might have passed but for the real world less than a minute had gone by. But, in that time it was enough for Ava to kill the Shea member she had grappled with and had gone to take the artifact but incredulously watched it reach out and flow into Hale’s dead body.

The explosions in the distance had subsided and there was no time left. Ava grit her teeth and lunged at Hale with a knife. At that same moment Hale awoke from his excruciating slumber. His eyes opened and a pressure that neither Ava nor Cayden could create was pushed down on them. A violet mist seemed to seep out of Hale’s eyes as he scanned the surroundings.

“Impossible!” Ava was already in a lunge and had no chance to retreat as Hale’s left arm seeped out black ink as it broke through his skin and stretched past his fist by at least a foot, it hardened into a blade that turned Hale’s forearm into a sword.

He pushed out his arm, piercing Ava through the chest, but she simply turned into smoke and disappeared, leaving behind the clothes she wore and a strange voodoo doll. Hale simply filed that scene away in his mind as he pushed his ragged body up until he was standing.

“It seems that using the ink as a blade moves it away from my heart making everything more labored.” Hale quickly deduced what was happening with his body since he was given a general breakdown by The Violet Demon. Hale also took into account that he was still missing liters of blood but that was self-evident. He couldn’t use this ability rashly.

He soon turned his attention to Cayden who had just slit the throat of the man he was fighting. Cayden turned and saw that the god’s blood was gone, and there stood Hale with a singular black blade protruding from his left forearm like a long claw. He didn’t know how it had happened but there was no longer time to think. Hale took off into a sprint as Cayden jumped backwards to reach for the gun of the Shea family member. He grabbed the gun and spun only to see his hands disconnect from his arms as a flash of black blurred by.

Hale stood in front of the now handless Cayden, no emotion flickered in either of them even though they were both under immense pain.

“Can you at lea-” Cayden got out before Hale decisively waved his bladed arm and took Cayden’s head from his neck. Hale had nothing to say to him.

He breathed heavily but he had lost a lot of blood and was quite light headed. The ink became liquid again as it all retracted back into his body, some of it turning into blood to help him. All that was left was his bloody forearm from where the little tendrils had broken through his skin that combined into the blade, and curiously, a forearm tattoo that seemed to be a mix between waves of an ocean and a topographical map.

Hale stood amongst dead bodies, his body shaking from adrenaline. He had killed at least one person. This wasn’t like before when he left those people behind. He had done the killing this time. His breathing wouldn’t slow down as he slumped to the ground next to Cayden’s now headless corpse.

Even after a minute the shaking wouldn’t stop and his breathing wouldn’t slow. Hale reached into one of Cayden’s pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He hesitated for a moment but after thinking of his three year lease on life he figured that his lung health was never going to be the thing to kill him.

He took the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, taking a deep drag on it. It burned his lungs and stung his throat, but Hale was surprised that it didn’t taste nearly as bad as he was expecting. The smoke twined through his fingers before it drifted off into the starry sky and dispersed. He smoked it to the butt but his hands still shook, so he took out another and smoked it. Only after his third one did his hands become steady and his breathing returned to normal as the nicotine buzz brought him back down to earth.

He used acquisition and found that the land of stars were normal once more, but there was no sign of The Violet Demon, but he expected that. Hale learned that Michael Shea had survived the battle with the abomination and retreated to recuperate. He threw away his original plan he had when coming to this place. He no longer wanted to run from the Crest family. He wanted to watch it burn to the ground.

He got up and swiped one of the guns and the strange doll that Ava had left behind. After that he tied some of their jackets together in a patchwork blanket. Michael or Rose could come at any time so he focused on speed and not perfection. After that was done he threw the three bodies on and dragged them off back into the forest. But before he did that he realized that the two Shea subordinates both had bags of gunpowder, probably to give to Michael if he ran out, so Hale decided to pour it onto the ground around the battle and lit it. The powder scorched the earth and singed the grass, just a precaution to turn any investigation towards the Shea family. It took an hour to drag the bodies as Hale was already hurt and missing a lot of blood, even though the god’s blood did make up for some of it Hale still felt lightheaded. He made it through the illusion by using acquisition and made it back to the ink tentacle area. He decisively threw the bodies in one at a time and watched them get devoured into nothing as he felt a hidden force try to rewrite the memories of their existence. A simple violet flash from Hale’s eyes dispersed that force.

Soon after he felt the world shift and the time dilate as the world was synchronized. The ink covered ground in front of him began to sizzle as it evaporated and he felt the natural balance of the laws of the world return. With the evidence destroyed he turned and returned to the core to meet up with any remaining Crest members.