Alex and Hope climbed the ladder into the main hall and sealed the hatch behind them. Hope’s sharp gaze swept across the curving hallway to the left, her expression wary.

“There are three things you need to know about Raphael,” she whispered, turning to Alex and counting off on her fingers. “One, he’s almost home now—closer than a kiss. Two, his favorite color is blood. And three, he probably knows a thousand ways to kill us. This is gonna hurt.”

“Follow me.” She finally exhaled, stepping toward the door that led to the dining hall. As if sensing her presence, the door groaned open of its own accord.

Hope rushed forward, eager to claim the Orphic Hammer and escape, but Alex did not follow. His gaze shifted to the right, down the dimly lit hall . A presence stirred there, a mind foreign to the ones he had sensed before. Someone—or something—had entered while he was below, freeing Hope.

Hope turned, puzzled. “What are you doing? Let’s grab the hammer and leave.” Her eyes darted nervously, scanning for unseen dangers. But before she could say more, the shadows swallowed them whole.

Alex drifted seamlessly into the void, reemerging in an opulent chamber—Raphael’s private quarters.

A lavish hexagonal bath sat in the center of the room, its waters faintly glowing with a soft, otherworldly light. Detailed portraits of Raphael hung along the walls, each painting displaying his visage in worshipful extravagance. But Alex’s attention remained locked on the figure reclining upon a luxurious bed.

‘What the fuck is he wearing?’ Alex thought, barely suppressing his disgust.

The devil lay sprawled on silk sheets, exuding effortless seduction. His attire was… eye-catching, to say the least—a harness of dark leather straps adorned with infernal script, the chains woven into it gleaming with an eerie luster. Each rune stitched into the leather pulsed with latent magic, the infernal markings shifting subtly with each breath he took. His broad chest, left mostly bare, gleamed under the dim lighting, and his lower body was covered only by an indecently tight pair of pants that clung to his form in ways that made Alex deeply uncomfortable.

Behind him, massive, leathery wings unfurled, their ember-like veins pulsing faintly as if they still carried the heat of the Hells. Even the bed he lay upon radiated decadence—dark red upholstery lined with gold, its headboard adorned with a grotesque, grinning devil’s face.

His fingers, long and clawed, tapped rhythmically against the silken sheets, lost in thought, unaware of his imminent doom.

“That’s Haarlep,” Hope murmured beside him, her voice barely above a breath. “Raphael’s incubus.”

Alex’s gaze flickered to her, then back to the incubus. Without hesitation, he moved.

Ethereal chains infused with holy energy lashed out, coiling around Haarlep’s limbs, pinning him in place before he could react. The incubus’s golden eyes snapped open in shock, his mouth parting for a cry that never came.

A dagger materialized in Alex’s grasp—its obsidian blade pulsating with divine wrath. Without a word, he drove the dagger straight into Haarlep’s heart.

The incubus arched in agony, his body shuddering violently as his soul was torn from him. The chromatic orb embedded in Alex’s chest pulsed hungrily, siphoning the very essence of the incubus, consuming him whole.

Dark tendrils of flesh slithered from Alex’s arms, entwining around Haarlep’s form, devouring what remained of him. The incubus’s once-perfect body withered, twisted, until nothing remained.

And then, the memories came.

Alex stiffened as Haarlep’s consciousness merged with his own. Images flickered through his mind in a relentless cascade—moments of seduction, whispered temptations, and…

Alex’s stomach twisted. He staggered back, barely restraining the visceral recoil as he saw it—Raphael, locked in a passionate embrace with himself, reveling in his own reflection, lost in an abyss of narcissistic pleasure.

‘What in all the hells did I just witness?’

A shudder wracked Alex’s frame, his mind rebelling against the obscene display burned into his consciousness.

Hope, oblivious to the horrors Alex had just endured, looked around frantically. “Are we done here?” she hissed, panic creeping into her voice. “Raphael should be here any moment.”

Alex exhaled sharply, pushing the invasive memories aside.

His voice was tight with disgust, his expression cold and unreadable. “Yes,” he said, barely containing his revulsion. “Let’s get the hammer and end this.”

His gaze flickered toward the side of the opulent bed, where a crystal orb—smooth and flawless, the size of a newborn’s head—rested in an intricate metallic cradle. Runes of arcane origin pulsed faintly along its polished surface, their eerie glow illuminating the dark metal frame that held it in place. The sphere seemed alive, shifting with a faint, pulsating light, like a beating heart filled with stolen secrets.

Alex narrowed his eyes. This was no mere trinket. From Haarlep's memories he knew this artefact purpose. A spy’s tool, a tether of control—this was Raphael’s unblinking eye, a window into the lives of those unfortunate enough to catch the devil’s interest.

A slow, simmering rage coiled in Alex’s chest. How many souls had suffered under this relentless surveillance? How many whispered confessions, desperate pleas, and dying breaths had been captured in its cold, unfeeling surface? The thought made his blood boil.

Without hesitation, Alex lifted his hand, psionic tendrils curling around his fingers like waiting serpents. A single pulse from the netherstone embedded in his chromatic orb sent a ripple through the air, distorting reality for the briefest moment. The orb trembled, its runes flaring in protest—before vanishing into nothingness.

Gone. Stripped from Raphael’s grasp. No more stolen whispers. No more unguarded moments fed into the devil’s greedy hands.

With one final glance at the now-empty bed, he stepped into the shadows, vanishing once more.

From the shadows they appeared in the archive, and Alex moved swiftly to the pedestal where the Orphic Hammer floated, suspended in place like an artifact of divine reckoning. Its crystalline core pulsed with an ominous red glow, the interlocking metalwork around it twisted in infernal artistry. A weapon of legends, sealed away in the heart of Raphael’s domain.

Alex’s keen eyes shifted, tracing the intricate enchantments woven into the pedestal. Layers of magic twisted and shimmered, protective wards coiling like unseen serpents, waiting to strike at the first sign of intrusion.

He clicked his tongue in frustration. The enchantments were far too strong to deactivate by conventional means. He reached out with his magic, attempting to siphon the energy away, but the instant his power brushed against the ward, the entire structure flared to life. A chain reaction of defensive spells surged in response, nearly triggering an unknown contingency.

He immediately pulled back, his mind working at a feverish pace.

‘Enchantment for detection and nullification of spatial tempering and teleportation—very strong,’ Alex thought grimly, his gaze sweeping the chamber.

He turned to Hope. "Do you know how to retrieve the hammer without triggering these protective enchantments?"

Hope shook her head. "Raphael made sure no one except him could touch his treasures. He’s a hoarder by nature."

Alex turned back to the pedestal, his mind racing. The netherstone embedded in his chromatic orb pulsed, an eerie glow emanating from his chest.

The enchantments flared violently, attempting to resist, but the orb projected a massive anti-magic field that disrupted their structure. One by one, the layers of protection shattered. A teleportation spell activated, attempting to whisk the hammer away, but the suppression field nullified it before it could take effect.

Then, with a final pulse, the hammer materialized in Alex’s grasp. Its weight was immense, both physically and metaphysically, as if he now held a fragment of a god’s will.

The entire floating island trembled.

A piercing howl erupted around them, reverberating through the infernal walls like the wail of a dying beast.

"Shit, shit, shit! We need to move!" Hope shouted, panic lacing her voice.

Without hesitation, Alex willed the hammer into his psionic vault, then turned on his heel. The corridor ahead was no longer empty.

The hall leading back to the main chamber was now flooded with movement. Devilish creatures poured in from the shadows, infernal eyes gleaming with malice. Behind them, armed debtors—souls bound to Raphael’s will—scrambled forward, their eyes hollow, their bodies forced into combat against their will.

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An arrow whistled through the air.

Alex shoved Hope aside as the projectile embedded itself in the stone floor where she had just stood. A second later, another streaked past his shoulder, grazing the edge of his armor.

There was no time to fight them all. He seized Hope in his arms, and like a blur, he surged forward, weaving through the chaos at impossible speed. Shadows curled around his feet, his movement a phantom flicker in the dimly lit corridors.

As they passed through the dining hall, Alex extended a hand toward Morfred. The ancient undead crumbled instantly, his skeletal remains collapsing like brittle parchment. A soft, glowing essence emerged from the wreckage—the soul that had long been bound to this wretched place.

Alex clenched his fist, and the soul flickered before vanishing into the ether. It was sent where it truly belonged—to Selûne’s embrace.

They reached the chamber where Alex had first arrived, the room bathed in an eerie glow from the infernal lights above. He skidded to a halt, placing Hope back on her feet.

The iron doors slammed shut behind them.

Alex's gaze flickered down for the briefest of moments, tracing the glowing pentagram carved into the floor—his way back to the material plane. But he did not step onto it. Not yet. His eyes lifted, focused ahead as the air in front of him rippled, space itself bending and twisting as a presence forced its way into the chamber.

Raphael.

The devil materialized with a controlled yet palpable fury, his elegant facade marred by a deep frown etched into his perfect features. To his right, standing like a loyal hound awaiting its master’s command, was Yurgir, the Orthon. A hunter, a warrior, bound in infernal servitude. And to Raphael’s left—

A dwarf woman. Her deep-set eyes held quiet intensity, dark curls framing her face in soft waves, streaked with silver that spoke of years hard-lived. Her sun-kissed skin bore faint freckles, and her rich, contemplative gaze carried the weight of too many burdens. Time had drawn lines upon her face, yet nothing had stolen the regal air with which she carried herself. Draped in a deep crimson robe, thick and finely woven, its fabric shimmered with intricate golden embroidery, curling like veins of living fire. A large emerald gem pulsed at the center of her chest piece, its glow casting eerie reflections against the polished stone floor.

Korrilla.

Hope’s little sister.

Raphael stepped forward, the room seeming to darken in his wake. His wings folded behind him, his movements deliberate, filled with restrained wrath.

Alex gently set Hope down, letting her find her footing, before drawing back his hood, revealing a faint smirk curling at the edges of his lips. He held his ground, his icy blue eyes calm—unchanging, unwavering, like the ocean before a storm.

Raphael's voice slithered into the air, venomous and simmering with barely controlled rage.

"You." The single word dripped with malice. "There are many things in your world that I loathe. Litters of kittens, chattering children—the noise and the chaos of it all." His lip curled in disgust. "In my world, in my House, there is order and there is decorum."

He took another step forward, the air thickening with an oppressive heat. "You came here uninvited, and you stole from me. In doing so, you dragged the chaos of your world into mine. I will not abide it." His voice rose, his anger no longer masked, reverberating through the chamber like the prelude to an earthquake.

Still, Alex did not react. He simply watched.

Hope, however, stepped forward, her bright eyes locking onto Korrilla. Her voice rang with desperation and longing. "Sister, oh sister, I've wept and I've cried, but all would be well if you were by my side!"

Her sister didn't even bat an eye at her words, her gaze fixed on Alex.

Raphael’s gaze snapped to her, his lips twisting into a cruel smirk. "Oh, Hope. You are such a piteous thing. All it takes is a crumb from the table, and you forget the centuries of starvation." His tone was laced with mockery, his satisfaction clear. "This insolence has earned you centuries more."

His crimson eyes flicked back to Alex. "It’s the fatal flaw of mortalkind. Take away their free will, and they call you a tyrant. Allow them to indulge it, and they become the tyrants themselves." His wings flared slightly, casting long shadows against the walls. "You and your friends would have been heroes if you’d only dealt fairly with me. Instead, you are no different from doomed Karsus, overreaching your limits and burning your world to ash."

"Wrong, wrong, wrong!" Hope snapped, pointing an accusing finger at the devil. "They will save the world, and they will smash you to smithereens!"

Raphael’s smirk did not falter. "It’s this charming naivety that makes your company so endlessly amusing, Hope." He took a step forward, voice dripping with condescension. "I’ll even forgive this little rebellion—once you’ve been suitably chastised."

Hope bared her teeth, her voice a furious growl. "This isn’t a rebellion—it’s a revolt! I’m revolting!"

Raphael laughed. A rich, rolling sound, soaked in contempt. "Then Hope dies today."

With that, he spread his arms wide, his presence swallowing the room in an overwhelming sense of dread. His voice, laced with infernal power, echoed off the stone walls. "Commander, you may salvage a trophy from these insects when I’m finished."

Yurgir’s massive frame tensed, his eyes gleaming with the promise of bloodshed. "Their skulls will make fine trophies."

Alex's smirk deepened as he tilted his head ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving Raphael’s. "Afraid to fight me alone, Raphael?"

Raphael let out a chuckle, low and condescending, his lips curling in amusement. "If you have any last words, make them quick. It would only take a moment to finish you."

Alex feigned a thoughtful expression before leaning in slightly, his voice dropping into a mocking whisper. "Wow. That's twice as long as it takes to finish with Haarlep."

For a heartbeat, the chamber was silent. Then, Yurgir—the massive Orthon—broke into a sudden, guttural laugh, clutching his stomach. The sound of it echoed through the chamber , the sheer absurdity of Alex’s words catching even the infernal warrior off guard.

Raphael, however, was anything but amused. His crimson eyes flared with unbridled rage, his composure snapping like brittle glass. "You contemptuous little creature!" His voice reverberated through the air, thick with seething fury. "Time to die, little mouse."

The space around them shimmered as six cambions materialized, wings unfurling as they readied their weapons. Their infernal blades gleamed under the flickering light of the chamber, their predatory eyes locked onto Alex, waiting for their master’s command.

Hope tightened her grip on her staff, her expression resolute as she stepped forward to stand beside him. But before she could act, Alex placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

The world around her blurred, the oppressive weight of the Hells vanishing in an instant as she was forcefully pulled from the battlefield. She barely had time to process the shift before finding herself standing a in a massive library , the echo of infernal flames still ringing in her ears.

Back in the chamber, Raphael chuckled, slow and deliberate, his smirk returning. "Sending your little friend away while you stay behind to sacrifice yourself? How noble, how utterly predictable."

But as his gaze met Alex’s once more, the amusement drained from his face.

The smirk on Alex’s lips had vanished. His expression was no longer one of arrogance, nor even defiance—it was something far more terrifying. Cold, calculated, and utterly devoid of fear. His piercing blue eyes bore into Raphael’s very soul, unblinking, unwavering.

Then Raphael sniffed the air. Something was off. Beneath the scent of brimstone and sulfur, there was something else—

Blood.

A faint trace, so subtle yet unmistakable. The air around Alex rippled, a pressure building like the calm before a storm. Shadows curled at his feet, coiling and writhing as if alive, as raw, primal energy surged from within him.

Raphael instinctively took a step back.

Alex’s voice, now devoid of mockery, resonated through the chamber, low and predatory. "You are mistaken about something, Raphael."

His fingers flexed, arcs of energy dancing across his skin, raw power threatening to crack reality itself.

"I am in no danger. But you..." He tilted his head ever so slightly, his gaze never wavering. "You are about to become my next meal."

A deep growl seemed to reverberate from the very walls of the chamber, and for the first time since this confrontation began, true unease flickered across Raphael’s face.

Alex’s body shifted as an overwhelming surge of divine corruption and abyssal entropy flooded through him, reshaping his very essence into something neither mortal nor god. This was no wild, uncontrolled metamorphosis—this was refinement, the calculated evolution of a being who had seized power and forged it into a weapon of his own making. The power did not consume him. He commanded it.

His flesh blackened, dark as the void between stars, absorbing all light into its abyssal depths. It pulsed with quiet, terrible finality—the inevitability of the end made manifest. Veins of silver and deep violet ran beneath the surface like constellations trapped in the skin of a god, pulsing with the slow, rhythmic heartbeat of an executioner who knew all things must come to an end.

From his skull, a crown of bone and shadow burst forth, woven from the remnants of forgotten souls. The jagged, skeletal antlers bore a faint, eerie glow—the embers of a thousand dying worlds. Above them floated a fractured, blackened halo, no longer a symbol of divinity but of absolute dominion over death itself. It did not glow. It did not pulse. Two rhomboid gemstones at its center, one was green and the other crimson, spinning slowly like watchful eyes.

It simply was—an eternal, unyielding void.

His eyes were no longer mortal things—they had become abyssal wells—endless, bottomless, filled with the echoes of every soul he had claimed. The very concept of mortality screamed within them, pleading for respite, yet there was none to be found. There was no sorrow, no madness—only the cold certainty of an executioner who never faltered.

From his back, wings of pure entropy unfurled, neither feather nor flesh, but woven from the unraveling fabric of reality itself. Their forms shifted between solid and immaterial, dispersing into formless black mist one moment and reforming into vast, skeletal structures the next. They bore no grotesque weight—only the unbearable silence of inevitability. When they moved, the air itself seemed to age, trembling with decay before being swallowed by their presence.

His form was not monstrous, nor was it grotesque—it was perfected annihilation, refined entropy, a being who did not simply bring death but was death itself.

And in his hand, Phalar Aluve was reborn.

The divine blade had been reforged into something more. Something final.

The once-pure steel had darkened, its edges jagged and irregular, as though existence itself struggled to define its form. The weapon no longer shone—it devoured light, leaving behind only the cold, empty silence of a world after its last breath. Its edge no longer merely cut flesh—it severed fate, erasing all that stood before it. A reaper’s scythe, disguised as a blade.

A deep, guttural growl rumbled from his throat—not rage, not hunger, but a declaration. His lips curled, revealing fangs stained with the essence of something greater—the dust of crumbling gods, the remnants of cosmic forces that had tried to challenge him and failed.

The ground beneath his feet cracked, veins of pale deathlight spreading outward, creeping through the stone like the roots of a dying world. The weight of his presence alone was enough to wither the air, age the stone, and still the heartbeat of all lesser beings.

This was not a wild, uncontrollable metamorphosis—it was evolution, ascension.

Alex did not stand before them as a mere mortal.

He stood as something far worse.

He was the end.

The beginning.

He was the executioner of gods.

No longer bound to a throne of dust but free to shape the fate of existence itself.

Raphael took another unconscious step back.

Alex smiled.