The sky bled.
Not with fire, nor thunder, but with silence.
An absence so absolute, it devoured the screams of the world below. Where once the trees whispered songs of wind and growth, now stood charred husks—blackened, cracked, moaning softly like dying lungs. The earth itself groaned, trembling as a beast clawed its way into a world not meant for it.
Anthony ran.
But not from fear. From understanding.
The Maelstrom had arrived—twisting above the mountains like a sentient eclipse, a storm given shape, a hunger without end. Blocks of obsidian-black mass spun in orbit around a pulsing, violet heart. It wasn't just a creature. It was a hymn of destruction. And it sang for him.
He looked behind him.
Three beams of darkness hissed through the air, flattening a forest in seconds. Wind screamed like tortured metal. Trees cracked, rose from their roots, and fed the sky like confetti to a god. The mountain behind him was now a wound.
It was following him.
He clenched his reforged spear—still faintly glowing with threads of fire and lightning. The weapon trembled, alive. It knew what approached. And it feared it.
Not far behind the Maelstrom, a man stood upon the last ledge of a crumbling peak.
Once known as Solun.
Not a god. Not a monster. A man. But Anthony's sin had birthed his grief. His grief had birthed this.
He had delved into forbidden rites, sought Hell's gates, broken their bindings in search of the past Anthony stole. Not out of hate—out of obsession. Anthony, that boy, that curse, had broken the balance. Now Solun, the former architect of peaceful spells and crystalline arrays, had turned his gift to vengeance. His creation, the Maelstrom, was both a beacon and a blade.
"Follow him," he whispered. "Unravel him."
And the storm roared in agreement.
Below, nature had long ceased to grow.
And it was not due to the Maelstrom.
But because he stirred.
The White Demon.
An ancient warden birthed in the last furnace of Hell's seventh layer—the place where sins didn't burn, they froze. A being sealed in flesh not to conquer, but to suppress. Each step he took withered grass, calcified bark, and turned color to ash. For decades, he fought with fists, blades, shadows—not because he could not unleash his truth, but because doing so meant killing the very fabric of the realm he stood in.
Now, enraged, he stirred.
Not because Anthony had harmed him.
But because Anthony had changed the rules.
When Anthony tore through Hell's gate—shattering its order, freeing beasts not meant to be unshackled—the White Demon had no choice. For the Maelstrom was not just a calamity. It was a summoning. A signal. And he was the answer.
The wind hissed. The skies choked. The land awaited judgment.
In the hollow crater of a once-stronghold, Anthony's boots cracked glass-laced stone. He paused, panting, arms aching.
A voice broke the tension.
"Found you."
Utan.
Raq. Warrior, seer, blade-witch. Her eyes glowed with a quiet thrill, not malevolence. Her form was covered in new metal bands and charms—fused through scars from the last time they met.
"I thought you'd be dead," she said. "But death doesn't want you, does it?"
He said nothing. Only stared at the bracelets.
"Annoying things," she muttered, removing a few with a hiss of smoke. "They limit what I am."
The fight resumed—sharp, brutal, fast.
And during it, Anthony learned.
Each parry with his barrier magic was a mimicry. He began shaping twin blades—not exact replicas of Utan's radiant crescents, but ghostly approximations. One shimmered like warped glass; the other pulsed like caged lightning.
His blood lit up. Not with heat—but drainage.
He had unlocked something darker. A reflex, a sin turned skill.
Bio-Leech.
Where his blade struck flesh, power seeped in—life exchanged for raw force. It wasn't healing. It was feeding.
Utan noticed.
And smiled.
"You're finally becoming real," she said, before slamming her fists into the earth, sending a shockwave into his ribs.
But she didn't finish him.
Instead, she stood in the silence.
And answered his question.
"The White Demon… wasn't born. He was forged. There are seven vaults in Hell. Seven prisons. Each held a piece of something older. Rage. Grief. Power. Judgment. When they tried to combine them, to make a warden to watch over the rest… they made him."
"And he escaped?" Anthony asked, still gasping.
"No. He was released the moment you broke the gates."
In the skies, the Maelstrom shrieked.
Below, the White Demon opened his arms.
And in between them all, Solun wept.
Family. A crest burned into the storm's eye.
Anthony's crest.
This wasn't fate.
This was design.
And someone had to die for it.
End of Chapter 24