Chapter 343: The Descent of the Demon King (4)

The God of Strength tumbled headlong and tore a furrow through the ground. They tried to rise, but the shock lived in their bones and turned every motion into a dull spasm.

Another god answered at once. A black curtain swept up and folded around the Demon King, layer upon layer, as if the world were being wrapped and sent into nowhere. It was the authority of seals. It severed connections and banished whatever it touched to an empty place.

The Demon King raised a finger. Black light gathered at the tip, small as a thorn and sharp enough to make the teeth ache. The sound of it cut like a wire pulled through glass. The bolt tore the sealing shroud apart and streaked for its caster. The god tried to draw their authority tight across their chest.

Ketal had met that light and held, but the god did not. Their power warped and snapped. The radiance speared their chest and blew through their back. They staggered and nearly fell.

The world shook. The Demon King pressed his will down. The realm answered by detonating outward in a rough wave that sent gods skidding. The Demon King reached through the blast and closed his hand around a god’s head.

“Die,” he said, almost bored.

His fingers began to crush the god’s head. Then, a sword struck the Demon King’s sternum and drove him a step backward. The blade had flown like a hawk and hit like a ram. The god in the Demon King’s grip tore free and flung themself away.

The Demon King reached across his chest and closed two fingers on the sword. The metal screamed and powdered between those fingers.

“The God of the Sword. Elia,” he said.

Elia had left Ketal’s side at the last instant to intervene. They looked at the Demon King and did not hide the quiet shock in their eyes.

They had been mistaken about the Demon King’s power. Because Ketal had held the Demon King alone, they had believed the King’s power was lesser than it had been in the old war. Somewhere deep in their memory, a false belief had taken root. No one could have held the Demon King of that age by themself.

However, they had been wrong. The force in front of them was the same. The Demon King ignored the gods’ alarm and looked past them to Ketal instead.

“Why do you not attack him?” the Demon King asked the gods in a voice that felt like a stone dropping into a well.

Elia blinked. “You mean Ketal? Why would we attack him? He stands with us and opposes you.”

“So that is the lie you chose to believe,” the Demon King said. “Fools. You will regret it.”

“If there is regret, it will be yours,” Elia said. “Not ours.”

“Then your regret will be that only five of you came.” The Demon King brought his hands together. Demonic energy crowded between his palms until the air moaned. “Come. I could not kill you before. I will kill you now.”

The five gods rushed. They were not avatars or veiled projections. Their true forms had stepped down. Each one held weight beyond the Mortal Realm’s measure. Strikes that should have ended journeys met the Demon King in a ring of thunder.

The Demon King moved with demonic energy sheathing his body. Elia’s blade shattered against him like a plank left to rot, and the authority of seals crumbled wherever it met his skin. Even five gods working in unison could not restrain him—they could not even hold the line. Step by step, they yielded ground.

Elia braced and blocked a descending fist. The block held for a heartbeat, then failed under the weight behind it. They flew back and tumbled through broken stone. A hand caught them and set them on their feet again.

“Thank you,” Elia said.

“Think nothing of it,” Ketal replied.

𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

They steadied themself and saw his face. “This is not going well. We may not be able to do it.”

“That was my thought as well,” Ketal said easily.

The being before them was a gathering of every idea that made darkness and demonic energy. Five gods were not enough to decide that weight.

“What about the others?” Ketal asked Elia.

“There are no others,” Elia said. “Only those with margin to descend came on short notice.”

“So you did not come to kill the Demon King.”

“No,” they said. “We came to buy time.”

Ketal nodded. “For what?”

“A seal,” Elia said. “A prison for the Demon King. It will not hold long, but it will let other gods descend.”

“So that’s why the God of Seals came with you,” Ketal said.

“Exactly.”

“Good. Then I will help.”

Elia bowed their head. “You have our thanks.”

Ketal smiled as if he were trying not to. The joy inside him was too loud to be quiet. To fight in step with the gods—to face the Demon King with divine hands striking beside his own—stirred something within him that no language could ever contain.

The Demon King released a torrent of pressure, and divine authorities splintered beneath its weight. The air shimmered in burning waves—and then it happened. A god’s chest collapsed under a single punch. Though divinity did not perish as mortal flesh did, the wound was dire all the same. The Demon King raised his foot, intent on finishing the fallen god beneath his heel.

“Hm,” the Demon King murmured, his expression changing.

The Demon King raised his arm to block the oncoming axe. The collision drove both fighters backward. Ketal slid to a stop with the haft already snug in his grip.

“Still strong,” he said, delighted.

“Anomaly...,” the Demon King said, narrowing his eyes. “You take the gods’ side against me.”

“That is how it worked out.”

“Why?”

Ketal answered without drama. “I have ties in the Mortal Realm. I have none among the demons.” There was a reason that mattered more, but Ketal let it stand beside the first. “And I think it’s more interesting to take their side.”

The Demon King’s gaze cooled. “You are mad.”

“If you don’t like that, you should have met me first!” Ketal shouted as he rushed forward.

Even the gods failed to follow his first step. The Demon King answered with a descending punch that shattered the ground, tearing more shape from Hell’s foundations. They clashed again. The gods moved in harmony with Ketal, striking through the openings he carved. Their divine authorities flowed along the paths his blade had traced, pressing forward through the space he had already cleared.

Ketal trembled with a joy that rose from somewhere below the chest and filled the throat. At the very bottom of his heart, something clicked into place. The Abomination inside him sounded offended, but it did not fight his hands.

“To think I must fight beside these young ones...,” it muttered. “It is an insult.”

Ketal and the Demon King collided. Gods dove for the opening and spent their power on the same beat. Even before this, he had been losing to the Demon King, but the margin was not immeasurable. With the gods’ support, the balance found a narrow place where both sides could stand.

The battle dragged on. The God of Seals caught sight of an opening and hurled themself into it—but the Demon King’s fist drove straight through their abdomen. Bloodless divinity flickered where the wound should have been, yet they did not let go. Wrapping their arms around the Demon King, they clung to him with desperate strength. For the first time, the King’s expression shifted.

“Why you...,” the Demon King muttered.

“Come with me,” the God of Seals said. “Let us spend a few days together.”

Space warped, and the void, an emptiness that had held nothing, yawned open to swallow them both. The Demon King’s expression twisted, touched by something that might have been an annoyance.

“A shallow trick.”

The void folded shut, and both the Demon King and the God of Seals disappeared from Hell. Elia lowered their sword, the tension draining from their frame, and finally released the breath they had been holding.

“It is done.”

“They sacrificed themself,” Ketal said.

“There was no other way to cage a being like that. Not even for a little while.”

The God of Seals had traded themself to bind the King. The world would no longer carry a god of that office. Perhaps they had come with the intent to spend their life from the start. The other gods showed little surprise. Relief was the thing that showed most clearly.

“I thought we would fail,” one of them said. “We were fortunate.”

“Our thanks, Ketal,” Elia said. “Without you, we would not have achieved our aim.”

“I enjoyed it,” Ketal said. “What now?”

“We return to the Mortal Realm,” Elia said.

The seal would not last for more than a week. In that time, Heaven had to descend more of their number. They would surround the Demon King and prepare to end him when he broke free.

“Let us go,” Elia said.

Ketal nodded.

***

They returned to the world of men. Even with most of their presence held close, the true forms of the gods pressed on the senses like a storm. If they had not lowered their rank by will, most of those who looked on them would have gone mad. As it was, many wept and bowed their heads to the ground.

The gods sent word to the Mortal Realm that the Demon King had descended. A seal bound him for now, but it would not last. The world had only days to ready itself. They had read the old chronicles. In the Divine-Demonic War, the Demon King had slain many gods alone and burned half the world. The script could repeat itself.

The Mortal Realm stirred into motion. Temples overflowed with worshippers, offerings piled high upon their altars, and prayers ascended ceaselessly into the heavens. One by one, the gods descended to walk among mortals.

Among them was a god Ketal knew.

“Is this the first time you have seen my true form?” they asked him.

“I think so,” Ketal said. “It is good to see you, Kalosia.”

They sat across from one another. Kalosia, the God of Lies and Deception, looked the same and different in the same instant. They were child and elder, man and woman, and neither of those things. Their shape was a chorus of answers that did not resolve.

“Interesting,” Ketal said.

“You as well,” Kalosia said. “We have not met true form to true form. You are strange. You feel like something that should not choose human shape and yet did.”

Ketal shrugged and leaned back. “What do you think happens now?”

“More gods will descend,” Kalosia said. “To meet the Demon King with mortal strength alone is not enough. As in the ancient Divine-Demonic War, gods must stand on the ground and answer the Demon King without walls between. The balance shifted when the King set foot here. That is why we can step down at all.”

“How long before the seal breaks?” Ketal asked them.

“A week,” Kalosia said. “Perhaps a little less. In that time, perhaps half of us can be here.”

“Is that enough?”

“No,” Kalosia replied with no hesitation. “In the last war, every god who could set foot here did so.”

“And even then, you did not kill him,” Ketal said.

“We did not. We bound him after many died and the world burned. This time is worse. We are fewer and we are later,” Kalosia said. They looked at him for a long moment. “Of course, the fact that you exist is what sets this age apart from the past.”

Ketal alone could stand against the Demon King, at least for a time. No such being had existed in the old war. Many gods were gone, and in their absence, the world now had one Ketal. Which side of the scale carried greater weight was something Kalosia did not presume to know. Ketal balanced against dozens of gods in ways that defied measure. Yet one truth remained certain.

“Victory will not be easy,” Kalosia said. “If we win, the cost will not be small.”

The Demon King would face both Ketal and the gods. In the answering, many gods would fall. The Mortal Realm might burn again.

Ketal rubbed his chin. “That is not an outcome I like.”

“I have thought about it,” Kalosia said. “I asked myself what would work. I asked what path harms the least.”

“Others plan to wager their lives. I prefer a plan that spends less blood if a cleaner plan exists.”

“I found one answer.”

“Oh,” Ketal said. “What answer?”

“It is not something I can do alone. I will need your hand.”

“My hand,” Ketal said. The god across from him smiled. Their face could not be read in the way a human face was read, but he felt the line of the smile anyway.

“Ketal,” Kalosia said. “Would you like to become a true Champion?”