The Broken Halo

The hand inside Simon’s stomach had almost stopped hurting, but that was worse than the pain.

His bloodline was yielding beneath something it recognised as superior. Here, stronger muscles would not free him. The strength he could force through his body on a battlefield meant little on a road built from ancestry.

His Will, Fearless, and experience had carried him past the earlier bloodlines. He had refused submission, endured what should have broken him, and exploited the Ithravel’s arrogance.

This was different.

The six-eyed Daemon carried the weight of a history older than anything Simon had known. His decades of war barely touched what that blood remembered.

Even the resentment pouring through the ritual could only help his bloodline resist. It could not make the difference disappear.

The fingers around his throat tightened.

"Have you decided?"

Simon could not call the wind. Space would not answer him either. His Byakko bloodline had remained beyond the gate, and this was not a place where he could borrow its affinities.

The Chaos Blade was inside his physical heart. The Wraps were around his physical arms.

Neither would appear here.

Neither would the Chaos Flames.

But he was still thinking.

Still refusing.

Fearless.

The sudden realisation sharpened his thoughts. His blood recoiled in the presence of this Daemon bloodline, but his mind had not surrendered. The Blessing still reached him here.

’If Fearless works...’

His remaining fingers closed more firmly around the Daemon’s wrist.

He felt the answer.

Devour was within reach.

For a moment, the possibility disturbed him more than the hand inside his stomach. This creature was an ancestral imprint, part of the road through his own blood. What would happen if he consumed it?

Would the path survive?

He had wanted to reach the origin through endurance and understanding. Not by eating everything that stood before him.

The Daemon pulled him closer.

"Your silence is becoming tiresome."

Simon looked into its six crimson eyes.

He would not let this thing decide where his evolution ended.

A bloodied smile pulled at his mouth.

"I was trying... to do this properly."

He gave it no time to answer.

Devour.

Blackness spread beneath the fingers holding its wrist.

The Daemon stopped.

A thin strand peeled from its skin and disappeared into Simon’s palm.

"What are you doing?"

More followed.

The hand buried in Simon’s stomach began losing its shape. Dark-bronze flesh separated into threads, and the pressure crushing his bloodline faltered.

The Daemon pulled its hand free.

Simon dropped, but did not release the wrist he already held.

The pressure had not vanished. It hammered through him while Devour tore at its source. He endured both, knowing what would happen if his fingers opened.

"What is this?!"

The Daemon raised its free hand. Then its eyes fixed upon the blackness spreading up its arm.

All six widened.

"The Devourers."

The words came out almost soundlessly.

Simon grinned.

The Daemon recoiled.

"Why do you possess their accursed power?!"

Its wings struck the air as it tried to wrench away. Simon’s feet dragged through the ash.

His companion lunged from the ground and wrapped its remaining arm around the Daemon’s knee.

Moments earlier, neither could have restrained it. Now every struggle fed the thing taking its strength.

"You carry their blood too? How many bloodlines are inside you?!"

Simon answered by drawing harder.

Then a wild laugh broke through the blood in his throat.

The Daemon struck his shoulder. Bone showed beneath the torn flesh, but his fingers remained locked.

His companion sank its teeth into the captured leg.

"LET GO!"

One dark-golden wing unravelled. Then the silver-and-crimson pair thinned into drifting strands.

Their power passed through Simon and flooded the manifestation clinging beside him.

The Path of Origin shuddered. Far behind, red threads snapped taut, but the road remained.

The Daemon tried to speak again, but Simon pulled until its words became a scream.

Its horned crown caved inward. The six eyes lost their positions as the face stretched toward his hand.

Curses followed it into the blackness.

Then there was nothing left to hold.

Simon fell to his knees.

Beside him, his companion’s missing arm began taking shape.

In the ruined Velmora, Unholy Regeneration seized the incoming power. Simon’s wounds closed, forcing blood from between the joining edges.

His four wings tore open along their roots.

A third pair forced through his back. The upper vanes turned dark gold, the middle membranes blackened around ivory bones, and the lowest pair unfurled silver on one side and crimson on the other.

Four new seams opened beneath his original eyes.

Lids formed.

All six eyes opened together, and crimson light spilling across his face before they closed again.

Eight horns curved into a crown above skin darkening toward bronze. Black markings spread along his throat and chest.

His Infernal Heart remained unchanged in rank, but its next beat nevertheless drove dust from the surrounding ruins.

Beyond the array, surviving beasts and demons flattened themselves against the ground. Blood rose in trembling drops above the inscriptions.

The black channel buckled.

Tarvak’s back lifted from his restraints.

His malformed wings folded through one another. Bones pierced the membranes, then turned inward and continued growing.

Eyes opened inside the mouths beneath his skin.

They blinked while the mouths screamed.

A swollen knot pushed up beneath his throat, trying to become another head. Lilith pressed two fingers toward it, forcing the growth aside before it could obstruct the vessel’s breathing.

She clicked her tongue.

"That fool used Devour on the Otheryn bloodline."

Crimson lightning branched overhead.

RUMBLE!

Thunder shook loose stone from the ruined buildings. The clouds pulled into broad, overlapping circles above the ritual.

A crack ran through the skull beneath Jorra’s heart.

Lilith’s gaze dropped.

Another fracture crossed its empty eye socket.

The passage was carrying more than the bone could endure.

"Mortal. Return."

Her voice reached him as he stood on the path.

His companion now possessed six wings, eight horns, and six crimson eyes. It flexed its restored hand.

Simon looked down at his own arm.

It was whole again.

The pain remained, but beneath it moved something vast and exhilarating.

"Do not go farther," Lilith said. "The skull is failing. It may survive bringing you back, but it will not support another advance."

He heard every word. However, the path continued.

Something waited farther along it.

Something greater.

’There is still more.’

He remembered fingers around his throat. The God of War’s. The Daemon’s.

How many times had something stronger held him still and decided what he could become?

His heart beat harder.

He had come here to survive.

Now surviving did not feel like enough.

"Mortal."

He wanted the power waiting ahead.

Not a glimpse. Not the knowledge that he might possess it someday.

He wanted it now.

In Velmora, the blood around his seated body began drawing inward. Crimson lightning descended lower, stopping above the outer rings in branches that remained visible long after the thunder.

Lilith looked from the sky to his changing face.

"Just as I feared. This bastard wants to..."

"Keep up," Simon told his companion.

Then he ran.

Crack

A fragment lifted from the Superior Demon Lord’s skull.

Lilith caught it before it separated.

"You greedy bastard!"

She pressed both palms around the bone. Dark-golden light threaded the fracture, holding the passage together.

On the path, Simon’s next step carried him farther than the last.

His companion flew beside him, six wings drawn tight. Neither looked back.

Every footfall opened another hairline fracture on the skull outside.

The blood inscriptions flared. Shadows stretched away from Simon’s seated body, lengthening across the ruins although no light had moved.

The red glow within the skull brightened until its surface seemed thinner than an eggshell.

Lilith kept the pieces joined.

She did not have enough attention left to curse again.

Ash swept around Simon’s legs as he ran. No summoned wind carried him. His Will drove the movement, forcing everything he had just gained into reaching what waited ahead.

The next figure emerged from the distance.

It stood taller than the Otheryn, yet the first thing Simon noticed was the silence around it.

Even the ash hung motionless near its feet.

Its skin was dull silver, smooth except for narrow black ridges following its ribs. Four ivory horns grew from its head, two on either side.

The lower pair swept straight backward beyond its shoulders.

The upper pair extended outward from its temples, then bent sharply upward, framing its head like the sides of an unfinished rectangular crown.

Six wings fanned from a black ring suspended behind it.

No bone connected the ring to its back.

Each wing was formed from overlapping translucent vanes, with dark-red filaments moving inside them. They hung around the ring like six vast blades, unmoving despite the disturbance approaching them.

Its face held only three eyes.

Two where Simon expected them.

The third stood vertically at the centre of its forehead.

All were closed.

The weight behind those sealed lids was greater than anything the Otheryn had released.

And Simon did not slow down.

He had no intention of waiting for this one to tell him to kneel.

He drove everything he possessed into the next stride.

BOOM!

The figure’s chin lifted.

Its central eyelid twitched.

Simon reached it before the eye could open, his hand closing against its chest.

"Devour."