Infinity: Reborn

Malphas’s voice rolled across the battlefield like distant thunder. “Stay back. This one is mine.”

The demons who had been closing in around him halted mid-stride. Andromalius watched them exchange glances, then retreat a dozen paces, forming a loose perimeter. The message was clear—Malphas wanted no interference, no assistance, no witnesses close enough to see weakness.

Good. Andromalius had counted on his father’s arrogance.

He signalled his own guards back with a sharp gesture. Wassalt hesitated, jaw tight, but obeyed. The eight demons withdrew to match Malphas’s forces, leaving thirty feet of blood-soaked earth between the two groups.

Father and son.

Seventy years of planning reduced to this moment.

Andromalius drew his blade—curved steel enchanted with minor speed enhancements, nothing spectacular but reliable. Malphas carried no weapon beyond his own body. He never needed one.

They closed.

Malphas struck first, a sweeping claw aimed at Andromalius’s throat. Andromalius ducked beneath it, feeling displaced air ruffle his hair. He spun left, blade cutting upward toward exposed ribs. Steel met flesh. Drew blood.

The wound split purple skin from hip to sternum, deep enough that Andromalius glimpsed bone beneath the torn muscle. Dark blood welled up, spattering the ground.

Malphas grunted. Stepped back.

Andromalius pressed forward, blade whipping in tight arcs. Malphas blocked with his forearms, claws catching steel in screeching impacts that sent sparks cascading. Andromalius feinted high, dropped low, and drove his blade through Malphas’s thigh. Twisted. Ripped it free.

More blood. Malphas stumbled, weight shifting awkwardly onto his wounded leg.

Too easy.

The thought surfaced unbidden. Andromalius had expected resistance—the dragon’s power should have made Malphas nearly invincible. But the wounds landed clean, the blood flowed dark, and his father moved with none of the supernatural speed that had terrorized the Wastelands for weeks.

Perhaps the dragon’s essence had faded faster than projected. Perhaps Malphas had exhausted it fighting through Eligos’s formations. Perhaps seventy years of preparation had actually prepared him for this.

Andromalius attacked again, blade singing through the air in practiced combinations his mother had taught him during those first ten years. Quick cuts to force defensive reactions. Feints to create openings. Precision strikes to weak points where armour didn’t protect and muscle attachment created vulnerability.

Malphas blocked. Parried. Retreated three steps.

The massive demon’s expression remained neutral, but his breathing had quickened. His wounded leg dragged slightly, leaving a blood trail in the dirt.

Andromalius’s heart hammered against his ribs. His arms burned from the impact of each blocked strike. But he was winning. Actually, genuinely winning.

He slashed across Malphas’s face. The blade opened skin from temple to jaw, splitting flesh in a diagonal line that crossed one burning crimson eye.

Malphas’s head snapped sideways. Blood ran down his cheek, dripped from his chin.

Andromalius stepped in close, too close for those massive arms to generate proper leverage. He drove his blade upward beneath Malphas’s ribs, angling toward the heart.

Steel punched through muscle. Sank deep. Grated against bone.

Malphas made a choked sound. His hand closed on Andromalius’s shoulder, fingers digging through leather and into flesh with crushing pressure.

Andromalius wrenched his blade sideways, opening the wound wider, then tore it free in a spray of dark blood.

Malphas released him. Staggered backward two steps. Three.

The massive demon looked down at the wound in his chest—blood pulsing between his fingers where he pressed a hand against the injury. His other hand rose to his face, touching the gash that had split his cheek.

Then Malphas laughed.

It started low, a rumbling chuckle deep in his chest that grew into full-throated amusement. He threw his head back, and the sound rolled across the battlefield—genuine mirth that made Andromalius’s stomach twist with sudden dread.

“Oh, boy,” Malphas said, still laughing. “You actually thought—”

The wounds closed.

Andromalius watched flesh knit itself back together with horrifying speed. The gash across Malphas’s face sealed from both ends, skin pulling tight until no trace remained. The chest wound followed—muscle reweaving, bone mending, skin smoothing over as if the blade had never touched him.

Even the leg. The deep puncture through his thigh that had made him limp disappeared like morning frost under sunlight.

Malphas straightened, rolling his shoulders. “You actually thought I was trying.”

The massive demon moved.

One moment he stood fifteen feet away. The next his fist crashed into Andromalius’s ribs with force that lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward. He hit the ground hard, tumbled, fetched up against something soft that screamed when he landed on it. A corpse. He’d crashed into a corpse.

Andromalius forced himself upright. His ribs shrieked protest—at least two broken, maybe three. His sword lay ten feet away where it had fallen from his grip. He lunged for it.

Malphas’s foot came down on the blade, snapping it in half.

Andromalius rolled sideways, came up empty-handed. Malphas’s backhand caught him across the face, spinning him completely around. He tasted blood. Felt teeth shift loose in his gums.

“Seventy years,” Malphas said conversationally, stalking forward. “Seventy years you prepared for this. Built armies. Made alliances. Studied my patterns. Learned my weaknesses.”

Andromalius scrambled backward on hands and knees. His broken ribs ground against each other with every breath, sending lightning through his chest.

“And you really believed,” Malphas continued, “that any of it mattered.”

A clawed hand seized Andromalius by the throat, lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing. Andromalius clawed at the fingers crushing his windpipe. His legs kicked empty air.

“At this rate I won’t even need the dragon’s power to defeat you,” Malphas said, bringing Andromalius close enough that his breath washed hot across Andromalius’s face. “Every wound, every scratch, gone in seconds. Did you really think a half-breed with a sword could match that?”

He shook Andromalius like a rag doll. Something in Andromalius’s neck popped. Pain exploded down his spine.

“I wanted to see,” Malphas continued. “If you’d learned anything. If you’d grown strong enough to make this interesting.”

He threw Andromalius to the ground. Andromalius tried to rise, got to one knee before Malphas’s foot slammed into his stomach. He folded around the impact, retching blood.

“Disappointing,” Malphas said.

Andromalius rolled onto his back, wheezing. His vision swam. Every part of him screamed. He tried to focus through the haze of pain, tried to find some opening, some weakness, some last desperate strategy that might—

Malphas’s foot came down on his chest, pinning him. The weight drove air from his lungs. Ribs flexed, threatened to collapse completely.

“Do you remember,” Malphas asked, leaning his weight forward until Andromalius felt his sternum begin to crack, “what I told you when I cast you out?”

Andromalius couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Could only stare up at his father’s face through vision that narrowed to a tunnel.

“I said it was mercy,” Malphas continued. “Compared to what I could have done. What I should have done.”

The pressure increased. Andromalius felt his chest beginning to cave inward. His mouth opened in a silent scream.

Then Malphas released him.

Andromalius gasped, drawing ragged breaths that felt like swallowing glass. Malphas stepped back, surveying him with clinical detachment.

“But I’m not merciful anymore,” Malphas said. “And you’ve inconvenienced me for more than a decade. Cost me time. Resources. Territories I should have claimed years ago.”

He reached down, grabbed Andromalius by the ankle. Lifted him upside down like a butchered animal.

“So I’m going to make an example,” Malphas said. “Your soldiers are watching. Your allies are watching. And they’re all going to see what happens to half-breeds who forget their place.”

Andromalius hung limp, too broken to struggle. Blood rushed to his head, pounding in his ears. Through inverted vision he saw Malphas’s forces watching from their perimeter. Saw Wassalt’s horror-struck face. Saw his father’s other hand rise, claws extending.

“I’m going to eat you piece by piece,” Malphas said. “Starting with the arms. Then the legs. Then everything else, bit by bit, while you’re still alive to feel it.”

He brought Andromalius closer to his mouth. Those multiple rows of teeth gleamed wet in the dimming light. The jaws opened wide.

“Your mother screamed,” Malphas added. “Let’s see if you do too.”

The teeth descended toward Andromalius’s elbows.

Something slammed into Malphas from the side.

The grip on Andromalius’s ankle released. He tumbled through the air, hit the ground in a heap that sent fresh agony through every broken bone. The impact drove what little air remained from his lungs.

He lay gasping, trying to process what had happened. Trying to understand why he wasn’t dead.

Slowly, painfully, Andromalius forced his head up.

Malphas stood twenty feet away, hand pressed to his ribs where something had struck him. His expression showed surprise more than pain.

Between Malphas and Andromalius stood a figure Andromalius barely recognized from the brief meeting days before—tall, grey-skinned, wearing armour that seemed to drink in light. The vampire. Lilith’s personal guard.

Drakul.

Beyond him, perhaps thirty feet back, Lilith herself watched with arms crossed. Her violet eyes caught Andromalius’s gaze for a moment, unreadable, before returning to Malphas.

She made no move to join the fight. Just watched. Waiting to see if her guard needed assistance.

Andromalius tried to rise. Managed to get one elbow beneath him before his broken ribs protested violently enough that darkness crowded his vision. He sagged back down, chest heaving.

She came, he thought distantly. Actually came.

Around them, Malphas’s forces had mostly retreated during the fight, rejoining their main army. Perhaps two dozen demons remained, spreading out in a loose circle to observe. Not helping. Not interfering. Simply watching to see how their lord handled this new development.

Malphas straightened, lowering his hand from his ribs. When he spoke, amusement coloured his voice.

“The Sanguine Duke,” he said. “I wondered if the legends were true. If you’d really survived a millennium waiting for an empress who’d disappeared.”

Drakul’s response was too quiet for Andromalius to hear. The vampire hadn’t drawn his sword yet. Simply stood between Andromalius and Malphas like a wall made flesh.

The darkness was winning now. Andromalius felt it pulling at the edges of his consciousness, dragging him down into unconsciousness that promised escape from the pain screaming through every nerve.

He fought it. Tried to stay aware. Tried to see what would happen next.

But his body had other ideas. The broken bones, the internal bleeding, the sheer accumulated damage of fighting something so far beyond his capabilities—it all caught up at once.

The last thing Andromalius saw before the darkness claimed him was Drakul’s hand moving to the hilt of his sword, and Malphas’s expression shifting from amusement to calculation as he reassessed his opponent.

Then nothing.

* * *

Lilith watched the scene unfold, arms crossed beneath her chest. Drakul moved between Andromalius’s broken form and Malphas like a wall given purpose.

The vampire still hadn’t drawn his sword. Didn’t need to, apparently. When Malphas lunged forward with claws extended, Drakul simply sidestepped—minimal movement, no wasted motion—and drove his fist into the demon lord’s ribs hard enough that the crack echoed across the battlefield.

Malphas stumbled. Caught himself. Straightened with a laugh that sounded more surprised than pained.

“The Sanguine Duke,” Malphas said again, circling now with more caution. “I wondered if the legends were true. A millennium of waiting for a vanished empress.”

Drakul said nothing. His hand rested on his sword hilt but didn’t draw.

The silence seemed to irritate Malphas. He feinted left, then drove forward with a sweeping claw strike that should have opened Drakul’s throat. The vampire ducked beneath it, stepped inside Malphas’s guard, and delivered three rapid strikes to the torso—precise, targeted, devastating.

Malphas went down on one knee. Blood welled from the impacts, dark against his shifting purple-green skin.

He rose again. The wounds closed within seconds, flesh knitting together as his enhanced regeneration worked. Dragon heart keeping him in the fight.

“Strong,” Malphas admitted. He rolled his shoulders, testing the repaired tissue. “Stronger than most I’ve consumed. But regeneration isn’t unique to you.”

He breathed out. Fire erupted from his mouth in a concentrated stream that would have incinerated anything in its path.

Drakul moved before the flames reached him. Appeared behind Malphas as if he’d simply stepped through space, though Lilith knew better—pure speed, pushed to supernatural limits. His sword finally left its sheath in a horizontal slash that caught Malphas across the back.

Blood sprayed. Malphas arched forward with a roar.

The wound began closing immediately, regeneration fighting to repair the damage even as Drakul struck again. And again. Each strike precise, calculated to overwhelm the healing factor through accumulated damage.

Dragon heart doesn’t stop bleeding, Lilith thought. Just makes the body stronger. Speeds recovery. But Drakul’s lifesteal…

She watched the fight progress. Watched thin streams of blood flow from Malphas’s wounds—not falling to the ground but drifting through the air like smoke, drawn toward Drakul. The vampire absorbed it through his skin, his own injuries fading as Malphas’s blood sustained him.

Perfect sustain loop. Every drop of damage dealt became healing received.

Malphas seemed to realize he was losing. His attacks grew more desperate, less controlled. Fire breath, claw strikes, even trying to grab Drakul in a crushing bear hug that the vampire simply wasn’t there to receive.

“You’re good,” Malphas gasped between exchanges. “Very good. But you’re serving a pretender.”

Drakul’s expression didn’t change. He drove his blade through Malphas’s shoulder, twisted, withdrew in a motion too fast to properly track.

“She’s convinced you,” Malphas continued. His regeneration was slowing now, unable to keep pace with the accumulated damage. “Convinced everyone. But I’ve lived three centuries, vampire. I know what real power looks like.”

Another exchange. Malphas tried to catch the sword between his claws. Failed. Took another slash across his ribs that sprayed blood the vampire immediately absorbed.

“The real Lilith Nocturia built an empire that lasted millennia,” Malphas said. “Your empress has been back how long? Weeks? And she’s already trying to recruit broken demon lords with scraps of old magic.”

Drakul remained silent. Struck again. Cut deep across Malphas’s thigh, severing muscle.

Malphas collapsed to both knees now. His breathing had grown ragged, regeneration barely keeping him alive as blood continued to flow toward Drakul in streams.

“She’s a—” Malphas coughed. “She’s a fake. Powerful, yes. But not who she claims. And you’re too loyal to see it. Too devoted to a memory to recognize the fraud standing right there.”

That got a reaction.

Drakul’s blade descended. The impact split Malphas’s chest with an audible crack of ribs, and before the demon lord could even register the wound, a boot slammed into his sternum. His massive frame lifted from the ground, hung suspended for a heartbeat, then crashed backward into the earth.

“You know nothing of devotion,” Drakul said. His voice was cold, utterly emotionless. “Or loyalty. Or worth.”

He advanced on Malphas, who tried to rise and failed. The accumulated damage had finally overwhelmed even dragon-enhanced regeneration. Blood pooled beneath him, still drifting toward Drakul in thin streams.

“I have served Empress Lilith Nocturia for twenty-six hundred years,” Drakul continued. “I was there when she founded Nocturne. When she declared herself Empress. When she achieved ascension and reshaped demonic hierarchy itself.”

He raised his sword. Positioned it above Malphas’s throat.

“I know exactly who she is,” Drakul said. “Which makes your words not insult. Just… ignorance.”

Malphas laughed. Wet, pained, but genuine. “Then kill me, Duke. Prove your devotion.”

He sagged backward, arms spread in acceptance. Ready for execution.

Lilith uncrossed her arms. The fight was over. Malphas had lost, thoroughly and completely.

She took a step forward, preparing to give orders.

Malphas’s hand moved. Fast enough that even Lilith almost missed it. He reached into a pouch at his belt, withdrew something that pulsed with sickly green light, and shoved it into his mouth.

“Drakul!” Lilith’s voice cut across the battlefield. “End it. Now!”

The vampire moved instantly. His sword came down in a perfect execution stroke that severed Malphas’s head from his shoulders. The head rolled across blood-soaked ground, eyes still open, that same amused expression frozen on its features.

Too late.

The headless body convulsed. Green light erupted from the stump of its neck, from its chest, from every wound Drakul had inflicted. The light intensified until Lilith had to look away, shielding her eyes against the sudden brilliance.

When she looked back, Malphas’s wounds were closing. All of them. The severed head rolled back toward the body as if drawn by invisible strings, reattached itself to the neck with a wet sound that made even Lilith’s stomach turn.

Malphas stood. Slowly. Deliberately. That same amused smile now directed at both of them.

Then he started growing.

His body expanded, muscles swelling, bones lengthening, skin stretching to accommodate the sudden mass. Nine feet became ten. Ten became eleven. Eleven became fifteen. His features distorted, became more monstrous, teeth multiplying in his jaws until his mouth was nothing but rows of fangs.

Power radiated outward from him in waves. Not physical force but something deeper—mental pressure that made reality itself feel heavy. Oppressive. Wrong.

The remaining demons who’d stayed to watch the fight fled. Some walked. Some ran. Most simply turned and stumbled away as fast as their legs would carry them, unable to withstand the crushing weight of whatever presence Malphas had become.

Lilith felt it too. The pressure pushed against her mind like hands trying to force her to kneel. She remained standing her natural resistances absorbing brunt of the force.

Beside her, Drakul hadn’t moved. The vampire stood utterly still, sword raised, waiting.

Malphas finished growing at what looked like twenty feet tall. He looked down at them, that smile still present despite his monstrous features.

“Round two,” he said.

His voice resonated now, layered with harmonics that shouldn’t exist in a single throat.

Lilith’s hand moved to summon her blade.