Chapter 5
Her delicate, glowing fingers sliced through Ush's flesh with terrifying precision. Each severed piece did not fall to the floor but instead hovered in the air, transforming into pulsating dark-red crystals, thick, pure, and brimming with cursed power. The essence of a demon, distilled.
Ush, his consciousness half-gone, could only tremble. His blurred vision watched as the angel collected his blood-crystals into a small golden vessel.
Then—
Tuuuuuut!
The triumphant blare of a trumpet filled the room, so majestic the very walls trembled. The angel suddenly halted, her towering frame slowly bowing. With reverent obedience, she prostrated herself before her handiwork, Ush, now half-torn apart, his body still smoldering with the remnants of holy combustion.
The blood-crystals glowed brighter inside the golden vessel, as if answering the trumpet's call.
And on the brink of death, Ush understood.
He was not a victim.
He was an offering.
The finest sacrifice for a victory that was never his.
Above, a choir of angelic voices began to sing, a hymn welcoming their new cure.
A cure made from him.
When the trumpet sounded a second time, something inside Ush shattered.
But no one heard his scream.
Because the noise of triumph always drowns out sacrifice.
"To You we bow, and in Your name, this hymn of grace is spoken!"
The house shook violently, its structure groaning as if straining against a fury erupting from outside. The growl of a demon rumbled like distant thunder, deep, resonant, and laden with unspoken threats. Each hot breath seeped through the window cracks, fogging the glass with thick black vapor.
Inside, the angel remained unmoved. Every shadowed corner, once a demon's refuge, had been claimed, overlaid with pale light etching sacred symbols into the wood and walls. Even the damp basement floor now gleamed gold, transformed into an altar.
A battle of another dimension was inevitable.
Outside, the demon's growl twisted into a furious roar.
"You call this victory?! We will never relent! Every light you kindle, we will devour! Every soul you claim, we will take back!"
In response, the angel simply raised her hand.
Tuuuuuut!
The holy trumpet blared again, and in an instant, every window rattled, not shattering, but changing. Their surfaces now reflected shifting holy verses, writhing like golden serpents.
This was clearly not the end.
Behind the walls, the sound of massive claws scraped against the protective barrier, like a starving wolf at the door. This eternal conflict had just reached its peak, and this house, this bloodline, along with the now-lost Ush, was its battleground.
And as the angel turned her pupil-less eyes toward a darkened corner, one truth became clear.
The war would never end.
Even after this world is reduced to ruin.
Even after the last soul is redeemed or damned.
For this is the highest law: light and dark must forever wage war.
And creatures like Ush?
They are but walking battlegrounds.
"Ahhhhh… acting up again."
Amid the angel's euphoria, radiant as the midday sun, something far more ancient emerged from the black mist. This was no ordinary demon, its form shifted like solidified smoke, now a horned giant, now a gaunt human shadow.
In its long-clawed left hand, it swung an object that was no pendulum, but something alive: a pulsing orb of flesh veined in crimson, throbbing in sync with the growls of demons encircling the house.
Its eyes, or whatever functioned as eyes, fixed on the house where Ush had been unmade. Each swing of that grotesque pendulum distorted the air around it, as though reality itself were being scraped thin by its presence.
Thud… thud… thud…
The fleshy orb pulsed faster, oozing thick black fluid that dripped to the ground and instantly seared dry grass into ash. Its sound was that of an ancient heartbeat, a rhythm that turned the sky a sudden, violent red.
Two heads remained motionless, each bearing a different tale of defeat yet bound to the same monstrous body.
The man's head, crowned in hair red as clotting blood, so dark it seemed dipped in the essence of devoured lives. His eyes, retinas slit in halves, leaked viscous black fluid like infected tree sap. A wound at his neck pulsed faintly, the scar of a holy blade that failed to kill but succeeded in stilling his heartbeat forever.
He breathed without a pulse, lived without bloodflow, a demon trapped between death and the impossibility of true death.
The woman's head beside him exuded a grotesque allure. Her dull yellow hair briefly gleamed like molten gold in moonlight, only to fade again into the hue of rotting straw.
The skin around her eyes was charred, cracked like porcelain subjected to extreme heat. Marks of exile, whether by angels or fellow demons, were etched into every scorched hollow of her face. But most striking was her smile.
A smile too wide, with too many teeth. A smile that whispered, "Too long we've suffered. Now it's your turn."
Their shared body, a forced fusion of two lives, lurched forward. Overlong legs left trails of black fluid, each step squealing like raw meat pressed to hot iron.
Two wings beat asymmetrically, churning the air into chaotic eddies that spun dust and dead leaves into miniature whirlwinds.
The left wing, anchored to the man's shoulder, drove downward with harsh regularity, its movements sharpening the air like a blade dragged across stone.
The right wing, sprouting from the woman's hip, fluttered upward erratically, at times vibrating like a wounded bee's.
Together, they birthed an unnatural wind, sometimes spiraling, sometimes surging forward, only to yank backward like the breath of some colossal beast.
The pendulum swung on, its rhythm discordant. When the left wing drove down, the orb rotated clockwise, veins stretching taut. But when the right wing jerked upward, it halted mid-swing before reversing, oozing a substance like spoiled honey.
The man's head, left ear twitching, tilted as if listening to the wind.
"Left unchecked for too long," he rasped, voice spilling from a mouth stretched too wide.
The woman's head, right ear shuddering, grinned, charred eyelids fluttering.
"But not for much longer," she whispered, the sound like burning parchment.
And then, they stepped forward.
One foot forward—the woman's right, followed by the man's left dragging slightly behind.
Each step crafted deliberate imbalance, an ancient dance designed to defy the laws of physics.
To be continued…