Far beyond Earth, in the cold and indifferent vastness of space, another rift opened.

  This one did not bleed red.

  It bled azure, a radiant, violent blue that tore through the darkness like a wound in reality itself. Space around it warped and twisted, flooded by foreign atum that screamed of annihilation.

  Two figures hovered before it.

  Barbatos and Alexandria.

  Neither spoke at first. Both could feel it, the pressure, the distortion, the unmistakable signature of something wrong. Something ancient and catastrophic.

  Barbatos stared at the rift, his jaw tightening.

  Then, suddenly,

  “Go!”

  The word tore from his throat.

  Alexandria snapped her head toward him, disbelief flashing across her face.

  “What?!” she shouted. “This is a cataclysm, Barbatos! You remember that, right?!”

  He shut his eyes and shook his head, forcing the hesitation away before it could take root.

  “I know,” he answered, his voice strained but resolute. “But Earth needs at least one of us. This is a once-in-a-millennium crisis. If we don’t act now, countless lives will be lost.”

  Alexandria’s eyes widened.

  For a heartbeat, she hesitated, caught between duty and instinct, between loyalty and fear. Then she clenched her teeth in frustration.

  “…Damn it.”

  She turned without another word and surged away, passing the rift and accelerating toward Earth.

  In the vacuum of space, nothing slowed her. No resistance. No friction.

  Atum erupted from her body in violent pulses, holding her form together as she pushed herself beyond natural limits, far beyond even the speed of light, her trajectory carving a luminous scar through the stars.

  Barbatos watched her disappear.

  He smiled faintly.

  Then he turned back toward the rift.

  His smile faded as he stared.

  A sound echoed from within, a low, humanlike growl that vibrated through the void itself. The azure wound expanded, straining as something on the other side pushed back.

  Barbatos felt cold.

  A giant hand emerged first.

  It was flayed completely of skin, exposed muscle and bone gleaming unnaturally in the rift’s light. The hand alone was five meters tall, its fingers curling around the edges of the tear in reality as if gripping flesh.

  The rift groaned as the thing pulled itself through.

  Barbatos swallowed nervously.

  In that moment, the weight of his decision crashed down on him.

  He had sent Alexandria away.

  He would face this alone.

  He had believed himself ready, after a month of relentless training, after learning the true nature of his power, after surviving a cataclysm once before.

  But that confidence had been built on a lie.

  The previous cataclysm had been humanoid in class, an insectoid horror, dangerous but manageable.

  This was something else entirely.

  The head emerged next.

  A grotesque, humanoid skull over ten meters tall, stripped bare of flesh. Loose, dead eyes dangled within hollow sockets. Six massive demonic horns curled upward from its crown, jagged and asymmetrical.

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  Its gaze fell upon Barbatos.

  For the briefest instant, he felt… small.

  Then the rest of the body followed.

  A skeletal torso, thin, starved, yet impossibly wide. Four elongated arms and two legs stretched outward, each limb resembling that of a malnourished child whose skin had been stolen away. From its back unfurled vast, batlike wings, torn and bleeding, dark ichor drifting uselessly into the vacuum.

  The creature hovered there.

  A colossal cataclysm.

  Over a hundred meters tall.

  Barbatos’s mind raced, grasping for reference, for meaning. An image from Earth’s ancient myths surfaced unbidden,

  The Devil.

  Red flesh. Horns. Wings meant to terrify humanity.

  A mockery of fear given form.

  Then realization struck him like a blade.

  By sending Alexandria away, he had signed his own death warrant.

  A colossal cataclysm had last appeared six hundred years ago, during the age of Dagon, Earth’s greatest guardian. Even legends said Dagon had barely survived that battle.

  If Dagon had nearly fallen…

  What chance did Barbatos have?

  He didn’t know.

  But one thing was certain, he could not run.

  Even if he fled, the creature would simply descend upon Earth, unopposed. The planet would burn. Everyone would die.

  There was no path forward that did not end here.

  His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to his best friend.

  Callum.

  Barbatos exhaled slowly, and a sorrowful grin crept onto his face.

  “You’d give it everything,” he murmured into the void.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  The colossal devil advanced, its presence warping space around it, each movement deliberate and inevitable.

  Barbatos straightened.

  The sorrow vanished from his expression, replaced by calm resolve.

  He raised his head and met the creature’s gaze.

  He would not fight to survive.

  He would not fight to grow stronger.

  He would fight to protect.

  His people.

  His planet.

  His home.

  And if this battle demanded his life,

  Then he would take the devil with him.

  No matter the cost.

  He readied himself.

  Like a true hero would.

  Then as the devil advanced, it suddenly stopped.

  Roughly a hundred meters separated them now, an abyss that felt far too small for something of that magnitude. Barbatos tensed, atum flaring instinctively as he braced for an attack.

  It never came however.

  Instead, the creature wailed.

  The sound tore through space like a dying universe, long, distorted, and layered with voices that did not belong together. Barbatos staggered despite himself, teeth grinding as he forced his mind to remain intact.

  Then the devil spoke.

  Its stomach split open like rotten flesh being peeled apart, and from within emerged countless human faces. They were fused into its body, malformed and incomplete, mouths stretching unnaturally wide. They had no eyes, only smooth, empty flesh where sight should have been.

  They spoke in unison.

  Voices like corpses dragged across stone.

  “Pathetic.

  You believe a single, pitiful prey item could stop me?

  How foolish… little lamb.”

  A chill ran down Barbatos’s spine.

  These were not illusions.

  They were victims, souls consumed and imprisoned, forever screaming within the thing that had devoured them.

  Barbatos inhaled slowly.

  He steadied himself.

  Then, despite the terror clawing at his mind, he looked directly at the devil and spoke.

  “Come.”

  The word echoed through the void.

  For the first time, the devil hesitated.

  Its many mouths twisted in surprise, then it laughed.

  The sound was unbearable. A horrific fusion of shrieking metal and crying infants, layered with something deeper, something that made the soul recoil. Lesser beings would have died on the spot, minds shredded by the sound alone.

  Then the laughter stopped.

  The devil’s dead eyes locked onto Barbatos.

  And it vanished.

  Space folded, as the devil suddenly reappeared directly before him.

  Barbatos barely had time to brace before a fist the size of a building slammed into him.

  Impact.

  He was launched through space at immeasurable speed, his body tearing through the void like a meteor. Moons shattered as he passed, rock and ice exploding into debris fields as he was hurled through them one after another.

  The devil followed.

  Its wings spread wide, blotting out distant starlight. Across its body, countless unblinking eyes tore themselves open. Each eye began to glow, gathering unholy energy at its center.

  Then they fired.

  Beams of pure annihilation tore through space, each one larger than the most powerful nuclear weapon ever conceived, each carrying ten times their destructive force.

  Barbatos tried to dodge.

  He was too late however.

  The beams struck his.

  Space ruptured. Moons disintegrated. Light swallowed everything around him.

  When the devastation faded, Barbatos stood amid the ruins, barely anchored to what remained of a shattered moon, its surface cracked and dying beneath his feet.

  He was burned.

  Bleeding and broken.

  And yet,

  He smiled.

  Slowly, Barbatos lifted his gaze to the looming devil. A new fire burned in his eyes, not fear, not despair, but something far more dangerous.

  Resolve.

  “You call me a lamb,” he said aloud, his voice steady despite the devastation around him,

  “yet you fail to kill me.”

  Light began to gather around him.

  Pinpricks at first, then thousands.

  Radiant motes of pure harmonic energy surged toward his body, wrapping around him and forming an armor unlike anything seen before. It shimmered, refracted, and sang, a construct of balance and defiance.

  Barbatos took a deep breath.

  The devil watched in silence, curiosity replacing mockery.

  “By the time I finish this,” Barbatos continued, adjusting his footing on the crumbling stone, his eyes narrowing with iron determination,

  “at the very least…”

  He looked up, meeting the devil’s gaze without flinching.

  “I will chain you down into the hell where you belong.”

  His hair began to glow, faintly at first, then brighter, shifting toward radiant white. His eyes changed as well, becoming an ever-shifting spectrum as multiple energies surged into him at once, straining the limits of his form.

  He grinned.

  Then he shouted, his voice ringing across the void like a vow carved into reality itself.

  “You devil!”