Barbatos faced the devil clad in his armor of radiant light.

  He drew in a slow breath.

  Then he lowered his stance, planting his feet against what little remained of the shattered moon. His muscles coiled, atum compressing within him like a star on the verge of collapse.

  In the next instant, he launched himself upward.

  The force of the takeoff was catastrophic, what remained of the moon was obliterated entirely, reduced to dust and drifting debris as Barbatos shot forward like a spear of light.

  The devil’s inhuman eyes widened.

  Too late.

  Barbatos crossed the distance between them in a heartbeat. A blade of pure radiance formed in his hand, its edge humming with harmonic resonance as he sprinted across the devil’s skeletal arm itself, using its body as a battlefield.

  He struck the fiend.

  The blade carved deep into the creature’s flesh, radiant energy burning through corrupted tissue as Barbatos tore past it in a streak of light.

  The devil shrieked.

  It wrenched its arm violently, hurling Barbatos away through space. Barbatos hissed as he stabilized mid-flight, already moving again as the eyes embedded in the devil’s wings ignited once more.

  They fired.

  Beams of annihilation screamed toward him.

  Barbatos propelled himself forward with controlled energy bursts, his body transcending speeds once thought impossible. He twisted and folded through space, narrowly slipping between beams as they tore apart the void behind him, each miss a near-fatal mistake.

  He cleared the last beam,

  And the devil vanished.

  It reappeared directly behind him.

  Before Barbatos could react, all four of the devil’s arms moved at once. Space around Barbatos locked, a crushing, unnatural force seized him completely, freezing his body in place.

  Then the assault began.

  Fists slammed into him again and again, each blow shattering pieces of his radiant armor. Light fractured, energy screamed and bone cracked.

  Barbatos couldn’t defend.

  He couldn’t even move.

  The devil raised its fists one final time, and brought them down with overwhelming force.

  The binding shattered.

  Barbatos was sent flying once more, tumbling violently through the void. Blood spilled from his mouth, dissipating uselessly into space as he struggled to stabilize his body.

  His breathing came heavy and ragged.

  'At this rate… I’ll lose before accomplishing anything.'

  The devil was already approaching again.

  As it closed the distance, Barbatos’s thoughts drifted, unbidden, to something Callum had once told him.

  A weapon.

  Ancient. Unconfirmed. Spoken of only in fragments.

  Callum had said it was like Barbatos, capable of accessing multiple planes. Not as many, but enough. What made it terrifying wasn’t its reach, but its method.

  It didn’t use planes individually.

  It combined them.

  Merged their foundations into singular, devastating expressions of power, attacks capable of erasing paragons effortlessly.

  Time seemed to slow at that moment.

  Barbatos looked down at his hand.

  They were wounded.

  His radiant armor shattered, fragments of light peeling away.

  His eyes widened,

  Then narrowed.

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  “I wonder…” he murmured.

  He closed his eyes.

  The devil drew closer.

  Barbatos focused, not on the planes themselves, but on their foundations. Their shared aspects. Their harmonics. The principles that overlapped beneath all distinctions.

  He assembled the pieces.

  Then he released them.

  Barbatos opened his eyes.

  They had changed, no longer shifting endlessly, but now burning with a fused hue of crimson and azure.

  He raised his hand and fired.

  A beam erupted forth, violent and condensed, tearing through space itself. Reality warped around it as it surged forward, a synthesis of planes forced into unity.

  The devil didn’t dodge.

  It didn’t even try.

  It assumed, incorrectly, that this attack would be like the others.

  The beam struck.

  It tore through the devil’s side like wildfire through dry flesh, ripping corrupted matter apart with horrifying efficiency.

  The devil recoiled.

  It looked down in confusion as its flesh attempted to regenerate,

  And failed.

  Nothing happened.

  Then, slowly, far too slowly, its body began to reform.

  Barbatos stared, stunned.

  'It worked.'

  A strange expression twisted across the devil’s face as human-like visages erupted from its flesh once more, mouths stretching wide as they screamed in unison.

  “What did you do?!”

  Barbatos grinned.

  Then chuckled.

  “I’m winning.”

  His eyes shifted again, this time burning yellow, as he surged forward, summoning a blade of purest steel into his grasp. He closed in fast,

  But the devil roared.

  Not in pain.

  In fury.

  The eyes embedded in its wings began to bleed, their gazes darting wildly in every direction. They screamed, every single one, an agonized chorus that sent violent tremors through space itself.

  Barbatos halted.

  His expression darkened as he realized the truth.

  The devil wasn’t dying.

  It was revealing itself.

  Its flesh convulsed as countless screaming, skinless corpses burst forth across its body. They twisted and curled inward, fusing together as the creature folded in on itself.

  Barbatos braced.

  A choir of shrieks erupted, so intense they fractured nearby space.

  Then the transformation began.

  it's flesh twisted.

  It's bones reshaped.

  When the devil finally rose again, it was no longer the same.

  Its six horns were gone, replaced by four, thicker and more twisted. An unholy halo of blood hovered above its head, slowly rotating. Its loose eyes had vanished entirely, leaving only hollow sockets that bled darkness.

  Its four arms had fused into two long, nightmarish limbs.

  The rest of its body remained, mostly, but the power emanating from it had multiplied.

  Anyone could feel it.

  Barbatos swallowed.

  He raised his guard.

  This,

  This was the real battle.

  Barbatos’s eyes narrowed.

  Then the devil vanished,

  It reappeared behind him.

  Its newly formed arm slammed into his back with apocalyptic force, hurling him across space toward Saturn. The acceleration was so violent that thought itself lagged behind his motion.

  Moments later, he tore through Saturn’s upper atmosphere.

  The planet’s endless clouds split apart beneath him, colossal storms unraveling as his body carved a burning path through them. He twisted instinctively and slammed into the planet’s dead surface, skidding across frozen gases and shattered stone.

  Before he could rise, he felt it.

  Power.

  The devil was already forming an energy beam within its palm, aimed directly at him.

  Barbatos’s eyes widened.

  He moved.

  He leapt away and accelerated to immeasurable speed, reality bending as he fled, but the beam fired and followed him, roaring through the sky like a living thing.

  He weaved between Saturn’s moons as the beam tore through them effortlessly, celestial bodies splitting apart in its wake. Stone, ice, and ancient rock were reduced to debris as the attack pursued him with merciless precision.

  Barbatos glanced back and hissed,

  The devil appeared directly in front of him.

  A single punch landed.

  The impact sent Barbatos hurtling straight into the pursuing beam.

  The explosion that followed was catastrophic, a violent bloom of chaotic atum that devoured everything in its radius. Saturn’s orbit lit briefly with annihilation.

  Silence followed.

  Then,

  Barbatos could be seen still hovering there.

  Alive.

  His vision shook violently. His body trembled, barely held together by will and fading energy, but he remained conscious. Blood drifted from his lips into the void as he struggled to steady himself.

  He looked up.

  The devil smiled.

  An unholy, knowing smile aimed directly at him.

  A cold sensation crept down Barbatos’s spine.

  Fear.

  For the first time in his life on earth, Barbatos, Earth’s strongest defender, felt true fear.

  This monster was beyond him.

  His attacks only slowed it. Damaged it briefly.

  One clean strike from the devil, however, could end him outright.

  Barbatos looked down at his trembling hands.

  Could he accept this?

  Could he die here, and allow that thing to reach Earth? To slaughter everyone?

  He hesitated.

  But he already knew the answer.

  He couldn’t.

  Not just because he wanted to save them,

  But because they had saved him first.

  Barbatos had always been a strange existence. Like Vale, he didn’t know who he truly was, or where he came from.

  His earliest memory was of a dead planet, a place where spawn slaughtered one another endlessly. He had been a child then.

  And yet even as a child, he had been a monster.

  He survived by killing spawn, blights, never cataclysms, but horrors enough to stain the world around him.

  Then one day, a gate opened.

  The G.V.O found him.

  He never learned who they were, but it wasn’t long before Rikin came. The man took him in. Raised him. Treated him as a son rather than a weapon.

  Barbatos hadn’t grown much stronger after that, not compared to what he already was. His strength had been forged in that hell long before.

  But none of that mattered now.

  Was he really going to repay his father’s kindness?

  His friend's faith?

  By letting them die?

  Barbatos spat blood into the void.

  He lifted his gaze to the devil, no, the ruin, and something inside him snapped. Fear was crushed beneath a rising tide of defiant fury.

  He decided then.

  He would not fall.

  He would kill this devil here and now, so no one else had to die.

  Not because he was a hero.

  But because he owed the world a second chance, just like the one he had been given.

  Barbatos roared.

  Radiance erupted from him, engulfing his form in blinding light. Space itself seemed to resonate as a presence descended, vast, ancient, and immeasurable.

  Then,

  A strange voice spoke.

  “I’ve wondered how long it would take you to make up your mind.”

  The sound was celestial, layered, harmonic, drowning out all else.

  “I am glad you finally did, my dear child. Now it is time.”

  Barbatos’s eyes widened slightly as the voice continued, unmistakably smiling.

  “Time for me to acknowledge you.”

  The light intensified.

  “I acknowledge you, oh great melody of the forgotten.”