It was felt across all of Aetheria.
The simultaneous deaths of five Demon Lords were impossible to ignore. Every Demon Lord felt it—some scoffed, others faltered in confusion, a few grew openly concerned—but none were untouched by it. The defenders of Aetheria felt it as well, those attuned to magic sensing a violent rupture ripple through the world.
And most importantly of all, Demon King Domine felt it.
All three of his eyes snapped downward, glaring at the stone beneath his feet. His clawed hands flexed slowly, tendons tightening as raw anger poured off him in suffocating waves. The pressure alone made Arkanis and Armada tense, muscles coiling, instincts flaring—both Demon Lords bracing themselves in case the Demon King chose to vent his fury on them.
He did not.
Instead, Domine turned toward the massive portal at the heart of Arcadicia. He extended one clawed hand, the air around it warping as power gathered.
"Fine," he muttered, his voice heavy with contempt. "I'll call him here early, since you all are so worthless."
His hand ignited with baleful light as he sent his will through Hell itself—a command, a summons—calling upon his trump card.
Inside Hell, the two demonic engineers continued their work, hands moving in practiced precision as they kept the portal stabilized. Tubes fed alchemical compounds directly into Kazon's body—sedatives, stimulants, preservation agents—forcing his flesh to endure far longer than it ever should have. He was no longer treated as a person, only as a structure that needed to remain intact.
The chamber doors swung open.
One of the engineers flicked a glance toward the arrival, identified him instantly, and returned to the console without pause. "The portal is stable enough for your entry."
The being who had arrived gave a single, silent nod.
He approached Kazon, each step marked by a sequence of sharp clinks and deep, resonant clangs as armored feet struck the obsidian floor. He looked down at the knight's body, or what remained of it. The mind was gone—scraped hollow long ago. Kazon was no longer alive in any meaningful sense, reduced to a conduit, a material component in a larger mechanism.
Without hesitation, he stepped forward.
The portal flared as he emerged into Arcadicia, demonic energy surging outward in a violent wave. First came a fully armored left foot of obsidian-black plate, sinking slightly into the stone beneath its weight. Then his hands followed, gauntlets ending in clawed fingers. He seized the edges of the portal itself—somehow gripping the unstable boundary—and hauled his massive frame through with deliberate force.
When he finished stepping through the portal, a knight stood at the center of Arcadicia.
He wore full plate armor from head to toe, every inch obsidian black. There were no sigils, no engravings, no ornamental flourishes—only brutally practical design, forged to deflect, absorb, and endure any form of attack. The sole exceptions were the skull of some hellbeast mounted on his left shoulder and a gray, furred half-cape draped from the other. Even those, Arkanis could feel, were saturated with demonic energy—far too potent to be mere decoration.
He carried no visible weapons.
It did not matter.
Both Demon Lords felt it deep in their bones. It did not matter that there were two of them. It did not matter that Arkanis was the strongest Demon Lord currently present. It did not even matter that Domine himself stood nearby. If they attempted to fight this man, they would die. Undeniably. Immediately.
This was no demon knight.
This was Kharveth—the Demon Knight Commander of the Second Generation. A being born of the Generation of War, over a million years old.
His presence was overwhelming, not only from the pressure he exuded, but from his sheer size. At ten feet tall, he forced both Demon Lords and even the Demon King to look up at him. His build was crafted for combat and nothing else—a colossus of streamlined, predatory power. Despite his towering height, there was none of the sluggish mass one might expect. Instead, his silhouette carried the dense, tapered physique of a world-class decathlete scaled to monstrous proportions.
The obsidian plates were molded so precisely to his frame that they outlined a torso like a vaulted fortress, broad through the shoulders and narrowing into a lean, iron-hard midsection built for explosive force. His limbs were long and corded, packed with a restless, high-tension strength that suggested muscle more akin to braided steel cable than flesh. There was a haunting grace to how his weight settled—heavy enough to crush stone, yet perfectly balanced, low and centered, as though he could erupt into motion at any instant.
He did not possess the redundant bulk of a weightlifter. He bore the honed, utilitarian economy of a living weapon—every line of his armored form a calculated measure of reach, leverage, and unstoppable momentum.
He looked down at them—the Demon Lords, and Demon King Domine—his head tilting slightly, the motion measured and deliberate.
"Do not stand idle," Domine commanded, his voice sharp with restrained fury. "Five Demon Lords have already fallen. Bring this world to its knees."
Kharveth did not respond verbally.
He raised his right arm instead, slow and unmistakable, turning his palm upward as if weighing the world itself. Then his fingers curled inward.
The moment his fist closed, power answered.
His half-cape ignited with a cold, brilliant blue glow, the light bleeding into the seams of his gauntlet and spilling outward in disciplined waves. The ground beneath his feet groaned as demonic energy surged—not drawn into him, but driven through him, amplified and released. Across Aetheria, every demon knight felt it. Their strength, their endurance, their very essence was forcibly elevated, hauled upward and reinforced as if an unseen hand had seized their cores and rewritten their limits.
Each of them rose to the threshold of a Demon Lord.
Then past it.
The pressure eclipsed that of a Demon Lord.
No—this was beyond them.
The difference was absolute. Demon Lords ruled through singular dominance. Knights existed for war, for formation, for execution. Lords commanded. Knights ended worlds.
The air itself seemed to recoil under the sudden escalation.
Arkanis felt it in his marrow. Armada felt it in his soul. Domine felt it immediately.
The invasion of Aetheria had just become vastly, catastrophically more dangerous.