Where ash and dirt had once muffled their steps, the world before them fused into jagged panes of black crystal, warped as if fire had once tried to turn the ground into a mirror and failed. Every step sent cracks racing like lightning beneath the surface, echoes rippling far and wide. Steam hissed from vents that opened and closed like gills, exhaling scalding breath that shimmered the air. The stench was part brimstone, part scorched blood, and something sickly sweet beneath, like burnt honey turned to poison.
Azaelia didn't slow. her wings half-spread, trailing threads of black-blue flame that pulsed faintly as she threaded them between the vents.
"Blackwater Flats," she said. "Baelgor's chains won't root here. The surface is too slick. But the vents will burn us alive if we misstep."
Alex hugged the grimoire to her chest. "And this is...better?"
Crimson eyes cut back at her. "It's survivable."
Alex didn't find the word comforting at all.
The rattle came again. Chains grinding against glass. The sound was traveling strangely over the plains, bouncing off cracked reflections so that Alex couldn't tell if it came from ahead or behind. It echoed like thunder dragged through an iron cavern.
Then a voice seeped into Alex's mind.
'Little lantern...'
Alex froze. A voice slithered through her skull, deeper than thought.
'I smell you. The Flats will not save you.'
Alex staggered. "He's...talking to me."
Azaelia's jaw tightened. "High-ranked beasts speak through sin. Don't answer."
The ground quaked.
A chain smashed the far edge of the Flats, sparks flinging where molten links scraped glass. A silhouette rose in the haze, massive and low, jaws exhaling steam, eyes burning like twin furnaces behind a mask of cracked shadow. Chains coiled its body like a serpent eager to strike.
Baelgor, the hound of Wrath, was now in front of them.
'You reek of the Sky beings,' Baelgor whispered in her skull. 'That blood is prey. That light is meat. Come closer. Let me dine on your flesh.'
Alex's body trembled. She couldn't stop the shiver that rolled through her spine.
Then Azaelia stepped forward.
Her wings spread wide; every feather caught black flame, edged in blue. Heat rippled around her. When she spoke, her voice rang hard, stripped of humor.
"You want her, chained mutt?" She raised one clawed hand. "You'll have to choke on me first."
Her wings snapped forward. Flame surged, not wild but sculpted, weaving into an elegant arc that wrapped her body. The ground at her feet bled light, black stone softening into molten sigils.
"Gehenna's Forge," Azaelia intoned, "Curse of Velvet Sin."
Black fire condensed. It poured over her like liquid silk and hardened into armor: overlapping plates that mimicked feathers, lustrous black with a deep blue sheen, the edges faintly luminous. A collar rose, shaped like a crescent; vambraces tapered to hooked claws; greaves contoured to predatory speed. A helm unfurled that left her mouth bare but veiled her eyes in a red glow, like a secret burning behind glass.
From the hinge of her wings, fire ran down and stiffened into a weapon.
A glaive: long-hafted, wickedly curved, the blade black with an inner line of cobalt, as if a vein of midnight burned inside it.
Alex's breath caught. She had never seen anything like it. The grimoire in her arms pulsed in recognition, as though murmuring within her mind.
Gehenna's Forge... a soul-bound crucible. A different dimension where both armor and weapons are created that grow with the bearer.
Baelgor's growl shook the Flats. Steam poured from its jaws as chains writhed outward.
Azaelia planted her glaive against the glass with a sharp crack.
"Alex," she said without turning. "Watch closely. This is the high rank. This is what you can earn one day...if we live."
The chains lashed out.
Azaelia blurred, the glaive whirling in a crescent that bloomed into petals of black-blue fire. The first chain yowled and recoiled, metal sizzling like fat on a griddle. Another whipped low. She twisted, wings folding tight, the glaive's spine kissing the link and shearing sparks. When she landed, her wings flicked, and feathers became knives that sang away into the haze.
Alex flinched at each impact. Azaelia moved like a liquid shadow: every strike concise, every step a sleight-of-foot that left chain whipping where she had been. Her wings weren't just for show; they were steel-edged fans and blast-gates for fire. The dance was both brutal and beautiful.
Baelgor surged. A paw slammed down and cracked the Flats in radiating webs. Chains reared like cobras. The beast's voice pressed closer.
'See her. She burns for you. She fights for you. What will you give when she breaks? Will you crawl to me then, little lantern? Will you beg?'
Alex ground her teeth and said nothing.
The first chain dropped like a gallows.
Lust's Aegis
Azaelia breathed.
Her wings crossed; petals of demon-flame spun from the overlap, weaving a circular veil. The chains struck the veil and slithered, its bite softened, then diverted, as if seduced into missing.
Velvet Veil
She hissed the name like a curse and a kiss. The next chain hit harder. The veil held for a minute before it shattered. Azaelia skidded, boots carving streaks through the glass; her glaive speared into the ground to lever her upright.
"Rule one." Azaelia's voice was iron. "Never let him pin you."
The beast lunged.
Ironhowl
The technique Baelgor unleashed wasn't a roar, but sounded like steel screaming through bone. Alex's stomach flipped; her ears felt like needles were stabbing them. Azaelia's wings flared, then folded hard, taking the shock with the armor's ribbed overlaps. She slid ten paces and recovered in the blink of an eye.
"Rule two," she grunted. "Never let the chains encircle you."
The chains obeyed Baelgor's will and thought like snakes. Three shot wide to the flank. One burrowed. The fifth feinted and dropped at Azaelia's ankles.
Umbra Waltz
Azaelia stepped, not back but through shadow. The Flats gave a ripple where her foot should have struck, and she reappeared five paces to the left, the low chain startling at emptiness. Her glaive bit down. The feinting chain severed, its molten insides hissing through the glass and sealing the trapped bubbles.
Baelgor's head snapped toward Alex.
The grimoire burned against her palms. Alex forced the triad breathing. She layered more sin over her sin core that occasionally leaked light energy from her being.
The beast's furnace eyes slid back to Azaelia.
"Good," Azaelia murmured without looking, as if she had felt Alex's suppression.
Chains erupted again. Azaelia answered with another veil and a new angle. The glaive reversed in her grip; the back-spike kissed a chain at just the right beat, not to cut but to knock the rhythm off.
The other edge then slashed a groove into Baelgor's muzzle. Molten blood sprayed. It spattered Azaelia's cuirass and hissed.
Rapture Brand
Azaelia snapped her left hand. A sigil of interlocked circles flared over her palm and dove into the wound she'd just opened. The flesh charred inward, edges blackening like seared leather. Baelgor howled, a cord of pain laid bare.
Alex swallowed. So this is what a high-ranked demon was capable of?
Baelgor dropped its head and exhaled.
"Three," Azaelia snapped. " Do not breathe his steam."
Wrath steam poured across the ground, hugging it, rolling like a fog. Where it touched the glass, it didn't melt. It crazed. Hairlines racing like frost.
Azaelia vaulted with a wing-assisted jump, flipped the glaive over her wrist, and struck the ground mid-air.
Seraph Ash Wing
Her wings snapped down. A gust of cold black ash burst outward, a counter-current that pushed the steam back just enough to carve a safe pocket. She landed in it, crouched, then launched again before the fog could flood in.
Baelgor's chains adapted. They stopped striking single and began to weave. Four became eight; eight twisted into a net.
Azaelia dove into it. Her glaive spun into a wheel of light and knives; her wings cut crosscurrents in the weaving links. Petals of flame kissed and turned attacks; the haft slid along a barbed loop and then hooked, dragging it into another line to tangle itself.
Azaelia's helm turned, just enough to see Alex.
"Left. Ten steps. Now!"
Alex obeyed without thinking. Feather step...small, sharp, causing the net to fall where she had been.
Azaelia's glaive bit again.
Velvet Crucible: Sovereign Kiss
She slid inside a loop and struck the haft. A ring of black fire burst at the contact point, a kiss-mark that flared, then detonated inward. The net kinked. Two lines crossed; the kiss bound them to one another. Azaelia tore backward, pulling the dead knot across the net's path, and two more links tangled.
Baelgor snarled, wrenched, and ripped the whole knot free. It went snapping back into the haze like a dismembered limb.
Ironhowl
The blast hit from the side. Azaelia stumbled, dropped to a knee, then used the momentum to slide and spin the glaive into a low guard. A chain hammered down. Her wings crossed; the Aegis flared and shattered in the same breath, but the hairsbreadth it bought let her roll under the second strike and come up at Baelgor's throat.
Azaelia leapt.
The glaive arced, a comet tail of blue.
Baelgor jerked his head; the blade scored a deep line under the jaw instead of taking it. Molten blood fell in sheets. A chain swatted her mid-air. She twisted, pointed her wings to catch the shock, and landed in a three-point crouch that cracked the glass.
Alex was shaking and didn't realize it until the grimoire rattled against her arm.
A shadow moved under the black glass.
"Azaelia!" Alex shouted without meaning to.
"Under!"
The chain erupted out of the Flats behind Azaelia like a harpoon.
Her right wing snapped backward. Three feathers ripped free and became black meteors mid-flight. They struck the chain just off-line, nudging it one finger's breadth. The barbs missed her spine by that same breadth and tore up her pauldron instead. Armor cracked. She hissed and cut the link on the recoil.
The Flats boomed.
Baelgor came on like a landslide.
He ramped his own Wrath, eating his pain.
Wrath-Gorge
Every wound Azaelia gave him disappeared as if the hunger of wrath healed them. He grew faster, heavier, meaner.
Chains hunted now. They skimmed the glass and then plunged under, then burst at ankle height. Tactile, cruel, and patient.
Azaelia's fighting changed. Her techniques became smaller, the names kissed like oaths under her breath.
Silk Bind
A half-step that led a link to overshoot, then clipped it into another with a twist of the glaive's heel.
Petal Reave
A wing slash that sliced the hook from a chain with surgical disrespect.
Eros Ember
A perfect puncture to a joint that flushed blue and slowed the limb a beat too late.
'Little lantern,' Baelgor cooed at the back of Alex's mind, 'Do you see how she is already tiring?'
Alex did. The armor had developed fissures where Wrath bit deepest. The helm's visor dimmed and brightened, as if it were blinking. The ash gusts were a hair thinner now, the petals less plentiful.
"Alex," Azaelia said. Calm as a needle. "If I say run, you Feather step without me."
"What?! I'm not leaving you," Alex said, surprising herself with how steady it came.
"You will, if I say," Azaelia said through clenched teeth.