The battlefield had barely begun to settle after Ellas's rebirth when the air twisted.
Not burned. Not shook. Not screamed.
It twisted, as though reality itself recoiled.
Even Scourge and Arephon froze mid-strike.
Demons fell silent. Angels lowered their spears. The molten rivers dimmed, their glow shrinking back into their beds of fractured stone.
Every being on that scarred battlefield felt it
The Elder was coming.
A crack of white-gold split the air above them. Not a door. Not a portal. A correction a line drawn through wrongness.
The general Arephon bowed his head.
Demons hissed in terror.
Ellas, now a demon, wholly reborn, felt something ancient press against his bones. His golden spark was gone, but some distant, instinctual recognition still twisted inside him.
Scourge snarled, raising his spear.
"Finally," he whispered, "you arrive."
The light condensed into a humanoid shape. Tall. Terrifying. Made of starlight and living creation. Their presence did not burn it defined. Things became sharper simply by standing in their orbit. The air around them folded neatly into place.
The Elder had stepped into the Below.
Angels dropped to one knee. Demons shrank away.
And Scourge laughed.
"Welcome," he said, "to my realm."
The Elder looked at him without blinking. Their eyes pure, focused starlight absorbed Scourge's broken wings, cracked skin, molten shadow, and the madness behind his smile.
Then their gaze shifted to Ellas.
Ellas stiffened.
Even with all the demonic power swelling in his veins, Elder's presence made him feel naked. Small. Seen through. As if every choice, every failure, every flicker of rage lay open on his skin like scars.
The Elder spoke at last.
Not loudly.Not violently.
Simply with authority older than heaven.
"Scourge."
Shadowfire flickered in response.
"You have waged war beyond the scope of your domain."
Scourge raised an eyebrow. "Your angels attacked first."
"Because you provoked them."
Scourge laughed again. "I didn't force them to bleed."
The Elder lifted their hand.
And the battlefield trembled.
Chains thin as light, strong as law materialised in the air. They shimmered like strands of lightning braided into iron. Their tips dripped pure creation-energy like molten gold.
Even I felt their weight.
Scourge's smile faltered.
The Elder's voice shook the Below.
"You are bound."
The chains shot forward. Scourge tried to raise his spear but the chains moved faster, entwining around his wrists, his ankles, his wings. They wrapped his torso like a star collapsing around itself.
Shadowfire surged outward in a desperate blast.
The chains drank it.
Every drop.
Scourge roared, wings cracking under the pressure. "NO"
The Elder raised their other hand.
A seal burned itself into the chains an ouroboros of celestial law, a symbol of containment. The chains snapped taut, and Scourge was slammed into the molten ground, pinned so deeply that lava crystallised around him to hold him in place.
He writhed. He snarled. He cursed.
But the chains did not budge.
The Elder looked down at him with neither hatred nor pity.
"You will remain in the Below."
Scourge spat molten shadow at their feet. "You fear what I will become."
"No," the Elder replied calmly. "I fear what you have already allowed yourself to be."
The chains tightened.
Scourge roared louder.
Then the Elder turned to Ellas.
The transformed duke, the man who used to shine bright as the golden ether, now remade in demonfire and desperation, straightened his spine and forced his wings open.
He refused to kneel.
The Elder studied him for a long, heavy moment. Ellas felt it like a weight against his heart not physical, but existential.
"You," the Elder said, "have severed yourself from the ether."
Ellas lifted his chin. "My spark is mine to use."
"You used it to destroy your own nature."
"Then I chose correctly."
Shadowfire flickered around his wings.
Elder raised one hand.
Ellas tensed but it was too late.
A second seal appeared in the air. This one was darker, heavier. Not luminous chains—but barriers. Invisible walls of law. A lattice of cosmic restriction.
They fell upon Ellas like a net of glass.
He snarled as they wrapped around him around his arms, legs, chest, wings, throat. He tried to blast them apart, golden-black flame erupting from his hands, but the barriers didn't break.
They only compressed tighter.
The Elder spoke:
"You will not leave this realm."
Ellas's wings snapped outward in rage. "You cannot imprison me!"
"You chose this prison," Elder answered. "The moment you burned the last piece of what you were."
The barriers contracted.
Ellas collapsed to one knee, teeth grinding in hatred.
"You are demon," the Elder continued. "Fully. Completely. Forever. Therefore, you belong to the Below."
Ellas growled, "I belong to power."
"And yet," Elder said, "you are caged by the strength you coveted."
Ellas roared in fury but the barrier did not care. It sealed around him like an invisible crown. A brand of fate.
He would never leave the Below again.
The demons saw it.
The display of strength.The containment.The transformation.
They saw Ellas, still standing, burning, still refusing to kneel beneath Elder's gaze.
And something ancient stirred in their instincts.
The abyss recognised its king.
One demon fell to one knee.
Then another.And another.And another.
One by one, the entire demonic host of hundreds, thousands bowed their heads.
"El-las…" one whispered.
"King…" growled another.
"The King of the Below…"
"He rises…"
The chanting grew.
And Ellas, breathing through pain, through hatred, through the knowledge of what he had lost, rose slowly to his feet.
He did not look at Elder.
He looked at the demons bowing before him.
A new crown formed above his head one not forged of metal or light, but of flame and shadow, a jagged ring of burning darkness with a faint golden edge that flickered like memory.
The demons roared.
"THE DEMON KING!"HAIL ELLAS!""HAIL THE NEW LORD OF THE BELOW!"
Even the lava surged upward in violent celebration.
The Elder watched silently.
Their work was done.
The general they had empowered remained wounded but alive. The angels, battered, carried him back through a rift in the ceiling of the Below. Heaven retreated. War quieted.
Only Ellas and Scourge remained in the battlefield's heart.
Scourge was chained to the ground. Ellas was caged within the realm.
And both of them felt the new hierarchy solidify.
Ellas walked toward Scourge.
Demons parted before him.
He stood over the bound Fallen King.
Scourge looked up, eyes blazing with pride and fury. "Demon King," he said. "A title taken in haste."
Ellas smirked. "Taken in power."
Scourge's chains rattled as he strained. "You should not have burned your spark."
Ellas spread his black-gold wings. "I have no need for what I used to be."
Scourge snarled. "And when the Elder binds you tighter? When does the Below itself clamp down on you? What then?"
Ellas knelt beside Scourge, lowering his voice to a whisper only the two of them could hear.
"Then I free you."
Scourge's eyes widened just slightly.
Ellas gripped the Fallen King's chains.
"I swear it," he said. "By flame, by shadow, and by what little is left of what I once was…"
He leaned closer.
"I will release you from this bondage. No matter the cost. No matter the war it starts."
The chains hummed, reacting to his vow.
Scourge smiled a slow, wicked smile.
"And then?" he whispered.
Ellas rose.
His crown burned brighter.
"We destroy the Elder."
The crowd erupted in cheers.
And above, far beyond the reach of hellfire and shadow, the universe trembled not from battle, but from the future that had just been written.
A future I understood.
I watched.
And did not intervene.