The gate in the labyrinth groaned to life, churning with raw energy that pulsed like a heartbeat from the shadows. Cracks spiderwebbed across its rusted iron surface, spilling an eerie red glow—a clear signal that another entity was breaking free. A demon. No teachers or guardians patrolled the school's dungeon this time; the halls lay deserted, a careless oversight in a place meant to safeguard young lives. Holidays had emptied the grounds, sparing potential chaos, but that didn't excuse the lapse. Security like this shouldn't falter, even for a day.
Old rumors—backed by dusty history texts—claimed the demons sealed in the school's underbelly were the weakest of their kind. Out of the original thirteen Cardinals, only two fit that grim bill: Chemosh the Farmer and Legion the Fractured. The rest were storms of power, too wild to contain in such a fragile vault.
A grotesque figure clawed its way through the widening fissures, writhing on the cold stone floor like smoke given form. The mist swirled thick at first, carrying the faint scent of turned earth and bitter herbs, then thinned to reveal a relatively short man. His skin gleamed like weathered ash, cracked and dry from eons of dormancy, and his eyes burned a vivid crimson, sharp as fresh-spilled blood. In one hand, he clutched a rusted pickaxe—its wooden handle scarred from old calluses—a relic of his pastoral days. Around his protruding belly hung a ragged lion skin, tied loosely at the waist, its golden fur matted and faded.
He lifted his free hand slowly, turning it palm-up in the dim light, crimson gaze darting over his reformed body as if testing its weight. "Now I can live my life," he murmured with a heavy sigh, voice gravelly and worn. Among the Cardinals, only Lilith outranked him in restraint; Chemosh had always been the least troublesome, a quiet shadow in the storm.
In his mortal days, he'd dodged real trouble, tending quiet acres far from kings and crusades. But one honest slip—a heated argument with wandering faithful, mocking their pleas to the heavens—had cost him everything. Cursed in the heat of divine wrath, he'd lost his humanity, fleeing to hidden groves where he clung to his simple rhythms: soil under nails. No grand schemes, just survival in the margins.
Mona Lisa, bound by her sacred charge to scour the world of evil's avatars, had tracked him even there. But pity—or perhaps strategy—stayed her hand. She'd offered a twisted mercy: sanctuary in her veiled realm, paired with Legion for crude games and idle diversions.
"Wonder what happened to that witch," Chemosh muttered, hefting his pickaxe over one shoulder as he shuffled toward the exit, boots scraping faint echoes off the damp walls. The air grew cooler, laced with the musty tang of freedom.
But as his foot crossed the threshold, a blinding light erupted—pure and searing, like dawn breaking through storm clouds. *Bam!* An unseen force struck him square in the chest, hurling him back against the gate with a crack of ribs and a gasp of scorched lungs. He felt pain, but he rolled to his feet quick, pickaxe raised like a shield.
There, floating amid the radiance, hovered a woman with hair like spun rose petals and eyes glowing the same soft pink. Her gown billowed in an unfelt breeze, woven from threads that shimmered like captured sunlight. She was no mere witch—her aura thrummed with layered power, voices echoing faintly in her wake.
"I was wondering when you'd wake," she said, her tone a harmony of whispers and commands, each word carrying the weight of judgments long past.
"Please—don't do this," Chemosh pleaded, palms up in surrender, his pickaxe clattering to the stone. "I'm not here to fight. No harm, no curses. Just... let me go."
The woman tilted her head, expression unyielding . "Then you should have stayed buried."
"I'm not sparing your life," she declared, and the light swelled brighter, a supernova coiling in her grasp—blinding white edged with holy fire.
Chemosh froze, legs leaden, the air thickening around him like chains. He couldn't run, couldn't swing. Resignation settled heavy in his chest; this was his end, and he couldn't even argue it. Demons were poison to the world—vile echoes of old sins—and purging them was the natural order. His simple crime, centuries back, had marked him for this pyre.
"Oh great Gia," the woman intoned, arms rising as if drawing from the earth's core. "Grant me your light and power to purge this unnatural thing from your soil."
A great ball of fire bloomed in her hands—roiling plasma shot through with green veins of earthen fury, crackling with the scent of ozone and blooming wildflowers. It hung for a heartbeat, immense and inevitable, then *boomed* forward. The blast engulfed Chemosh in a roar of heat and light, his form igniting like dry tinder—skin charring to ash, pickaxe melting to slag. He didn't scream; just a final, weary exhale as the flames consumed him, reducing the once-farmer to a scattering of gray dust that swirled briefly before settling silent on the dungeon floor.