The voice rumbles through Mike's skull as he and Abbadon collide again, the world beneath them splitting like ice under a hammer.
"Yes… Dragon…"
The tone was deep and rumbling, threads through his head like a hook dragging through soft flesh.
Mike laughs, wild and violent as he tears through the air, but the edges of his grin tighten for a split second.
That voice…
Was that Abbadon?
No. No, it came from inside his head.
He throws a punch that sends Abbadon sliding across the crater wall, but his hair rises cold against the back of his neck. The echo doesn't fade like it should. It lingers. Layered. Whispering. Almost… affectionate.
Mike snarls under his breath.
"Shut up…"
But he doesn't know which one he's telling to shut up.
Abbadon?
The voice Or himself?
He doesn't have time to untangle it, Abbadon rockets forward, red lightning coiling around his arm, fist slamming into Mike's jaw with enough force to shatter mountains. Mike's head snaps back as the impact cracks the air itself into folding sheets of distortion.
He laughs again.
But the laugh wavers.
For the first time since he began his battle with Abbadon, a sliver of clarity cuts through the haze of exhilaration.
On the wall of Sanctuary, Nicolas watches the two beings spiral through the sky like twin comets determined to erase the world.
"He's… slowing," Nicolas mutters.
"Mike?" Lisa asks, gripping the railing.
Cyra narrows her eyes. "No. Not slowing. He appears to be thinking."
Leo grimaces. "I'd rather he go back to not thinking."
Another shockwave detonates outward, flattening what remains of the demon cavalry. Feathers and ash drift like dark snow.
High above the battlefield Mike swings his arm, sends Abbadon tumbling back through a curtain of molten clouds, but this time… he doesn't pursue immediately. His breathing hitches, just once.
The voice chuckles softly.
"Glorious… more… give him more…"
Mike's eye twitches.
That wasn't Abbadon.
Abbadon was fifty yards away.
That whisper came from behind his teeth.
"Shut up," Mike growls again, but the violent joy muddles the thought, dissolving it before he can focus.
Abbadon halts midair, wings fanning wide like a god appraising a storm. His smile curls, knowing.
"You falter, dragon."
Mike bares his teeth. "I don't—"
But the voice interrupts him.
"Do not ignore me."
His breath stutters.
Because this time… it isn't just the voice.
A presence inside him stirs.
A presence he hasn't felt since—
His heart jerks.
Since the old man in Africa.
Since Bahamut.
The realization hits so violently he almost misses Abbadon's incoming strike. The Destroyer's fist slams into his ribs, launching him through a half-collapsed siege tower. Wood, steel, and demon corpses explode outward.
Mike doesn't rise immediately.
He stares down at his hands shaking, not with fear, but with the sudden heavy awareness spreading through his mind.
He forgot Bahamut.
He forgot the ancient dragon whose essence still flowed through the deepest tunnels of his power. The monstrous dragon that had been the cause of all his suffering through the trial, but helped him through his journey around the world.
How could he forget?
Because he'd been too enthralled with the joy of the fight.
With the blood.
With the ecstasy of destruction.
Mike's breath quickens into ragged, unstable thrum.
Abbadon hovers above him like a shadow blotting out what remained of the sky.
"Why have you become weaker?" Abbadon asks quietly, almost reverently.
Mike's throat tightens. "Shut the fuck up!"
Bahamut's ancient snarl:
"Young dragon… do not forget who FIRST reshaped you. Do not lose focus."
Mike's eyes widen.
Abbadon descends slowly, expression shifting, not to pity, not to concern, but to fascination.
"You are evolving," Abbadon whispers. "As all of us have."
Mike staggers, fury and confusion warring inside him.
"You're not like me," he spits.
Abbadon's smile deepens.
"Dragon… we are exactly alike."
Bahamut growls approval.
And Mike's own heart surges with an answering thrill that terrifies him.
"No…" Mike snarls before a smile starts forming on his face. A laugh slowly echos from his mouth. "Fuck it, I may be batshit crazy at this point, but I'll enjoy killing you."
He launches forward, wings igniting in a pillar of black-red fire. Abbadon meets him instantly, and their collision lights the sky with a white-hot explosion. Angels and demons caught in the shockwave evaporate before they even scream.
Mephistopheles watches from his conjured chair, grinning ear to ear.
"Yesss… break, Michael. Break the line between what you think you are and what you REALLY are…"
Back in the crater the two titans slam into the earth with enough force to flip entire landmasses. Spikes of hardened magma spear upward. The very bedrock trembles like it's afraid.
Mike pins Abbadon, roaring laughter inches from his face.
Abbadon laughs hysterically.
"Then why," he whispers, "do we share the same joy of destruction?"
Mike freezes for a moment before he begins laughing again.
Mike's laughter splits the air.
His roar shakes the clouds into spirals, sends fissures cracking across the huge crater. Abbadon kicks upward, sending Mike flying. The compact dragon form twists and rights himself, wings flaring open with violent fire and with final clarity spreading across his expression.
Mike hangs in the air, wings spread wide, breath heaving like a creature waking from a nightmare and a dream at once. Fire rolls along his scales in jittering pulses, more chaotic than before, more alive. Like something inside is trying to claw its way out.
The laughter fades from his throat, replaced by a ragged inhale.
"At last… you hear clearly."
Mike's eyes widen. The fire along his wings sputters.
"…Bahamut."
The name feels foreign on his tongue. Foreign and familiar and terrifying all at once.
Abbadon watches from afar, hovering just above the melted horizon, his grin spreading slowly as if he senses it too.
Mike's chest tightens.
The massive dragon pressing into the space behind his thoughts. Mike hears him with horrifying clarity.
"You forgot me, young dragon."
Bahamut's voice rumbles like a storm shifting continents.
"We are creation's counterweight. The answer to stagnation. The teeth of evolution."
Mike's heart pounds.
He wants to deny it.
He wants to scream that he's not some cosmic monster.
But his fingers are still trembling with joy from tearing apart chosen.
His chest still aches with exhilaration from being hit hard enough to explode mountains.
His mind still surges with the thrill, the need to keep fighting.
To keep destroying.
Abbadon stretches his wings, red lightning dancing along their edges.
"Now you understand," he calls out. His voice cracks the air like a whip. "We are not gods. We are not demons. We are not dragons."
He points a clawed finger at Mike.
"We are the fire at the bottom of existence. We are the hunger that the universe itself fears."
Bahamut growls with thunderous pride.
"And he is correct. Do not heed the words of that old man who tried to derail your fate."
Mike's breath stutters.
Abbadon laughs, delighted. "You hear him now. Good. GOOD. That means you finally see the truth."
Mike shakes his head violently. "I'm nothing like you!"
A lie.
He hears it in his own voice.
He feels it in the fire crawling along his spine, begging to be unleashed.
He feels it in the way his lips twitch upward, in the same kind of smile that curls across Abbadon's face.
"How can you hear him?" Mike asks as his smile grows.
"Because I am older than the gods and divine plans. I see it all, even from my pit" Abbadon responds in a flat tone. The smile never leaving his face.
Bahamut speaks again, calm but resonant enough to vibrate the marrow in Mike's bones.
"You resist because you fear the reflection."
Mike's jaw clenches.
"But you are closer to Abbadon than to any mortal. Closer to destruction than to life."
"STOP TALKING!" Mike snarls.
The sky rips open with the force of his shout, black fissures zigzagging through the burning clouds.
But Bahamut does not stop.
"You were shaped by suffering. Tempered by hatred. Fueled by blood. You consumed essence without hesitation. You reveled in war. You laughed while worlds burned around you. Tell me—"
His voice grows softer…
almost compassionate.
"—how are you not like us?"
Mike's breath falters.
His heart drops into a cold, bottomless void.
Because somewhere deep inside, in the part of him that had smiled as he slaughtered Titans, Primordials, Angels, Orishas, in the part that had roared with glee when Abbadon struck him with excruciating force, he knows the answer.
He knows the truth.
He's the same.
Abbadon sees the realization hit.
His grin widens with triumph.
"There," the Destroyer whispers. "There it is. The evolution."
Mike's head bows, shadows falling across his face, wings trembling with surging power.
Bahamut's voice becomes a low hum of approval, the kind that feels like magma shifting beneath the earth.
"Remember this feeling, young dragon."
A beat.
"Because your evolution has only begun."
The fire behind Mike's eyes flickers violently.
He lifts his head.
And as he looks at Abbadon once more, there is no hatred in his gaze.
Only understanding.
And a terrifying, insatiable joy of hunger and destruction.
The ground beneath them splits.
Demons scatter.
Angels scream.
Mephistopheles leans forward in his chair, delighted.
Mike spreads his wings wide, fire boiling off them in molten waves.
He whispers to himself with a grim, dawning acceptance.
"…I really am the same as you."
Abbadon's laugh splits the sky.
Bahamut's growl thrums in approval.
And Mike's wings ignite once more as he launches back into the air.