If the earlier eruption of the Fallen Land had shaken the abyss, then Soren's time-space detonation was what truly drove the entire plane into terror.
Mephisto had devoured the corrupted fragments of the abyss's origin, giving him the terrifying ability to wield part of the plane's own power. Yet even with that advantage, he was obliterated by Soren.
The portion of the plane's origin Mephisto had absorbed was erased completely by the collapse of time and space, leaving the abyss's foundation itself wounded.
Soren had no choice, any lesser method would have cost him his life. Only the destruction of time and space could end Mephisto. And despite the cost, this was the best outcome the abyss could hope for.
"Hmpf." Soren stood at the very heart of the dissipating temporal vortex, his chest rising and falling.
The battle had been vicious, by far the hardest he had ever fought. Even now, the shockwaves of the time-space rupture rippled across the abyss, and countless powerful demons felt the deep scar tearing through their home.
At the edge of the Fallen Land, the succubus grand elder stared toward the battlefield. The overwhelming corruption that once tainted the abyssal origin had vanished, she felt its absence immediately.
For the first time in ages, her expression brightened with hope.
All across the lands, demons once controlled by the extreme evil aura howled, their minds reeling as the influence gripping them dissipated.
With Mephisto's death, chaos erupted among them. Without his command to bind them, the corrupted demons turned on one another the moment they met killing, devouring for dominance.
Amid this carnage, one demon survived longer than the rest… the intangible lord of nightmares.
His disturbing talent, becoming incorporeal at will, allowed him to avoid most physical attacks. Blade and fang passed through him like smoke. While others ripped each other apart, he consumed them by slipping into their dreams and devouring their minds from within.
One by one, the remaining demons fell and became part of him.
When the final opponent collapsed, the nightmare lord's aura surged dramatically. He fed so deeply that his power swelled to a level approaching Mephisto's peak, yet he remained unaware of how monstrous he had become.
Driven by instinct, he flew toward the center of the Fallen Land.
It took him only moments to arrive and when he saw how drastically the place had transformed, he froze in disbelief. The twisted aura he had relied on, fed on, lived through was gone.
Completely gone.
"AHAHH!"
Soren immediately sensed the presence rushing toward him.
The Demon Lord shot forward in a frenzy, its body dissolving into a massive tide of incorporeal black mist. It surged at him, expanding to its limits as if determined to smother him entirely.
Soren did not move.
His purpose had been singular, purge the lingering corruption, destroy every demon twisted by the vile aura Mephisto had left behind.
He had expected an army, but not this. Without Mephisto's command, the demons had torn each other apart in endless slaughter.
In the end, only one creature remained capable of reaching him.
The black storm roared toward him, the creature's warped face flickering within the vapor. "Reckless."
He activated Time Stop.
The roiling mist halted mid-expansion, suspended in place like ink trapped in glass. Even the faint echo of the Dream Lord's howl was sealed in stillness.
Against such an incorporeal existence, ordinary means were useless. But Soren possessed something far from ordinary.
The power of the Mind Gem.
A spiritual circle unfolded across his brow, radiant and complex. The bright yellow gem embedded at its center gleamed like a third, unblinking eye as it aimed toward the frozen mass of darkness.
A pulse of thought shot forward.
The yellow light condensed into something almost physical, a spear of psychic force that pierced the Demon Lord from within. In the frozen silence, its entire form lit up, dyed in blinding gold.
Through the shining haze, Soren could faintly hear a distorted roar of refusal, like a nightmare unraveling upon waking.
Then the Lord of Nightmares began to come apart.
Its body dissolved into countless strands of pure mental energy rootless, unsupported by will. One by one, they faded into nothing, absorbed by the world and lost forever.
Soren watched quietly as the last fragments dissipated.
He remembered the first time he had met this being, when he first arrived in the Abyss. They had nearly clashed back then, but the succubus clan's Great Elder
And yet here he stood. The prophecy, fulfilled.
It was absurd, really.
Soren had spent the entire time insisting the Succubus Elder's prophecy was nonsense going so far as to avoid the Nightmare Lord just to prove her wrong.
Yet in the end, the Nightmare Lord still died by his hand.
When faced with the corrupted, Blackened Nightmare Lord, Soren had no choice but to act. And with that single strike, the prophecy the Elder spoke of came to pass.
"…" He exhaled slowly, letting the moment pass. The Fallen Land was gone, its corruption purged. The plane itself was wounded and its origin damaged, sluggish but no longer suffocating under Mephisto's malignant influence.
Already, he could feel life stirring through the ether again.
As he teleported across the recovering landscape, he sensed the change clearly, the oppressive aura that had twisted every abyssal creature was fading.
In time, the demons born here would return to what they once were.
✦••┈┈••✦••┈┈••✦
A day later, after overseeing the restoration as best he could, Soren met the Great Elder once more. She personally escorted him to the spatial gate, the same one that had brought him to the Abyss.
With Everlife's power, the portal had remained stable all this time, merely concealed by Soren's own doing.
He raised his hand.
At his gesture, the hidden darkness peeled open, revealing the swirling spatial passage exactly as it had been the day he arrived.
"Time to go home."