A crimson sky bled over the capital.
Flames clawed at the heavens, staining the clouds in twisted reds and blacks, as if someone had taken a blade to the firmament and let it bleed. The outer walls were gone—melted stone, warped metal, and shattered battlements all fused into a grotesque ring of slag. The air tasted like ash and iron.
In the middle of the ruined plaza, the demon laughed.
He towered over the broken city, a crooked crown of bone curling from his head like jagged antlers, wings of roiling shadow blotting out what little light remained. Crimson eyes blazed with madness, reflecting the burning streets and the corpses that paved them.
Every step he took pressed despair into the ground.
"So this is all humanity has left?" His voice rolled through the ruins like thunder. "Pathetic."
Bodies lay strewn across the cracked stone. Soldiers, knights, mages—some burned, some crushed, some simply gone. Shattered swords and splintered shields lay among twisted staves and broken spears. There was no clear line between the dead and the dying anymore.
But still, in front of the monster, a small formation stood.
A thin, ragged line of knights and mages, backs straight despite shaking legs, shields raised, staves glowing weakly.
At their center stood a man in tattered robes.
"Hold formation! Don't back down!" Archmage Seran shouted, voice hoarse but unbroken. Ribbons of golden light swirled around him, weaving themselves into a dense lattice of runes in the air. "As long as we stand, the capital stands! Do not break!"
A beam of black flame fell from the sky.
Seran thrust his staff forward. "Triple-layer ward—anchor!"
The golden lattice solidified into a dome. The beam slammed into it with a deafening roar, warping the barrier like glass over a furnace. The shockwave blasted outward, flattening the remnants of nearby houses and tearing chunks from already-ruined towers.
Knights behind him staggered but held. Their shields shimmered with faint holy sigils, metal scorched, armor a patchwork of dents and blackened edges. Their breaths came in ragged gasps.
Between the knights and the archmage stood a woman robed in white, her once-pure garments soaked crimson at the hem.
High Priestess Lyra pressed bloodstained hands together, lips moving in a steady, unbroken murmur.
"O Great Will, grant us strength and shield us in Your light… Holy Field."
A second, paler dome blossomed beneath Seran's shimmering barrier, sliding up to merge with it. Cracks in the upper ward knitted shut where the holy light brushed them, buying them a few more breaths of life.
As the smoke cleared, the survivors were still standing.
Barely.
The demon's grin stretched wider. "You gnats just don't know when to die."
His tail—formed of condensed shadow and bone—whipped out lazily. It sliced through one of the rear formations as if swatting flies. Dozens of mages and knights flew through the air, striking broken stone with sickening thuds. Several didn't get up.
"Seran!" a voice cried from behind, near one of the half-shattered spires. "The front lines are almost gone! We can't take another hit like that!"
Seran didn't look back.
He could feel the fear. The hopelessness. The knowledge pressing down on every heart here: they were facing something that did not belong to this world.
The Demon of Calamity.
The Devouring One.
A name that had existed only in myths and old warnings, in fireside tales meant to frighten children—and now it stood in the center of their capital, laughing at them.
"We knew," Seran muttered under his breath. "From the moment the Abyss tore open… we knew this wasn't a battle we could win."
Lyra's chant faltered for a heartbeat. "Don't start," she snapped. "We don't have the luxury to despair now."
"We're not fighting to win," Seran said quietly. "We're fighting to buy enough time."
His gaze flicked—to the cracked sky overhead, then downward, to the ground beneath their feet. As if trying to see through stone, through layers of earth and old foundations, to something far below.
His hand moved to the crystal hanging at his waist.
"What's the charge rate?" he asked, voice low.
The crystal pulsed weakly. A tired man's voice emerged, thin under the constant roar of distant magic.
"Seventy-four percent. We lost three towers when the outer defenses collapsed. The rest are still channeling."
"Seventy-four…" Seran's fingers tightened around his staff. "Not enough."
"At this rate," the voice continued, "we'll need at least three more hours for full charge. Anything less and it may not hold him."
Lyra's eyes widened. "Three hours? We'll be lucky if we last thirty minutes!"
"We'll last as long as we have to," Seran replied. His voice was firm, even as blood trickled down from a cut at his temple. "We didn't throw everything into this for half measures. If we fail now, it's not just the capital that falls. The world follows."
He raised his staff.
"Everyone still breathing!" his voice boomed across the plaza, amplified by magic. "Remember why you're standing here! Remember who's behind you—your families, your homes, the lands beyond these walls! There is nowhere left to retreat to. If we fall, everything falls. So stand!"
Some of the knights laughed brokenly. Some sobbed. Some just clenched their weapons tighter.
But no one ran.
They had no illusions. Most of them knew they would die here.
The demon watched them straighten and rally and scoffed. "Touching," he said, voice dripping contempt. "You cling to meaning like insects clinging to a leaf in a storm."
He raised one clawed hand, black mana swirling around his fingertips like liquid night.
"Let me show you," he said, "how meaningless it all is."
The sky darkened again as another torrent of abyssal fire descended.
Seran and Lyra braced together.
"Layered barrier!"
"Divine bulwark!"
Golden arcs and white sigils spun into existence, overlapping, reinforcing, compressing around the battered defenders. The blast crashed against their combined wards, pressing them inward, grinding at them like a physical weight.
Seran felt his knees buckle.
The barrier flickered.
For a heartbeat, he saw it: behind the demon—nothing. Just a yawning tear in reality, where color and light and even sound seemed wrong. The Abyss.
If they failed, that tear would spread. And then—
"Seran!" Lyra's voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. "Focus!"
He gritted his teeth, forcing more power into the barrier. "I'm not done yet!"
The barrage ended.
The dome held… barely. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface before slowly knitting back together.
More knights lay motionless on the scorched ground.
The demon tilted his head, almost bored. "You're still not broken," he mused. "Interesting."
He began to walk forward again, each step sending minor tremors through the already-devastated plaza. The air around him shimmered with an oppressive, suffocating pressure.
Seran's hand tightened on the crystal. "Status."
The reply came at once, ragged but determined. "Ninety-one percent. The remaining towers are overloading. We can't maintain this output for long."
Lyra pressed a hand to her chest, closing her eyes briefly. "Just a little more," she whispered. "Just a little. Please…"
Seran lifted his staff again. The runes floating around him shifted, re-forming in more complex patterns.
"We draw his attention," he said. "We hold him in the array's center. When it hits a hundred, we—"
The demon moved.
Before Seran could finish, the demon stepped forward and simply swept his arm sideways.
A black shockwave erupted, a wall of compressed, corrupted mana that cut across the plaza like a blade. Barriers shattered. Shields exploded. Men and women were lifted into the air and flung away, armor and flesh tearing alike.
Seran threw his staff down, slamming a fresh ward into place. Lyra screamed a blessing, pouring everything into one last shield. The shockwave smashed into them.
For a moment, Seran thought his bones had cracked.
When his vision cleared, the first thing he noticed was the silence.
Most of the screaming had stopped.
"Seran…" Lyra panted, voice shaking. "We…"
He didn't answer. He couldn't bring himself to look back at how many were still standing. Instead he forced his shaking legs to straighten, his eyes fixed on the demon.
The monster stood exactly where he'd begun, not even out of breath.
"This is tiresome," the demon said, scowling faintly. "You are not fun. You break, but you don't shatter." His lips curled. "Let us end this pretense."
Seran's hand found the crystal one more time.
"…Tell me," he whispered, "we've reached it."
Silence. Then, with a near-delirious laugh:
"One hundred percent," the man at the other end said. "The formation is fully charged. We can trigger it at any time."
Relief hit Seran so hard his vision wavered.
"Do it," he said. "Now."
The demon's head tilted. For the first time, his smile dimmed. "Oh?"
The ground trembled.
Lines of light flared to life beneath the ruined city, tracing themselves along buried channels and carved stone. Alleyways, plazas, temples, wells—every stone that remained bore a fragment of intricate carving, a piece of a pattern that no one alive outside this city had ever seen in full.
All of it lit up.
From under fallen towers and broken streets, from hidden pylons sunk into the bedrock itself, a vast formation awakened.
A gigantic magic circle blazed under the demon's feet, its edges stretching beyond the city's shattered horizon. Runes interlocked like gears, spinning, shifting, locking into new arrangements as the formation fully activated.
The demon looked down, brows knitting. "So you're finally going to use it," he murmured. "That little trick you've been charging under my feet."
Seran frowned. "…You knew?"
"Of course," the demon laughed softly. "Do you take me for blind? Your little formation tickled my ankles from the moment I arrived."
"Then why did you let us cast it?" Lyra whispered.
The demon's grin widened, wicked and lazy.
"Because it. Won't. Matter."
He raised a clawed hand as black mana surged around him—
—but suddenly the mana within the demon began to flow.
It rushed downward, inward, dragged toward the luminous lines of the formation.
The demon's aura stuttered.
"…Oh?" His eyes narrowed. "You dare to steal from me?"
The circle brightened, runes rearranging into tighter, smaller sigils under his feet. The siphoning intensified, dragging at his power with a relentless, grinding pull.
The demon snarled. "You think draining me will be enough?"
Black mana exploded outward, slamming against the circle's lines. "Even starved, I am beyond you! I will tear this spell apart and devour what remains!"
The circle shook. Parts of it flickered, dimming at the edges.
Seran slammed his staff down.
"Bring it up!" he roared. "Now!"
The ground cracked.
A heavy, grinding sound filled the air as vast lengths of metal forced their way up through shattered flagstones and molten stone. The earth split and heaved, tossing rubble aside as something enormous emerged.
Chains.
Gigantic, obsidian-black chains surged out of the earth, their links thicker than a man's torso. Each segment bore deep-carved runes—not delicate symbols, but jagged, primal marks that pulsed faintly like sleeping hearts. The metal seemed less forged than dredged up from some older, darker age.
The demon froze.
"…What is this?" he hissed.
Seran did not answer.
The first of the chains lashed out.
They shot forward with impossible speed, wrapping around the demon's ankles before he could step away. The plaza exploded in a shower of rubble where the links slammed down, anchoring themselves to buried segments of the circle.
The demon roared, staggering. "You dare—!"
More chains erupted—dozens, then scores—surging upward like steel serpents. They coiled around his legs, waist, arms, and wings, each impact sending shockwaves through his vast frame. The air rang with the sound of metal grinding against unholy flesh.
Runes lit up along their lengths, lines shifting and recombining, drinking in the power raging against them. As the demon struggled, the carvings burned brighter, swallowing his mana in ravenous currents.
"Pull as much as you can," Seran rasped to the crystal. "Everything. Feed it all to them."
"We're already emptying the reserves," came the strained reply. "Leyline anchors, shrine caches—everything. If we push any harder, the ground might—"
"Let it," Seran said. "So long as those hold, nothing else matters."
The demon thrashed.
Black mana poured from him in waves, crashing against the chains, trying to corrode, to shatter, to burn. The runes along the metal flared brighter, the links vibrating under the strain—but they did not break.
"You insolent vermin!" the demon roared. "You bind me with your crude tricks?! You think metal and scribbles can chain me?!"
The plaza quaked. Buildings that had barely remained standing finally collapsed, towers breaking apart and crumbling into the spreading cracks.
Lyra dropped to one knee, struggling to stay upright as the world shook. "Seran…!"
He didn't move.
He watched as the chains tightened, as the circle below them pulsed again, directing more energy downward.
"You will regret this, humans!" the demon bellowed. "I will tear open your world from the inside out! I will—"
His words cut off in a roar as the chains yanked him down.
One final surge—
—and the demon was dragged downward.
The last thing anyone saw of him was those burning crimson eyes, filled with hatred so raw it felt like a physical force, glaring up at them as the earth swallowed him whole.
"Activate the core altar," Seran ordered, voice trembling.
Deep underground, stone pillars rose and locked into a circular formation. The chains threaded through them like serpents completing a ritual. Their runes glowed violently as they anchored the demon's limbs, pinning him against the altar.
The formation pulsed once—twice—
Then… silence.
Up above, the magic circle dimmed, its lines fading from blinding gold to faint embers etched into the stone.
Lyra whispered, voice hoarse, "Is it… done?"
Seran did not answer immediately. He stared at the spot where the demon had been swallowed by the earth, as if expecting those crimson eyes to tear through the stone again.
"It is," the voice from the crystal finally said. "The chains are drawing in the demon's power. They will drain him endlessly. As long as they remain fed… he will never rise again."
Lyra looked around at the ruins of their home.
At the scorched streets.
At the broken towers.
At the bodies.
"At what cost?" she breathed.
Seran closed his eyes briefly.
Then forced himself to stand straighter.
"We will rebuild," he said. "If he never walks this world again, we can rebuild."
Lyra's gaze lowered to the stained ground where the magic circle had burned brightest.
"And if the chains fail?" she asked quietly.
Seran's jaw tightened.
"They won't," he said.
The words came out twice—first as a statement, then again, softer.
"They won't."
It sounded more like a prayer than a promise.
Lyra lifted a trembling hand and traced a small blessing in the air.
"Then may those chains hold," she whispered, "for as long as the sky remains above us."
The wind moved through the broken city, carrying dust and the fading smell of smoke, as two exhausted figures stood amid the ruins—staring at the quiet earth where they had chained the calamity.