Night fell fast.
Too fast.
The carriage struggled along the forest road when the first scream tore through the air. It wasn't a warning. It was an ending.Wood splintering.Blood splashing against the canvas.Something heavy slamming into the side.
She barely had time to understand.
Monsters.
Not shadows. Not beasts from stories.
They were real. Far too real.
They looked like hyenas… if something had taken their shape and twisted it with sick magic. Their bodies were elongated and angular, bone spines jutting from their backs, their skin patchy and dry, with elemental veins glowing like living wounds.
Open jaws tore through flesh with double rows of serrated fangs. Their forelimbs, too long, ended in deformed hands capable of ripping bodies apart like broken dolls.
But the worst part wasn't their form.
It was what they spat.
Electric-blue lightning, razor-sharp shards of earth, jets of compressed water slicing through flesh… a parade of death in many forms.
They moved as a pack. Coordinated. Intelligent. Hungry for mana and destruction.
She saw a man dragged away, a mother failing to shield her child. It all ended in an instant.
When the carriage overturned, she rolled through mud and blood. She tried to scream. No sound came out.
The monster saw her. It approached, drooling.
Then—
Something fell from the sky.
It wasn't lightning. It wasn't an arrow.It was a dark spear, barely visible, as if the night itself had decided to strike.
It pierced the monster's skull and pinned it to the ground. The body twitched once… and did not move again. The spear vanished. But the black hole in its forehead remained. Final.
She turned her head, trembling.
And saw him.
A man dressed in black walked through the wreckage. His steps made no sound. His yellow eyes shone like a beast's… or something worse. His sword, Dainslein, seemed to drink the darkness itself.
From the rumors whispered in taverns and temples… she had no doubt.
The Devil.
Lusian moved his blade. It wasn't a strike. It was a sentence.
Dainslein cut through reality—monsters split apart, flesh and bone scattering, not even given time to scream.
When it was over, he glanced around: five survivors, eight half-devoured corpses. He clicked his tongue, annoyed.
"This wasn't my concern…"
In the distance, Emily knelt beside a trembling woman.
"You're alive," she said softly.
The woman nodded, finally understanding that facing the Devil was not only futile… it was fatal.
Farther ahead, Lusian continued on, wandering without direction. Thunder trotted at his side, neighing as an electric aura crackled through the air. Every muscle of the beast pulsed with power.
Figures emerged from the forest—robes of white and gold, eyes filled with fanaticism, weapons blessed.
"Death to the Devil!" they cried.
The ground trembled under bursts of fire, wind, and earth. Lusian did not blink. Dainslein cut through reality, sending the fanatics flying like ragdolls. Thunder leapt among them, unleashing electric pulses that shattered weapons and broke spells.
Emily trapped a group within a prison of black light, revealing the curse the goddess had placed upon her. Kara and Adela moved among the enemies—Kara with overwhelming strength, Adela riding her ice tiger, freezing those who came too close.
Elizabeth held her power back, wary of revealing her true identity to Lusian. Every movement she made was measured, lethal, precise.
Lusian advanced. Each swing of Dainslein was not an attack—it was judgment. The fanatics' weapons bent, shattered, melted. There was no mercy, only an end.
"No one survives this path," he murmured, as the last of them fell trembling.
The night wind swept away blood and smoke, but the echo of the fallen lingered in the air. Anyone who knew of Lusian's existence would not only fear him—
they would worship him from afar, like a god walking through death.