Page 44 of Unholy Bond
The court broke, some collapsing to their knees, others crawling forward in worship, one or two trying to claw their own eyes out. It was beautiful, in the way a planet-killer asteroid is beautiful. all possibility, all destruction, all inevitability.
I released Aziz, Levi, and Ian, and they staggered, transformed, their skin now written with Void’s runes, their eyes glossy and black. They looked at me, and for the first time, I saw nothing but loyalty. Not a trace of resentment, no plans to betray, no little whispers of subversion. Just awe, and hunger, and the knowledge that I owned them forever.
I stood, naked and rune-marked, and surveyed my court.
“You may rise,” I said, and even the ones who had lost their minds obeyed.
I claimed the split throne, letting the crack gape open behind me like a wound in the world. Aziz took his place at my right, Levi at my left, Ian just behind, hands folded, head bowed.
The Void purred, content for now, and for the first time in existence, Hell was at peace.
I leaned back, closed my eyes, and dreamed of the next world to conquer.
Chapter 24: Lilith
The doors of the throne room detonated inward in a single, obscene thunderclap, and every immortal and dead thing in the chamber flinched as Lucifer stormed through. He wore his truest form. The swollen, beautiful horror that belonged at the center of this universe’s original sin. His horns nearly brushed the lintel, and his skin glowed with that impossible shade of red that punished the retinas, a shifting spectrum of agony. His rage eclipsed all lesser lights, and the air trembled with it.
He didn’t stride; he conquered the space, his tail smashing torches from the walls, clawed feet gouging new trenches in the fossilized ribs that paved the floor. Two handspans behind him, a shockwave followed, flattening lesser courtiers to their knees. Eyes as black as midnight caught mine from across the hall, and I could see the instant his momentum failed. He saw me seated on the cracked, blackened throne, legs crossed, back straight, Void energy licking over my shoulders like a blasphemous stole. Aziz, Levi, and Ian knelt below me.
The court lined the walls, packed so thick the architecture itself seemed to bulge. Not a one so much as blinked. Even the demon-children at the four gates stopped gnawing on bones to watch the scene with animal reverence.
Lucifer bared his teeth. The heat rolling off him condensed moisture in the air, formed instant clouds that hissed and rained blood onto the audience. He flexed his claws, and the runes in my throne room guttered, as if fearing to bear witness to what came next.
“You dare,” he boomed, and the resonance cracked bone and sent a spiderweb of fractures up the obsidian pillar nearest me. “You dare usurp my throne?”
A thousand nightmares tensed, expecting apocalypse. I did not move. I smiled. A gentle, infuriating curve of my lips, the sort of smile a chess player wore before the final move. I let him fill the silence, let him taste the possibility that maybe he had a chance to regain his throne.
He hurled a ball of hellfire at me, and the thing howled as it streaked through the room. It should have atomized the throne, the court, the city, but it struck an invisible skin an inch from my breast, blossomed into a corona of blue-black Void energy, and vanished. The audience gasped in a ragged, orchestrated way.
He tried again. And again. Each time, the fire fizzled, then snuffed, absorbed into the growing storm around my body. The Void adored the attention.
Aziz watched the spectacle, lips curled in a lazy, lethal smirk. Levi cracked his knuckles and leaned forward, as if to better savor the humiliation. Ian, unreadable as ever, kept his gaze fixed on the former king’s face, cataloging the micro-expressions as Lucifer realized just how bad things had become.
I uncrossed my legs, let my arms drape over the sides of the cracked throne.
I stood, slowly, and the three kneeling devils didn’t flinch. Instead, they bowed deeper, as if the pressure of my rising pressed them down. I walked to the edge of the dais. Each step radiated a pulse of hunger that made the air tight as a noose.
Lucifer’s face twitched. Rage, then confusion, then something like terror before rage reasserted itself. He lashed out with raw power, a shockwave meant to vaporize the soul, but the Void caught it, devoured it, and shuddered in delight.
“What is this!” he demanded, but the sentence wobbled, lost its footing. “What did you do?”
I held up one hand, palm out. The court saw it. The intricate latticework of runes, the signature of my blood, inscribed with care and hate into the very flesh. “Looking for this?” I asked, with just enough mockery to cut through his bravado.
He staggered, as if something unseen had kicked out his knees from behind. The audience moaned, a susurrus of pleasure and horror, indistinguishable in Hell. The runes along Lucifer’s spine began to glow, the symbols I had carved into his skin during our last communion.
“You—” he rasped. His mouth hung open, fangs gleaming. “You cannot—”
“Oh, but I can.” My voice carried. The Void saw to that.
His body jerked, puppeted by the binding magic. He resisted, every muscle bucking, but the runes flared brighter with every futile twitch. Aziz watched, eyes avid; Levi licked his lips; Ian exhaled a contented sigh, as if watching a masterwork fall into place.
I came down the steps with glacial patience, circling Lucifer, letting the silence show the court who now ruled. At his back, hiswings flexed, then convulsed, then folded in submission. With a twist of my wrist, I drove him to his knees. He collapsed in a shower of sparks, hands braced against the cold stone, refusing to look up.
I stood over him, one hand on the crown of his head, the other tracing a line along his spine. “You thought you were shaping me,” I said, loud enough for the court to catch every syllable. “But you never realized I was letting youthinkyou had control.”
He tried to rise, but I forced him down, grinding his face to the floor.
The room was so silent that the hiss of his shame was audible.
