The world ripped open with sound.
Azazel stumbled into reality—into hell itself.
The Vatican's grand hall lay in ruins. The marble floor was littered with dead bodies: priests, nobles, guards, their blood steaming against the infernal heat. Sections of the ceiling had collapsed, and through a jagged hole poured a shaft of moonlight, silver against the smoke and the flames that licked upward like a thousand tongues of hellfire. The scent of sulfur and ash clogged his throat. Screams tore the night.
"Move!" Aurelius barked, grabbing Azazel's arm. They sprinted across the rubble-strewn hall. From the shadows, grotesque forms lunged—horned demons, their eyes burning like coals.
Azazel raised Weyer's pistols. The weight of history trembled in his grip.
BANG!
The first shot rang like thunder. The demon's chest exploded, a hole bored clean through by light-forged lead. The creature screeched and evaporated into ash.
The others faltered, eyes wide, as though they remembered. As though they feared.
"Keep firing!" Aurelius shouted.
Azazel obeyed, each blast punching through the darkness, shredding demonic flesh. The Order's knights rallied to his side, emboldened by the impossible sight—an initiate cutting down hellspawn. Together they forced their way through the collapsing building, fighting step by step until they burst into the garden.
And there—
Chaos magnified. A literal massacre.
Tenth of horned humanoid creatures fighting against knights.
And precisely, five demons stalked the grounds like predators, their hulking silhouettes backlit by fire. One swung a tail tipped with bone blades, another exhaled black smoke that turned men into stone. Their laughter rolled like thunder as they feasted on the panic.
But three of the monsters focused on a single target: a group of thirty survivors—priests, guards, even nobles—huddled together, protected only by the shield of dawn-light cast by three church leaders standing bloodied at the front. Their garments were torn, their bodies failing, but their prayers flared like sunrise against the night.
"Azazel, now, please run!"
Azazel and Aurelius were spotted by one of the five high-ranking demons.
"Grandmaster of the Order, I wonder how tasty you are!"
Skin in snake scales and without hair, humanoid stared at them with his panther eyes.
Aurelius formed a white glowing shield to block the attack.
Azazel's breath caught. He looked past the glowing shield, to the back of one of the demons.
The red gloves.
His stomach dropped.
"Kimaris…"
The Marquis of Hell turned, and even in the bloodlit chaos his grin spread wide.
Azazel's grip tightened on the pistols. Rage burned through fear. He raised both weapons, the moonlight flashing against their barrels.
"Let's finish this," he hissed.
"No, Azazel, run!"
Aurelius screamed
The pistols roared.