The garden became a graveyard.
Screams of men and monsters blurred into the distance, drowned beneath the clash of two titans.
Azazel's arms steadied. The pistols in his hands no longer felt like steel and wood—they pulsed as if alive, veins of light racing along their barrels. Every squeeze of the triggers carried not bullets, but the wrath of Johann Weyer, bound into scripture and iron.
Balaam's wings stretched wide, blotting out what remained of the moonlight. Each feather fell like a blade, scarring marble, ripping through air with edges honed in abyss. His voice shook the marrow of the world.
"Weyer… We crushed you once. And I will do it again, even through this child."
Two voices answered as one, Azazel's and his grandfather's:
"You never crushed me. You only delayed your death."
They moved.
The pistols roared, white-blue streaks splitting the night. Each shot folded through space, striking Balaam not where he stood but where Johann willed—shattering his claws, tearing burning holes through his void-flesh. But where one wound appeared, another mended, rivers of shadow stitching themselves back together with molten hatred.
Balaam lunged. His talons met the riftfire head-on. Azazel twisted, body jerking with reflexes not his own, the pistols spinning in his hands like extensions of thought. Bullets ricocheted into the cracks of reality, rebounding at impossible angles—one buried into Balaam's jaw, another seared through the membrane of his wing.
The King howled, and his laughter followed immediately after.
"Yes! Yes, Weyer! That's it! But your vessel breaks with every shot—look at him!"
He wasn't wrong. Azazel's arms bled from the recoil. His veins burned with light too bright for mortal flesh. But Azazel did not yield.
"Better my body breaks."
Balaam spread his wings and the battlefield bent. The wings absorbed corpses, shots like two black holes. Everything that was absorbed became a weapon: spears of night, fangs of black fire, rivers of molten void. They surged for Azazel, enough to drown the garden a hundred times over.
The pistols crossed. Johann looked behind, there were people he needed to protect.
The barrels flared. A storm of light erupted, not bullets, not chains—but a rain of burning scripture, each word a cut across Hell itself. The demonic technique was consumed by hunter's verses that spread from only two pistols.
Balaam roared, wings curling inward to shield himself. The verses scarred his void-flesh, searing the Seal of Solomon on his forehead until it cracked like glass. But still he stood. Still he smiled through the pain.
"You cannot kill me, Weyer. You cannot erase a King. You don't have enough time"
Azazel's lips curled with Johann's laughter.
"Then I'll remind you: kings can fall."
The pistols flared again, and the two forces collided—
God of Weapon against demonic techniques, scripture against blasphemy.
Johann Weyer's awakening against Balaam's true form.
The garden could not hold them. Marble shattered. Towers buckled. The night itself screamed.
The real duel of two titans began.