The final echoes of the Soul-Thrall's death-rattle had barely faded from the flue before the Demoness was standing atop the blackened altar in the Iron Square, bathed in the fanatical roars of her cultists. The prologue of destruction always begins at the festering heart of a city—the fall of Solace had been eerily seamless, a masterpiece of betrayal orchestrated by these "insiders."
The square was choked with the faithful of the void: nobles in gold-embroidered silks rubbing shoulders with beggars in reeking rags. Yet, none gathered here were players of importance; they were kindling, fuel for the coming pyre. Even a frayed wick has value if it ignites a conflagration, and the worth of these cultists lay in the desecration of their own flesh. The Radiant Lord had crafted humanity in his own image and pampered them since the dawn of time; what irony could be more exquisite than the betrayal of his favorite children?
There was, of course, a truth the Demoness loathed to admit: only humans possessed the edge sharp enough to sever the threads of faith. For any other creature, destroying even a century-old chapel or a humble roadside shrine would cost a price in blood, provided it was anchored by true piety.
"My little pup has a bit of fight in him after all!" The Demoness giggled, her fingers tracing the jagged obsidian glyphs on the altar with unconscious grace. She savored the sight of prey thrashing in the throes of agony, and her mood was particularly jubilant. The cultists had already smeared the cathedral's great doors with defiled blood and were now flooding into its depths. Soon, the shivering nobles of Solace huddled in the crypts would stare with wide, terror-stricken eyes as the darkness claimed them. The thought of their rising screams, the symphony of pleas and whimpers, made her very marrow shiver with delight. Pain, terror, hatred, greed, and lust... every shard of human suffering was a wellspring of joy for her kind—and the purest fuel for their power.
Her eyes drifted to an Obsidian Golem as it lumbered past with heavy, earth-shaking strides. Her lips curled into a wicked smile as she hummed a low incantation in Infernal. A bolt of concentrated emerald light, no larger than a thumb, flicked from her fingertips and buried itself in the construct's forehead.
The Golem froze mid-step, its joints twisting at grotesque angles as it convulsed violently. Lacking vocal cords, its only scream was the silent, frantic shuddering of its granite muscles. A second later, fissures erupted from the point of impact, and toxic green flames spewed from every crack.
BOOM!
The construct detonated into a storm of burning stone. Shrapnel slammed into several nearby cultists, shredding flesh and bone. They collapsed into a mangled heap of screaming agony.
The Demoness merely covered her mouth with a delicate hand and laughed, her eyes curving into charming crescents. "Oh dear... my hand slipped."
What emerged from the detonation of the Black Butcher was a humanoid figure wreathed in roaring emerald flames—a Hellfire Golem. Though several sizes smaller than its predecessor, standing just over two meters tall, it possessed an aura far more lethal. Gone was the lumbering bulk of the Butcher; in its place was a lean, muscular engine of destruction.
To a seasoned eye, the distorted heat haze shimmering around the golem and the sinister intelligence dancing in its emerald eyes signaled a far greater threat. It gripped a chain-axe—its serrated teeth now bathed in a sickly green glow—that hummed with a sound of suppressed madness. For the faint of heart, a mere glimpse of this desecrated weapon was enough to shatter their resolve.
Unlike the frantic, impulsive Soul-Thralls, the Hellfire Golem moved with a rhythmic, chilling deliberation. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. Each footstep beat like a war drum against the soul of the city, leaving behind smoldering footprints of green fire as it marched toward the Western District with unwavering purpose.
Inside the house, Neo was realizing that heightened senses were a double-edged sword. Until he learned to filter the sensory onslaught, his gifts were a curse. The freezing wind carried the shrieks of the dying—too many of them high-pitched and small—tearing at his ears. Even a kilometer away, the stench of blood mixed with the sulfurous rot of the Abyssal host was thick enough to taste. It was an undeniable reality: Solace was drowning in the shadow of total annihilation.
Neo knew that Solace was no helpless maiden. The city's black-iron weaponry, wielded by the Kingdom's famed Gale-Stride Infantry, was a suit of spiked mail that had broken many a greedy hand in the past.
He wracked his brain but couldn't fathom what dark sorcery had allowed the enemy to coordinate such a surgical strike at the perfect moment. Yet, he quickly realized that the geopolitics of the fall were a luxury he couldn't afford. Right now, he was half-naked, caked in filth and blood, shivering, starving, and plagued by the throbbing remnants of a curse. He was a wreck. Before he could save anyone else, he had to salvage himself.
The owners of the house were likely among the panicked throngs he had seen earlier, a stroke of luck that spared him an awkward confrontation. After locating a flint and steel to light the hearth, Neo turned his attention to the two "donors" on the floor. He began to strip the armor from the shriveled carcasses of the Soul-Thralls. He knew that against a high-ranking demon, this steel would be as useless as wet parchment, but the legions conquering Solace weren't all elites. To survive the night, he needed every scrap of protection he could find.
Crossing a divine barrier was never a simple feat for a denizen of the Abyss. The higher the entity's rank, the more likely they were to be incinerated by the invisible sanctified veils. This was why the Legions relied on fodder: golems, cultists, the Fallen, and the Undead. Against such dregs, steel was a lifeline, no matter how heavy it felt.
But Neo had no intention of being entombed in plate. He knew the art of the light-skirmisher: greaves cut off just above the knee, thigh guards discarded entirely, and no cumbersome faulds. He kept only the front plate of the cuirass to shield his heart, a single pauldron on the left for parrying, and left his right arm bare for maximum range. Vambraces protected his forearms, and he chose a lightweight helm with a slim visor. This hybrid kit weighed barely half as much as a full suit, allowing him to move with the silent, predatory grace of a ghost.
As he selected each piece, he tossed it into the roaring hearth. The flames hissed and spat as they licked the steel. It served a dual purpose: scouring away any lingering necrotic miasma and stripping the polished ceremonial coating. In the snow, a gleaming chestpiece was as good as carrying a beacon; he needed the dull, blackened iron of a shadow.
Next, he scavenged a set of dry, rugged clothes. The moment he changed, he plunged into the kitchen's rainwater cistern. The water was bone-chillingly cold, but he bit his tongue and scrubbed himself raw with coarse lye soap. Sweat, grime, and the telltale scent of a hunted man had to go. Every stray odor he scrubbed away was another second of life bought.
He emerged dripping, his hair now a wild mane—a lingering aftereffect of the Lycanthropy. Even if he had been bald before, the transformation caused coarse, silver-gray locks to erupt from his scalp, feeling more like a wolf's pelt than human hair.
He was just cinching the straps of his makeshift kit when the floor began to shudder. A heavy, rhythmic booming shook the foundations, accompanied by the acrid, choking stench of sulfur. A Dark Golem. He could see it in his mind's eye: a mountain of obsidian muscle, hellfire pulsing through its veins like molten blood.
Whether it was hunting him specifically or just raking the district, Neo wasn't going to gamble. He bundled the rest of the gear into a cloak, shoved a slab of salted pork and a half-bag of flour inside, and slung it over his shoulder. Before slipping out, he kicked the two desiccated corpses into the fireplace to mask their fate and left the fatter of the two looted coin purses on the table—a deliberate "scent" to mislead the pursuers.
CRASH!
The wall didn't just break; it detonated inward. The Dark Golem squeezed through the jagged breach, snorting plumes of searing sulfur. Its lava-like eyes scanned the room, yet to lock onto a target. It lumbered toward the hearth, reaching into the white-hot coals to pull out a burning corpse. It began to tear into the charred flesh like a beast claiming its prize, showering the floor in sparks and the stench of burning rot.
Neo remained unaware that the Hellfire Golem was doing more than just feeding on the charred remains of the Soul-Thralls. It was a ritual of consumption—parsing the physical data of the target from the ash. Through the marrow and the lingering traces of Neo's blood that the thralls had tasted, the golem was reconstructing his height, his scent, and his very essence. Even had he known, Neo could only have accepted the grim reality: this construct, wreathed in smoldering blue hellfire, was leagues beyond the Black Butcher. The power gap was an abyss. Even in his full Lycan state, a direct confrontation would be nothing short of a televised suicide.
For now, the cacophony of the slaughter remained bottled up in the main thoroughfares. The panicked crowds had been stripped of their reason, their minds hollowed out until only the word "run" remained. Blindly, they surged with the collective tide. Ironically, the narrow alleys of the residential district had become temporary sanctuaries. Only a few stray figures stumbled through the shadows; the far-off barking of dogs and the muffled booms of distant combat formed a haunting, atmospheric hum.
The clouds pressed lower, the wind finally dying down, only to be replaced by a snowstorm that grew denser by the minute. Neo's ears, sharp as glass, could hear the hiss of snowflakes landing on the obsidian eaves—the sound of ten thousand tiny needles drumming against the stone.
He was freezing and starved, but these were pains his bloodline was built to endure. In every sense, he was a lone wolf: capable of gorging himself on a week's worth of meat in one sitting, or starving for days without a flinch. He understood gratitude, yet his soul belonged only to the wind of freedom.
Neo didn't know Solace's layout intimately, but a fugitive's instinct ensures they never truly lose their way. He pushed westward, his only goal to breach the city limits. He only skidded to a halt when he saw it: a shimmering veil of liquid mercury clinging to the outer walls—a Divine Barrier.
"Someone wanted to lock the demons out, but they were a heartbeat too late," Neo sneered, a cold light flickering in his eyes. "Or more likely, the dark powers have already seized the reigns of this energy cage, turning a shield into a slaughterhouse for the entire city."
"A full day and night of siege..." He felt the hardened slab of salted pork at his waist, his mind churning with cold calculations. "Staying in one place is suicide; running blindly is idiocy. I need three, maybe four safe houses, rotating as the hunt shifts. The first one has to be remote."
He turned his gaze toward the southwest. If his memory served, that was the location of Solace's slums. To the invading host, those wind-battered, crumbling shacks held the least value for plunder. It was the perfect place to vanish.