They went back down.
The tunnel mouth yawned at the edge of Vel Athor's ruins, the same wound in the earth the Heroes had crawled out of three days ago. Now it pulsed. That sick orange light. The heat of something digesting.
Garrick stopped at the lip. Stared into the dark. His hand found the hilt of his sword like a man reaching for a lover before a long separation.
"You're taking us back in there."
"I'm taking her in there." The Demon Lord jerked his chin at Lira. The girl stood at the edge, looking down, her face unreadable. "You lot can wait up here. Try not to die."
"We're coming with you."
He turned. Garrick's jaw was set. Behind him, the other Heroes, twelve of them now, the ones who hadn't fled into the city, stood in ragged formation. Hands on weapons. Eyes on the dark. Terrified. But standing.
"You want to die in a hole," the Demon Lord said flatly. "That's your choice. But I'm not dragging your corpses back up when the corruption,"
"We're not asking you to drag us anywhere." Garrick stepped forward. Met those red eyes without flinching. "We came down here to kill a monster. Found out we were the monsters instead. So now we're going back down to see what we were really fighting. And maybe..." He swallowed. "Maybe do something that isn't wrong for once."
The Demon Lord stared at him.
They're going to die. All of them. And they're going to die proud, which somehow makes it worse.
"Suit yourself." He turned. Stepped over the edge.
The darkness swallowed him. The Flame Sword ignited, white fire cutting a path through the orange glow. Behind him, Lira followed. Then Garrick. Then the others. A chain of fools walking into the belly of something that had been hungry for eight hundred years.
...
The tunnel had changed.
The walls weren't stone anymore. They were flesh. Not human, something older. Veins of light pulsed beneath the surface, the same sick orange that had been bleeding from his chest. And everywhere, the sound. A low hum that vibrated in his teeth, his bones, his thoughts.
Lira pressed close behind him. Her hand found the edge of his cloak. He didn't shake it off.
"How far?" she asked.
"To the bottom. Where the seal's anchored." He touched his chest. The wound had started bleeding light again. "About six hours, if we move fast. Two days, if the corruption slows us down."
"It's going to slow us down."
She said it like a fact. No fear. Just the calm of someone who'd already accepted the worst.
The first wave hit them at the hour mark.
They came from the walls, bursting through the fleshy membrane, gray-skinned things with too many joints, too many teeth. No eyes. They didn't need eyes. They tasted the air, and what they tasted was a dying man carrying eight centuries of rot.
"Contact!" Garrick's voice rang off the tunnel walls. "Formation, tight, don't let them separate us,"
The Flame Sword moved. White fire. One of the things unraveled. Then another. But they kept coming, pouring out of the walls like pus from a wound, and the Demon Lord felt the seal shudder.
Too much. Can't burn them all. Not without breaking the rest of the way.
"Lira." He grabbed her arm. Pulled her close. "The holy sigil. You said it lets you hear prayers. Can you push back?"
"I don't, I've never,"
"Figure it out. Now."
She closed her eyes. Her face went slack. And for a moment, nothing happened.
Then the sigil screamed.
Light. White light, pure as the sun that used to exist, exploding outward from her arm. The gray things melted, not unravelled, not burned, but purified. Their forms dissolved, and in the light, the Demon Lord saw them: the people they'd been. The people the Empire had thrown down here. The people whose prayers had curdled into hunger.
They were smiling.
Then they were gone.
Lira collapsed. Garrick caught her before she hit the ground.
"That," she gasped, "was not supposed to work."
The Demon Lord looked at her. Really looked. The holy sigil had spread, fine lines of light crawling up her arm, her shoulder, her throat. It was changing her. Using her.
She's burning out. Just like I am. Just like all of us.
"Can you walk?"
"I can crawl if I have to."
"That's not what I asked."
She met his eyes. Got to her feet. Stood there, swaying, the light under her skin pulsing in time with the Sorrow-Stone.
"I said I can walk."
He nodded. Turned. Kept moving.
Behind him, the tunnel walls were healing. The flesh knitting itself back together. And somewhere far below, the seal was cracking, and the voice in the stone was whispering:
"Father... hurry."
He hurried.
...
The second wave came three hours later.
Not from the walls. From ahead. A wall of sound that hit them like a physical force, screams layered on screams, prayers turned inside out, eight centuries of compressed suffering trying to tear through the last barrier.
Garrick dropped. Blood from his ears. The other Heroes followed, clutching their heads, screaming, dying.
The Demon Lord planted his feet. Raised the Flame Sword. And for the first time in eight centuries, he spoke to the Abyss.
"ENOUGH."
The word wasn't human. It was something older. The language he'd spoken before the world existed, before light and dark had names, before anything had been made that needed holding. The language of the thing that had volunteered to be the hole where all the shit fell.
The scream broke.
The sound shattered. The pressure released. Garrick gasped, sucked air, clawed his way back to his feet. The others staggered up behind him, bleeding, terrified, but alive.
"What," Garrick wheezed, "was that?"
"That," the Demon Lord said quietly, "was the Abyss saying hello. It knows I'm dying. It knows I'm bringing her. It's trying to stop us before we reach the anchor."
Lira was still standing. Still upright. The light under her skin was brighter now, pulsing faster, and her eyes,
Her eyes were starting to change. The gray fading to something else. Something that looked like the light from the Sorrow-Stone.
"You're seeing it," he said. "The weight. The truth. The thing you'd have to carry."
"I'm seeing them." She pointed down the tunnel. At the walls. At the light pulsing in the veins. "They're not just corruption. They're people. Everyone who ever suffered. Everyone who ever prayed and got silence. It's all still here. All of it. Waiting to be... what? Heard? Held?"
The Demon Lord was quiet for a long moment.
"Yes."
Lira looked at him. Her eyes were almost gold now. Almost his.
"You held it. All of it. For eight hundred years. And you never let it turn you into one of them."
"I got close. A few times."
"But you didn't break."
He touched his chest. The wound was weeping light now, the seal barely holding.
"Not yet."
She nodded. Turned. Started walking again.
"Show me the anchor," she said over her shoulder. "Show me where you've been keeping it. And then I'll tell you my answer."
He followed.
The tunnel narrowed. The light grew brighter. And somewhere ahead, at the bottom of the world, the anchor waited, the place where the Sorrow-Stone had been forged, where the seal had been made, where one man had volunteered to become the bottom of the hole.
They walked in silence. The Heroes followed. The Abyss watched.
And for the first time in eight centuries, something other than the Demon Lord looked back at the dark and didn't flinch.