Adam felt something behind him.
Not a breath.
Not a step.
Not a movement.
No.
A presence.
A shadow too dense, too silent, as if the world itself had bent under a weight no one else could see.
Ironic, truly.
He—Adam—
the one who had inherited Belzebuth's shadow powers,
the one who believed himself shaped to rule in the dark…
…was being crushed by a shadow that wasn't even his.
A cascade of thoughts shattered inside him.
Had Belzebuth betrayed him?
Abandoned him?
Traded him for Kael?
As always?
His inferiority complex surged back to the surface,
but this time,
it wasn't a whisper.
It was a visceral scream.
His back froze instantly.
Every hair on his neck rose.
His heart skipped a beat,
then another,
then resumed hammering too fast,
too hard,
as if trying to expel fear from his body.
He tried to turn his head.
He couldn't.
His neck stayed locked,
his muscles frozen,
as if some ancient, primal instinct had seized every nerve fiber to scream at him:
Don't move.
DON'T LOOK.
YOU'RE GOING TO DIE.
A shiver shot down his spine.
His vision wavered.
Black spots invaded the edges.
His field of vision collapsed all at once,
like a tunnel closing its walls around him.
Then he heard it.
A step.
Just one.
There had been no sound.
None.
But his brain—
his brain showed him the scene with terrifying clarity.
Kael.
Standing behind him.
Too close.
Far, far too close.
Adam tried to breathe.
Nothing.
His chest locked up,
as if air refused to enter his body.
His aura cracked.
He felt it dissolve,
like overheated glass shattering from within.
His own magic recoiled,
fleeing toward his heart,
fleeing from Kael.
He imagined Kael placing a hand on his shoulder.
He imagined those fingers closing.
He imagined his throat being sliced in a clean snap.
He imagined it…
with such absolute clarity
that his body reacted as if it were truly happening.
His mouth opened.
A breath tried to escape.
— N… no…
He lost his footing.
Collapsed to his knees.
His hands slapped the stone without strength.
His fingers scratched the floor as if searching for an exit,
a door,
a miracle.
Anything.
Nothing.
And Kael…
still didn't move.
He hadn't stepped forward.
Hadn't breathed louder.
Hadn't even turned his head.
He hadn't done ANYTHING.
Adam curled in on himself.
His teeth chattered.
His body shook with spasms.
A drop of acidic saliva slid down his lips.
His eyes rolled.
And his mind finally understood,
with a cold, merciless clarity:
He would not survive.
Even if Kael never touched him.
The presence behind him became overwhelming.
Absolute.
Entirely inhuman.
His pupils expanded one last time…
then flipped upward,
showing only the whites.
Adam collapsed.
But from the outside?
Kael hadn't moved a single millimeter.
He stood exactly where he had been.
Calm.
Still.
Eyes resting on Adam
the way one watches a flame extinguish itself.
Belzebuth's eyes widened.
— Tss… he's already gone in his head…
The Replacement paled.
— It's… it's a psychic defeat.
A total implosion…
without an attack.
Belzebuth clenched his teeth.
Because if Kael hadn't moved yet…
Then once he finally decided to?
The entire floor would witness the impossible.
Adam lay sprawled on the ground,
eyes rolled back,
unconscious,
emptied.
But Kael…
Kael didn't look away.
His gaze held no excitement.
No anger.
No explosive madness.
Only that glacial calm.
The calm of an executioner estimating the moment the sentence should fall.
He inhaled.
Once.
Slowly.
Then he spoke—
in a voice so soft it became terrifying:
— The execution… begins.
His arm lifted.
Not fast.
Not violently.
He raised it
as if drawing a line in the air
that no force in existence could alter.
His hand opened.
His fingers extended.
His claws lengthened by another millimeter,
as if greeting the imminent death.
The world tightened around the gesture.
The air grew heavy.
The stone vibrated.
The Replacement swallowed with difficulty.
— Oh… oh no… he's really—
Belzebuth understood first.
He saw the trajectory.
He saw the infinitesimal shift of Kael's foot.
He saw Adam's neck aligned with that line of death.
He saw the second about to unfold.
And he knew.
He wouldn't make it in time.
Not to block.
Not to shield.
Not to counter.
Too slow.
He had only one option:
Wake Adam AND move him
in the same instant.
— WAKE UP!!
Belzebuth struck.
His hand cracked across Adam's cheek
in a sharp smack of bone against flesh,
amplified by his aura to multiply the force.
Adam was literally
launched.
Like a ragdoll.
A human projectile flung by an infernal wingbeat.
His body slid two meters,
bounced once,
then crashed in a strangled groan.
And at that exact moment—
Kael struck.
The perfect trajectory.
Immutable.
Unavoidable.
But the target
had been moved.
Another body
fell into the path of the claw.
Belzebuth's hand
— still extended after the slap —
crossed the lethal line.
And Kael's claws
sliced clean through it.
No resistance.
No slowdown.
No mercy.
A shlak rang out—
pure, flawless,
like a mythical blade cutting polished stone.
The Prince's forearm
split open cleanly,
neat as a fruit carved by a divine saber.
The severed hand, still tensed,
fell to the ground.
A geyser of black blood
arced upward,
evaporating in places into infernal fumes.
Belzebuth…
did not scream.
He simply looked at the bloody stump,
then at Kael,
eyes narrowed,
expression frozen somewhere between shock
and a cold, fascinated unease.
— Tch… he hissed.
I saved… an insect.
Kael turned toward him.
Calm.
As if the one-armed Prince before him
was just an obstacle that happened to step into his path.
His two pupils — red and gold —
lit with a predatory gleam.
— You stepped into my trajectory, he murmured.
Belzebuth felt something
crawl up his spine.
Fear.
The real kind.
Not the mortal version—
the one that warns of an anomaly.
Suddenly, time warped for both of them.
Not slowed.
Distorted.
As if each millisecond shattered into visible pieces.
Belzebuth couldn't react.
His body understood before his mind.
In Kael's eyes burned a frozen fire—
a paradox made flesh, a flame without heat, a predatory certainty.
And Belzebuth felt something he hadn't felt in centuries:
Fear.
The true kind.
The fear he had experienced twice in his entire existence.
The first time—
before him.
The being he called "father,"
though the word meant nothing in their world.
A giant among Princes,
whose very presence crushed hell like a celestial hammer.
That day, Belzebuth had learned what absolute dominance was:
the kind that asks nothing,
the kind that simply is,
and is enough to destroy all else.
The second—
before an entity
that belonged to no known Hell,
no lower strata,
not even the infernal dimensions named by Archivists.
A presence so vast, so ancient
it didn't even need an aura to tear the mind apart.
He had never defined it.
Never understood it.
Never found it again.
To name it would have been blasphemy—
like trying to baptize a cosmic void.
And now that fear—
precise, glacial,
the kind that strikes once a millennium—
returned.
In the eyes of a human.
An apprentice.
A… nothing.
A child compared to him.
And yet…
the shiver was identical.
Exactly the same.
But different.
Not the fear of what Kael was now.
No.
The fear of what he would become.
Or of what still slept inside him, too deep for mortals to perceive…
but not for a Prince.
Belzebuth remained still, disturbed.
He couldn't tell whether this fear came from the present
or from a sealed future.
He didn't know if the threat was Kael…
or what lived inside Kael.
He couldn't define it.
Couldn't understand it.
Couldn't even name it.
But one certainty imposed itself.
Heavy.
Sharp.
Undeniable.
This human… would become something.
And that "something" would be fatal.
Or salvific.
Depending on the side he chose
when the moment of judgment came.
Belzebuth inhaled slowly.
Yes.
Kael would one day be
either a threat,
or an absolutely necessary ally,
depending on the circumstances…
and his place when the blade finally fell.
But before he could even finish the thought—
before his mind could rebuild itself around the pain—
he hadn't realized that Kael had already resumed the hunt.
Yes.
The hunt.
Not a pursuit.
Not a duel.
Not a mechanical execution.
A hunt.
Pure.
Primal.
Merciless.
And his prey…
was not Belzebuth.
Not even a rival.
No.
It was Adam.
Adam, the reason he'd lost his hand.
Adam, the direct source of the Prince's mutilation.
Adam—this dead weight, this scrap of destiny
that insisted on existing
in the orbit of someone he could never catch.
Belzebuth reacted before thinking.
A reflex.
Animal.
Ancient.
He tried once more to save his contractant—
desperately,
awkwardly,
almost humiliatingly.
Because he knew.
Because he'd understood.
Because Kael's next strike wouldn't be a warning:
It would be the end.
Dissolution.
Certain death.
So he threw himself forward to protect this human…
this utterly useless, pathetic human,
this walking burden,
this emotional parasite
who brought nothing but weakness and complications.
A contractant who envied Kael,
who wanted to destroy him,
who secretly dreamed of stealing his future—
like a jealous child breaking a toy he can't possess.
Belzebuth felt bile rise in his throat.
What negligence.
What monstrous error.
How could I… ever let this thing bind to me?
He cursed himself.
He cursed his pride.
He cursed the moment he had judged Adam "promising."
His aura flickered.
A shiver of true fear—
the kind that rises from the guts—
ran up his spine.
Because he understood that Kael wasn't just killing.
Kael was fulfilling a truth.
A logic.
A consequence.
And this time…
there would be no escape.
Minutes unfolded.
Not human minutes—minutes of carnage.
An infernal ballet.
Sometimes Belzebuth took the blows,
forced to use his body as a shield.
Sometimes Adam—too slow, too weak—
was shredded by the mere displacement of air from Kael's movements.
Kael wasn't attacking.
He was harassing.
Erasing space.
Each pivot, each micro-motion
sent a claw too close,
an aura wave slicing skin,
a vibration rupturing nerves.
Adam wasn't an opponent.
Just a bag of flesh being cut into successive instants.
And then—
The arm.
It happened without sound.
Without windup.
Without even a visible gesture.
Adam jumped back—or tried to.
He stumbled, panicked, flailed his left arm for balance.
And that arm…
vanished.
Not torn off.
Not sliced clean.
Not knocked away.
No.
It evaporated in a second.
As if something—a claw, a blade, a cosmic rule—
had removed it from reality
before Adam's brain could understand.
The blood came afterward.
Always afterward.
As if the wound lagged behind the truth.
Adam screamed.
An animal howl.
A cry that no longer came from his throat
but from his crushed soul.
Belzebuth felt a cold shock run up his spine.
This wasn't a strike.
Not an attack.
It was a correction.
A sanction.
A sentence carved by Kael into flesh.
And that was when instinct took over.
Belzebuth snapped his head toward the Replacement,
pupils blown wide,
voice trembling with a fury barely hiding panic.
— Open me a portal home, NOW!!
The words exploded like a blast.
The Replacement flinched,
too pale, trembling.
Never in his "functional existence"
had he seen a Prince lose a hand…
and now retreat from a human.
Belzebuth continued, voice rough, guttural:
— NOW! OR HE'LL KILL HIM!!!
For a Prince, it was almost a plea.
The Replacement finally panicked, threw out his hand, and the rift opened—
a black slash, an ink tear shivering like a poorly sutured wound.
Belzebuth didn't wait for stability.
He grabbed Adam by whatever was left—collar, skin, anything—
and hurled him toward the breach.
Not noble.
Not protective.
Just a desperate, brutal, almost animal act:
Get the burden out before Kael reaches him.
Adam, half-unconscious, barely felt the void pull him.
His body slid, spun—
and at the precise moment his foot crossed the breach—
Kael appeared behind him.
A breath away.
A heartbeat away.
Too late—yet almost not.
Their gazes crossed.
A fraction of a second.
An eternity.
Adam's face froze into pure terror,
his fingers clawing for a hold,
a grip,
a miracle.
The rift snapped shut.
SHLAK.
The air vibrated.
Silence fell.
Adam vanished into the hell awaiting him—
with one final, icy certainty carved into his soul:
Kael had missed him by a hair.
And he would come back.