The spear ignited with both fire and shadow, a weapon of annihilation and salvation entwined. His arms shook violently, torn between thrusting it inward or outward, between ending himself or unleashing the abyss.
The void quaked around him. Each tremor was not of stone or sky but of existence itself, as though the universe struggled to decide if it should collapse or continue. Devil stood at the center, body half-consumed by darkness, half-held together by flesh, every breath a war he was losing.
Rick's throat tore with a shout. His legs churned against the tar-like shadows dragging him down, but no matter how he fought, the distance remained. He was too far, too late. His friend—the man he had sworn not to abandon—was about to impale himself and take with him any chance they had left.
The Watcher's laughter filled the abyss. It was not sound but vibration, gnawing at bone and thought alike, a hunger given voice. Yes, it hissed through every crack of reality. Break yourself. End yourself. If not vessel, then corpse. If not host, then feast.
Chains surged from the dark, not toward Rick, not toward the others, but toward Devil. They twined his arms, his legs, his chest, forcing the spear downward. The weapon shook in his grip, the fusion of shadow and flame burning against his very soul. He was not wielding it—it was wielding him.
Rick tried to scream again, but the void swallowed his words. His blade was gone. His strength bled dry. He had nothing left to give—
Until fire exploded through the dark.
Sun burst forward, body fractured with cracks of molten gold, light spilling from him as if he were a vessel for a star. His hands clamped onto the shaft of the spear, stopping it inches from Devil's heart. The effort made his body tear wider, flame leaking like blood. Yet he grinned, teeth bared against the shadows.
"Like hell I'm letting you pull this stunt!" he roared. "You're not dying on me, you bastard—not when I'm still standing!"
Devil's head jerked toward him, crimson eyes blazing with torment. "Let go… you don't understand… I can't… hold it…"
"Shut up!" Sun barked, flames climbing the spear, burning into the veins of darkness that riddled Devil's skin. "I don't care if you're falling apart. We're all falling apart! Look at me—my body's cracking to pieces, but I'm still here! You don't get to carry this alone, you idiot!"
The spear screamed—an unholy noise that vibrated through the abyss, as if two gods were locked in its steel.
Then a second light joined.
Piu staggered into the clash, her form faint and translucent, her broken staff glowing like a candle in a storm. She raised it with trembling arms and pressed the tip against Devil's chest—not piercing, but holding. Her eyes burned with fragile fire.
"You told me once," she whispered, voice shaking but clear, "that I was too weak to carry the burden of this world. You were right… but none of us were meant to carry it alone."
Her staff flared, weaving light into Devil's fading human half. His veins of shadow sizzled against it, the abyss hissing as if scalded.
Silver followed flame and light. Babasaheb raised his hands, words older than the void spilling from his lips. His aura stretched, not to bind but to shape, runes anchoring Devil's flickering form. The syllables rang with power untouched by hunger, words carved in defiance of eternity itself.
"You are not vessel," he intoned, voice steady despite the shudder in his frame. "You are not weapon. You are not host. You are Devil. That name is yours. Claim it."
The Watcher shrieked, its colossal form writhing in the abyss. Its chains whipped faster, slamming against the four of them, but their unity held. For every lash that struck, Sun burned brighter, Piu steadied harder, Babasaheb's runes wrapped tighter.
And Rick—Rick pushed forward.
The phantom weight of his sword blazed in his grip. It was not steel but memory, not forged by smiths but by will. He hacked through the chains binding him, stumbled across the broken plain, and reached out.
"Devil!" His voice cracked raw, yet it carried. "You're not their puppet! You're not their monster! You're my friend! And I won't let you go—not now, not ever!"
For a heartbeat, Devil's human half glowed stronger. His crimson eyes flickered—not abyssal, not broken, but alive.
The abyss roared back, flooding through him. Half his body dissolved into shadow, the Watcher's will screaming through his veins. The spear trembled, threatening to turn inward again.
Rick lunged. His hand met Devil's.
And the void recoiled.
The spear shuddered violently. Flame and shadow still raged, but something else was forming between them, something neither the abyss nor the world had ever birthed. A new light. A contradiction forged of opposites.
The Watcher reeled, its titanic form lurching. Its voice, for the first time, faltered. Impossible… impossible…
The spear erupted—not inward, not outward, but upward. A pillar of fused light tore through the void-sky, splitting it into cracks. The Watcher's colossal shape splintered beneath the strike, its endless chains writhing in panic.
Rick's body trembled, his soul burning from the contact, but he held on. Piu's staff steadied. Sun's flames surged. Babasaheb's runes sealed the cracks. And Devil—
Devil screamed, but this time it was not agony. It was defiance.
The abyss staggered, thrown back. Stars that had collapsed flickered once more. The endless dark hesitated, unsure.
"This ends here," Rick said, voice steady despite his shaking frame. His friends' voices joined his.
Together they raised the weapon. Not to pierce Devil. Not to end themselves.
But to strike the abyss itself.
The Watcher shrieked. Chains erupted like rivers of knives. The void collapsed inward. Its maw opened wide, a hole of nothing that sought to consume everything, even hope itself.
The spear fell.
Light devoured dark.
Dark devoured light.
The two forces collided, and the world shattered—
—
And when Rick opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.
Not the void. Not the fractured plain.
A field.
Grass beneath his hands. Wind across his cheek. A sun overhead.
But the sky was cracked. The grass was ash. The wind carried whispers of chains.
And beside him, Devil lay motionless, the spear still in his chest.
His eyes closed.
His breath silent.
The Watcher's laughter, faint but alive, echoed across the false horizon.
You cannot kill hunger. You cannot kill me. You have only delayed the inevitable.
Rick's chest seized, his scream catching in his throat. He staggered toward Devil, fell to his knees, and pressed his hands against the wound.
"Wake up," he whispered, tears burning hot. "Don't you dare leave me here. Not after everything."
For a moment—just a moment—Devil's fingers twitched.
Then the world cracked again.
And something vast, something older than the abyss itself, stirred beyond the false sky.
The field shuddered. The sun bled black. The horizon split wide.
The Watcher was not finished.
It was only beginning.