"Stop," said a voice, mellifluous yet cold, its echoes weaving through every crack in the cavern's stone ribs. It was as if the shadows themselves had spoken.
"Your wish is my command, Sire," Zarkaura murmured, bowing low. He began unfastening the battered pieces of his armor, letting iron plates fall with dull clangs onto the wet rock until his torso was bare. Pale flesh shone with old scars and inked sigils that seemed to writhe when touched by torchlight.
He lifted his arms and began to chant in a language no mortal throat should recall. The sound coiled through the cavern, heavy and rotten, stirring something unspeakable in the stale air. Then it came, horror forced into flesh.
From Zarkaura's shoulders the skin split. Slow and deliberate, the seams tore wider, birthing shapes that forced themselves out like blasphemous flowers blooming. Riser felt bile rise in his throat at the sight.
On Zarkaura's right shoulder emerged a head, if it could even be called that. It was an obscene parody of flesh, a face pocked with burrowing insects that feasted on decaying eyes, mandibles clicking as they crawled from its ragged mouth. It quivered in perpetual agony, a suffering given shape and voice.
On the left, by contrast, bloomed a visage of near-divinity. Its flawless features seemed carved from marble and haloed by a faint, pearly glow. Yet its eyes, deep crimson, gleamed with such pitiless cruelty that it made the monstrous one seem almost honest by comparison.
When all three faces turned toward him, Zarkaura's own head bowed beneath them, Riser felt an icy terror settle in his marrow. The beautiful one smiled first, a perfect mouth curving into something inhuman.
"Hello there, Riser Phenex," it purred. Its voice was music, angelic but slick with poison. "A perfect vessel. Don't bother screaming too long. It dilutes the soul."
The ruined face on the right shoulder began to babble, a string of broken, ancient syllables that made Riser's ears throb and bleed. He gritted his teeth and fought the urge to collapse.
"So... Kelzior, I presume?" Riser rasped, mustering a bravery he did not feel. His back pressed against cold stone as he searched for an exit that did not exist. "What is this? What do you want? Surely we can... reach an understanding. Preferably one where I walk away alive?"
Kelzior laughed through the perfect mouth, a sound too lovely to belong in this pit. It dripped mockery and rot. "Understanding? Delightful creature. No, no. This ritual is far older than you. Older than this world's memory."
He lifted his borrowed arms and began another chant. Sharp syllables cracked the air like lightning. From a leather satchel, he scattered pieces into the foul river that trickled through the cavern: yellowed bones, hearts slick and red as fresh slaughter. The water hissed as flesh dissolved into steam and stink.
Kelzior traced a circle into the black stone with his nails. Light bled from it, sickly, greenish. The cavern trembled. From the circle, like a perversion of birth, they came: 666 women clutching swaddled infants to breasts swollen with milk and something worse. Their smiles were too wide, eyes glassy with unnatural bliss.
"Do it," Kelzior commanded.
One by one, the mothers stepped forward, cooing lullabies as they hurled their babies into the river of death. The water turned crimson, the air thick with burnt copper and the thin, awful wails of lives snuffed out before they could draw breath. The beautiful head laughed, a bright, lilting giggle that soured the stone. The monstrous head only gnashed and gibbered its filth.
Riser's expression froze into a mask of stone. He would not give Kelzior the pleasure of his horror.
"This ritual, my dear," Kelzior crooned, his voice wrapping around the nightmare, "is for my rebirth. You see, my old vessel decayed long ago. But you... you are perfect. A shell made for my soul, as if tailor-crafted by fate itself. A vessel worthy of the name Kelzior."
"Fuck," Riser whispered. He had only cursed twice since his rebirth. This time it felt earned.
Kelzior's three heads beamed. "These rites will make your flesh better. Purified. More potent. The perfect throne for my ascension."
In a blink, the creature was before him. An iron grip closed around Riser's throat and lifted him like a rag doll. He struggled, flame flickering at his fingertips, but it was like wrestling stone. Kelzior hurled him into the blood river.
Pain. Agony like oil on fire. And then, blackness.
When he opened his eyes, he stood in a place that should have belonged to a fable, if fables were written by madmen.
A vast tree rose above him, its leaves a thousand shades of blood. Its trunk was knotted with faces, each locked in an eternal scream. All around, the landscape pulsed with shapes that wept and whispered. The air was thick with the salt-bitter taste of suffering souls.
"Where the hell am I?" Riser rasped.
Kelzior's beautiful voice coiled through the branches. "Your mindscape. The river carries body and soul to the threshold."
"I suppose this is where I'm meant to fight you for my body, then," Riser said, his voice dry as old bone. He pretended calm, anything to keep the terror at bay.
"Correct," Kelzior sang. The branches above rustled with unseen laughter. "Whoever commands this realm commands the body of Riser Phenex."
Riser turned in slow circles, eyes drawn to the countless souls orbiting the tree like moths around a corpse-flame. The more he stared, the more the landscape trembled beneath his will. It felt like clay waiting to be molded. There was power here, yet a price too.
"Careful," Kelzior's voice warned, smooth as silk over a blade. "Stare too long at the dead and you will forget yourself. You will become just another soul screaming in the bark."
"Why would you care?" Riser shot back and tore his gaze free. The spell snapped like rotten string.
Kelzior's laugh drifted through the bleeding canopy. "Because I crave a challenge, little bird. And I would hate for you to break too soon."
--------------------------------
Riser stood beneath the blood-red canopy, eyes half-lidded as crimson leaves drifted down like flakes of dying flesh. The screaming faces knotted in the bark seemed to breathe in time with his heartbeat. The air was thick with the weight of other minds, their suffering made almost musical in this place that was not a place.
He drew a slow breath, steadying the echo of agony that pressed against his thoughts.
Devils could use telepathy—it wasn't a rare talent but something they were born with and trained to master. It could be divided into two parts.
The first was called Sorvian. This was telepathy used to attack. A devil could reach into another person's mind, read memories, change emotions, or plant suggestions that felt like the target's own thoughts. It was how devils erased memories, lied without speaking, and broke even the strongest leaders without laying a hand on them.
The second was called Shadeward. This was telepathy used to defend. It protected the mind from being read or influenced. A strong Shadeward user could hide their true thoughts and feelings completely, locking their mind like a fortress no one could enter.
When devils fought using telepathy, it wasn't loud or flashy. It was quiet, heavy, and intense, like two invisible forces pressing against each other, trying to break through or hold the line
Riser's eyes narrowed. This ritual reeked of both, a battlefield of minds, not steel and flame. It is not quite Sorvian nor quite Shadeward, he thought. But the principle is the same.
He stood in the red-glowing mindscape beneath the tree with bleeding leaves, his breath shallow, his soul bared. His eyes tracked the monstrosity across from him—Kelzior, no longer hidden in shadow or in another's body, but revealed in mocking majesty.
He looked like Riser—only taller, broader, more perfect. His face was symmetrical, inhumanly so. A crown of bone adorned his head. His smile was sharp enough to split sanity.
"That thing is your core. Your anchor. Your soul in symbol. And look how it cracks already. Just like you shall."
Kelzior's grin widened, a sliver of bone and malice. "Let me tell you what is happening, so you know exactly how thoroughly you shall lose. Listen well, for my mercy is to teach you what breaks you."
He circled Riser like a serpent, voice echoing off the shrieking canopy. "This is your mind's final veil. The souls' theatre. Here, thought and meaning are one. Here, you and I will not cross blades of steel nor call down petty spells. Here, we battle with identity. Mask against mask. What you are, what you pretend to be, all tested until it splinters."
Kelzior leaned close, breath like grave dust. "And I shall peel you apart piece by piece."
Riser did not flinch. He merely exhaled through his nose, calm as the abyss. So be it, he thought.
⸻
Kelzior's smile turned cruel. "Shall we?"
Without another word, his form shifted, unraveling into scales and fangs and coiled muscle. A serpent, vast as a river, coiled around the tree. Its eyes glowed with deceit and venom, each flick of its tongue dripping poison that sizzled on the screaming faces below.
Riser's mind flickered through memory and myth. The snake, an old symbol of slow death, corrosion, treachery. Very fitting.
He smiled slightly. If you bring poison, I bring the talons.
His own form blurred, bones snapping, feathers tearing through charred flesh. Wings spread wide, shadowed under the bleeding canopy. A bird of prey, vast and regal, claws hooked like scythes. He struck from above, talons raking scales, tearing at the serpent's flesh with cold precision.
The serpent hissed, body coiling tighter. Venom sprayed in arcs that scorched feathers, yet Riser pressed in, ripping scale after scale free, a hunter dismantling its prey.
Kelzior's laughter slithered through the air even as the snake's head split and changed again. Poison gave way to corrosion. The serpent rotted as it shifted, flesh bubbling into corruption given form. Rusted chains snaked outward from the decaying coils, wrapping Riser's wings and dragging him downward.
Corruption. Rot. A thing that devoured all brightness.
Riser's claws scraped the chains. So you would decay me.
His wings smoldered. Feathers burned and fell like embers. Beneath them new feathers regrew, each brighter than flame. He let himself drop, shifting into something else. A white phoenix, body flickering between life and ash. Fire hissed as chains dissolved. He rose again, talons blazing, striking the corruption until it split like old bark.
Kelzior roared, shifting again. Corruption bent into theft, shadows coalescing into a masked figure with countless hands. Each hand grasped, snatched bits of light from the tree's roots and Riser's wings alike.
Riser stumbled back, mind spinning. A thief, now. A parasite. He watched the figure pull flame and memory from him, threading it into an endless cloak.
Above the battle, the orbiting souls drifted in slow circles, whispering their agony. He felt them like static, crawling on the edge of his thoughts.
He countered the thief with conquest. His form lengthened, armored plates of molten gold encasing him. A crown of searing flame hovered over his brow. In one hand he carried a lance of blazing sun. In the other, a shield wrought of charred wings and bone.
He struck the shadows with sovereign force. Light stabbed through the masked thief. For a moment, Kelzior's figure flickered. The many hands withered in the sun's blaze.
But the shadows reformed, always finding cracks in the armor.
The mindscape trembled. Kelzior's laughter oozed from every bleeding branch.
"You think your fire can last forever, little phoenix?"
Riser said nothing. He could feel his thoughts stretching thin, the pressure of millennia pressing against his will. Kelzior's experience in Sorvian and Shadeward was suffocating. Each strike Kelzior landed was precise, leeching parts of Riser's essence.
He is too skilled, Riser thought, mind fracturing under the weight of the conflict. If it continues like this, I will lose.
A thin thread of observation flickered. Riser's gaze drifted to the orbiting souls. Their whispers pressed closer when the thief had torn pieces from him. He remembered the river. The mothers. The offering.
Pieces clicked together behind his eyes.
So that is it, he thought, ignoring the ringing in his skull. The souls feed this place. Not audience but fuel.
He forced a piece of his mind to probe them. One whisper drifted near, a face half-formed in sorrow. Riser reached out, let a wisp slip into his burning shell.
For a heartbeat, strength surged through him. The conquest blaze roared higher. The shadows recoiled.
But another heartbeat later, a voice that was not his laughed inside his skull. A shriek that clawed at the walls of his mind. He felt it scratch at the core of who he was.
Madness. A cost.
Riser exhaled, eyes bright. So that is the game, old devil. Feed on the damned or die clean.
Kelzior's mockery coiled around him, a voice made of barbs. "You flinch at what you taste, vessel. The dead are poisonous. They will devour you from within."
Riser forced a grin, crimson light dancing in his pupils. "You hid that well. Or perhaps not well enough."
He let his mind drift again. Beneath the agony he could feel it , the truth. Kelzior could have used these souls himself. But he had not. He hoarded his own self intact.
Riser parried another strike as Kelzior's form warped again, now a reaper clad in famine and pestilence. Rusted scythes swung at Riser's burning wings. The phoenix dodged, countered with a blinding flare.
He will not risk himself, Riser thought. That is his flaw.
He laughed aloud. Flames danced from his broken mouth. "Is this all you have, snake? Rot and theft and famine? Try devouring hope."
His wings burst outward, feathers like comet trails. Each strike carried the weight of a conqueror's will.
Yet Kelzior met him blow for blow. The older devil's grin never wavered, scythes cutting fresh wounds in the phoenix's burning hide. Shadows bled poison into every strike.
Riser felt himself buckling. He is better. If it stays like this, I am nothing but cinder.
He saw the tree's roots cracking. More souls drifted closer, drawn to the rising heat.
Should I risk it? Should I burn what remains of me for a chance?
He thought of the alternative, becoming Kelzior's shell. A puppet worn by something older than kings.
The answer was obvious.
With grim resolve he spread his wings wide. The souls wailed as he opened himself. Their shapes folded into his blazing chest. Their whispers became storms in his skull.
Kelzior recoiled, scythes dropping for a single heartbeat. "Stop! What are you doing, you fool!"
Riser's laughter cracked like thunder through the mindscape. It came out ragged and half-mad. "So it is as I guessed."
He loomed over Kelzior, burning feathers falling like meteors. "You need me sane to wear my flesh. You need me whole. But you, old snake, will not risk yourself to do what I do."
Kelzior's perfected face twisted, a glimmer of fear coiling behind crimson eyes. He opened his mouth but no mocking rhyme came.
Riser's grin was all teeth and broken flame. "I guessed your heart in the moments between strikes. You care only for yourself. You would not gamble your essence to drown mine."
He laughed again, louder now, as more souls poured into him, shredding the last walls of sanity thread by thread. "You could have done it too, couldn't you?" he spat. "You could've consumed these souls and negated my innate control. But you didn't. You played it safe."
His grin widened, mad and bright. "Because you're a coward at heart. You care about one thing, don't you? Yourself. You could've risked it. But you didn't. Because unlike me, you're not willing to risk madness just to win."
Kelzior's eyes twitched. His voice failed him. The tree shuddered, its leaves igniting in bursts of white flame.
Kelzior raised his scythes but the shadows flickered with doubt. "You dare ….you fool ….you will destroy yourself!"
Kelzior stepped back. A mistake.
Riser's mind fractured further, voices echoing in his skull, but his eyes shone with something bright and final. Riser stood taller, flames of mind-soul-body intertwining. The tree behind him, once cracking, now burned bright.
"I won't let you take this body . Even if I must feed my mind to the abyss to keep you out."
He lunged, feathers and flame and a thousand screaming souls moving as one. Kelzior stood frozen, staring at Riser with a face of pure incomprehension.
Not fear.
Not anger.
But a mind that could not process what it was seeing.
A being who had seen millennia of horror and finally glimpsed something beyond it.
Riser laughed one last time, mad and bright, and the world began to tear.
Author's Note: Here's the new chapter, hot off the metaphorical press!
This one nearly fried my brain. Trying to write a battle of concepts is like trying to juggle metaphors while blindfolded on a unicycle. It was inspired by the oldest game from the Sandman comics, so if it feels like pure madness… that's because it is. Hopefully it's the fun kind of madness and not just me being a narrative gremlin.
Oh, and if you're wondering why Kelzior is out here explaining the ritual mechanics to Riser like he's auditioning for a role as Saturday morning cartoon villain of the week, it's not just drama. He has to. It's literally a condition of starting the ritual. Ancient rules and all that. Bureaucracy meets evil sorcery. Classic combo.
Anyway, I'd love any feedback. Praise, criticism, savage burns, or conspiracy theories about the plot. Let me know what you think, how I can improve, or if I accidentally broke grammar beyond repair. I'd really appreciate it!