NOVEL WEB Chapter 7: Chapter 6: Amor Fati
AN: So if the beginning feels a little off, that's because I was experimenting—trying out this fancy new high fantasy prose. You know, the kind where every tree has a name, the wind sighs dramatically, and people say "verily" unironically. Basically, I was practicing my inner Tolkien. Results may vary.
Chapter 6: Amor Fati
When the ritual's last echoes had scattered like dying embers, there remained only silence or what passed for silence in the battered corridors of Riser Phenex's mind.
Yet it was no true silence that pressed upon him now, but the hush of a storm before it speaks. Beneath that hush came the whispering of the broken, mad voices gathered where the borders of thought frayed and bled into one another. At first they were distant: a babble of tongues, half-formed prayers or curses gnawed to bone by the centuries.
Then they swelled. The hush broke.
Their ravings rose about him like a flood: words without meaning, syllables that scraped the air raw, laughter gurgling where laughter had no place. The voices wept and gnashed and called him by names he had never worn, father, thief, king, meat. They begged him to drown, to drink them, to let them shatter him into a thousand shards of mirrored thought.
Sound split apart from sound. Light bled through color until he heard red like the peal of cracked bells. The scent of burning leaves and old blood flickered across his vision in streaks of blue flame. His mind trembled at the edges, drawn thin as a blade left too long in the forge.
Riser stood beneath what remained of his anchor: the tree, gnarled and beautiful, once vast with branches like the arms of a god. Now its trunk was blackened, leaves torn and drifting away into the cavernous dark of this mindscape that no longer obeyed shape or reason.
"I do not have much time", he thought, though the thought itself felt as though it had been spoken by a stranger's lips.
Madness coiled around him, not as an enemy to strike him down in open battle, but as a lover whispering seduction at the ear of his reason. Let go, it seemed to say in a thousand voices. Slip beneath the tide. Rest.
But rest was a stranger to Riser Phenex, and pity had no throne within him.
His eyes swept the ruin, the smoldering roots, the drifting ash, the branches that bent beneath an unseen wind. There, within that ruin, flickered a light: splinters of something not his own. They glimmered like coals scattered by a broken hearth. Soul-shards. Pieces of Kelzior Saeros, that ancient devil who had once thought himself eternal.
Any sane men, standing at the edge of their mind's oblivion, would have recoiled at that sight. They would have fled into forgetfulness, or clutched what little of themselves remained until they withered beneath the weight.
But Riser Phenex was no sane man. He was no man at all. He was becoming.
He did not reach for these fragments as a priest might reach for holy relics. He did not bow to them, nor weep for the knowledge they carried. He looked upon them as a starving wanderer might look upon a poisoned spring, to be drunk, risk and all.
So be it, he thought. Better poison than the desert's thirst.
He drew the first fragment into himself. It struck him like a blade drawn across his ribs, visions of ancient betrayal, forbidden rites spoken in palaces where the ceiling dripped with human ash. Secrets hissed in the dark. Pain older than cities. Curses uttered beneath a blood eclipse.
Madness howled at the edges of this offering, gnawed at the thread that was his name. He felt it tug, whispering that it could unmake him if only he would yield. Yield, it said. Yield and be silent.
But Riser's will did not yield. It folded the whisper into silence, pinned it like an insect beneath glass.
Then came the second fragment, then the third, and still he fed upon them. They did not heal him. They did not mend the cracks that split the walls of his mindscape. Instead, they formed new struts, crooked and jagged, upon which he laid the weight of his will.
I do not worship chaos, he thought, as the hush of Kelzior's soul bled through him. I harness it.
He saw himself as if from afar, a figure alone beneath the dying tree, light flickering behind his eyes like the last flame in a ruined citadel. He thought back, not to the abyss that gaped at him now, but to the moment this second life began.
One month. A heartbeat of time by the measure of devils. He had awoken then in a bed too soft for the trials that lay ahead. He had looked upon a world that fed its children to monsters, where kings knelt before claws and shadows spoke in old tongues. Some would have wept then, cursed the fate that cast them from one world into another's teeth.
He had not.
Amor fati. The words rang within him as he drew the last shard of Kelzior's essence into the citadel of his thought. To love one's fate, not merely bear it but to greet the jaws of the beast laughing.
What meaning was there in life unending, rebirth without boundary? Many had broken upon that question. They called it cruelty, proof that nothing endured but pain and entropy. They clutched at gods and duty, nation and kin, as anchors against the storm.
Riser spat upon such chains.
Meaning? he thought, as the last of Kelzior's cunning screamed within him before it fell quiet, bound by the iron of his will. Let lesser men beg for meaning. I am my own purpose. I name my own summit. To conquer, not others only, but myself.
He stood then in the ruin of his mindscape, a storm raging about him, but the core of him glowed like a black star. The tree above him cracked, not with the promise of collapse, but with a promise of rebirth.
He was not saved by these fragments. He made no shrine to them. He bent them to his shape, forged ruin into scaffold. What had been Kelzior's crown became Riser's throne. The whispering madness found no purchase but what he gave it and what he gave it was nothing but obedience.
I am the storm, he thought. I do not stand against it. I ride it to the world's end.
⸻
POV: Zarakura Saeros
In the cavern beyond thought, stone wept with the cold breath of the Dead River.
Zarkaura Saeros lingered at the banks. The torches that lit the cavern guttered, fed by air heavy with sulfur and old secrets. He stood alone, armor polished, hands folded behind his back like a sentinel who believed himself master of what he watched.
The second head did not whisper now, nor the third. Those husks, once vessels for an ancient mind's cunning, were gone. The river's surface rippled with a darkness that never slept, as if it dreamed of mouths waiting below the stone.
Zarkaura pitied the boy, though he would not have named it pity aloud. Such is the fate of the weak, he told himself, watching the black tide shift. Better that they be consumed by the strong. So it has always been. So it shall ever be.
He dreamed of the future then, of a house restored to their glory and beyond, draped in banners that sang of flame and rebirth. His lips parted in a smile that showed more teeth than warmth.
Then the river split.
A shape rose from the depths, as if the black water had grown weary of keeping secrets. Zarkaura stepped back, breath caught in his throat.
What emerged was no trembling wretch, no broken vessel leaking scraps of soul.
Naked.Tall. Perfect
It was a figure fairer than any painted saint. Hair gold as the crown of dawn, skin pale where the torchlight dared touch it. His muscles flowed like divine geometry. Eyes deep crimson, deeper than the river, deeper than the old abyss that birthed devils in days forgotten. They glowed not with hunger, but with dominion.
Power poured from him in silence. It pressed upon Zarkaura's shoulders like a mountain's weight.
At the very least, Peak High-Class, he thought, heart thundering like drums at a sacrificial rite. Grandfather lives.
The figure took three steps forward. The water clung to his bare limbs like reverence.
"Grandfather," Zarkaura whispered, sinking to one knee. His armor clanged against stone slick with ancient blood. Who else could it be? The boy had no chance.
The figure stepped onto land. He walked like royalty. Like destiny.
Zarakura bowed deeper.
This was the rebirth of the Saeros line. Finally, their house would return to glory.
The figure's gaze fell upon him, steady, unblinking. In that gaze, kingdoms might kneel. In that gaze, old gods might find cause to pray.
One pale finger rose. A single word fell, bright and cruel as a star made iron.
"Bang."
Zarkaura's thoughts ended there.
⸻
POV: Riser
When the echo faded, Riser Phenex stepped from the river's hush. Steam rose from his skin where the darkness fled his touch. He reached for the robe Zarkaura had laid out, silk dyed deep with silver thread, fine enough for the shoulders of a king.
He slipped it over his bare frame with no haste. His eyes did not linger upon the ash that once was Zarkaura. He did not need to.
A whisper of laughter flickered past his lips, bright, almost gentle.
"He really thought I was his grandfather," Riser mused aloud, voice like honey and knives.
"I didn't even have to act. He'd convinced himself Kelzior couldn't lose. He let his guard down."
He chuckled.
"Pride always comes before the fall."
Then he laughed harder, shoulders shaking with something between cruelty and joy.
He flexed a hand, curling and uncurling the fingers as if testing their truth.
Power hummed beneath his ribs. Not the stolen shade of Kelzior's cruelty, but the raw, singing promise of new dominion. Peak High-Class, at the least, and yet only a single stone upon a stairway without summit.
Riser Phenex looked down at the silver armor prepared by Zarkaura's trembling hope, a promise of borrowed greatness. He ran a finger along its polished edge, and a smile, bright and cold, flickered across his face.
"One step," he said to the dark cavern that once housed monsters and prayers alike. "One step toward my true ambition."
With the robe about his shoulders and the armor at his feet, he turned from the river's hush.
Back to the world he went, laughing not for the world's sake, but for his own.
For what was fate but another stone to tread upon?
-----------------------------------------------------
POV: Ryzephar Phenex
It had been three weeks.
Three weeks since Ryzephar Phenex watched his youngest nephew ride out with thirty devils, banners proud and hearts eager for glory. Three weeks since he'd let the boy talk him into it, so easy, so smooth, so unnaturally persuasive.
Why had he agreed?
Why indeed.
Why had I let him go? The question was poison, bitter upon the tongue of thought. He had replayed that hour endlessly: Riser, that bold spark of reckless fire, standing before him in the meeting chambers, voice steady as any captain thrice his years. He had asked to join the expedition into the Northern Reach, the old forests where legends were said to rot among twisted roots. And Ryzephar, the Warden of the North, eldest of his line save for Lord Aurelius himself, had given leave. Freely, yes. Or so he had believed.
Yet even now, seated in the hush that follows folly, he knew that he had not been himself when he spoke that fateful consent. His thoughts had been gauzy, as though steeped in some heavy wine. A warmth had weighed his reason, blurring caution, singing him toward ruin with the soft promise of destiny. As though fate itself or some hand masquerading in its cloak, had guided him to betray his own blood.
A fog had wrapped his mind. He saw it now for what it was: a trick.
A puppet string wound into his very thoughts. And when the fog lifted, horror came with it.
Someone had bent his will. Someone had made him send Riser Phenex, his brother's son, into the mouth of Hell itself.
When the truth cracked open, Ryzephar had acted fast.He had summoned the messengers at once, pale devils clad in the runes of secrecy and sent them winging toward the capital where his brother Aurelius Phenex kept his court. No word of the trespass. Not yet. Only a request for an adept in the mind-arts, one skilled in unweaving the curses that bind thought to foreign hands. .
Aurelius, bound by blood older than any kingdom now breathing, asked no needless question. Within days the adept had come, faceless behind a mask of silver, robed in the dusk-light of ancient runes. In the hush of his chamber, Ryzephar had bared his skull like a penitent before a surgeon's blade.
"Yes," the old devil confirmed, voice soft with pity. "You were made to want it. The strings are cut now, but the knife remains."
So Ryzephar made himself a promise: If there was even a breath left in his nephew's chest — he would find it. Or bring vengeance enough to drown Hell in blood.
⸻
They gathered at dawn: ten devils of high rank, who could level a mountain with their might, twenty elite hunters and mind-wardens with hellhounds foaming at the leash.
They hunted into the forest's veins, old woods where the sun never shone, roots tangled in old sins, trees that wept pitch instead of sap. They found signs: hoofprints like claw-marks, a dead wolf here and there, stripped of color, skin like brittle parchment.
Then came the corpses.
A devil crucified upside-down on a spear of black iron. Another split open and stuffed with ravens. The symbols on the trees were not words but wounds, bleeding meaning into the earth.
Some horrors made even Ryzephar's soul flinch and he had seen centuries.
And yet they pressed on.
⸻
They found the last stand at dusk:
A clearing where severed hands bloomed like flowers, eyes nailed to bark in a ring of silent witness.
He recognized the faces, Abygral of House Mengis, Tenebrael's jaw lying open in a circle of flies.
"Ambushed by demonic wolves and something else," someone whispered.
Ryzephar did not answer. He felt no wind, only the iron taste of finality. The last hope that his nephew might walk out of this forest whole began to flicker.
And then the shadows came.
⸻
They rose from the roots and the black air: four shapes of shadow and flame. Shadow Warlocks. He knew the tales, and the price they demanded in flesh.
"Formation!" Ryzephar barked.
The Phenex elites moved like one: circle tight, weapons drawn, wards flaring bright in the dusk.
The first blow fell — a snap of hellfire against sigils of defense. They met force with force, strategy with cold resolve.
Divide them, that was the only way. A hive-mind must be splintered, broken like a brittle bone.
They clashed in silence broken only by roars and the wet tearing of reality itself.
They killed one. A good sign. But the cost was time.
Ryzephar felt it before he saw it, a chill, a ripple of unseen knives pressing against the back of his neck.
The warlock hissed in a tongue that hated the world.
And the forest answered.
A sea of eyes blinked open between the trees. Demonic wolves, thousands.
"We are surrounded…" someone breathed.
"You don't say." Ryzephar bit it back, lips pressed to a grim line. His mind raced. The strategy shifted: hold the line, buy the mages time, draw their strength into one final obliteration.
The wolves came in waves, a red tide over black soil.
Steel and flame met fur and fang. A high-class devil split ten at a time, but for every beast slain, ten more slithered free from the dark.
They fought thirty minutes, thirty years in a heartbeat. Ryzephar did deeds surpassing of valour, holding the line where it should have broken, carving down wolves and flinging shadow back into shadow.
Then, the two devils in the middle, guarded by their kin, shouted their spell complete. Ryzephar's hand rose. The sign given.
The forest turned white.
An explosion carved a new crater in Hell's skin, two kilometers wide, a sun of ruin that devoured trees, wolves, shadows.
When the thunder faded, the silence mocked them.
Five shapes still stood.
Five Shadow Warlocks, fresh as newborn flame, glaring with molten hate.
Ryzephar's heart sank. His devils bled around him, only six high-class left standing, two middle-class crouched behind them, wide-eyed.
The rest?
Fuel for the forest now.
The Warlocks hissed as one, a sound like knives under the tongue. They moved as a single will, circling.
Ryzephar read the truth in that molten halo of hate: Death.
There would be no legend sung of this place. No grave for his nephew. No redemption for his own folly. Only shadow and ruin.
⸻
But then, the world cracked.
Something faster than thought, faster than sound, hit one of the Warlocks like a thunderbolt from the black sky.
A crater bloomed where its chest had been.
The hive-mind shrieked, momentarily severed.
Dust rolled like stormclouds, and from that ruin stepped a figure.
From the ruin rose a tall figure clad in silver like moonlight upon a stormy tide. Hair bright as dawn's first flame. Eyes crimson as the birth of suns.
Riser Phenex.
He raised two fingers to his temple, mock salute. Smirked.
"Miss me?" he said, as if the whole forest wasn't watching him reborn.
----------------------------------------------
POV: Riser Phenex
The wolves were the first to flee. One heartbeat, they snarled and circled, the next, they vanished, tails tucked between legs, eyes wide with primal dread.
Riser let his demonic aura unfurl, a blazing storm of golden flame laced with something colder, older, stitched from Kelzior's bones and his own sovereign will. The forest itself seemed to recoil.
Only five shapes remained. Cloaked in smoke, rimmed in dull flame, the Shadow Warlocks held their ground. No mortal foe, these — but something older, a hive bound by ruin and pact, five bodies moved by one feral mind. Even wolves had fled their presence before. Even lords of lesser rank would turn back at the sight of their slithering flame.
Riser rolled his neck, silver armor whispering over skin still wet from the river of the dead. His crimson eyes gleamed with manic delight.
"Well then…" he purred, voice like velvet over a dagger's edge. "…Shall we dance?"
They lunged, five as one, the swarm-mind howling silent in the air. They were fast, devils born of nightmare and abyss, flame and shadow stitched into muscle that moved at twice the speed of thunder.
But Riser was faster. He blurred forward, a streak of gold and silver.
The first Warlock's claw came, trailing a wake of shadow-fire meant to shear through the marrow of lesser devils. Riser's palm flicked up, flame gathering at his knuckles like a jewelled gauntlet, and he struck aside the blow with a contemptuous twist. Another Warlock flanked him from the left, shadow tendrils blooming like roots seeking his throat.
Too slow.
Riser vanished, the world swallowing his presence in a heartbeat, then reappeared behind the Warlock, a flaming spear forming in his hand mid-lunge. It was the Blazing Spear, conjured with the ease of a noble plucking wine from a feast-table. The spear punched through layered shadows, pinned the shrieking creature to the black earth. Its flame roared inward, a hateful bloom that devoured what should not burn.
He turned before the corpse struck the moss, already smiling at the next two.
They came at angles, one high, one low, moving faster now, driven by rage and the tearing loss in their collective mind. But for every speed they found, Riser found greater. His body, reshaped by Kelzior Saeros' mad rituals, was not merely that of a Phenex but a vessel tuned to bear ruin. His limbs blurred, his steps struck roots to cinders.
A claw grazed his cheek, flame hissed, the wound gone before pain could register. In its place: laughter. A flick of his hand, and he wove flames into ravens, Fire Ravens screaming from his outstretched fingers. They tore through the clearing like burning omens, harrying the Warlocks, pecking and exploding in sudden bursts. One raven crashed into the skull of the closest, detonating with a shriek that shook branches overhead.
As the Warlock reeled, Riser closed in, faster than the hush between two heartbeats, and drove his fist into its chest. Fire Infusion: the blow not only broke bone but spilled flame inside. He twisted, a lover's grace turned to slaughter, and triggered the bloom. The Warlock erupted from within, its shriek cut short by cleansing fire.
Three left. Still they circled him, but now a trace of uncertainty fluttered at the edges of their unity. Riser sensed it. He smelled it like a beast scents blood.
"Ah," he mocked, rolling his shoulders beneath the gleaming plate. "Where is the fabled strength of the mighty warlocks? You lunge like curs without a leash or master."
One lunged, driven by that same spark of rage. Riser met it head-on, body clad in Fire Armor, a corona of white flame that melted the warlocks' claws on contact. His fists cracked ribs made of dusk and memory — each blow infused with embers that burrowed deeper, blooming into sudden, vicious eruptions. From nothing, flame congealed into a blade, a scimitar of crimson heat, its edge flickering with runes too ancient for mortal tongues. They clashed: the Warlock's claws sparked against the conjured blade. Sparks burst like embers caught in the wind.
Riser's grin widened as he parried a savage blow. "Weakness investigation," he murmured. His eyes flickered, the Cull sang through his veins, pinpointing flaws in their churning shadows.
He traced the Warlock's core beneath the tangled shadows, a knot of devouring flame that pulsed within its chest.
"Found you," he whispered. His sword flicked, a blur of motion, and the blade's edge turned to his stolen art: Dismantle. The cut seemed slight. But a heartbeat later the Warlock's chest peeled open, parted like silk to the blade's passing, and a gout of searing fire devoured it from within.
Two left now.
The last pair came together, shadows fusing into a single monstrous shape, arms doubling, claws blacker than tomb-soil, its flame fused with void-light that cracked the air like a storm. They charged. The forest trembled at their roar. This was the full might of the hive, the living knot that had undone the expedition, that had hollowed the devils whose bones still decorated this glade of nightmares.
Riser only bared his teeth, a grin carved of arrogance, flame and old delight. He lifted his free palm. Flame gathered, folding in upon itself like a star birthing its own ruin.
Compression.
Deeper. Denser. The fire hissed as though alive, the air warping around it. A Giant Fireball, but one compressed so tightly that its light was a core of white within the palm, a miniature sun caged in his fist. He spoke no incantation. He needed none. The flame obeyed because it remembered him, a phenex, and it was eager to devour.
As the fused Warlocks came within a blade's length, Riser thrust the orb into the soil between them. He stepped back, and his smile was wicked with promise.
"Boom," he whispered.
The ground cracked open. Flame swallowed root and bone alike. The Giant Fireball burst outward with surgical violence, not scattered chaos, but precise ruin. A ring of white flame erupted around the Warlocks, searing their shadows apart even as they howled, splitting in pain that could not be uttered by mortal tongue.
They stumbled from the ruin. One tried to flee, dragging what remained of its conjoined half. But Riser was already moving, faster than the eye, the mind, the soul. He reappeared at its back, hand outstretched. The space around his palm shimmered, Kelzior's legacy made manifest.
Dismantle.
An invisible slash parted the Warlock from throat to spine, no flame, no roar, only the whisper of air giving way to will. The Warlock fell in halves, both still alight with ruinous flame.
And so, silence. The forest, still dripping with the hush of ancient rot, now echoed with only Riser's laughter, softer now, though no less terrible.
The blast turned the glade into a sunrise. When the light faded, nothing remained but drifting embers.
Riser stood there, chest heaving, silver armor cracked but whole, flesh knitting itself back together as fast as it split. He tasted the char in the air, grinned, flexing fingers that trembled not with weakness but with victory.
Behind him, Ryzephar Phenex and the battered survivors stared, not at their enemy but at the thing they had reclaimed. The nephew who stood laughing amid ruin , golden, terrible.
Riser turned to them, eyes gleaming like a predator's in dawn's fire.
He smiled wide, perfect and terrible, his eyes alight with a madness that danced like a prophecy yet to be spoken.
-----------------------------------------
POV: Ryzephar Phenex
Ryzephar stood frozen, breath caught halfway in his lungs. The air trembled around him, as if the forest's charred earth itself bent its knees to the figure clad in silver flame.
The wolves had fled, the Shadow Warlocks were ash, but what remained was worse. The devil who gazed with madness.
The aura Riser exuded was wrong. It was not the savage, crawling dread of the Warlocks' abyssal shadows. It was bright, terrible, royal. It pierced flesh like a thousand blades. It whispered ruin and triumph in the same breath. Ryzephar, a devil near a millennium old, found himself fearing the very air that touched his skin.
He dared speak. His voice rasped like old parchment. "Riser?"
And the vision turned smiling, beautiful, lethal.
"Hello there, Uncle."
A voice like honey over coals, beautiful, melodic, yet brimming with something that refused to be named.
Ryzephar drank in the sight. This impossible thing that claimed to be his kin. Taller, easily six and a half feet now with golden hair falling in perfect waves, framing a face that mocked marble with its cruel perfection. His features were sculpted too finely for nature's chisel. Fae-like, dreamlike, but more than that: they were alive, every subtle flicker of the brow, the twist of his lips, the iron alertness in crimson eyes.
It was the bearing that struck him dumb. Riser stood not like a boy, nor a scion, nor even a prince. He stood like a king. No, a conqueror. No tremor of doubt, no humility to mask the tyrant in his veins.
His silver armor shimmered under the bloodied sky. Ryzephar's mind, ever the scholar, marked runes and arcane lattices forged of metals rarer than phoenix's ash. This was no mere armor, it was testament.
And then Riser spoke, voice clear enough to make the wind stand still.
"The tribulation is over."
The words rolled across the scorched clearing like a royal decree. Ryzephar felt, absurdly, that Hell itself would bow its horned head if commanded.
He did not argue. He could not. Not after seeing five High-Class monsters swatted aside like children.
He turned, voice booming with what command his battered soul could muster. "We move! Back to the stronghold, now! Carry the wounded and burn what remains, this ground is cursed."
His devils obeyed with grateful desperation. Even in ruin, they found renewed purpose in the monstrous shadow of the new Riser Phenex.
⸻
It took hours to trudge back through the gnarled woods, the horror of the forest left behind, the shadow of warlocks replaced by whispers of a rumor no one dared speak aloud. Beside him, Riser glided rather than walked, as though the earth feared to stain him.
At the gates of the fortress, Seorin, his daughter, first of his blood and his hope for their House's future, awaited with her retinue. She wore black mail and a blade at her hip, yet when she saw her father alive, dignity melted in an instant.
"Father!"
She flew into his arms, armor clanging against his. He held her tightly, feeling the mortal warmth of family for a heartbeat longer than he should have.
Then her gaze lifted and found him.
Riser Phenex stepped through the dusk, flames dancing across his silver chestplate, crimson eyes glinting with a mirth too sharp to touch. Seorin's breath caught in her throat. Ryzephar felt it, the way the devils behind her stilled. It was as if an archangel or a demon-lord masquerading as one had stepped through Hell's gate.
Riser tilted his head, a sly half-smile curling his mouth. "You'll catch flies, cousin. And I'm hardly that holy … yet."
Seorin startled, color rose to her cheeks so fast Ryzephar almost laughed. She regained herself in a rush, stepped forward and, daring what the air told her not to dare, flung her arms around the Phenex reborn.
Riser let out a soft, bemused chuckle, one hand brushing over her back like a priest blessing a penitent. When she stepped away, dazed but radiant. Ryzephar knew there would be songs sung of this moment before dawn broke.
⸻
He cleared his throat, the fortress quieted, all eyes fixed on him. His old voice boomed with the weight of centuries and a theater devil-kind adored.
"Hear me! Devils of House Phenex, hear what befell in the accursed woods!"
He spun them a tale as old as their blood, of wolves and shadows, betrayal and slaughter. He spoke of how they, the faithful, carved a path through horror with fang and flame. He told of sacrifice "More than half our strength, gone but not in vain!"
Then his voice rose, thunder cracking the hush of night.
"For when our ruin seemed certain, when the abyss yawned wide, who returned from the jaws of death? Who burned the shadows to cinder? Who stands before you now stronger, brighter, terrible and glorious, our scion, our hope?"
He turned , pointed, the gesture more dramatic than any stage.
"Riser Phenex!"
They cheered, how could they not? Devils are creatures of spectacle and what spectacle stood before them now?
Ryzephar caught the briefest flicker of amusement in Riser's eye, a prince pleased with his court, perhaps. When the roar of adoration quieted, Ryzephar bellowed:
"Spread the word! Spread it through every hall and hearth, the tribulation is over!"
⸻
When the clamor faded, Ryzephar turned, a quiet word perched on his lips.
"Nephew, we must speak. There is much—"
Riser held up a hand, graceful, imperious. His crimson eyes gleamed like sunset reflected in a blade.
"Later, Uncle. I must see my Queen."
No apology. None was needed nor dared be demanded.
Ryzephar only bowed his head. The Mad Phenex had returned. There would be no commanding him now.
⸻
And so the devils parted, a tide making way for a storm. Riser Phenex, clad in silver and crowned in flame, strode toward the heart of the stronghold, where Yubellana waited.
He did not look back.
----------------------------------------------
POV: Riser Phenex
Riser strode down the fortress corridor, silver boots echoing against ancient stone. Eyes followed him, devils in black mail and crimson cloaks parted like mortal waves before a storm. Some bowed their heads, some dared not breathe. A few, braver or more foolish, let their gaze linger on the impossible symmetry of his face, then quickly looked away, cheeks burning, hearts drumming.
He felt it, the hush in the air, the reverence born not of love but of fear and awe. As it should be, he mused, a flicker of amusement curling the corner of his lips. Among devils, strength is the iron coin that buys respect. Without it, one is nothing but mocked, toyed with, devoured. He smiled as he walked. How swiftly they learn to kneel when power stands before them.
Ahead, the carved doors of his Queen's chamber rose like a promise. He rapped his knuckles against them, gentle, polite. A faint voice, warm yet weary: "Enter."
He did and felt the world catch its breath.
Yubellana Phenex, his beautiful Queen, sat wrapped in a silken robe. Her hair, glowing purple and soft as midnight, tumbled down her shoulders. She turned and the shock that flooded her face was almost comical.
Riser bit down a laugh. I suppose I'll have to grow used to this, he thought wryly. Beauty, power, devils worship them both. And I am both.
⸻
Yubellana's stupor broke like glass under a storm. She leapt from the bed, a blur of silken limbs and tremulous sobs and threw herself into his arms.
"Master— Riser— I—" Her words broke against his chest as laughter and tears spilled together. "I was so worried— when I woke they told me— you'd volunteered— some damned suicide mission— What were they thinking— what were you thinking—"
Her voice trembled. Her fingers dug into his back as though to swear he'd never vanish again.
Riser said nothing, he only held her. Sometimes, a king's comfort was not in words but in silence and in the unyielding strength of an embrace that promised I remain.
For long minutes she wept until the tremors softened, the sobs turned to small, broken laughs muffled against his chest.
⸻
He drew her gently to the bed, silk sheets, the hush of a chamber made for whispered confessions.
"Are you well now?" he asked softly and not of her tears, but of the exhaustion that had hollowed her when last he saw her. That felt like a lifetime ago.
She sniffed, wiping her cheeks. Her eyes shone, bright, alive. "Ye- yes, my demonic energy's back. The drain from the last ritual, it's healed. My technique, Explosion Creation, I'll be able to use it again soon."
He smiled, radiant, careless. "Good. I'd hate to think my Queen was anything less than terrifying in her own right."
She laughed, a flush rising under pale skin. Then her eyes flicked up, curious but shy. "And you…? this…this change. This… power? Master…forgive me but how…?"
He chuckled, brushing a knuckle along her cheek. "Curiosity suits you. The forest was… educational, let's say."
So he told her, in the broad strokes devils love. Of wolves with fangs like black glass. Of shadow-warlocks lurking like cancerous veins in the roots of the world. Of betrayal, a captain named Zarakura Saeros who betrayed them.
He did not speak of the ancient devil that wore his face. Nor of the mindscape war and the tormented choir of souls he devoured. Some truths were for kings alone.
Yubellana listened, rapt, lips parted, breathing shallow. Not just love now in her eyes but something more. Worship, raw and unblinking. A queen undone by the sheer certainty of the tyrant she called her master.
They spoke of other things, softer things, old memories, small jests. He teased her and she laughed until her shoulders trembled. When he rose at last, she clung to him once more, timid now, as though he were a relic too holy to touch. Her lips brushed his, feather-light, burning.
"Go then," she whispered. "Before I lose my mind and beg you to stay."
Riser grinned, wolfish, dazzling. "Your mind is already mine, my Queen."
And with a final lingering kiss, he slipped from her chamber, silver boots silent on old stone.
⸻
The fortress seemed smaller when he strode through it now a gilded cage of granite and iron that bowed before him. Servants flinched, warriors bowed. Riser did not pause, only smiled, the monster king cloaked in flesh.
⸻
He found Ryzephar and Seorin in the private hall, a low room walled in ancient obsidian and lined with flickering braziers. A table was set, fine wine, roasted meat and warm bread. Comforts for devils who knew how close death had come.
They rose when he entered, as if a god had stepped across the threshold.
Ryzephar spoke first, voice careful and respectful. "Nephew. Please take a seat and break bread with us."
Riser sat. His crimson eyes gleamed in the braziers' glow, mirth and calculation dancing behind the smile.
"Uncle. Cousin." He inclined his head to Seorin, who flinched at his gaze but did not look away. Brave girl, he thought, amused.
⸻
They poured wine. Dark as blood, older than mortal kingdoms.
"How fares your wound, Uncle?" Riser asked lightly, voice smooth as silk. "Shadows and wolves leave marks."
Ryzephar cleared his throat, the old devil's fingers tightened on the goblet. "No fatal injuries, thank Lucifer. I remain hale enough, though I will need some time to be what I was."
"Good," Riser murmured, each word both blessing and judgment.
He let the pause linger, then tilted his head, eyes sharp as razors. "But what were you doing in that damned forest, Uncle? With so few devils at your side?"
Ryzephar's mouth worked. Seorin's eyes flicked between them, wary as a cornered doe.
The old devil sighed. "A folly. My folly. When you volunteered for that expedition, I… I allowed it." He grimaced, shame crawling over ancient features. "But when my mind cleared, I knew someone guided me. Bent my will. I was not my own."
Riser's smile did not waver but the glow behind his eyes turned cold.
Ryzephar pushed on, words tripping over each other like penitent monks. "I sent for a mind-breaker, they confirmed it. So I gathered my best trackers, the sharpest hounds, and went to find you. To redeem my mistake. We met wolves, ambushes, the shadow plague that hunted you. Had you not come when you did—"
Riser raised a hand, the room silenced. He leaned back, a king on a throne of simple wood and iron.
"And I may know the mind that touched yours, Uncle. Only one devil I know favors whispers over steel, Zarakura Saeros."
Seorin gasped. Ryzephar's hand clenched so hard the goblet cracked.
Riser's smile was all teeth now, a serpent's delight. "He betrayed me. Sold us to wolves. Tried to cut my throat in the dark."
He did not tell them of Kelzior, of ancient bone crowns and soul-crushing rituals. Some truths were the marrow of monsters.
⸻
They spoke a while longer, words swirling like smoke over blood-red wine. Ryzephar and Seorin asked questions they dared not voice outright. Where he had found such power, how he still was. But Riser only laughed, a soft and terrible thing and gave them nothing more.
When the wine was drained, he rose, cloak rustling like dragon's wings.
"Rest well, Uncle. Cousin."
He turned to go but Ryzephar called out, voice hoarse with some fragile hope.
"Riser, before you vanish into the dark again, your father, Lord Aurelius, sends word. There will be an annulet, a grand gathering in the capital. To celebrate the end of this tribulation."
Riser paused at the door. Crimson eyes gleaming like sunrise through a crimson sea.
"Good." He smiled, a promise, a threat, a crown forged in one word.
------------------------------------------
POV: Riser Phenex
Riser Phenex adjusted the silver armor that clung to him like liquid moonlight, catching the fire-glow of the fortress torches. Its polished plates gleamed with arcane runes, a subtle show of wealth, and more importantly, a reminder of what he had become. The corridor leading out of his uncle's keep was lined with devils. Warriors, maids, even old scribes, all bowing low as he passed, heads lowered so deeply they nearly kissed the black stone floor.
He did not slow. Let them feel the weight of the Phenex name now reforged in him. Let them fear it, envy it, worship it. Respect born of power was the only currency devils never devalued.
Behind him, Yubellana kept pace, her steps light, her eyes flicking between his armored back and the awed whispers that followed them. He caught the echo of her thoughts in the soft rustle of her breath: disbelief, adoration and the smallest quiver of fear, that new and delicious offering.
His uncle had been the one to suggest he wear the armor. "Let the family see with their eyes what words cannot hold," Ryzephar had said. Riser agreed. He was no fool, spectacle mattered. In a world where devils wrote their truths in fire and blood, you announced your legend with iron and radiance.
And now, as the teleportation circle shimmered before him, its runes old as the Phenex name itself. Riser Phenex prepared to step into the ancestral seat of his House, where marble halls rose like frozen flame and judgement waited behind a father's throne.
He turned once, glanced at Yubellana. She looked beautiful and breakable all at once and he loved that about her.
"Ready, my Queen?" he asked, voice warm, mocking and affectionate all at once.
She nodded, eyes shining. "Always."
The circle flared and the world twisted.
POV: Rahella Phenex
The great throne room of the Phenex ancestral hold was carved from white marble veined with gold and shaped by devils who had long since become myth. A thousand candles flickered in iron sconces shaped like wings. Velvet banners bearing the Phenex crest, the immortal bird, aflame but never ash, hung like crimson rivers from the vaulted ceiling.
Rahella Phenex stood beside the massive throne of her husband, Lord Aurelius Phenex. To his right, tall and brooding, stood their eldest son and heir, Ruval Phenex, his eyes hard as diamond, jaw tight. Beside him, Rionas Phenex. Second son, sharp-eyed and perpetually amused, a ghost of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Ravel, her youngest, perched near Rionas, trying and failing to appear calm, one slim hand twisting the hem of her sleeve
The air was thick, curdled with disbelief and rage and dread. The message, that cursed, blessed message from her brother Ryzephar still weighed on Rahella's mind like a stone chained to her heart.
She remembered how her hands had trembled when she broke the seal. How her breath had caught when she read the first lines, her Riser, her youngest son, fighting a Minotaur. A Minotaur!
He was fifteen. In the eyes of their kind, a boy barely grown enough to survive a proper duel and he had thrown himself at a beast that could break ancient high-class devils over its knee like twigs.
She'd nearly burned the letter in a fit of rage. Only Aurelius' calm had steadied her, his voice like an anvil dropped on flame. "Read it all," he'd told her. "Then decide if you will weep or roar."
And so she read on. How her brother praised Riser's cunning, his devil's wit, how he had used the battlefield like a blade to weaken the Minotaur before striking its heart. For a moment, she'd allowed herself a fragile flicker of pride.
But then the tale darkened. How Ryzephar, that old fool, had allowed her son to volunteer for a death march, an expedition deep into cursed territory teeming with demonic wolves and crawling with shadow warlocks. How he had been mind-controlled, a power so subtle and terrifying it froze Rahella's blood cold. If such arts could bend her brother, what chance did her bright, reckless boy have?
And then came the words that nearly drove her mad: ambush, massacre, betrayal. Zarakura Saeros, that snake. The betrayal, the kidnapping. How her son vanished, presumed dead while Ryzephar scoured the forests with what remained of his best.
She remembered gripping Aurelius' hand so tight her nails drew blood.
And then, the impossible twist. Her brother's words painted a picture that strained reason: her boy, clad in silver armor like some vengeful archangel, descending on the battlefield like a falling star. Five shadow warlocks, high-class beings, monstrous in cunning and cruelty cut down like wheat under a Flaming sword. Ryzephar swore it was no embellishment. Her brother was a man who did not gild horrors.
She remembered the line that made her breath catch in her throat: "…and then, when hope was lost, a figure clad in silver fell from the sky like a burning star. He alone stood against five of the Shadow Warlocks, and he alone stood when the ashes cleared."
It sounded like a tale told by trembling mortal bards, not a mother's truth.
Her mind reeled. A month ago, Riser had barely grasped the raw edge of high-class power. Now he wielded it like a crown. How? How did her foolish, bright-eyed son grow teeth so quickly?
A mother's pride battled a mother's fury. The moment she saw him, that beautiful, reckless boy. She would hold him tight and then shake him until his bones rattled.
⸻
A sound broke her thoughts, a flicker of rune-fire. The air shimmered at the heart of the throne room. The family turned as one, devils of ancient blood holding their breath.
From the spiral of white flame stepped Him.
⸻
At first she thought the rune-fire tricked her. Surely no flesh could bear such a sculpted cruelty of beauty. Yet there he was. No flicker, no mirage. Tall, taller than when he'd left, impossibly so, now near six and a half feet of sinuous power. His hair spilled like molten gold, each strand catching the torchlight and throwing it back tenfold. His skin pale, near porcelain, the sheen of pearl beneath an ancient moon. He moved like a blade unsheathed, gliding across the cold marble as if the ground itself bent to bear him gently.
His armor, silver wrought in flowing lines, runes dancing along the plates like captive embers. It clung to him perfectly. Not heavy, but regal, a second skin of war and legend. His face, Rahella could scarcely name the horror and awe it conjured. Cheekbones sharp as truth, lips curved with a softness that mocked the edges of the world. Eyes, crimson suns, burning with a mirth that made one wish to kneel and avert the gaze lest it see too deeply.
He looked like the Archangel Michael, she thought dazedly, if Michael had grown tired of Heaven and carved himself a throne in Hell instead.
There were no illusions here. Devils were masters of mask and glamour, but what he wore was more terrible: truth. There was no trick, no borrowed flame. This was what her son had become: the crown of fire that devours its own ashes and is reborn brighter.
Riser Phenex smiled.
And in that single gesture, so gentle, so effortless, the room's cold dread fractured. His smile was spring rain on scorched earth, a summer wind through endless dusk. It made fools forget the blades he carried behind his teeth.
"Father. Mother. Brother. Sister."
His voice was music, soft yet ringing like a blade unsheathed. He stepped forward, boots silent as falling stars, and bowed just enough, perfectly judged, perfectly poised. Not submission. Not quite defiance. Something else: a reminder that they would find no boy here now, only something they had forged in fire and fear, only to lose control of it.
He turned that smile to his father, his brothers, his sister and each found themselves caught in its impossible warmth, wondering where the line lay between devotion and dread.
⸻
Rahella felt tears burning the corners of her eyes. Pride, fury, fear. All a mother's weapons turned against herself.
He is beautiful, she thought numbly. Terrible, terrible and beautiful. The devil's child, now the devils' king in waiting.
Aurelius Phenex, iron-eyed lord of their immortal line, opened his mouth to speak, to question, to scold, to demand the truth behind this impossible creature that now wore his son's face.
But Riser only tilted his head and the smile that danced on his lips made his words die on his throat.
AN: Here we are again folks—a new chapter has dropped and hoo boy, this one's a beast. Easily the longest I've written so far, but hey, the arc is finally done. Time to exhale dramatically.
Yes, there was a lot of "Oh my god, Riser is so hot" and a bit of fangirling sprinkled throughout. I regret nothing. Blame the characters. They're just very enthusiastic about their flaming bird boy.
I hope the mental battle conclusion felt satisfying and not like Riser was wrapped in five layers of indestructible plot armor. And I really hope you enjoyed the fight with the shadow warlocks. It was my first time ever writing a full action scene, and I went full mad scientist mode with Riser's fire manipulation and weird new techniques.
Anyway, as always, throw whatever you've got at me—feedback, criticism, compliments, dramatic rants, or well-aimed tomatoes. I'd love to hear what you think and how I can keep improving.