Liam didn't remember moving.

One moment he was standing in the throne room, staring at Zara's devastated expression. The next, he was Phase Shifting through corridors with a speed that should have been impossible, Essence burning through his system like acid, every fragment of his being focused on a single destination.

The western wing.

Where he'd left her.

Where three heroes were—

No. Don't think it. Don't accept it.

He burst through the hole Lilith had created earlier and found carnage.

The grand hall was destroyed. Walls cracked and crumbling. The floor cratered in multiple places. Scorch marks from divine fire mixed with demonic blood splattered across every surface.

And in the center of it all, Lilith.

She was on her knees, her black armor shattered, golden blood—demon royalty bled gold—pooling beneath her. One arm hung at an unnatural angle. Her breathing was shallow, labored.

But she was alive.

The three heroes stood around her in a loose triangle, barely touched. The blonde one was actually yawning.

"Oh good," she said, noticing Liam. "You came back. We were just deciding whether to kill her slowly or quickly. Maybe you can help us choose?"

Something inside Liam broke.

Not shattered—that implied fragments, pieces that could be reassembled.

This was dissolution. Complete structural failure of everything that had been holding the synthesis in careful balance.

[CRITICAL SYNCHRONIZATION THRESHOLD REACHED]

[WARNING: Psychological stability compromised]

[WARNING: Essence patterns destabilizing]

[WARNING: Subject experiencing emotional cascade]

Liam ignored every warning.

His vision had narrowed to a single point—Lilith, bleeding, broken, dying because he'd left her here. Because he'd chosen the mission. Because Lord Azra made tactical decisions and Liam Cross's feelings were irrelevant.

"Step away from her," he said, and his voice was wrong. Deeper than before, harmonically layered, as if multiple versions of himself were speaking simultaneously.

The sword-wielding hero turned to face him properly. "Or what? You'll teleport around some more? Throw your little black flames? You already tried fighting us, demon. You failed. Ran away like a coward while we—"

Liam Phase Shifted.

But it wasn't like before. The cooldown that had limited him, the range that had constrained him—both were gone. He simply thought about being directly in front of the sword-wielder and reality bent to accommodate.

His fist caught the hero in the chest.

The impact sent the divine champion flying backwards through three walls. The crack of breaking stone was followed by a very human grunt of surprised pain.

The blonde hero stopped yawning. "What—"

Liam was already moving, his body now responding to instincts that transcended training or skill. Pure, absolute rage given form and function.

[EMERGENCY EVOLUTION SEQUENCE INITIATED]

[Synchronization Index: 55% → 67%]

[WARNING: Rapid synthesis acceleration detected]

[Evolution Points: 540]

[DIVINE THRESHOLD BREACHED]

[APOTHEOSIS PROTOCOL ACTIVE]

Power flooded through him—not gradually, not carefully metered out, but in a torrential cascade that should have torn his body apart. Instead, his form adapted, changed, evolved to contain what was pouring into it.

Liam didn't consciously direct the changes. The System was acting on its own now, unlocking abilities that had been locked behind requirements he'd never met, purchasing upgrades with Evolution Points he didn't remember earning, transforming him from Greater Fiend into something that defied categorization.

[ABILITIES UNLOCKED]

[Archfiend Ascension - ACTIVE]

[Divine Void - ACTIVE]

[Hellfire Incarnate - ACTIVE]

[Sovereign of Damnation - ACTIVE]

[Phase Singularity - ACTIVE]

[Abyssal Apotheosis - ACTIVE]

The third hero—the analytical one—took a step back. "That's... that's not possible. He's just a demon lord. He shouldn't be able to—"

Liam's Infernal Conflagration erupted, but it wasn't the black flames he'd been wielding before. This was something primordial, flames that burned reality itself, fire that consumed not just matter but the concept of matter.

The analytical hero raised a divine barrier—consecrated light that should have been proof against any demon magic.

Liam's hellfire ate through it like tissue paper.

"SCATTER!" the blonde hero shouted, and all three of them moved with their impossible speed, trying to surround him, to attack from multiple angles.

Liam stood in place and let his new power manifest.

[Phase Singularity] activated, and suddenly he wasn't just teleporting—he was existing in multiple positions simultaneously. The heroes saw five versions of Liam, all real, all substantial, all absolutely focused on their destruction.

The sword-wielder came at one version with his burning blade. It passed through harmlessly as that particular iteration phased out of sync with reality.

A different version of Liam appeared behind him and struck with Essence-enhanced strength that cracked consecrated armor.

The blonde hero tried her impossible speed, moving faster than normal eyes could track. But Liam's Divine Void activated—a sphere of absolute negation that slowed everything within its radius to crawling speeds.

She found herself trapped in distorted time, her divine speed rendered useless, as one of Liam's simultaneous selves drove a fist wreathed in primordial hellfire into her ribs.

[Damage Dealt: DIVINE RESISTANCE BYPASSED]

[Hero Status: SIGNIFICANT INJURY]

She screamed—the first sound of genuine pain Liam had heard from any of them.

Good.

The analytical hero was shouting something, trying to coordinate, trying to analyze this new threat. His divine senses were attempting to categorize what Liam had become, to find weaknesses, to identify the source of this impossible power.

Liam hit him with Sovereign of Damnation—an evolution of his Primordial Authority so absolute that it didn't just impose will, it commanded reality itself.

The hero's knees buckled. His divine protections flickered. For a moment, his analytical mind went completely blank as something beyond prophecy, beyond divinity, beyond anything his summoners had prepared him for, imposed its authority on his existence.

"You hurt her," Liam said, and his voice carried across dimensions, echoing with power that made the palace structure groan. "You broke her. You were going to kill her."

He was walking toward them now, and his form was changing. Abyssal Plate no longer just covered his hands—it was spreading across his entire body, forming armor that looked carved from solidified darkness. His eyes, which had always been human, now glowed with inner hellfire.

And from his forehead, something was emerging. Growing. Manifesting.

A horn. Curved, black as midnight, marked with patterns that hurt to observe directly.

The physical manifestation of what he was becoming.

[Synchronization Index: 67% → 73%]

[DEMON GOD TRANSFORMATION: STAGE 1]

[Warning: Humanity Index approaching critical minimum]

[Warning: Reversibility threshold will be exceeded at 75%]

Liam didn't care about warnings.

Didn't care about thresholds or reversibility or any of the careful calculations that had governed his existence since the summoning.

He only cared about the three beings who had hurt Lilith and were now backing away with expressions that had shifted from curiosity to genuine concern.

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