The sword-wielder recovered first, divine weapon raised. "Whatever you've done to yourself, you're still just—"

Liam was in front of him before the sentence finished. Five simultaneous versions converging on a single point, each one striking from a different angle, each impact enhanced by power that transcended anything he'd wielded before.

The hero's consecrated armor—forged by prophecy itself, blessed by three thousand years of accumulated faith—cracked.

Then shattered.

The sword-wielder stumbled backward, blood running from his mouth. "How—"

"I don't care how," Liam said, and his multiple selves spoke in perfect unison, creating a harmonic that made reality itself resonate. "I don't care about prophecy or divine mandate or anything except the fact that you hurt someone I—"

He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't admit what King Aldric had identified. Because admitting it meant acknowledging that leadership had failed to destroy that attachment, that the synthesis hadn't consumed everything human about him.

But the hesitation cost him.

The blonde hero, recovered from the broken ribs, hit him with concentrated divine fire—not just heat, but purifying flame designed specifically to destroy demons at the conceptual level.

It hurt. Not just physically but existentially, burning at the core of what he'd become.

[Health: 38% → 29%]

[DIVINE DAMAGE DETECTED]

[Warning: Purification effect active]

Liam screamed—the first time he'd vocalized pain since the transformation began. The divine fire was trying to unmake him, to burn away the demon synthesis and leave only the human remnant.

It was excruciating.

It was clarifying.

Because in that moment of absolute agony, Liam Cross and Lord Azra stopped being separate entities in careful synthesis. They merged completely, instantaneously, creating something that was neither human nor demon but a perfect fusion of both.

[Synchronization Index: 73% → 82%]

[APOTHEOSIS: STAGE 2]

[DEMON GOD TRANSFORMATION: COMPLETE]

The divine fire that had been burning him suddenly... stopped.

Not because it weakened. Not because Liam overpowered it.

Because it no longer recognized what it was burning. Couldn't categorize him as demon or human or anything its divine programming understood.

Liam raised his hand—now fully covered in evolved Abyssal Plate that looked more like obsidian glass than armor—and the divine fire simply dispersed.

"Impossible," the analytical hero whispered. "You can't just... divine fire doesn't just stop—"

"Divine fire burns demons," Liam said, his voice now carrying harmonic frequencies that existed outside normal hearing range. "But I'm not a demon anymore. Not fully. I'm something you don't have a classification for. Something prophecy didn't account for."

He could feel it now—the complete integration. Liam Cross's memories, creativity, and desperate need to matter. Lord Azra's power, authority, and absolute will. Both merged into a singular entity that transcended either component.

The Primordial Demon. For real this time. Not performance or stolen authority, but genuine divinity born from impossibility and synthesis.

"REGROUP!" the sword-wielder shouted, and the three heroes tried to coordinate, to combine their powers into something that could challenge what Liam had become.

Liam activated Hellfire Incarnate, and his entire body erupted with flames that existed in multiple dimensions simultaneously. Not fire that burned matter, but fire that burned possibility itself.

The heroes' divine coordination faltered as the flames disrupted their prophecy-granted teamwork. The analytical one tried to counter with holy light. The flames consumed it. The blonde tried to scatter with her speed. The flames tracked her through time itself.

The sword-wielder charged directly, his divine weapon raised in desperate offense.

Liam caught the blade with his bare hand.

The consecrated steel—blessed by prophecy, forged by faith, designed to be the ultimate demon-slaying weapon—shattered in his grip like cheap glass.

"What are you?" the sword-wielder gasped, staring at his broken weapon in disbelief.

Liam's expression was serene, almost peaceful, despite the apocalyptic power radiating from every pore.

"I'm the thing that breaks prophecy," he said simply.

Then he showed them exactly what that meant.

[Opening: Gates of the Abyss]

[WARNING: REALITY STABILITY COMPROMISED]

[WARNING: SANITY AFFECTING ENTITIES WILL MANIFEST]

[PROCEED? Y/N]

Yes.

Reality tore.

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The fabric of existence simply ripped, creating a wound in the world through which something older than demons, older than prophecy, older than the concept of gods themselves began to emerge.

Liam had opened this gate once before, when fighting Grand Commander Orin. Then, it had been desperate, barely controlled, a technique that had nearly killed him from the strain.

Now, as a manifested demon god, it was effortless.

The Abyss answered his call like a faithful servant, and from that dimensional wound, things began to pour into the palace.

They defied description. Shapes that hurt to perceive. Colors that didn't exist in normal spectrums. Sounds that bypassed ears to speak directly to the most primal parts of the brain that still remembered when humanity huddled in caves and prayed the darkness wouldn't notice them.

The three heroes, despite their divine power and prophetic purpose, took one look at what was emerging and their faces went pale.

"Close it," the blonde whispered, her earlier arrogance completely gone. "Holy light, close it—"

"I will," Liam said calmly. "After they deal with you."

The entities from the Abyss noticed the heroes—noticed the concentration of divine power that made them stand out like beacons in the darkness—and moved with terrible purpose.

The analytical hero tried to raise barriers. They were brushed aside.

The sword-wielder attempted to fight. His broken blade couldn't even touch them.

The blonde hero used her speed to run. The entities existed outside normal time and caught her anyway.

And Liam watched, his horn now fully manifest, his power stabilized at a level that transcended everything he'd been before, as prophecy's champions faced something prophecy hadn't prepared them for.

The oldest darkness.

The things that existed before gods invented rules.

The reason demons sealed the Abyss and never spoke of what lay beyond.

[Synchronization Index: 82%]

[Current Status: DEMON GOD - AWAKENED]

[Power Classification: BEYOND SYSTEM PARAMETERS]

The heroes were screaming now.

And Liam Cross—Lord Azra—the synthesized being who had transcended the limitations of both identities—stood in the center of controlled chaos and felt absolutely nothing about their suffering.

Because gods didn't feel mercy.

Only purpose.

And his purpose was protecting what he'd nearly lost.

The battle had only just begun.

But the outcome was no longer in question.

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