Liam's smile widened into something that didn't belong on a human face.

The exhaustion bled out of his posture. The defensive stance straightened. And when he spoke, his voice had changed.

Lower. Older. Carrying weight that seemed to press against the air itself.

"It seems," he said. He didn't sound like Liam Cross or the struggling commander. "You're worthy enough to die by a God's hand."

Orin hesitated. Just for a heartbeat.

His greatsword was already descending, committed to the killing blow, but something in Liam's tone made his instincts scream warning.

The blade came down.

Liam didn't move.

[Sovereign's Presence - Evolve to Sovereign's Imposition]

[Cost: 20 EVP]

[Confirm: YES]

The aura hit like a physical wall.

Before, Sovereign's Presence had been intimidation. The weight of something ancient declaring its existence. Uncomfortable but resistible.

This was different.

This was absolute.

The demonic pressure slammed into Orin mid-strike, and for the first time since arriving, the Grand Commander's perfect form broke.

His blade wavered.

His advance stuttered. Not from fear—divine training burned that away—but from the sheer metaphysical wrongness of standing before something that shouldn't exist.

The greatsword missed. By inches. By miles. Didn't matter.

It missed.

Liam stood untouched, and his grey eyes had gone cold. Empty. The eyes of something looking at the world through a mask of flesh.

"You are brave," he said in that voice that wasn't his. "I acknowledge this. Thirty years of service to a dying god. How very... quaint."

Orin pulled back, reassessing.

The cut on his chin had stopped bleeding. The wounds Liam had inflicted were shallow, healing already through divine vitality.

But something had changed in the courtyard. The air felt heavier. Evil.

"You've changed, What are you now?" Orin asked quietly.

Liam tilted his head, the gesture alien, wrong for the body performing it.

"What am I?" He laughed, and it echoed wrong off the fortress walls. "The question your god fears to answer...the sin his infinite divinity cannot cleanse. I am the dark that existed before his first light."

He took a step forward. Orin took a step back.

"You came to test me. To determine if I was god or pretender." Another step. The pressure intensifying. "But what happens when you find the truth, when you stare into my eyes and nothing mortal stares back?"

"I'm not afraid of demons," Orin said. But his grip on the greatsword had tightened. His stance had shifted fractionally more defensive.

"No." Liam's smile was terrible. "You fear because I am not just a demon. I am the thing demons pray to when they lose faith in themselves."

He was buying time. Seconds. Moments.

His fingers moved subtly at his side, interface commands flowing through consciousness faster than thought.

[Hell's Summon - Evolution]

[Cost: 15 EVP]

[Confirm: YES]

"I pity you," Liam continued, his voice carrying across the silent courtyard. Even the wounded had stopped moving, transfixed by whatever was happening.

"You serve a god who will abandon you. Who will let you die on this forgotten rock fighting a war that means nothing."

"The war means everything," Orin said. But there was uncertainty now. Just a trace.

"To you, perhaps. To your god?" Liam shook his head slowly. "You are a tool. Blessed steel to be wielded and discarded. When you fall, he will not mourn. He will not remember your name."

[Oblivion's Gaze - Unlock]

[Cost: 15 EVP]

[Confirm: YES]

[EVP Remaining: 10]

The knowledge crashed through Liam's consciousness. How to channel null-energy through his eyes.

How to concentrate reality-unraveling power into a focused beam that disintegrated matter and tore apart magical constructs.

Dangerous. Unstable. The kind of skill that cost hundreds of essence by the second just to maintain.

Perfect.

"But I will remember you," Liam said, and his eyes began to glow. Not red. Not demonic crimson.

Darker.

The color of space between stars. The void given form. "I will remember Orin, the Grand Commander who died believing his sacrifice mattered."

The glow intensified.

"I will remember you longer than your god will."

Orin's eyes widened. He'd seen this before. Had fought demons who could channel destructive energy.

But never anything that looked like this.

"I pity you," Liam repeated, his voice dropping to something almost gentle.

Almost sad.

"Because your death will be just as painful as the rest of your Paladins. Just as meaningless. Just as forgotten."

The null-energy gathered. Reality warping around Liam's eyes.

"And the worst part?" His terrible smile widened. "Deep down, you already know I'm right."

[Oblivion's Gaze] - 150 EP per second

The beam erupted.

Worse than fire. Worse than light. The absence of both. A concentrated lance of nothing that tore through air and made reality scream.

Orin raised his greatsword, divine light blazing to counter—

The null-energy hit his blade and the blessed steel shrieked.

It didn't look liks shattering or breaking, but unraveling at the molecular level, magic and matter both trying to resist the fundamental wrongness of what they were touching.

Orin was thrown backward.

Ten feet.

Twenty.

His armor blazing with golden light, divine protection the only thing keeping him from being disintegrated.

The beam tracked him. Relentless. Consuming.

The Grand Commander hit the ground, rolled, came up already moving. The null-energy carved a trench through stone where he'd been, leaving edges that smoked with reality-damage.

"IMPRESSIVE!" Orin's voice carried genuine respect even as he ran. "BUT NOT ENOUGH!"

He was right.

The divine armor was holding. Barely. The golden light countered the null-energy enough that Orin wasn't being erased, just pushed back, battered, hurt but not destroyed.

And Liam could feel his essence draining. One hundred fifty per second. He had maybe fifteen seconds before he ran dry.

[Essence: 6,547 EP]

[Essence: 6,397 EP]

[Essence: 6,247 EP]

The countdown was brutal.

Orin circled, using rubble as cover, divine training letting him read the beam's path and stay fractionally ahead of disintegration.

"CLEVER!" he shouted. "BUYING TIME! FOR WHAT? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RUN OUT?"

[Essence: 6,947 EP]

Liam didn't answer. Kept the beam tracking. Kept Orin moving. Kept the performance going.

Because that's what this was.

A performance. The greatest of his life.

Playing a god he wasn't. Channeling power he barely understood. Hoping that somewhere in the desperate mathematics of survival, there was an equation that added up to living.

His eyes burned.

The null-energy wanted to consume everything, including the host channeling it. Only constant essence expenditure kept it from eating him alive.

[Essence: 6,597 EP]

Orin broke from cover, sprinted left, divine speed carrying him faster than the beam could track smoothly. He closed distance.

Twenty feet. Fifteen.

If he reached melee range, this was over.

Liam cut the beam, phased right, reacquired target, and fired again.

[Blink]

[Oblivion's Gaze]

The null-energy caught Orin mid-stride. Threw him sideways into the eastern wall. His armor screamed, golden light flickering under the assault.

But holding.

Still holding.

[Essence: 6,247 EP]

"YOU CAN'T KEEP THIS UP!" Orin was right. Could read the mathematics as clearly as Zara could. "COUPLE MORE SECONDS AND I'LL REACH YOU!"

[Essence: 5,947 EP]

Eight seconds.

Liam's mind raced. He'd bought time. Pushed Orin back. Proven he could hurt the Grand Commander.

But hurt wasn't kill. And kill was the only outcome that mattered.

He had three evolved skills now.

Sovereign's Imposition keeping Orin off-balance, unable to close to melee range.

Hell's Summon evolved and ready.

Oblivion's Gaze pushing the Grand Commander around but not destroying him.

And maybe four thousand essence left after this beam ran dry.

One shot. One play. One desperate gambit.

Liam cut the beam.

[Essence: 5,797 EP]

The sudden absence of null-energy made the courtyard feel quiet. Almost peaceful.

Orin pushed himself up from where the beam had pinned him. His armor was scorched. His greatsword's edge had been partially unraveled.

Blood ran from his nose where the pressure had ruptured something.

But he was standing.

And smiling that terrible smile.

"Out of mana?" he asked.

"No." Liam's voice was still that wrong, ancient thing. "Just finished testing you."

Orin's smile faltered.

"You were right about one thing," Liam continued. The performance never breaking. The mask never slipping. "Most demons are weaker than you. Less skilled."

He raised his hand, and the air around it began to distort.

"But we have something you don't."

"What?"

"Friends in low places."

[Hell's Summon - Evolved] - 2500 EP consumed

The courtyard temperature dropped twenty degrees in a heartbeat.

Reality screamed.

And behind Liam, space tore itself apart.

Not a small rift like last time. A doorway, no a gate.

Twenty feet tall. Thirty feet wide. Edges burning with black flame that consumed light itself.

And beyond it, in the depths where geometry stopped making sense and physics became optional, something moved.

Orin's face went pale. "No."

"Yes." Liam's grey eyes reflected the gate's darkness. "You wanted to know if I was the Demon God."

The thing beyond the gate pressed against reality.

Too large to fit. Too wrong to exist. But coming anyway, because Liam had called and Hell answered those who wore its crown.

"Let me show you what gods summon when they pray."

The gate widened. The darkness deepened.

And Orin, Grand Commander of the Radiant Empire, veteran of thirty years and killer of seven High Overseers, felt something he hadn't experienced in decades.

Fear.

Real fucking fear.

Not for himself. For what this meant.

For what would emerge if that gate finished opening.

"What have you done?" he whispered.

Liam smiled. The performance reaching its crescendo. The final act beginning.

"I've stopped pretending...to be anything but a God."

[Humanity Index: 15%]

The gate yawned wider.

Something with too many eyes looked through.

[Hell's Gate: Stabilizing]

[Summoning: In Progress]

[Estimated Time to Full Manifestation: five seconds]

Five seconds.

Orin had thirty seconds to kill Liam and stop this.

Or whatever was coming through that gate would kill them all.

The Grand Commander's face hardened. The fear burned away under divine training. Under three decades of fighting horrors.

"Not today," he said quietly.

And charged straight at the opening Hell itself.

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