He tore the veil open above the northern edge of the city—a great, roiling wound in the sky, black and seething. From its swirling depths, the Demon stepped forth.

One colossal foot slammed down onto rooftops and stonework, crushing buildings like brittle stalks. The second followed, his massive form shaking the earth as he stepped fully into the city. Mortals caught beneath his descent were flattened in an instant—snuffed out with all the ceremony of grapes beneath a boot.

Behind him, the portal spat forth chaos—his minions, shrieking things of smoke and fang, poured through in an endless tide.

He had chosen this place with intent. These northern wards were densely packed, teeming with people. Panic would spread fast—just as he intended.

But it was not fear he had come for.

No, he could feel it now—like a splinter lodged in his immortal soul. The Staff of Ceitus.

It pulsed from the castle at the city's heart, high on the hill, cloaked in magic and mortal arrogance.

That cursed artifact had haunted him for millennia.

And now, at last, he would shatter it—and everything around it.

Shadow wraiths poured from the portal behind him, gliding like torn silk across the rooftops—screeching, half-formed things that dripped hunger and malice. Black dragons swept overhead, their wings beating the air into a storm. They rained acid and frost upon the city below, turning cobbled streets into sludge and brittle bone.

Screams rose in waves—panicked, shrill, desperate. Just as he’d planned.

The chaos began at the northern edge and rolled inward like a dark tide, driving the mortals toward the heart of their doomed city. He wanted them to run. He wanted them to see it coming. Let them fear. Let them feel every ticking breath until it was torn from them.

Fear was power. And despair... despair was exquisite.

As the terrified fled toward the castle on the hill, he harvested their jzirittiah.

He ripped it from them—bright, pulsing knotts of life-bound power, stolen in those final moments of panic. They didn’t deserve it. They’d never deserved it. And now, that raw essence flowed into him, strengthening his limbs, his fury, his will.

The Staff of Ceitus pulsed like a beacon, and he drank deep of the lives between him and it.

Soon, he would crush it beneath his heel—and tear down the throne of mortals with it.

He paused mid-step, eyes narrowing toward the eastern quarter of the city.

A ripple. A flicker. A pulse of power that did not come from him.

In the sky above, blasts of incandescent energy erupted—searing white-hot and screaming with power. They struck a formation of his dragons mid-flight, and three of them dropped from the sky like burning coals. Another blast followed—jagged and electric—shredding shadow wraiths into wisps of black smoke.

He turned, his horned head cocked to one side.

Interesting.

Somewhere in the chaos, a group of mortals had rallied. A handful, no more. But their magic crackled with purpose—trained, focused, dangerous. They fought together, linked by discipline and fury.

 He remembered the scent of their spells. The sting.

The pitiful mortals had grown stronger during his exile. 

Still, it would not be enough.

He flexed a clawed hand, the air around it warping with gathered power. Their defiance was amusing. Admirable, even. But foolish.

Let them fight. Let them show him how far they’d come.

It would make their defeat all the more satisfying.

With a thought and a whisper of scorn, he reached out—grasping not with hands but with hatred.

The six defiant mortals froze mid-motion, suspended like broken marionettes above the smoking rooftops. Their spells faltered, their limbs locked in place. He drew them closer, studying them with a cold, burning gaze.

Two were traditional humans—scarred, determined, young. Three were beastmen, fur bristling, tusks bared, still twitching with the aftershock of resistance. And one—an altemen—hovered at the center, his form wrapped in silver light, eyes wide with disbelief.

Together, they had power. Enough that, had they known more, or acted faster, they might’ve wounded him.

But they didn’t. They hadn’t.

How dare they?

His fury boiled over.

With a silent roar, he reached into each of them with his will—into their cores, into their essence. He found the delicate, shimmering threads of magic that ran through their souls—and tore.

Their power came screaming into him. Six lifelines snapped, unraveling into glittering filaments of stolen strength. Each one entered him like a breath of fire—new, raw, intoxicating. He absorbed it all, his veins alight with stolen magic.

Their bodies fell like forgotten toys, crashing to the streets below in tangled ruin.

And still, he did not slow.

His gaze rose, drawn now to the heart of the city—to the highest tower of the castle, where a glow was forming. A glow he knew.

Ceitus.

The name burned through his mind like poison. Rage welled up—ancient, corrosive, endless. The Staff. The artifact. The final fragment of the one who had bested him time and again.

He stepped forward again, each stride crushing homes and marketplaces beneath his feet, moving through the city as one might wade through reeds. Walls shattered. Spells struck his shielding and fizzled like raindrops on molten steel. He ignored them all.

His path was straight. His purpose, singular.

He would erase that name from existence.

He would crush the Staff of Ceitus—
—and finish what had begun in the age before memory.

That cursed artifact.

That abomination of magic—created by Ceitus, forged with divine spite and purpose. A tool not of balance, nor of judgment, but of extermination. The Staff had one purpose alone: to erase Demons from existence.

And it had nearly succeeded, once.

The memory of its sting still haunted his immortal essence. Not pain, no—not physical—but something deeper. Something that scraped the eternal core.

Ceitus alone had been bad enough—arrogant, luminous, righteous. A rival in power, a blight in his path. But to create such a thing, and to entrust it to mortals—to these fragile, short-lived insects—that was the truest offense. An insult that echoed through time.

He deserved vengeance. Ceitus deserved to suffer for what he had wrought.

And though the God himself had long vanished into the outer planes, his legacy remained. His artifact had resurfaced—drawn forth by the trembling hands of mortals too foolish to understand its weight, too impertinent to fear it.

They would be punished.

All of them.

This pitiful realm that dared raise the Staff once more would be scoured from history. He would not merely raze their cities. He would unmake them.

No stories. No monuments. No names carved in stone.

Only ash. Only silence.

And when the last soul screamed its final breath, he would tear the Staff from their trembling fingers and grind it to dust.

Then, and only then, would his vengeance be complete.

More mortals surged into the fray—magic flaring like sunbursts as they hurled bolts of fire and light into the sky. Dragons shrieked and fell in twisted arcs, crashing into buildings, their bodies scattering stone and timber. Wraiths were torn from the air in bursts of brilliance, unraveling like smoke in the wind.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

Behind him, the portal churned like a wound in reality, stretching wider, deeper—hungry. From its endless dark, the true army emerged.

Foot soldiers of the Demon Lands poured forth in waves.

Twisted devils with razor wings and claws like curved scythes. Stonewolves with molten eyes and jaws that could crush armor. Devious trunbuls, dashing forward with wicked warhammers forged in volcanic furnaces. Living golems bound in chains of voidmetal, their silence more terrifying than any roar.

And more. Unspeakable things without name, conjured from forgotten nightmares beneath the Demon Thrones.

They spread like rot, sweeping through the streets of Retinor.

Shattered walls. Splintered gates. Blood ran through the gutters and pooled in the alleys. Resistance flared and died in screams. Entire squads of defenders vanished beneath the stampede, their final cries swallowed by the thunder of marching feet and snarling jaws.

The city groaned under the weight of the invasion.

The air itself screamed, choked by smoke and magic and death.

And high above it all, the Demon watched, unblinking—his gaze locked still on the castle where the Staff of Ceitus pulsed with gathering light.

The mortals could rage. They could fight and bleed and burn.

It would make no difference.

He reached out again and again, tendrils of dark magic lashing through the city like invisible whips. Each time, he seized the shimmering cores of power within mortal bodies—their connection to Lotrar, the magic of Rit—and tore it free.

Their screams barely echoed before their bodies dropped lifeless to the stone. Their jzirittiah, their essence, flowed into him—raw, potent, fuel for his wrath.

He grew stronger with every essence devoured.

The streets beneath him were a graveyard of power.

Buildings cracked and crumbled beneath his steps, until finally, looming above the castle itself, he reached the summit—the heart of Retinor.

The light was changing.

Above the tallest tower, where once shone a piercing white flare, a golden radiance now pulsed—steady, ancient, divine.

The Staff of Ceitus was awakening.

Someone down there… knew what they were doing. Not just wielding it, but wielding it with purpose. The spell—the spell—was taking shape. He could feel the edges of it forming: jagged, righteous, lethal.

Still incomplete. Still vulnerable.

With a roar of fury and contempt, he reached out. His claws, each the size of a warhorse, tore into the tower. Stone and mortar exploded outward. The roof came away like paper, then the walls, peeled back in a storm of rubble and dust.

Within the ruined chamber, exposed to the sky, a small group of mortals stood around the Staff of Ceitus. It hovered in the air—glowing gold, humming with gathering power, lines of glowing power circling it in flame and light.

They looked up at him.

So small.

So brave.

So doomed.

The tower chamber was bathed in golden light, now open to the smoke-choked sky and the looming shadow of the Demon above.

A translucent dome of magic shimmered into being around the dais—a hastily raised shield, its surface rippling and shifting with flickers of unstable light. Dust and debris from the Demon’s assault pelted it like hail, but the shield held—for now.

Seven Wizards stood in a circle, their robes torn, their faces pale with strain. Each one was powerful in their own right, their hands extended, magic threading between them in a web of force. Sweat poured from their brows. 

In the center, upon the raised dais, the eighth Wizard stood with both hands upon the Staff of Ceitus.

The ancient weapon still jutted from the rock, its lower half embedded deep into the stone of the tower floor, as though the earth itself had swallowed it in ages past and only now began to release its grip.

The Wizard channeling the spell was gaunt and silver-haired, his eyes blazing with golden light. Bright power encircled him in a slow, spiraling dance. The Staff pulsed in time with his breath, each beat stronger than the last.

Outside the dome, the Demon snarled.

The golden glow had grown brighter, more focused.

This was no blind attempt to harness power. This was a ritual. An invocation.

They knew what the Staff could do. And they were invoking its purpose.

Eradication.

The Demon’s claws closed around the shimmering dome like the jaws of a godless vice.

Black and red, immense and cracked with molten light, his talons pressed inward with crushing force—both physical and magical. The very air screamed around them as power warped and buckled under the pressure.

The shield trembled, groaned… then cracked.

One of the seven Wizards staggered backward, blood pouring from his nose as he collapsed in a heap. His thread of the protective web snapped, weakening the spell. The others gritted their teeth, digging deeper into reserves already strained to the edge of collapse.

The Demon’s claws flaked under the stress—thin shards of obsidian-black chitin splintering off like volcanic glass. But it was no true wound. If anything, it enraged him further.

Around the tower, a chorus of spells screamed through the air. From the castle walls, from the nearby streets, from rooftops and courtyards—Wizards of the kingdom hurled their strongest enchantments, desperate to pierce the dark titan’s defenses.

A barrage of fire-laced spears struck his shoulders and arms. A bolt of white lightning cracked against the side of his neck. Green ribbons of acidic wind sliced at his legs.

Some of the spells made it through the shielding he wore like a second skin. They struck his hide and burst, smoke curling from the impacts. He roared in irritation, in rage, in insult.

These mortals dared to wound him.

Dared to resist him.

His fury now burned hotter than the fires rising across the city. The gold light from the Staff of Ceitus pulsed stronger, the central Wizard’s voice rising into the storm with a chant so ancient even the Demon felt its echo stir across the planes.

He squeezed harder.

The shield crackled with fractures of light.

The tower would not hold much longer.

The shield cracked like a pane of glass under a hammer. Lines of pure white light webbed across its surface, flaring and pulsing as the strain grew unbearable.

The Demon snarled in disbelief.

How could they still be holding? These mortals—these fragile little beings—should have broken long ago. And yet their magic persisted.

Good, he thought, pressing harder, claws grinding against the barrier with renewed force. The greater their resistance, the more satisfying it would be to rip the essence from their broken bodies. Their magic cores would taste all the sweeter.

Then—

A flash.

A streak of white light cut through the smoke and debris, striking the dome from the east. It wasn’t an attack—it merged, threading into the spell, blending with the fractured barrier and reinforcing it.

The cracks receded. Fractures healed. The dome’s glow flared brighter.

The Demon’s claws slipped. Just slightly.

Another streak followed the first, then another. And another. From rooftops, from hidden courtyards, from windows high and far—more magic, white and gold, poured into the dome.

Mortal Wizards poured all the magic they could toward the shield defending the Staff.

The will of an entire people rising in defiance.

The shield pulsed like a heartbeat now—no longer fragile, no longer failing.

The Demon roared, the sound shaking walls for miles.

He redoubled his efforts, slamming his fists against the magic, flame and void spilling from his mouth in frustration.

No.

This city would not resist him. This was his moment of victory. These upstarts would not deny him vengeance.

But deep in the tower’s heart, the light of Ceitus began to change again—no longer just gold, but something deeper, older.

It remembered.

A deep, resonant growl rumbled from the Demon’s throat—not a roar this time, but something worse.

It was the sound of a predator realizing the prey might fight back.

Like the thunder of a hundred lightning strikes crashing at once, the sound cracked the air and sent tremors through stone and bone.

Still, the Wizards came.

On rooftops scorched black with dragonfire. In alleyways slick with blood. From shattered windows and barricaded towers—they lifted their hands and poured what power they had into the dome.

The protective barrier shimmered stronger now, less like glass, more like polished metal laced with light. Cracks still spidered across its surface, but now they healed as quickly as they formed.

The Demon’s clawed grip around the dome trembled with fury—but he did not stop. Instead, he turned the full breadth of his hate outward.

He reached.

Again.

And again.

Faster.

Tendrils of dark magic, like black lightning, lashed out from him in all directions. Each found a Wizard exposed—unguarded—and ripped the magic from them with surgical cruelty.

Screams echoed in waves. Bodies dropped to the stone.

The light feeding the dome wavered for brief moments—but always, always, another Wizard stepped forward. Some stumbled into position, bleeding or burned, but with hands raised and magic offered.

Then something changed.

Pairs of Wizards began forming quickly—then trios, then clusters.

Protecting one another. Shielding one another.

Where once the Demon had hunted isolated flames, now he faced a growing fireline of linked souls. They passed their strength down the line, shielding the weak, pulling the fallen behind them, and pushing power forward.

Yes, they still fell. The Demon’s hunger was vast, and his power overwhelming.

But they fell slower.

And more rose to take their place with every passing moment.

The city of Retinor—its very breath channeled through spell and sacrifice—was rising.

The light from the Staff of Ceitus flared once more—brighter than fire, brighter than the sun.

What had begun as a golden glow now burned with the fierce, unrelenting brilliance of divine judgment—a piercing blue-white light that bathed the shattered tower and the sky above in blinding radiance.

The air screamed.

A high-pitched whine sliced through the Demon’s senses, cutting past physical form and into the marrow of his ancient essence. He staggered, his claws faltering, his breath catching for the first time in thousands of turns.

He knew this frequency.

He had felt it before—long ago, in the dying days of the last war.

Ceitus.

Then it struck.

A beam of focused magic shot from the Staff’s crystalline gem—perfectly aimed, mercilessly fast. It lanced through the space between breath and heartbeat, driving through the Demon’s massive chest like a spear cast by the heavens.

The smell of evergreen, salt air, cinnamon, and sage filled his nostrils just before the force hit him. 

It tore through his ribcage. Through his blackened heart. Through his core—that dense, pulsing engine of magic and malice that had sustained him through eons.

The bolt exploded from his back in a shattering burst of light and force. The path it left behind was not burned or bloodied—it was erased. An entire corridor of his monstrous body had been disintegrated, atom by atom, leaving a gaping void through his torso.

The Demon froze.

A groan of disbelief escaped his lips—deep, strangled, fragile.

The light from the Staff pulsed again, as if daring him to move.

Smoke billowed from the hole in his chest.

And for the first time since his arrival… he took a step back.

Deritomas jolted upright with a guttural snarl, claws flexing against the armrests of his basalt throne.

The dream still clung to him—vivid, visceral, unreal. But the pain… the pain had felt real. The Staff of Ceitus—gods-cursed thing—had pierced him clean through. He could still feel the phantom sting in the center of his chest, still hear the whine of the weapon’s charge, the echo of his own roar as magic and essence were torn from his core.

It took him several slow, grounding seconds to remember: he was not on a battlefield. Not in Retinor. Not facing Ceitus' staff.

He was in his lair.

The cavern around him pulsed with heat and shadow, cast in the deep red glow of molten rivers that flowed lazily across the obsidian floor. Jagged spires of rock framed the throne like broken teeth. Vapors curled through the air—thick, choking, acrid.

Home. Prison.

The heat would blister mortal skin in seconds. Even lesser Demons rarely stayed in his presence long—those who did often collapsed from the fumes or burned alive simply to amuse him.

Deritomas liked it that way.

Company was a burden. Conversation, a chore. The only thing more intolerable than noise was silence.

Still seated on his throne, he glanced at the smoldering remains of his most recent entertainment—a charred husk of what had once been a servant, sprawled across the stone steps below him like spilled kindling. Deritomas gave a low grunt of disinterest.

Three hundred turns in this place. Three hundred cycles of idleness, reflection… and boredom. Even other Demons had stopped visiting.

He didn’t mind.

Not really.

He didn’t need companionship.

But there were only so many ways to occupy a mind as ancient and monstrous as his.

That dream, though…

It hadn't been just memory. It had felt like prophecy.

A premonition.

The Staff of Ceitus had been destroyed—or so the world believed.

And yet…

He clenched one clawed fist and stared into the molten pool before him, the red light flickering in his crimson eyes.

Perhaps it was time to see what had become of the mortals.

Perhaps it was time to move.

The dream still clung to him like oil—thick, acrid, impossible to shake. His rage swelled until it could no longer be contained.

Deritomas threw back his head and roared.

The sound shook the cavern to its roots, a terrible, bone-splitting howl that echoed off molten walls and collapsed tunnels. The air trembled. A shower of stones tumbled from the jagged ceiling. A lesser being would have gone deaf from the sheer force of it.

From a darkened passage, a figure rushed forth—stooped, hulking, misshapen.

“Your Eminence?” the creature rasped, voice like gravel dragged through blood.

It was a corrupted Apharalies—once a towering, radiant creature of light and order, forged by Ceitus in the golden age to be protector and steward of the mortal world. This one had been captured a hundred turns ago, its purity slowly carved away, its essence twisted and reshaped until its noble form had become a mockery of itself.

Its skin was cracked obsidian, its once-proud face melted into a cruel mask of servility and pain. Its luminous eyes had long since been extinguished, replaced by glowing pits of sulfur and anguish.

The sight of it brought Deritomas a flicker of pleasure.

A creation of Ceitus, broken and bound to him. A fitting monument to the old enemy’s failure.

“I desire punishment,” Deritomas growled, rising from his throne like a storm given flesh. “Bring me prisoners. Mortals. As many as we have.”

The cavern rumbled with the force of his command.

His voice was a force of nature, and the very stone recoiled from its power. Cracks split the floor. Chunks of obsidian crashed from the ceiling, shattering into splinters of black glass.

The Apharalies abomination dropped to one knee, bowing its head so low it scraped the molten stone.

“At once, my Lord.”

It rose and lumbered off, the echo of its footsteps vanishing into the tunnels.

Deritomas turned his gaze back to the lava pools, their glow reflecting off his crimson skin.

The dream had left him with more than fury.

It had left him with purpose.

If the Staff still existed—if some fool mortal had dared to unearth it—then the world had forgotten its place.

It was time to remind them.