Ch. 19: Demonic Intuition

The creaking of the makeshift elevator's chains was the only sound that accompanied Neia Baraja as she descended into the earth's suffocating embrace. The air grew heavier with each passing second, thick with the scent of damp stone and something far older—something that whispered of forgotten crypts and buried sins. Neia remained silent, her breath steady, her posture rigid. The ornate silver visor that shielded the upper half of her face rendered her emotions inscrutable, a mask as unyielding as the steel that forged it. Yet her clenched fist betrayed her—knuckles stretched taut, the flesh so pale it seemed translucent, as if her very blood had retreated from the tension coiling within her. Her nails bit into her palm, sharp enough to draw blood, but the pain was distant, secondary to the weight of what lay ahead.

At last, the elevator shuddered to a halt, its groaning protest swallowed by the oppressive darkness. Neia stepped forward, her boots meeting cold, uneven stone as she entered a long, narrow hallway. The walls pressed in on either side, slick with condensation, their surfaces etched with faint, arcane sigils that pulsed faintly in the gloom. Ahead, a sickly green light flickered like a dying ember, casting jagged shadows that writhed against the stone. She moved toward it, her stride measured, her senses sharp. The air hummed with latent power, a silent chorus of unseen forces watching, waiting.

When she crossed the threshold into the chamber, the green light bathed her in its eerie glow, revealing the assembled figures who stood in a perfect, silent ring. The Deathless's elite—each a sovereign of shadow in their own right—waited with the stillness of predators. Neia took her place among them, her movements precise, her gaze carefully averted.

Directly across from her stood a pair, their presence commanding even in stillness. The woman was a vision of controlled ferocity, her armor a masterful fusion of plate and leather, each piece sculpted to evoke the savagery of a war beast. Her helmet, wrought in the likeness of a boar's snarling visage, hid all but her eyes—deep brown and piercing, alive with a vigilance that missed nothing. Power radiated from her in waves, not the chaotic frenzy of a berserker, but the honed, lethal precision of a seasoned strategist looking down at the throat of the world.

She did not fidget, did not shift—her posture was a calculated equilibrium, the poise of a general who had long since learned that battles were won before swords ever clashed. The way her fingers curled, loose but ready, suggested a mind already three moves ahead. Her calculated serenity spoke of victories yet unclaimed, the quiet force that turned the tide of wars with a glance, a gesture, a single murmured word. The air around her hummed not with the threat of violence, but with the certainty of it—and the chilling understanding that she would decide its time, its place, and its necessity.

Beside her, the man was a study in contrast—his frame leaner, less overtly imposing, yet no less dangerous. His long blue cowl shimmered as if woven from twilight itself, its edges blurring in and out of perception. The torchlight refused to settle upon him fully; his form flickered like a mirage, here one moment, half-gone the next. An aura of enigma clung to him, thick as mist, and the air around him thrummed with the promise of unseen spells, of secrets waiting to unravel flesh and fate alike.

But where his companion dominated through martial certainty, he ruled through revelation—through the quiet, terrible understanding of how the world unraveled. His fingers, pale and precise, twitched occasionally as if plucking at unseen threads, each motion a silent calculus that measured the alchemy of existence: the tensile strength of time, the stoichiometry of suffering. The torch flames bent toward him when he breathed, not in submission, but in recognition—for fire knew what he could ask of it.

An aura of enigma clung to him, thick as mist, but it was no mere obscurement. It was the veil of a scholar who had peered too long into the universe's ledger and found its margins wanting. The air thrummed not just with the promise of spells, but with the certainty of their making—each potential hex and hymn already weighed, already priced, their consequences tabulated long before their casting. He was danger distilled to its essence: not the blade's edge, but the knowledge of where to place it.

Neia's gaze slid away, drawn inexorably to the blonde woman who stood apart from the others like a razor laid upon velvet. Clad in an unsettling fusion of battle armor and gothic vestments—black and white fabric cascading like funeral shrouds over polished metal—she was a portrait of chilling elegance, a blasphemy of beauty and brutality. Her face was sculpted perfection, porcelain-smooth and unmarred by emotion, the kind of loveliness that made poets weep and fools reach out to touch—right before the teeth beneath the smile found their fingers.

Yet it was her eyes that betrayed the monster beneath the masquerade. Crystal-blue and glacial, they burned with a cruelty so refined it glittered like shards of stained glass, each flicker of light a calculated promise of suffering. There was no smile to soften her, no pretense of warmth—only the quiet, hungry anticipation of a predator who had long since learned that terror tasted sweetest when drawn out. Her stillness was not patience, but the coiled tension of a spider counting the vibrations of a struggling fly. Every breath she took was measured, every blink a deliberate taunt, as if she were savoring the scent of fear before she deigned to carve it from living flesh. This was no mere killer; it was a true monster, one waiting to devour any too foolish to behold her true nature.

Beside the woman stood a reptilian monolith of muscle and scale, his battle monk's robes—a humble blend of brown cloth and scalemail—doing little to disguise the raw power beneath. Every inch of him was coiled strength, his emerald-sheathed bulk glistening like forged iron, his claws resting with deceptive idleness against the stone. There was a quietude to him, the stillness of a blade sheathed but unsheathed, his golden-slitted eyes holding the patience of a predator and the wisdom of something ancient.

He breathed like a smith's bellows, slow and deep, his tail a heavy weight behind him, his presence warping the air with unspoken threat. This was no mere warrior—this was a storm wrapped in monastic calm. There was a paradox in his stillness—a serenity that bordered on the divine, yet beneath it thrummed the promise of annihilation. His claws, black as obsidian and just as sharp, rested at his sides, their tips faintly scoring the stone beneath him. His tail, thick and powerful, lay in a loose coil behind him, its slightest twitch betraying the restrained energy that simmered beneath his scaled flesh.

To Neia's right, the doppelganger Caspond II stood in solemn silence, his head bowed in a show of deference so perfect it bordered on parody—a masterful performance of submission that could not quite smother the razor's edge of cunning beneath. His features were flawlessly regal, coldly handsome, carved with the precision of a sculptor who had never known doubt. Yet this face was nothing more than a borrowed skin, one of countless masks hanging in the unseen wardrobe of his soul. The longer one looked, the more unsettling the illusion became—the faintest shimmer at the edges of his jawline, the way his shadow seemed to shift just out of sync with his movements, as if reality itself hesitated to confirm which version of him was present.

When he sensed Neia's attention, he tilted his head just so, the barest nod exchanged between conspirators. It was a gesture laden with unspoken understanding, yet even this small motion carried the weight of a hundred untold lies. His eyes—today a deep, noble brown—flickered with something unplaceable, as if the color might bleed into another hue at any moment. We are here. We endure. The words hung between them, but the truth was far more treacherous. For Caspond II was not a man but a living riddle, a being who wore identities like others wore gloves—discarding them without a second thought, leaving behind only the hollow echo of whoever he had pretended to be. To trust him was to grasp at smoke; to fear him was to stare into a mirror that reflected every face but your own.

And then—the center.

Lord Demiurge sat enthroned in stillness, his presence not merely dominating the room but rewriting its very nature - the air grew thicker, darker, as if the chamber itself remembered it knelt within his shadow. Where the others bore power, he was its source; where they commanded respect, he inspired the primal terror of a lamb catching the scent of wolf. His form was a blasphemy of perfection - too symmetrical, too flawless, every angle of his demonic beauty calculated to unsettle mortal eyes. Behind a pair of flawless round glasses, the demon's imperceptible gaze cut through the gloom like smoldering coals, the vertical slits of his eyes pulsing with a rhythm that mirrored no heartbeat, but perhaps the dying gasps of worlds.

An almost imperceptible tension coiled through his frame - the only hint of the apocalyptic wrath simmering beneath his glacial composure. The temperature fluctuated around him in waves, as if reality itself recoiled from what he might say next. When he finally deigned to speak, his voice would emerge as honeyed venom - every syllable polished to aristocratic perfection, yet carrying the weight of damnation in its undertones. This was no mere ruler of demons, but the living embodiment of their purpose: an existence forged from the raw essence of domination, his very presence a reminder that all other powers in the room existed only by his sufferance. The others governed their domains - he was dominion itself.

Neia's pulse thundered in her ears, a traitorous rhythm she forced into submission. She would not waver. She would not falter.

Then—Demiurge's voice, smooth as oil, sharp as a scalpel, cut through the silence.

"Now then," he murmured, and the very walls seemed to lean in to listen. "Let us begin."

"Bring the human."

The great doors parted with a groan like the jaws of some primordial beast, and Irisia Kiv Jovarus—swallowed by the black shroud of her robes—stood trembling on the threshold. The air turned to tar in her lungs as the council's gazes fell upon her in unison, each more terrible than the last.

To her left loomed the reptilian monk, his emerald scales glistening with an otherworldly sheen, his stillness that of a coiled viper. His slitted eyes pinned her where she stood, unblinking, as if he could already trace the path of her veins beneath withered skin. Beside him, was the gowned monstrosity in black and white lace, her porcelain face a mask of amusement, her blue eyes alight with the glow of a scalpel hovering above flesh.

Across the circle, The armored woman with the boar's visage, her gaze a blade resting against Irisia's throat. Her mysterious companion flickered at the edges, his form unraveling into smoke before snapping back into focus—a living riddle that made Irisia's eyes water to behold. And finally, the silver-visored enforcer, standing like a blade driven into the earth, her ornate vestments drinking in the torchlight. The visor hid her eyes, but not the weight of her judgment; Irisia felt it like cold fingers tracing her spine.

Yet all of them—all—were but shadows cast by the figure at the heart of the chamber.

The demonic figure at the center did not stir as Irisia's knees threatened to give way. His impeccable gaze carved into her, peeling back her years, her secrets, the very sinew of her soul. The air around him bent, as though the fabric of the world could not quite contain the abyss that dwelled beneath his skin. She tasted copper—had she bitten her tongue? Or was it the scent of his power, thick as a slaughterhouse mist?

A whimper died in her throat. These were not beings. They were forces, and she—a brittle leaf caught in their gale.

"Kneel."

The Archbishop. The familiar voice that haunted her dreams, once so far beyond her reach, The command cracked like a whip, and Irisia's body obeyed before her mind could protest. The stone bit into her knees, but the pain was nothing next to the terror of that single, glacial word.

A bead of sweat traced the hollow of Irisia's throat. She had known fear before—had worn it like a second skin in her long years—but this? This was the terror of a mouse beneath the shadow of a descending talon. The certainty that every prayer she'd ever whispered had fallen on deaf ears. The descending wrath of the Supreme Chancellor in all her terrible power could not compare to the sheer horror she now beheld.

And then—

A voice like honey over razors. "Welcome."

The voice that coiled through the chamber could only belong to the creature of nightmare—the Demon Hand himself. Its timbre was a paradox: silk wrapped around a scalpel, each syllable polished to aristocratic perfection yet humming with the subsonic growl of something not meant to speak mortal tongues.

"You were present at the Theocracy's latest meeting, correct?" The words slithered forth, their cadence almost conversational, as if discussing the weather over tea. "The Archbishop has been so kind as to relay some brief details of the occasion, but I thought it might be best to hear from our precious source directly. Do speak freely."

The shift was instantaneous. The suffocating demonic aura that had pressed Irisia to the brink of collapse retracted like a receding tide, replaced by the crisp professionalism of a scholar or statesman. His posture relaxed infinitesimally; his gloved hands now steepled in apparent idle contemplation. Yet the effect was not reassuring—it was the calculated charm of a spider lowering itself onto a trembling fly.

Irisia's throat constricted. Every instinct screamed that this facade of civility was thinner than vellum over a void.

"Of course, my lord." Her voice emerged as a whisper, her neck bent so low her chin nearly touched her sternum. To meet those demonic eyes would be to stare into the heart of damnation itself.

With meticulous care, she recounted the Theocracy's panic:

"The High Council of the Theocracy have begun speculating on the nature of recent events, namely the overnight demise of the Draconic Kingdom and the inexplicable slaughter wrought upon both the Kingdom's own citizens and the invading beastmen forces. Several members of the Black Scripture went on a mission to investigate the aftermath of the calamity, and encountered a mysterious lich seemingly responsible for the ordeal. The Theocracy agents were ultimately forced to retreat against the might of the undead; their experts suspect that the Lich's arcane power may reach as far as the legendary Eighth Tier of magic."

Nothing. No flicker of surprise from the armored woman with her boar's helm. No twitch from the reptilian monk, his scaled fingers still as death. The flickering sorcerer's form wavered no more than usual. The blonde devil in lace's crimson lips remained set in that halfway mask between amusement and cruelty.

"Did they come to a conclusion?" The Demon Hand's question was a scalpel sliding between ribs.

"They have several theories. Some suspect a resurgence of Zuranon, the necromancy organization from decades past. Some suggest the recurring cycle of Player activity, the descent of god-like beings from beyond this realm. Most notably, the Cardinal of Light believes that it is the work of the Deathless, the rise of a new conspiracy to retake the reins of the world."

"And the Half-Elf? What were her thoughts?"

"The Supreme Chancellor did not engage in these particular discussions. She did, however, make several other declarations. First of which concerns the Staff of the great Sorcerer King. The Staff showed signs of activity at the same moment that a great spire of crimson energy appeared in the vicinity of the Draconic Kingdom, estimated to be around the time of the great calamity. She believes the truth lies in the middle of all the aforementioned theories."

There.

A tremor in the air. A fractional hitch in the chamber's oppressive weight, as if the shadows themselves had flinched. Then it was gone, smothered beneath the resuming pressure of those predatory gazes. Had she imagined it? Or had she, for the briefest instant, brushed against something like...doubt?

"I believe there is more?"

The former Cardinal of Darkness took a deep breath before responding:

"Yes, my lord. The Supreme Chancellor has also ordered the execution of one Lupusregina Beta, to be carried out in the open fields before the Immaculate Capital in three days."

A ripple passed through the chamber—a slow, gathering storm. The air grew heavy, thick with the promise of violence, pressing against Irisia's skin like the charged silence before a thunderclap.

The boar-helmed warrior did not snarl, did not roar. Instead, her gauntleted fingers flexed once, deliberately, the leather creaking with the strain of withheld fury. The plates of her armor seemed to darken, as if drinking in the torchlight only to exhale something far colder. Her deep brown eyes, visible through the slits of her helm, burned with a quiet, seething intensity—the kind that did not need to shout to promise annihilation.

Beside her, the cowled figure did not hiss, did not lash out. His form wavered, not into jagged tendrils, but into something more insidious—a flicker at the edges of perception, like a shadow that refused to settle. The temperature dropped, not in a sudden frost, but in a slow, creeping chill that seeped into bones.

But the blonde horror—

Her face split.

Not in hunger. Not in amusement.

In rage.

Her porcelain-perfect features twisted, her lips peeling back from teeth that seemed suddenly too sharp, too many. The delicate frills of her gown trembled, not with imagined wind, but with the sheer force of her fury, the fabric straining as if it might tear apart from the tension coiling beneath. Her crystal-blue eyes, once glinting with cruel amusement, now burned with a light so fierce it near blinded—a star on the verge of supernova.

The pressure in the room mounted, crushing, suffocating. Irisia's knees threatened to buckle. Her breath came in shallow, frantic gasps, her vision tunneling. She would die here. She would—

Then—

Silence.

The Demon Hand's presence slammed down like the closing of a tomb. The armored woman's tension eased, her armored shoulders settling back into disciplined stillness. Her cowled companion's form stabilized, his edges smoothing into something almost human again. The blonde woman's snarl froze, her rage arrested mid-snarl, her glowing eyes widening just a fraction—not in fear, but in recognition.

All of them turned, as one, toward the throne.

The Demon Hand had not moved. Had not raised his voice. Had not even blinked. But the air around him pulsed with something older than rage. Older than gods. The weight of his gaze was a command etched in fire and blood.

"Cardinal," he said, his tone so calm it near soothed. "Leave us."

She did not hesitate. She did not dare look back.

The door groaned shut behind her, sealing away the storm to come.

Demiurge's mind unfolded—a labyrinthine engine of calculation where thoughts moved not in sequence, but in fractal simultaneity. Even the vast intellect of the 7th Floor Guardian would have strained to parse the deluge of data now surging through his consciousness, each revelation a spark igniting chains of deduction that branched endlessly into the dark. Around him, the Pillars of the Deathless stood frozen, their breath held not in reverence, but in primal recognition: they were witnessing a predator's mind at the apex of its hunt.

With surgical precision, he severed emotion from analysis. The white-hot urge to reduce continents to cinders—to peel back the sky and let the abyss pour forth—was quarantined, locked away in the vaulted depths of his discipline. Only the work remained.

The Draconic Kingdom's demise. Millions of souls extinguished in a single night. A lich capable of wielding the Eighth Tier.

The facts crystallized, then shattered, their fragments rearranging into a thousand possible patterns. His neural pathways burned with the effort, synapses firing in constellations that would have driven a mortal mind to madness. Visions flickered at the edges of his perception:

—A crimson spire piercing a smoldering sky, its shadow stretching across kingdoms yet unconquered.

—The Guild Weapon's dormant heart shuddering awake, its pulse a drumbeat of war.

His smoldering eyes narrowed, the irises beneath his inscrutable glasses darkening to molten iron.

Has that woman finally begun to move? Or perhaps…

The question hung like a blade over the silence. There were only two others in this world whose intellect could rival his own—two minds capable of orchestrating cataclysm from the shadows through the shattered forces of Nazarick. Either of them, unleashed, could fracture nations through sheer cognitive force.

A new possibility ignited, cold and brilliant:

Has one of them finally found a way….to accomplish that which even He…?

The conclusion had barely taken shape in his mind before Demiurge wrenched it back—not discarded, but sealed away in the black vaults of his intellect, where hypotheses fermented into certainty. Speculation was the currency of lesser minds; he demanded proof, patterns, the unassailable geometry of fact. Yet even as he locked the thought away, a corrosive truth remained: in his current state, shackled by circumstance, there were moves he could not counter, players he could not yet reach. Any move he made now in blunder and presumption would only serve to disrupt the machinations of those minds he deemed his equal. No, he would not make that mistake.

As the focus of his demonic mind moved on to the next matter of hand, however, a fresh wave of hatred surged through him—not the hot, reckless fury of beasts, but something far more dangerous: the icy, infinite wrath of a being who had measured eternity and found it lacking. It threatened to unspool his focus, to turn his brilliance into a weapon without a target. With a will honed into an instrument of perfect control, he crushed the emotion to powder. His mind, now a scalpel glinting in the dark, turned to the next calculation.

And there—

Clarity.

Like a chessmaster spotting the inevitable checkmate three turns ahead, the path unveiled itself. It mattered not whether this world shattered or the next; no permutation of reality existed where he would permit the Supreme One's legacy to be tarnished. The Theocracy's arrogance was not merely an insult—it was an existential miscalculation. They had mistaken his restraint for weakness, his strategy for hesitation.

The air around him warped, reality itself recoiling from the pressure of his decision. The Pillars of the Deathless stiffened as one, their instincts howling—not in fear, but in grim exultation. The pieces were in motion now. The game they had played in shadows was ending.

And the board?

The board would drown in fire.

Demiurge rose.

"It is time."

His voice was the crash of a mountain into the sea, the sound of a god pronouncing doom. The chamber trembled. Torchlight guttered, not from wind, but from the sheer force of his presence.

"Prepare for war."

Two sentences. Six words.

And the world held its breath.

Author's Note: I'm trying to overhaul my writing style, so you might notice a pretty significant change in my prose. I'm curious what people think about it, and if it's too much or not, so please give me some feedback in the reviews and I'll try to adjust accordingly. Thanks guys.