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Bargain Infernal Episode 101: "Shadows of Ruin"
The golden light of the Sanctuary was trembling with a quivering mass as the Archon of Judgment stood in its midst, shining bright and replete with a potent aura of divine wrath. Alex Mercer only had a nanosecond in which to perceive the full power of the entity's presence as his knees betrayed him. His very essence seemed to howl in revolt at the celestial force flooding the room.Helena tightened her grip on her sword, the holy glow flickering in the wake of the entity's arrival. "We need to move. Now."Lucifer, for once, wasn't smirking. His golden eyes flickered between caution and something that almost resembled fear. "Oh, this is going to be a problem."The Archon stepped forward, its voice like a celestial bell tolling a death knell. "You have disrupted the balance for the final time. The corruption of the abyss, the defilement of the Sanctuary this ends now.A pulse of light burst forth from its form, sending shockwaves through the crumbling chamber. The force sent Alex crashi
Bargain Infernal Episode 102: Tendrils of Darkness
The air inside Sanctuary was heavy with unease, every breath laced with apprehension. Above the cracked ground, there hovered the luminous figure of the Archon of Judgment, its radiant form crackling with divine energy.Sanctuary quivered before it as if the very walls realized that the celestial authority now stands within them.Lucifer, for once, had lost his smirk. He stood rigid, golden eyes narrowed. "Of all the problems I expected tonight, you weren't one of them."The Archon's voice echoed through the chamber, layered with echoes of ancient power. "You have meddled with forces beyond your right, fallen one. The balance has been disrupted."Helena gripped her sword harder, the holy light flickering along its blade. "If you're here to render judgment, you should start with the abyss. That thing nearly destroyed everything."The Archon only slightly turned its radiant look toward her. "The abyss is a result of disobedience. Your meddling merely puts off the inevitable."Alex, stil
Bargain Infernal Episode 103: "A Shattered Dawn"
The blinding light of Lucifer's power swirled through the air, crackling with an intensity that seemed to distort reality itself. The abyss shrieked in agony, its form flickering between substance and shadow, as if it were caught in the throes of being torn apart by forces too immense to comprehend.And the golden energy flowed out from the obelisk, pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat, shaking through the trembling walls of the Sanctuary.And then in the wink of an eye, it was gone, just gone, and replaced with an eerie silence.Alex blinked rapidly, his vision still swimming with the aftereffects of the blinding explosion. His body ached with the remnants of his hellfire powers flickering weakly beneath his skin, but he could feel something else too: coldness, a heavy absence.His pulse quickened as he scanned the room, his eyes searching for the abyssal creature, but it was gone. The only sound was the faint crackling of the obelisk's fading light.Lucifer was the first to break
Bargain Infernal Episode 104: "Shadows Unbound"
The world around Alex dissolves into darkness. His senses are swallowed whole by the crushing weight of the abyss, suffocating blackness pressing against his very soul.He feels it tugging at him, clawing its way into his mind like the sharpest of knives, slicing through his thoughts, leaving them fragmented and disjointed.He cannot move; he cannot speak he can only feel the abyss wrapping around him, claiming him, pulling him deeper into its void.In the distance, a flickering light; it was dying, barely hanging on to existence. A memory, a whisper of something not part of the dark.Helena.Her name was a lifeline, pulling him back from the precipice. He clung to it, his mind reaching out, but the darkness twisted it, turning it into something twisted and wrong. He was drowning, but there was a spark, a chance, a shred of hope buried beneath the suffocating shadows.Suddenly the void was torn apart. A burning, tearing pain shot through him, ripping at the edges of his consciousness
Bargain Infernal Episode 105: "Fractured Destiny"
The world was a shiver away from destruction, trembling and breaking. Alex felt it its pulse was like a thing that could only make his bones feel the pounding so strongly they might break in it. Behind them, the wraith writhed like an angry living creature with tendrils of darkness reaching into the air as if it hungered for the pair and might drag them to it.Helena's sword flashed brighter now as she grasped it with tightened fingers. End.They were doing this together. No turning back now."Do it," Alex said, his voice low and rough.Helena's eyes met his, though they shone with a set purpose and even a touch of misery. She nodded once, as if she could convince herself that this was the only option open to her.Without another word, her sword arced through the air, a line of golden light cutting across the darkness. The rift responded with a screamed howl that vibrated the walls of Sanctuary.The moment Helena's blade hit the obelisk, the room erupted into a burst of light and powe
Bargain Infernal Episode 106: "The Price of Sacrifice"
The rift pulsed with dark energy, the air around it thick with the weight of impending doom. Alex and Helena stood at the edge of the abyss, their hands tightly intertwined, their bodies trembling with the enormity of the choice they were about to make.The rift had already begun to tear at the very fabric of reality, its edges unraveling as the Old Ones, the ancient, malevolent beings, stirred beyond the veil.The room felt impossible to breathe, the walls pressed in as if the universe was collapsing around them. Every beat of his chest echoed with each heartbeat, a reminder of just how little time they had.The air stank of charred metal and something deeper, something old that made his stomach churn over.The dark that had eaten the rift alive seemed to move, a thing alive, with an insatiable hunger for them all, stopping at nothing to claim what was theirs.Lucifer's words haunted him, and the weight of what lay on the other side of the tear was crushing on his shoulders. The Old
Bargain Infernal Episode 107: "The Prisoners of Eternity"
The figure that stepped through the rift was unlike anything Alex and Helena had ever seen. It loomed before them, its dark form an endless void that seemed to absorb the light around it. Its features were at once ancient and indescribable, shifting in ways that defied reason and logic.The figure was taller than any human, its limbs stretched unnaturally long, the darkness that clung to it pulsating as if it were alive. It was no longer just a shadow this was something far worse.Helena froze, her breath hitching in her throat. The sword in her hand trembled, its light flickering as the darkness grew stronger. Alex’s heart raced, the weight of the situation crashing over him like a tidal wave. The rift had opened, and what had emerged was far more terrifying than they had imagined.“What is that?” Helena whispered, her voice barely audible as she took a step back, her eyes wide with fear.“I… I don’t know,” Alex said, his voice strained. He could feel the oppressive weight of the cre
Bargain Infernal Episode 108: "The Shattered Veil"
The world was silent.Alex couldn’t tell if he was still alive. He had lost all sense of time, all awareness of his surroundings. The last thing he remembered was the rift, a blinding surge of energy, and then darkness. He had pushed against it with every ounce of strength he had, and then... nothing.He could hear Helena’s voice faintly in the distance, but it sounded muffled, distorted, as if it were coming from underwater."Alex… please… hold on."Her words pierced through the fog in his mind, pulling him back from the edge of oblivion. Slowly, his senses began to return first, the cold, biting air that wrapped around his skin like a frozen shroud. Then, the weight of his body pressing into the ground, the rough texture of stone beneath his hands."Helena?" His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.He forced his eyes open, blinking against the dim light. It took a moment for his vision to adjust, but when it did, he saw her. Helena was kneeling beside him, her face pale and streaked
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Episode 224: One Final Strike
The world fractured.At the moment the boy lunged towards him, his sword clashing against the Hunter’s blade of shadow-steel, reality shattered like glass.His feet were no longer standing on solid ground.The battlefield the stars, the ruined earth pulsed, tremblied, shifting like an unënded painting.For one terrifying second He felt himself being torn in two.Not by a blade.Not by the Abyss.By time itself.He staggered back, gasping, his vision going double, reality fracturing into two separate lines of incident at once.One he stood here, fighting, existing.In the other he had never been born.Never consumed mermaid flesh.Never imagined, never suffered, never fought.Just gone."This is the correction."The Hunter’s voice remained steady, uemotional."Your existence is an error."Kaiza bared his teeth, pushing forward, screwing his sword back alight."You talk too much."And then he attacked again.The Impossible DuelThis time he moved faster.He could still taste the Abyss
Episode 223: The Last Throne
It was no longer their place of battle.The sunless sky was now a filthy mirror of a world that had perished before history.”Under Ethan and Asha’s feet, the ground shook, not with ruination but with something trying to rewrite existence itself.And the whole thing revolves aroundThe light wasn’t from this world, and now it burned behind their eyes, finally exposed by the broken perishable mask.They weren’t human.They weren’t divine.They’d been something before all of those things.And the closer they got, just their walking warped the air next to them.“You have walked too far, Hollow King.”“You’ve shattered too many chains.“And now you will see what should have been forgotten.”Ethan’s hands made fists.Asha inhaled slowly and deeply.They had no time to think.Because the First King moved.And the final battle began.Before Ethan even had the time to react, he found the First King in front of him.Their move defied space itself—not teleportation, not speed, but the here and
Episode 222: The Ones Who Devour
The sky was breaking.Helena became the epicenter of the battle that should have never been.The Firstborn were no more, their sacred monarchy rent asunder, their celestial kingdom fallen to ruin.But the universe had no love for vacant thrones.And now.It had been supplanted by something else.Reality tore, the sky splitting open like a wound that wouldn’t heal.Out from the void, they came.Not Hollowed.Not firstborn.Something else.Older than war itself, something.They did not have names.They did not have faces.They were churning, writhing aspects of the consummate void, their nacreous flesh contorting into a thousand forms at once—humanoid, monstrous, holy, forgotten.And when they spoke.It wasn’t with voices.It was with thoughts that did not belong to Helena, curling into her thoughts, unwinding her like leaves of an old book."You do not belong here."Helena’s entire body tensed.The Hollow King did not move.The Old One merely watched.Silver fire sizzled along the edge
Episode 221: The Thing That Should Not Wake
The Silence Before the EndThe battlefield was quiet.Too quiet.Helena found herself in the ruins of a war that had rewritten history. The Firstborn's God-King was vanished, their form crushed into void, their heavenly horde blown away like dust.The Hollowed had won.And yet.The heir was wrong.Heavy. Tainted.Like something was waiting.“Yup,” Cain gasped, running a bloody hand through his hair, his silver eyes showing some signs of uneasiness. “Please tell me it’s not just me that feels this.”Helena gripped her throbbing fingers, the black-fire dagger still buzzing in her hand. "You’re not."The Hollow King hadn’t budged.They froze there, their shape like a void, their head cocked slightly, listening.Helena stepped forward slowly, the ground crackling beneath her boots. The Firstborn were disappearing, their godly light blinking out like red stars in the firmament.They had lost.So why did it seem like something worse had just begun?Then.The world shifted.The Veil Splits O
Episode 220: The Forsaken vs. the Divine
Helena did not kneel.Not to kings.Not to gods.Not to the Firstborn, who had cut history to shape and made it fit.She had stood against death.She had stood against fate.And she would stand now.Even as the God-King of the Firstborn loomed before her, his celestial fire coiling in the air like an executioner’s blade.As the burden of their command bore down upon reality itself, compelling everything to bend.Helena stood tall.Her dagger blazed with black flames, oscillating between the Hollow King’s strength and something more ancient.Something that was hers and hers alone.The battlefield was silent.Even the Hollow hesitated.Because no one had ever disobeyed the Firstborn’s command and survived.Until now.The God-King’s expression did not change.They took a slow step forward, their silver eyes calm and infinite, burning with cold.“Then I will break you.”The world shattered.A void pulled inward, the air itself ripping apart as the God-King began his assault, faster than l
Episode 219: The Forsaken Queen
Helena felt everything.The Hollow King thrummed through her as she surged forward, a scintillation of wicked pleasure that burnt in her blood like a fire that would never run soft. Not only did it fill her, it transformed her.No longer was she Helena, the fighter who had resisted destiny.She was something more.Something that never was meant to exist.And as she stood at the very center of the battlefield, surrounded as she was by another ruin crumbling around her, one of a war older than time itself, she understood.The Firstborn knew it, too.They had expected a rebel.They had expected resistance.But they hadn’t expected this.They had not believed she would survive the Hollow King’s might.And they did not expect her to turn it against them.”His silver eyes, previously flooded with naught but icy apathy, now sparkled with another emotion.Fear.And Helena?Helena smiled.Then she attacked.Her movements were like a storm, her new blade slashing through the Firstborn’s ranks.
Episode 218: The Moment When the World Picked a Side
The battlefield froze.Helena’s voice still rang in the ruins, suspended in the air like a blade poised to fall."I will fight for the truth."And just like that.She had chosen a side.The Hollow King turned its void-like eyes to her, unreadable.Cain gaped, his breath ragged, his silver eyes bouncing between disbelief and something else. Something closer to fear.The Firstborn did not speak.They didn’t scream in rage or throw accusations of betrayal.Instead.They smiled.And Helena learned something a little too late.She had walked into a war older than she could understand.And each side had been waiting for her to make a choice.Now.There was no turning back.The Gods Strike FirstThe Firstborn moved first.Helena didn’t have time to react before the sky itself lit on fire.The clouds parted, hurling javelins of heavenly fire onto the battlefield. The Hollowed howled, their flesh caught alight, their bodies liquidizing beneath the assault.The pallor of the air cracked apart b
Episode 217: The Gods Must Bleed
A Sky That ShattersThe heavens collapsed.The sky literally ripped apart, opening like a wound in reality itself, and Helena hardly had time to scream. The battlefield below was engulfed in golden fire and infinite darkness, as though the universe itself was tearing in two.The Firstborn were the falling stars, their weapons blazing with heavenly fire, their silver eyes lit with righteous fury. The Hollowed howled back, their broken voices rising like a war hymn, thair void-forged blades craving vengeance.This wasn’t a battle.This was annihilation.Helena moved.She ducked, avoiding a sweep of a Firstborn warrior that cut through the air where her head had only seconds before been. The heat of their blade seared against her skin, too near, too quick.But she was faster.She spun, her dagger slicing through their divine armor, and, for the first time, she heard the sound she never thought she’d hear.A firstborn screamed.Helena’s breath hitched.She could kill them.And if she coul
Episode 216: The Ah Which Ends Worlds
A Throne of Lies, A War of TruthHelena’s breath was quick and brittle, her heart pounding against her rib cage.The Hollow King knelt before her.Not as an enemy.Not as a monster.But as a warrior awaiting a response.The gods had walked the earth before her, and the earth had been their altar. They stood behind their King, all soulless eyes on her, waiting for her to make a choice.And in the distance.Something else was coming.Something worse.Cain moaned next her, spitting blood from his mouth. “Well,” he muttered, “this complicated fast.”Helena barely heard him.Because she wasn’t looking at Cain.The throne of the Hollowed, upthrust from the ruins, split reality like a jagged wound.It was waiting for her.And deep inside, she knew.If she did that, if she chose the Hollowed, there could be no undoing it.She would not only be battling the Firstborn.She would be waging war on the very gods themselves.And it was a war no one had ever won.The Hollow King’s voice was gentle,
