2025-01-26 18:56:41
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
Bargain Infernal Episode 51: Shattered Horizons
It was not the same world anymore. The fight against the Sovereign of Despair had ripped through the very fabric of existence. Above Alex and Mara, the sky was a painting of chaos; blood-red streaks intertwined with streaks of darkness that pulsed like a living heart. And yet, even in ruin, Alex's hand found Mara's, fingers interlocking as if holding onto each other would anchor them to reality.You alright?"Alex's voice was a rusty rasp, each syllable like it weighed the universe on his tongue. His hellfire faltered weakly at his fingertips, a shadow of the fire that had writhed like an alive flame mere moments ago.Mara nodded, her trembling hands belying the fear in her eyes. Her silver-white aura was now only a soft glow that barely pushed the shadows back, no longer shining as brightly as stars used to do. "I'll survive. But Alex, it's still out there.She didn’t need to say more. The Sovereign had retreated, its monstrous form dissolving into the darkness that seeped through the
Bargain Infernal Episode 52: Abyss Rising
The attack of the Sovereign of Despair left Alex and Mara battered but standing.The shape of the creature shuddered and convulsed, its tortured shape flickering like a dying ember, as if reality was straining to hold itself together.Then, in an instant, it was gone into the abyssal void, its enormous presence retreating behind dark tides that receded from the shore like the going out of a tide.Yet, the short-lived respite was suffocatingly brief because the air was heavy with an unspeakable sense of foreboding, thick with the promise of impending catastrophe.The silence that followed was oppressive, palpable, and malignant, seeming to seethe and twist with an evil life of its own, whispering cruel assurances that the devastation was far from over and that the true horror was only waiting in the wings, biding its time before unleashing a maelstrom of unmitigated terror upon the world.Alex gripped Mara's hand tighter, their fingers laced together like lifelines. Her power still sho
Bargain Infernal Episode 53: Dance with Shadows
The air was heavy with tension as Alex and Mara descended into the abandoned cathedral, once majestic arches now engulfed by creeping vines and shadows that seemed to have a life of their own. The faint dripping of water resonated through the vast space and mixed with the quiet creak of their footsteps against the cracked stone floor. Alex's grip on the hilt of his blade tightened as he scanned the darkness for any sign of movement. Hellfire flickered faintly along its edge. "Do you feel it?" Mara whispered, her voice barely audible but laced with urgency. Her own weapon, a slender spear of luminous light, hummed faintly in her hands. Alex nodded, his jaw clenched. "It's here. Watching us." After that last meeting with the Sovereign of Despair, it was nowhere to be seen, but Alex knew that did not mean it was gone. It was waiting and planning; it would stay hidden, ready for its time to emerge once again and cause damage. And there, behind these broken spires, behind the quiet air o
Bargain Infernal Episode 54: The Despair
The fissure widened with an earsplitting crack, a jagged wound splitting the earth beneath Alex and Mara’s feet. The eerie glow pulsed in time with a rhythmic, almost sentient heartbeat, bathing the chamber in a sickly luminescence. The Sovereign of Despair may have retreated into the shadows, but its presence lingered, thick and oppressive, clinging to the walls like a malevolent specter waiting for the perfect moment to strike once more.Mara gripped Alex’s arm instinctively, her fingers tightening as another tremor shook the ground. The darkness in the fissure roiled and churned, tendrils of mist slithering upward, whispering in tongues too ancient to decipher. Something lurked beyond, something neither of them had yet faced something that watched.Alex managed to even his breathing, though his heart beat in his chest like a war drum. He had battled innumerable demons and gazed into the darkness so many times, counting was pointless, but this… this was different. The Sovereign's pa
Bargain Infernal Episode 55: The Reckoning
The tremors beneath the underground chamber grew stronger; the ground continued to crack wide open beneath Alex and Mara's feet. Eerie light issued from the rift, pulsing in erratic spasms as though something inside were stirring, seeking to break forth. A whirlwind of freezing air shot upwards, screaming up through the battered cathedral above it, bearing whispers inhuman, broken, guttural voices that slithered chillingly down the length of Alex's spine.Mara gripped her spear tightly, its light flashing wildly in the oppressive darkness. "Alex… this isn't over," she whispered, her voice laced with barely contained fear.Alex nodded, moving protectively in front of her. His blade, still wreathed in hellfire, cast ominous shadows against the stone walls, but even its infernal glow seemed diminished against the abyssal radiance seeping from below.The tear widened with a jerky, savage lurch, jagged cracks racing out through the cavern like dark tongues. From deep inside, a pair of elon
Bargain Infernal Episode 56: The Blood Red Sky Awakens
The tremors hadn't stopped.Even after they had escaped the collapsing ruins, even as they now stood on the deserted streets beneath the blood-red sky, the ground beneath Alex's feet still rumbled with an unnatural pulse, like the slow, deliberate heartbeat of something stirring beneath.Something waiting.Something hungry.Mara rested against a rusted lamppost, her breaths sharp, shallow gasps. Her spear, still clutched tightly in her hand, had lost much of its glow; the divine light flickered weakly. Whatever energy she'd poured into their last attack had drained her, and it showed.Alex peered down the path toward the remains of the cathedral, tightening his grip on his sword. The air hung heavy with dust and debris, but even through this miasma, he could feel it the Sovereign's presence had not been snuffed out. If anything, it was stronger, bolder."That thing," Mara said, swallowing hard. "It wasn't the real nightmare, was it?"Alex shook his head, jaw clenched. "No."The memory
Bargain Infernal Episode 57: The Eye
The roar that burst from the abyss was not just sound. It was a force one that rippled through reality itself, warping the air, shattering glass in the buildings around them, and sending Alex and Mara stumbling backward.Alex clenched his jaw against the pain still lancing through his skull, his fingers digging into the hilt of his sword like a lifeline. The visions had faded, but the lingering weight of what he had seen clung to him like a curse.The city was collapsing.Not in that manner of dilapidated structure that crumbles with time but in a more unnatural, eerie way. Streets twisted, darkness deepened even further, and shadows that began to bleed into the abyss extended like a pulsing infection swallowing everything in sight.And a thousand golden eyes stared at him from the abysmal reaches.Come home, child of the fallen.The words caressed his thoughts once more. Chilling shivers ran from his spine.No.He gritted his teeth and forced the voice out. He wouldn't let it control
Bargain Infernal Episode 58: Descent Into Darkness
Tendrils of shadow wrapped themselves around Alex's limbs like living chains, pulling tighter with every desperate struggle. His body was being dragged toward the abyss, toward the gaping maw of darkness that pulsed like a living entity, whispering his name in a voice that made his soul shudder.He dug his fingers into the crumbling concrete beneath him, his nails scraping against the debris, but it was futile. The abyss wanted him. The Harbinger had claimed him.And worst of all some part of him felt like it had always been meant to happen."No no, I won't!" he gritted out, every muscle in his body straining against the pull.The abyss responded.A shockwave of raw, eldritch power erupted from its depths, throwing splintering cracks through the ground. Buildings that barely remained standing crashed down, their ruins tumbling into the void. The air twisted, warping as if reality itself was unraveling at its seams.And the Harbinger? It stood at the edge of the abyss, regarding him th
Latest Chapter
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,
