Pure energy rushed through me. The pages of the Chronicle glowed with incomprehensible text as a voice echoed out. The familiar words pounded in my head over and over again, victory at any cost.

I grit my teeth as the power of the book flowed through me. Using the Chronicle three times was taking its toll. If I had known Abigor would suddenly kill himself, I would have chosen a different method of dealing with his regeneration, but the thought was something I had barely even considered. In all the years I had been fighting them, I had never seen a Demon take the easy way out. They would always fight to their last breath, doing everything in their power to do as much damage as posssible before their death. Only certain Demonkin with unique bodies would sometimes self-destruct when forced by a higher-ranked Demon’s command, but even that was rare.

I didn’t have time to berate myself now, though. I simply had to fix my mistake. Pain was a small price to pay if it stopped Envy or his army from entering this realm before we were ready.

Taking a deep breath, I forced the overwhelming power of the Chronicle down and brought it under my control. I eyed the inky-black void and the nearby rift between realms. I had to move fast. Dom was blocking the brunt of the spacial disruptions from reaching me, but he could not maintain it for long. His right arm was already injured from our earlier attack. He hadn’t said anything about it yet, but from what I could see, the internal damage was probably more severe than he was letting on. Only grit determination was keeping him from screaming in pain.

Reaching my hand towards the squirming shadow, I directed the power radiating out of the Chronicle. The area around the black void seemed to shudder. It felt as if a hand had reached out and grabbed hold of space itself.

I smiled nostalgically at the familiar feeling. My teacher’s talent had always been the strangest for me to understand. It was only now that I was an Adept that I had even the faintest idea of how it worked. It was as if the laws of the universe itself were bending to accommodate my will. They reached out and wrapped around the black void. I had to be especially careful at this point not to let the two talents touch. The void was a volatile and dangerous talent. Once it came into being, it did not need to be maintained like other talents. It would instead feed off of any energy it came into contact with. Even Azreal sometimes had difficulty controlling it, and he had a thousand years of practice. If he were here, he could have quickly dealt with this small mass, but I had no confidence in replicating that with the Chronicle. Instead, I had to be careful, cautious, using a secondary power to maneuver it.

I completely surrounded the area around the void with the borrowed talent the Chronicle granted me and urged the ability to shift the entire space towards the unstable portal between realms. Sweat started pouring down my forehead as the energy in my body rapidly drained away. The space I was moving was small, but it felt like I was trying to push a mountain. My arms shook, and my breathing quickly turned ragged. The black void moved painfully slow as it inched towards the portal.

As I labored to shove the void, I heard a voice begin to mock me, a voice from beyond the rift. “Poor little Aurielle, all this time, and you still struggle to use even a fraction of the Aevus family’s greatest armament.”

I clenched my jaw as the blurry figure of Envy appeared on the other side of the portal. He sat casually, leaning against a giant beast. He looked as if he were watching a drama unfold. An amused grin danced across his lips.

“I’ll show you how much of a struggle it is when I use the Chronicle to tear a hole in your chest, Envy,” I responded with a grunt as I continued to push the void forward.

“Oh, please do. I would love to copy the ability of a division commander. That would make everything so very easy,” Envy replied with a chuckle. He rested his cheek on his hand as he watched me struggle to move the void towards the portal. “Honestly, I don’t understand why you are trying so hard. At this point, closing this rift will only delay my arrival by a week at most. Why do you even bother?”

“The fact that you don’t understand is why you remain the weakest of the Archdemon’s seven generals.”

Envy’s eyes narrowed. The smile was gone from his face. “I see. Since that is how it is, I should put in a little effort of my own then.”

I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the Demon’s words. With renewed determination, I pushed the borrowed power with all my might. I had to close the rift as quickly as possible.

While doing so, I kept an eye on Envy’s actions. I didn’t know what he had planned, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

A creature handed him something. The distorted image through the half-formed portal made it challenging to see what it was at first. It looked like an egg with a strange pattern on it… No. It was a rift stone, a very big rift stone!

My heartbeat skyrocketed as I realized what Envy was about to do. A rift stone of that size could stabilize the portal between realms in seconds.

I shouted at the top of my lungs in desperation. I couldn’t care about the cost anymore. I pushed all the power I had remaining into shoving the void forward. It didn’t matter what happened afterwards so long as the rift collapsed.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me. My domain collapsed as it ran out of power to maintain it, and I began to fall out of the sky.

Dom reached out his hand, grabbing me before I could fall too far. “I’ve got you,” he said. His firm hand wrapped around my waist.

I nodded in appreciation, but my eyes were locked on the portal. The black void fell into the rift at the same moment as Envy crushed the rift stone between his fingers. Two forces intertwined. The effects of the rift stone caused the portal to grow, and the blurry view became crystal clear. The influx of energy only lasted for a second, though, before the void started to expand at a frightening pace. The portal began to waver again as the energy in it was rapidly consumed.

Envy did not seem concerned as he tapped the beast he had been leaning against and pointed towards the portal. “Bring her to me.”

The Demonkin growled in response. It moved to reveal a body larger than most houses with four long gangly arms. The situation in the portal was far from stable, and anything passing through would be lucky to arrive in one piece, but the Demonkin did not show any hesitation as it carried out its master’s order.

The clawed hand of the Demonkin reached through the portal. A finger was sliced clean from the hand as well as a chunk of the creature’s forearm, but if it felt any pain, it didn’t show on the Demonkin’s face.

The blood-thirty aura of an Alpha washed over me. As close as we were to the rift, the Demonkin did not need to step through to reach me. He simply stretched out his long arm.

I did not need to feel its grip to know this Alpha was strong. Just from its aura I could tell it was almost comparable to the Demons I had just fought. Even if I had any energy left in me, this Demonkin would have been a troublesome enemy. Right now, though, I couldn’t even fly anymore.

I could feel the heat radiating from the Alpha’s skin before it even touched me. A stench like Sulphur mixed with rotten flesh wafted through the air.

I clenched my fist, preparing to do whatever I could to stave off the creature. The portal would collapse soon. I had suceeded in my paln. The void was consuming it by the second. We just had to survive less than a minute.

I felt Dom’s right arm tremble as he held me. His domain clashed with the clawed hand of the beast, slowing its approach but not stopping it. I could see the sweat on his forehead as the two forces clashed. He did not look any better than I felt. The combination of all the battles until this point, unleashing the combined attack, and withstanding the direct force of the unstable rift, left the man teetering on the edge. I knew he was too exhausted to face this enemy, and he knew it too.

“Sorry about this, Aurielle,” he said with a weary determination in his voice. I felt his arm loosen as he dropped me. “I will hold it back for as long as I can.”

I reached out, grabbing the man’s gauntlet as I dangled in the air. “Don’t you dare! You can’t fight that thing alone.” I shouted furiously.

Dom smiled. There was a mix of sorrow and pride in his eyes. “It was the greatest honor of my life fighting by your side. Look after Sebastion and Tia for me. Don’t let them do anything too stupid.”

The gauntlet on Dom’s right hand came undone and it slipped from his fingers. I fell, shouting at Dom as the large hand on the beast broke through his domain and closed around him.

There was a brief explosion as two forces collided. Dom’s fist met with the Demonkin’s hand, but without any other talents to empower it, the force behind the blow was too weak to stop the creature as it grabbed him.

I could see Envy’s eyes, full of mirth and ridicule, as he watched Dom’s sacrifice. The beast pulled the man through the portal and into the realm of Demons.

The Demonkin dropped Dom at Envy’s feet. He was bleeding from a wound on his leg created when he passed through the unstable portal, but the pain didn’t stop him from standing. His back was perfectly straight as he faced the Demon infinitely stronger than himself. There were no signs of fear. Instead, Dom smiled as he clenched his fists and raised them in preparation for one final fight.

The image of his bravery was burned into my mind as the portal between the two realms finally collapsed. I fell from the sky, clutching the sole gauntlet to my chest. Tears were lost in the wind as I cried.