As Vinea vanished completely, the six demon guards moved to surround the altar, their burning eyes fixed on Caleb.
He looked up at the stars wheeling overhead and reached out to Delia.She was there, blazing with determination and fear and a love so powerful it made him ache for her that much more.She was fighting her way through Angel’s Dream’s twisted corridors, facing horrors that would break most people.
Hold on,he thought, projecting the message with everything he had.I’m coming for you.Just hold on.
But even as he sent the thought, he knew the truth.He was trapped here, bound by mystical chains in a ritual chamber carved from ancient stone.The only way out was through the ritual itself — and that meant triggering his sabotage early, before Vinea could complete the preparations.
It was time to stop playing along.
Caleb closed his eyes and reached deep into himself, past the human shell that made him vulnerable, past the fear and doubt that whispered he wasn’t strong enough.He touched the core of his dual nature, the place where mortal determination met demonic fire.
The mystical bonds began to smoke and crack.
“Bring me to the altar,” Caleb said, making sure he sounded resigned rather than grimly determined.“Let’s get this over with.”
The demon guards exchanged glances, as though they weren’t quite sure they should do anything with their master gone.After that brief hesitation, however, they moved to comply.As they escorted him toward the meteorite altar at the chamber’s center, each step made the carved symbols on the floor pulse brighter in response to his presence.By the time he reached the altar itself, the entire chamber was alive with sickly red light.
“Lie down,” one of the guards commanded, and Caleb complied, settling himself on the chilly stone surface.The meteorite felt wrong against his back, too smooth and too cold, as if it was actively draining heat from his body.
The largest of the demon guards produced what looked like a ceremonial dagger, its blade carved from the same black stone as the chamber walls.But when it held the weapon up to the starlight, Caleb could see that it wasn’t entirely black — threads of silver ran through the obsidian, forming patterns that didn’t follow any earthly geometry.
“Lord Vinea said to begin the preparatory bloodletting,” the demon growled.“You are to remain conscious throughout.”
Caleb stared up at the stars above him and tried to center himself.The sabotage he’d planted throughout the ritual framework was ready to trigger, and the bonds holding his powers in check were weakening with every surge of emotion.
All he needed was the right moment.
“Any last words?”the demon asked as it positioned the dagger over Caleb’s chest.
“Yeah,” Caleb said, making sure he met the creature’s burning gaze without flinching.“You really should have done your homework on quarter demons.”
Before the demon could ask what he meant, Caleb let the fury he’d been holding in finally explode outward.White-hot flames erupted from his body, fueled by every ounce of anger and determination and love he possessed.The mystical bonds holding his powers vaporized, and the ceremonial robes he wore began to smoke as the modifications he’d worked into their fabric activated.
The demon guard stumbled backward, surprise flickering across its inhuman features.“Impossible.The containment field should have — ”
“Should have been designed by someone who actually understood how mixed blood works,” Caleb broke in as he rolled off the altar, flames wreathing his entire body.“See, the thing about quarter demons is that we don’t follow the same rules as full demons.Our power doesn’t come only from Hell — it comes from the connection between planes.And you just brought me to the most powerful nexus point on the continent.”
The chamber’s mystical architecture was responding to his presence, ley lines blazing brighter as his unleashed power fed back into the network.But instead of stabilizing the ritual framework, his energy created cascading failures throughout the system, turning Vinea’s carefully balanced equations into chaos.
The six demon guards rushed him, but Caleb was ready.Two years in Hell had taught him that sometimes the best defense was an overwhelming offense.He met their charge with a wall of fire that sent all but one of them scrambling backward, their forms beginning to dissolve as the flames ate away at their ability to maintain a physical form on this plane.
The remaining guard — larger and more substantial than the others — managed to get close enough to rake claws across Caleb’s ribs.Pain flared through his side, but the injury only fed his anger, making his flames burn that much hotter.He grabbed the creature by what passed for its throat and channeled every ounce of heat he could muster directly into its core.
The demon’s death scream echoed off the chamber walls as it crumbled to ash.
Around him, the ritual framework continued to unravel.Mystical conduits sparked and failed as his sabotage spread through the chamber’s architecture.Each failure sent tremors through the stone, and the careful patterns of the summoning circle began to warp.
But something was wrong.He could feel it in the way the ley line energy was responding to his interference.Instead of simply disrupting the ritual, his actions had created a feedback loop, and raw power was beginning to flow back through the network directly into him.
Caleb tried to shut it down, to stop drawing from the nexus, but the energy had momentum now.It poured into him like water through a broken dam, more raw power than he’d ever channeled before.The pain from his injuries faded to nothing as supernatural fire raced through his veins.
It was incredible.Intoxicating.He could feel his human limitations beginning to burn away, replaced by something vast and terrible and utterly without mercy.
More,something whispered in the back of his mind.Take more.You can end this.You can end everything.
The chamber walls began to crack under the strain of so much uncontrolled energy.Chunks of ancient stone crashed down around him, but Caleb barely noticed.The power kept flowing, kept building, kept changing him into something that could contain forces no mortal was meant to touch.
His human side screamed warnings he ignored, too drunk on the rush of absolute power to care about any of the possible consequences of what he was doing.
