Limbo was wrong.

All of it.

The air didn't just sting, it dragged. It clawed at their lungs and made every breath feel borrowed. Shadows here weren't mere absences of light, they had texture and pressure. It was as if darkness itself resented their presence.

Silas stepped forward, his boot crunching over brittle bone buried beneath a shroud of ash. The sound echoed too loudly in the silence.

To his left, Sergeant Moon followed, rifle drawn, scanning every corner. His sharp eyes missed nothing, but even he couldn't mask the tension in his jaw.

Behind them, Sergeant McEvoy muttered curses under his breath, his blade pulsing faintly with runes etched into its edge.

The sky, if it could be called that, wasn’t a sky at all. It pulsed and writhed, a sheet of bruised violet stretched over a dying world. Silent lightning cracked across the expanse, revealing silhouettes that shouldn’t have been there.

“This is it,” Silas murmured.

He halted before a twisted archway. It loomed like a gateway into a cathedral from a forgotten god’s nightmare. Its spires curled toward the heavens, warped as if reaching for something that would never return.

Moon narrowed his eyes. “You’re sure he’s here?”

Silas didn't look back. “He never leaves this place. Not anymore.”

He could feel it. The weight in the air. The thick, pulsing dread.

He's here.

Nythor’s presence wasn’t just nearby. It was stitched into the very fabric of this realm.

They stepped through.

Inside, the Sanctum of Echoes breathed.

Not metaphorically.

The walls pulsed and contracted, stone shifting with wet, creaking tension as if the building itself was alive... and in pain.

Whispers drifted like dust on the stale air. Names. Pleas. Laughter turned inside out.

McEvoy flinched. “This place ain’t right. I’ve fought banshees that felt more welcoming.”

Silas said nothing. He tightened his grip on his blade. The runes shimmered in response, recognising the magic in the air.

At the far end of the hall, a raised pulpit made of obsidian jutted upward like a throne for the dead.

And upon it stood the demon.

Nythor.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. His horns spiralled backwards like iron hooks. His skin shimmered, fluid, living black. Violet veins pulsed beneath the surface like magma.

His eyes were hollow, but they weren’t empty.

They brimmed with fury… and something deeper.

Recognition.

“You... again,” Nythor growled.

His voice shattered the quiet, like thunder laced with grief. “The Hound of the High Order.”

Silas didn’t flinch. That title was a curse. A weight he’d long grown tired of.

“Nythor.”

“You still swing your masters’ chains,” the demon hissed. “They still send killers to bury their regrets. No different from before. No different from—”

He didn’t finish.

The shadows exploded.

Dozens of figures erupted from the floor. Some bore twisted humanoid forms. Others were malformed beasts stitched together by agony.

They didn’t shriek like monsters.

They wailed.

Like mourners at a funeral, no one attended.

“Contact!” Moon shouted, firing. His rounds flared likens, scorching through the phantoms. They shrieked as they burned, folding into ash.

McEvoy roared, bringing his rune-blade down in a wide arc. One shadow split in two, evaporating into smoke.

Silas moved like wind through a storm. His blade didn’t just cut flesh, it destroyed. Each strike dispersed another shadow creature into shrieking nothingness. The runes on his sword glowed a brighter gold with every swing, drawing heat and breath from the air.

But it wasn’t enough.

The shadows didn’t retreat.

They merged.

In a violent pull of dark matter and anguish, the horde collapsed back into Nythor, absorbed through his skin like ink into cloth.

The demon stepped down from the pulpit. Each footfall cracked the ground beneath. The air grew heavier.

“I offered peace once,” he said. “No one listened.”

Silas raised his blade. “You offered silence. That’s not the same.”

Nythor laughed low, broken, cold.

“Then you’ll have both.”

He struck.

The world shifted.

Chains of darkness surged from the walls. Silas rolled, slashing two apart in midair. Moon dived behind a pillar, firing another volley. The rounds hit Nythor’s chest, sizzled but didn’t pierce.

McEvoy roared again, charging.

“Wait!” Silas shouted.

Too late.

Nythor’s clawed hand met McEvoy mid-charge, swatting him like an insect. The sergeant flew backwards, crashing into a pillar. The stone shattered.

“McEvoy’s down!” Moon called, reloading.

Silas gritted his teeth. “I see him.”

Nythor bled shadow with every movement. He was graceful and surgical.

Not a monster lashing out…

…but a warrior delivering judgment.

Silas stepped into his path.

They exchanged blows, steel and shadow colliding in bursts of dark flame. Silas’s blade howled as it met Nythor’s claws, the runes pulsing with each impact.

Still, the demon pressed harder.

Silas’s arm burned. His breath hitched.

I can’t hold him much longer.

But he had studied Nythor. Memorised his rhythms. The way pain made him hesitate. The way he still remembered the mercy that damned him.

Wait... there—

A faint hitch. A brief wince when Silas slashed across the ribs.

He struck again. Carving deeper.

Nythor roared. Flames erupted violet, not red.

His body wavered.

Now.

Silas activated the final sigil, hidden beneath his bracer. The runes across his arm lit up, synchronising with his blade. A pillar of light surged upward, cutting through the cathedral’s darkness.

Nythor blinked.

Too slow.

Silas drove the blade forward, straight into the demon’s chest.

Time slowed.

Nythor clutched the blade, eyes wide with disbelief.

But there was no scream. No rage.

Just... silence.

Then a whisper. Almost a sigh.

The shadows recoiled, tearing away from the walls. The cathedral groaned as if weeping.

Silas stepped back, breath caught in his throat.

Nythor staggered.

His body began to disintegrate… first his limbs, then his chest, shoulders, horns.

All burned into ash, pulled upward by an unseen wind.

Not scattered.

Carried.

As if even Limbo mourned.

All that remained...

...was his heart.

A jagged mass of obsidian, veined with a dull violet glow. It pulsed once. Then again. Floating, solid.

As if alive.

Silas stared at it.

It didn’t beat.

It endured.

He stepped forward and reached out, his gauntlet closing around the obsidian heart.

It was cold.

Heavy.

Like a sin remembered.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

Boss Battle Complete

Target: Nythor – Lord of Shadows

[Archdemon Class] – Status: TERMINATED

Essence Detected...

Archon-Class Core Identified

Status: DORMANT

Soul Compatibility: PENDING

[Commencing Heartseal Protocol...]

Vessel Required. Preparing for Transference...

Silas didn’t blink. He froze. “What the hell is a heartseal?”

He turned, heart stowed in his inventory, the cold weight still lingering in his palm.

“Moon,” he said, voice hoarse. “Grab McEvoy. We’re done here.”

They left the Sanctum behind as it began to collapse, stone folding into shadow, whispers fading into dust.

***

Silas’s Journal

Entry 17:

Of all the fallen, Nythor remains the most conflicted. Once the Archon of Veiled Light, he guided lost souls through the shadows between worlds. A watcher angel. A shepherd for the forgotten.

Entry 26:

Exile twisted him. Limbo welcomed what Heaven discarded. In that cold realm, grief became power. He fed shadows into the mortal realm—demons born of anguish, causing despair.

Entry 29:

I confronted him in the Sanctum of Echoes. He was wrath incarnate. Not monstrous in form, but in fury. I struck where he still hurt. When my blade pierced him, there was no scream.

Just silence.

And then... relief.

I think he wanted to be ended.

I think, deep down... he still believed in something.

Maybe that’s why the heart didn’t die.