“All things end twice: once when they perish, and again when they are forgotten” - Pluto, God of Death
The battlefield wept fire.
Mountains split. Rivers boiled to steam. Crimson clouds churned above the ruined valley, streaked with ash and gold—like the bruised flesh of a dying god. The ground shuddered, not from battle, but from the slow decay of divine energy leaking into the earth.
The obsidian spires of the Demon Throne lay in ruins, its halls slick with blood and broken marble. Knights and fiends lay scattered alike, their bodies charred under a holy sun. And at the center stood the last monster.
Devil King Karrion
"The Devil Alchemist."
"The Bloody Baron."
"The Warlord of the Demon Throne."
He stood taller than most men, a titan of limbs and bone. Blasphemy, monstrous in both shape and aura—his body warped with agony. Multiple red arms hung from his torso. A crowd of horns crowned his skull. A bone-plated tail curled behind him, and insectoid wings of razored chitin fanned open like an abomination of angels. His flesh was a blasphemy of science and blessings.
A walking war crime—veins pulsing with infernal stimulants, bones gilded in rune-gold, muscles grotesquely swollen from cursed injections. Divine protections woven into his soul—gifts bartered with forgotten Old Gods —were unraveling. The drugs, the enhancements, the monstrous Doping rituals that made him a god of war were now eating him alive.
His muscles spasmed under the weight of too many enhancements.
Four ancient sigils still glowed faintly across his limbs. Remnants of lost gods and dead oaths.
And at his heart burned one mark deeper than them all:
The seal of Pluto - god of death and silence
The last planetary deity to take a mortal apostle.
And now, that apostle was dying.
A divine blade pierced clean through his abdomen, still humming with judgment. Forged from Mercury’s breath and sanctified in Venusian flame, it shimmered with impossible light. No corruption could resist it. No pact nor Blessings could stop it. Not even Pluto’s.
The one who held the blade—her hands trembling, her face streaked with ash—was crowned by a floating Saturnian halo.
A ring of slow-turning gold, inscribed with the ancient laws of time and finality.
It pulsed with divine gravity—an orbit of inevitability.
She was the Sword-Saint of Saturn, first daughter of the Martian Synod.
She wept—not for victory, but for the man he could have been.
“You weren’t supposed to become this,” she whispered, voice shaking.
“You were a hero. Once.”
Her blade trembled in her grasp, sunk to the hilt in his midsection. Her silver-plated armor was scorched and torn, but it was her face—tear-streaked, frozen in anguish—that struck him harder than any divine weapon ever could.
Karrion coughed—thick, black blood rising to his lips. His corrupted body was failing. His quadruple-layered heart, fused with basilisk tissue, was stuttering. His lungs modified for poisons, strained for air. Even the stimulants could not hold him together anymore.
And yet… a small, pained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Funny… this feels familiar,” he rasped, eyes hazy with deathlight his voice low and distant.
(he laughs letting the irony sit in the air—bitter, quiet, too perfect not to savor. A death not once, but twice. He found it... almost funny.— a broken, bitter sound that leaves ash in the air.)
The silence that followed was sharp. Bitter. Cosmic.
She said nothing. Her grip on the sword faltered, but she didn’t pull it free. Her halo turned slowly behind her, ticking like a celestial clock.
He staggered, clutching at the sword embedded in him, more to hold himself upright than to fight back.
Karrion’s legs buckled. The weight of his science—dragged him down. The monstrous glory of his form dimmed as he staggered, swayed and stumbled.
The world blurred.
As he collapsed, the fire in his eyes dimming, memory crashed in...
Karrion Kingston once the most feared drug lord in modern history. His empire stretched from crowded cities to quiet towns. His name ruled the underworld, entire governments bent to his will. He weaponized addiction. Massacred opposition. Built an empire soaked in fear.
But even that empire ended with a blade in his chest and a girl standing over him.
Then Rebirth...
A new world of Blessing and Miracles.
A second chance.
And he used it the only way he knew how:
He climbed.
He conquered.
He corrupted.
Until now.
The sigils on his skin began to fade—one by one, he was crumbling. Only Pluto’s remained, burning dim.
He collapsed fully, ash swirling around him like mourning veils. His vision dimmed, but the last thing he saw was her—still holding the sword, Her halo hovered like judgment—yet felt almost... merciful, tears tracing through the soot on her face.
There was love in her grief.
“I don’t regret what I did,” he whispered.
“I regret… what I didn’t.”
She let go of the sword.
And stepped forward.
Her hands reached out—slow, reverent. She knelt beside him, pulling his failing body into her arms. She cradled him not as victor but as one might a fallen king or a wounded animal
Karrion did not fight her.
For the first time in his second life, Karrion let himself be held.
The divine marks on his skin flickered and faded. Pluto’s seal cracked.
Then vanished.
“I wish you had chosen differently,” she whispered.
“I would’ve followed you.”
But he was already gone.
And for the first time since his rebirth—
the world fell silent.
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