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« When someone commits a mistake, it doesn’t mean they’re irrecoverable. Sometimes, they just need the right words. Sometimes, they just need the right actions. Sometimes, they only need a little bit of consolation and encouragement. »

The air froze, then suddenly shattered in thousands of pieces by my impatient handling. Washed away by the savagery of my doing, the clouds scattered in tiny fragments before this world’s eyes, dispersed then vanished in an instant as the sky shrieked and bleed and fell apart just as miserably as it once did in the past.

Two incompatible spaces tried to merge together, one made from primordial and unbending laws, the other fleshed out from remnants of what could not be. An ominous rift cracked above the canopy, spitting thousands of laments which spoke of the pain I forced unto this world in order to help it.

I wasn’t a hero. I do not save others, and I do not expect others to save themselves.

I wasn’t a protector either. There is nothing I should protect, because I knew failing once was enough to forfeit one’s life.

What I am, is an obstacle. A challenge nobody could win, an unsurmountable wall that could not be overcome.

The tapestry of reality had been shredded, and the wound was deep enough to collide with the Limbo, bridging the scarred place with my home and allowing the unending swarms of demons to take over the real world.

Summoning thousands after thousands of lesser creatures, I stood floating in front of the unnatural door. The large fissure vomited a black-tainted wind carrying the pungent smell of curses, diseases and despair, a mixture of odours lethal even for the gone deities.

Before the hungry horde, the forest was quickly reshaped into a lifeless plain. Munched, the trees fell down. Gnawed, the wildlife disappeared with no traces left behind. The grass that looked so glassy under the dew was nothing more but an appetizer for my famished children. It only took a short moment for this land to lose all its previous attractiveness, the demons only left behind a dehydrated and sterile soil covered with plagues.

Each time they bite down on them, I felt the meat and the bones of his human servitors. Each time their carapace was blown away by his magicless wands, I heard a scream piercing their tympanum and another worthless life lost to the starved swarm.

With his measly group of twelve mortals blinded by greed, it was impossible for him to face my innumerable family. After all, it took three armies specialised in dealing with demons, the last remaining living-tools from the lost civilisation, a very determined girl and a stupid miracle to finally repel the invasion I led during the Black War.

It didn’t matter to me what kind of new technology he was trying to use against me, I had the overwhelming advantage in number. One demon fall, and dozens replace him. Ten were slain, then a hundred appeared behind it. They win against a group, before realizing a legion is coming after them. They succeed against all odds, before noticing the never-ending waves they still had to battle against.

It was, of course, impossible to remain victorious against me.

I was a challenge, and victory was possible only when my conditions were met.

I was a wall, and nothing, nobody and absolutely no one will go against my scenario.

You win because I handed over you this possibility. You succeed because I made it so it remained within your capability.

But otherwise, you cannot.

I am Eendis, the father of the Limbo, the Black God who mortals must defy in order to survive, and the sole dalenh who actually defeated its now-deceased masters.

I watched over the living hill of demons busy devouring the cadavers of our victims. Obviously, they stood no chance against me, it was only a matter of time before they met their demise in my hands. However, the result pissed me off.

Keraza was nowhere to be found. He left the scene, or perhaps used a double for him to play with from afar. I couldn’t sense any useful lingering signature of magic, probably because my kin devoured their soul to the last grain.

But it was still fine. I was still furious, but I had to remain calm if I so much desired to finish it.

The continent was vast, and looking for him under every stone could potentially make me waste years if not centuries. I had no choice, but to widen the door.

To eliminate the most dangerous threat on this planet, I had to reuse an old but revised template from an old lesson. A fairy tale born from a blurry memory. An ancient battle recorded as a myth in archives, barely remembered as a warped picture of the Black War.

Ballads could not capture the cold atrocity of this period, of this presence which stung mortals’ feeble sensibility with fear and an inexplicable weight of inevitability. I could still clearly remember their faces.

The kingdoms of that age were fractured yet united, afflicted with the cancer of political struggles and selfish ambitions from crafty individuals, and yet they still managed to face the invasion of demons threatening their little garden. Cooperating under the shared goal of repelling the hungry hordes, they drew their holy blades and raised their sturdy shields on the battlefield to slain and slice and survive against all odds.

They won once, so I had to send a bigger legion.

They won a second time, and I understood number wasn’t enough anymore to try their might. That was when I had to… Adapt and improvise my approach on the matter at hand.

Mortals were fascinating me so much I felt the urge to test their utmost limit, the boundary between flesh and divinity. Against the merry soldiers clad in metal and light, I sent a home-made, half-backed god.

For the second time in history, the earth shrieked in terror at the appearance of the unbelievable.

From the depth of the Limbo, a sky-shattering cry resonated from the ones witnessing the ascension of the once-deceased harbinger of apocalypse. The godly, soul-seeking entity emerged from the portal, dressed in a fog full of ominous anomalies and maledictions, palpable starving emotions manifesting from the shaggy thoughts coursing through its pulsating veins.

A mountain of teeth and tentacles crawled through the door and made its place on this world, loudly lamenting its sorry state and cursing everything in sight out of desperate and furious spite with unintelligible roars and spasmodic episodes of its jaws attempting to chew on the strings of space-time.

The demon-turned creature was crying, was angry, confused and also alarmed at the idea of being exposed once more to the sun. It clawed at the earth to forget its pain, it shouted incomprehensible torrents of malice to lighten its sorrow and its suffering. Famished, locked away for so many years far beyond this place’s reach, and now suddenly awaken and thrown again to fulfil a purpose that wasn’t his own.

Spikes of bones erupted from its bulging skin, a semblance of mighty horns or comparable to a parasite’s antenna which served as sensor for smelling the mana in the air, but broke due to their fragility and rapid deterioration as if consumed by a brief longevity.

It wanted to smell something. It desired to feel the touch with its membrane, to see the light of the day and carve its sight inside his rotten head to try and cherish this one and only memory. The reason for its crazy, almost enamoured behaviour towards such simplistic subjects, came from the fact that he only saw it twice in his life.

I pulled on the leash to put a stop to its reverie.

“You no longer merit to freely bask under the radiance of the day, Father. You damned being who pleased yourself with the misery of others, rewriting the fate of an entire planet just so you can leisurely breathe at your own pace.

Lazy and arrogant despot, you now live because your flesh is bleeding an incomprehensible amount of mana, and that blood of yours will help heal the scars you left behind.

This strength you boasted is now merely for show, and all your thoughts and actions will serve to strengthen the mortals you so much desired to domesticate before slaughtering them.”

Plunging my arm into its body, I tinkered with its massive soul to extract the newly carved picture he tried to save for himself. The defeated foe struggled under the immense stress caused by the spiritual damages, but I paid no heed to its laments. Then, I removed my arm from the pungent wound, looking over the shining piece of the divine material I was holding, a physical manifestation of a memory. A bright sphere, smoothly malleable between the fingers, and easily crushable.

Under the pressure of my fingers, the orb cracked and shattered in pieces before slowly vanishing. Its original energy will then linger in the air until some random mage consume this essence to cast a spell.

An ingenious system, if I may say. A system sustained by an ethereal vein so vast even I had no control over. I wasn’t authorized to utilize the same magic as them, however, I had my own tricks under the sleeve to achieve a few miracles. Resurrecting a defeated god was one of them.

A system crafted by the easily-convinced Haliaetus, and abused by Keraza. His goal seemed absurd at first, but now I see clearly how he planned to use it.

With this miraculous energy, the blood of gods, anything became achievable. Omniscience, omnipotence, and of course immortality. Simply put, he wanted to become a god. He wanted to become the one and only god of this world by overthrowing everyone else.

Aseraath was a righteous fellow. Disposing of him was inevitable as their ideals would eventually collide.

Chaalith remained under my protection, so she should be fine. But as for the remaining of the cianalas, I guessed most of them were already removed by him and his agents. Perhaps Iorivalith was the last one, and now only three or four of them still live to this day.

As for our pact we shared, this truce we signed which prevented both of us to directly interact with each other’s world, he probably broke it because he deemed I wasn’t a plausible threat to his plan anymore.

… Thinking about all of this kind of helped me calm down. Ironic.

Now, let’s show this megalomaniac how terrific my Limbo really is-

A huge explosion blasted from far away, sending a violent shockwave despite the distance separating my horde and the epicentre of the unexpected catastrophe.

“What happened?”

Through the turbulent winds I sensed a dangerous weight of mana, as if the explosion itself wasn’t natural but artificially produced by magic, and an absurd amount of mana at it.

… I knew only one imbecile potent enough who could replicate this kind of excessive measure. The same witless cretin Chaalith went to apprehend.

“Haliaetus, you again…”

I almost decided to go check up on him before realising this was probably another part of Keraza’s plan. I wasn’t considered a threat anymore, because Haliaetus wasn’t leashed anymore and could act on his own. He and myself shared the same sentiment for mortals, alas his approach was drastically different. I never cared about him and his methods, even if he didn’t completely accomplished those good deeds by himself, as I knew my own strategy would overwhelm the pamper he continuously provided. And he most certainly thought the same about me.

So why should he fight? Why did Keraza felt so certain I would postpone my pursuit and battle with Haliaetus?

We both existed separately, aiding mortals with our own means and ideology.

He protected them, while I tested them.

Even if we didn’t see eyes to eyes, we complemented each other. Even if it wasn’t our intention at the start, at the core we were the same. Because we share the same origin, we share the same blood and the same family.

We’ve never been born to this world. We’ve never had any parents to tutor us, or siblings to look up to. We had no relatives, no conjoint, nobody to confess to.

The gods built us to serve the role of watchers.

He rebelled out of compassion, and failed to bring them down.

So I rose in his stead. I finished what he started. Because I understood what he was trying to achieve.

We weren’t brothers, yet we shared the same blood. We were different, yet closely identic from the roots we both shared.

That was why I understood the trap, and still had to fall for it.

I was the one who understood Haliaetus the most, because he and I were the same.

I knew that one mistake from him was enough to end this world. And he also knew I only needed to slip once to eradicate all mortals.

We both knew. That was exactly why I had to go and stop him at all cost, even if I had to put an end to his misery.

Putting Keraza in second on my to-do list, I ordered my demons to charge towards the ruins of Lagida.