The Broken Halo

The first bolt crossed the sky in a crimson flash.

Its centre was almost white. Branches lashed outward from the descending column, tearing through the clouds before snapping back toward the figure below.

Its pressure reached the ruins ahead of it. The few living things still capable of moving flattened themselves against the ground and coughed out mouthful of blood.

Some lived.

Some died.

Simon watched its approach.

He could move.

That realisation came with a clarity he had never possessed before the evolution. His body could answer quickly enough. A step, perhaps two, would carry him beyond the place the bolt was about to strike.

But leaving that place would not mean escaping the tribulation.

He had dealt with tribulations in his previous life. Running from a tribulation strike had never been the same as surviving the trial, and Lilith had given him no reason to believe this one would be different.

He left the spatial distortion that had stopped Tarvak.

No barrier rose. His wings did not close around him.

The crimson light struck his body.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

For an instant, Velmora disappeared.

Red light filled the ruins. The ground beneath Simon burst outward, lifting broken paving stones, corpses, and rubble into a widening ring.

The shockwave caught them before they could fall.

Stone became dust. A leaning tower collapsed away from the impact, its remaining floors crushed together as it struck the buildings behind it.

At the centre, Simon’s feet sank into the earth.

His knees did not bend.

Lightning divided around his horns and raced across his bare shoulders. Thin branches followed his ribs, crossed the exposed face of the cube, and spread along all six wings.

Burned skin split above his collarbone.

He looked down.

Unholy Regeneration began closing the wound.

He had felt the lightning enter. Heat drove beneath his skin, followed by a cutting pain that reached deeper than the visible burn.

His expression did not change.

A moment later, he lifted his hand and examined the crimson threads moving between his fingers.

”So much power in one bolt.”

A fork of lightning snapped against his knuckle. The skin blackened, peeled, and began reforming.

”And hardly any of it wasted.”

The demonic energy within the lightning was astonishingly pure. Its destructive force remained tightly gathered even after the bolt had broken across his body.

However, purity did not make it gentle.

The remnants kept moving inward.

Simon watched one branch enter the wound above his ribs. When Unholy Regeneration closed the flesh, the current struck the same place again.

”This isn’t ordinary lightning.”

It did more than burn what it touched. Its energy retained a direction, pressing toward his Demon Heart and the pathways carrying his two bloodlines.

The main bolt was gone.

What remained was still trying to finish its work.

”The strike ends,” he murmured, ”but the attack doesn’t.”

He flexed his fingers.

A little of the lightning passed across the black skin of his hand. He could sense its structure more clearly now, although sensing it did not make it obey him.

The lightning awakened with his Nine-Tailed Byakko bloodline felt different. He could recognise the affinity in both, but not the same destructive nature.

A thought surfaced.

Devour.

Simon looked at the red light beneath his skin.

What would happen if he consumed it?

He had devoured the power inside a god’s borrowed forearm. He had even consumed ancestral imprints within the Path of Origin.

Here was another kind of power, already in contact with his body.

It was hostile.

But that had never stopped Devour before.

”Could it improve my lightning affinity?”

His lips curved slightly.

”Perhaps change the lightning itself. And with this much energy, my Infernal Heart...”

The sky answered before he finished.

The second bolt struck.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

It was thicker than the first.

The crimson column enclosed Simon from horns to feet, and the crater beneath him dropped deeper into the ruined ground.

A ring of dust climbed around it.

Then the pressure flattened that ring and hurled it through the neighbouring streets.

Broken walls flew outward. A broad foundation split in half, its two sides rising before falling into the new hollow beneath them.

The sound rolled beyond Velmora.

Simon felt a sharper sting across his chest.

A patch of skin burned away from his left shoulder. Small holes opened in two wing membranes, their edges glowing red.

He neither groaned nor flinched.

Unholy Regeneration repaired the shoulder while new tissue spread across the damaged wings.

His body had given the lightning flesh to injure.

It had not given it anything easy to destroy.

When the glare thinned, Lilith was watching him from beyond the crater’s edge.

Simon kept his gaze on the clouds.

”How many tribulation lightnings would I have to endure?”

”If you do not provoke it, ten.”

”Each stronger than the last?”

”Yes.”

”And if I do?”

”More than ten. And do not expect the additional strikes to resemble what you have endured so far.”

The light overhead gathered along several immense branches.

”Retaliation will make it more dangerous,” she continued. ”You have only taken the first two.”

Simon nodded.

Ten, provided he accepted what came without answering.

He examined his body again.

The shoulder had healed. The holes in his wings closed, leaving the black membranes smooth beneath their silver undersides.

His strength had not increased.

Neither had the capacity of his Demon Heart.

Unholy Regeneration was spending his own demonic energy to undo the damage inflicted by the tribulation. Nothing useful remained once the foreign force was gone.

He remembered other tribulations from his previous life. Some had left power behind for the survivor, nourishing what their violence had failed to destroy.

Even pain had served a purpose beyond punishment.

This lightning offered no such benefit.

It burned. It broke. It continued attacking until its remaining power was exhausted.

The wounds closed because of his Blessing.

Not because the sky intended him to emerge stronger.

Simon’s eyes narrowed.

”The bloodline is what it wants.”

Lilith did not answer immediately.

He could feel the remaining crimson energy pressing against the places where Uruqath and Byakko now worked together.

It had no interest in whether their union was stable.

Only that it existed.

”Does every Daemon face this?”

”In this generation? Yes.”

Lilith paused.

”A Daemon’s birth, or the full awakening of a Daemon bloodline,” Lilith replied. ”The stronger the bloodline, the harsher the tribulation.”

Simon looked at the lightning gathering above him.

Then at his hand.

Four horns. Six wings. Two lineages that had survived everything required to bring them together.

And the realm’s answer was to try to burn them out of existence.

”So this isn’t meant to strengthen me.”

”No.”

His mouth curved without warmth.

”You aren’t testing whether I deserve this body,” he said toward the clouds. ”You just don’t want me to have it.”

The third bolt descended.

Its branches joined before reaching him, becoming one blinding shaft of crimson.

Simon remained where he stood.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The crater floor vanished beneath the light.

Pressure drove through the earth and lifted the ground beyond its rim. Long cracks opened through the ruins, crossing streets and foundations before disappearing beneath the dust.

A distant wall toppled inward.

Then the blast reached it and threw the broken pieces back the other way.

Red illumination covered everything.

For several heartbeats, the shadows beneath the rubble became sharper than the objects casting them.

Simon’s white hair streamed upward.

Blood escaped through a burn crossing his chest. Blackened skin split along his side, exposing damaged muscle beneath an ivory stripe.

The lightning spread across his wings.

Their membranes smoked. Crimson threads crawled along the ivory spars, searching for a route through the roots into his back.

His jaw remained relaxed.

He could feel every injury, but he simply had no reason to cry out.

Unholy Regeneration moved through them in order. Torn vessels closed first. Muscle joined beneath the burned skin, then fresh ash-grey flesh spread over it.

Simon watched an ivory stripe return across his ribs.

A few breaths later, the visible wounds were gone.

His Infernal Heart still burned at the same rank.

The third strike had repaired nothing, improved nothing, and taken more energy from him than the second.

He raised his hand.

Residual lightning leapt between his fingers, still trying to bite into the flesh it had failed to ruin.

There was enough power overhead to make the thought of advancing into the Forged Heart realm difficult to ignore.

And the lightning’s destructive nature...

Simon studied the crimson thread caught against his palm.

He had not decided that the retaliation would be harmless.

He had decided that simply enduring it was a waste.

”If you won’t leave me anything,” he murmured, ”I’ll take it myself.”

”Devour.”