Published at 23rd of May 2026 8:23 am

Chapter 208: From The Ashs

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Chapter 208: From The Ashs

The cultists camp had become a storm of light and violence. Skills flashed across the battlefield in bursts of color while aura clashed against bloodlight, weapons screamed through the air, and the constant thunder of impacts shook the broken concrete beneath everyone's feet. Blood pooled everywhere now, mixing with shattered bug shells and pieces of human bodies scattered across the camp. No matter where someone looked, there was another struggle between life and death unfolding.

The only person not fighting, the only one lying still while screams and battle cries tore through the air outside, was Ash.

After finding him unconscious inside the twisted chunk of rusted iron, Widow hadn't pulled him free. Instead, she'd sealed the opening shut with thick layers of webbing before returning to join her siblings in battle.

Even unconscious, Ash couldn't stay still.

Face pale, he twisted repeatedly while sweating profusely, breath hitching hard as though something inside him was clawing for a way out. Earlier, when the black hand had emerged from the altar and grabbed Triss, something had crossed through their shared connection.

Now it whispered to him from the dark.

The words came in a language he had never heard before, but somehow understood instantly. They mocked him. Accused him. Weak. Coward. Useless. Burden. Every word dug deeper into him until his convulsions worsened. His head struck against the rusted metal behind him while his elbows and ankles scraped against jagged iron hard enough to peel skin.

Outside, the brood and Min fought their battle. Inside the cramped metal shell, Ash fought his own...and he was losing.

Suddenly his body jolted violently, though not from the whispers alone. Outside, the battle had reached another fever pitch. Every attack was being funneled toward the center altar now, crashing against it in a constant frenzy that shook the ground beneath him.

Widow repeatedly launched her javelin while Synapse fired without pause, the barrel of his rifle glowing red from the endless shots. Those without ranged attacks focused on keeping the demons attention while fending off the surviving cultists at the same time. Debuffs stacked endlessly on the boss, most of them coming from Hex and Sin, all of it done for one purpose.

Give Tomb a chance.

The giant pushed through a thick black cloud the cult leader had unleashed directly into his path. Flesh melted from his body as he forced his way forward, even his eyeballs burst under the corruption, yet he kept moving anyway. With Sins healing flooding him, the giant remained standing.

For Ash, all of it may as well have been happening oceans away. For him, the only thing he could hear clearly was the voice.

It dug into every insecurity he had ever buried. It told him he was unwanted. That his parents had died because of him. That he should have been the one buried. That he deserved the pain and suffering, not them.

He had fought it at first, even unconscious, his mind refused to bend beneath the voice. But little by little, each whisper wore that resistance down. His convulsions slowed. The violent shaking faded until only small twitches remained beneath the sweat soaking his skin.

If someone could have looked inside, into the shape of his soul itself, they would have seen a single fire. Blue flame rippled through the darkness, strong at first, burning steady against the cold pressing in around it. But slowly the fire receded. Its color darkened. The edges weakened.

A sudden gasp tore from Ashs throat as his entire body locked.

The flame of his soul was dying.

Only embers remained now, crackling weakly against the growing dark. Sensing weakness, the thing whispering to him pushed harder. Images began bleeding into the voice. His mother appeared first, healthy and smiling one moment, eyeless the next as blood streamed from empty sockets. His father followed, begging for his life while blood poured down his face, dripping from his chin.

As the final spark of Ashs soul flickered, another vision slammed into him.

Seo-jin. Min. Gregor. The brood. All of them dead at his feet.

The smell of blood hit him so hard it turned his stomach. Heat rolled across his skin like the bodies were really there. The image crashed into his fading soul like the final blow...or at least it should have.

Outside, Tomb hefted the enormous spear in both hands. Despite its size, the weapon felt balanced, natural, almost like it had grown from his own body, which it had. He pulled his arm back to throw

Then an explosion ripped through the camp to his left hard enough to shake the ground beneath him.

A smaller altar, the same one the black hand had emerged from to grab Triss, detonated into black fire and shattered stone.

Triss burst from the flames.

She landed in the middle of the battlefield with a roar, claws digging into the broken concrete. Her full Umbral Felis form had fully emerged now, black stripes flowing through the air behind her like living shadows.

Inside the rusted metal shell, the dying spark that had once been Ashs soul ignited. The ember had become a blaze.

Ashs eyes snapped open.

Purple light exploded from them, flooding the cramped space and reflecting across the rusted metal walls. At the same moment, a shrill wailing scream erupted around him as the light burned through the foul energy wrapped around his mind and soul.

Ash slowly rose to his feet, breathing hard as sweat dripped from his chin. Lifting one shaking hand, he watched the last trailing specks of black corruption burn away from his skin like ash caught in sunlight.

And in that moment, he understood exactly what had happened.

"You shouldn't have used the boss. There's no way in hell I could ever beat him."

He blew the last traces of the corruption from his palm.

Outside, Synapse recovered first. The second he saw Tomb still hesitating, he screamed.

"Throw it!"

Not wasting another second, the giant broodling planted his feet into the shattered ground, muscles swelling beneath ash-colored skin as he pulled his arm back and hurled the spear.

The air split with a sonic boom.

Dragged away for a single fatal moment by Triss escaping the altar, the cult leader barely reacted in time. Snarling, he thrust both hands forward as thick black miasma erupted from his palms and crashed into the incoming spear.

The collision detonated across the camp.

Concrete burst apart. Wind and dust blasted outward hard enough to throw everyone near the altar off their feet. Even Min was sent tumbling through the air, her body spinning through blood and debris before she slammed across the ground.

A scream full of pure wrath ripped from the demons maw as the spear punched through the black fog and buried itself into the altar.

Ash and Trisss distraction had been enough. The defense the cult leader managed to raise at the last second simply wasn't enough to stop it.

Cracks of black light immediately spread across the altars surface, branching through the stone like fractures through glass. Matching fissures spread across the cult leaders enormous torso at the same time, leaking streams of dark miasma into the air.

"Maggots!"

Fury twisted the demons face as he gathered what power remained. The miasma around him thickened and compressed, both hands pulling together as a dense sphere of black energy condensed between them

Then both of his arms suddenly jerked outward and locked in place.

Wide-eyed, the cult leader screamed.

"What?!"

"Ultimate finisher! Night Parade of a Thousand Souls!"

Hovering high above the battlefield, Ash stood atop Grimms massive skull as the ghot restrained the cult leaders arms. Purple light burned from the boy's eyes while power gathered around him in violent waves, his clothes snapping in the wind as he formed a hand sign.

A massive torii gate manifested in front of him.

Black wood covered in ancient script groaned as it formed from thin air, towering over the battlefield. Inside the gate sat two enormous steel doors streaked with rust and dark stains.

The doors exploded open.

Behind them was only darkness. Then the chains came.

Hundreds of glowing black chains shot from the void like harpoons, shrieking through the air fast enough to leave trails behind them. Some pierced into the battlefield itself while others shot far beyond the camp and vanished into the distance.

A split-second later every chain suddenly pulled tight, and at that exact moment, a single low drumbeat echoed across the camp.

Dumm!

As if responding, ghosts ignited into existence at the end of every chain.

Cultists. Their victims. Beasts from the Freelands. Things with shapes too twisted to recognize. In a single instant, hundreds of spectral figures filled the battlefield, their glowing forms flickering beneath the bloodlit sky. Though not a single vent bug appeared among them.

And all of it, from summoning the gate to hooking the ghosts, happened within a single breath.

With another hand sign and another deep pound of the drum, the chains retracted, dragging every ghost back screaming through the gate. Even the spirits pulled from beyond the camp streaked across the sky fast enough to blur, shrieking as they vanished into the darkness beyond the steel doors.

The moment the last ghost disappeared inside, the doors slammed shut hard enough to shake the air.

Ashs aura surged.

Blue energy twisted around his body in violent currents while purple light bled higher from his eyes, crawling across his face like cracks.

"Release!"

He clapped his hands once more, and the doors exploded back open. A flood of ghost soldiers poured out in a chorus of rage and pain, charging straight for the demon leader.

Their screams rolled across the battlefield, armor rattling, chains dragging, spectral claws and weapons tearing through the air as they crashed forward in a tidal wave.

"Lord Baal, my flesh!"

Black cracks continued spreading across the demons massive torso as the ghosts slammed into him and swallowed everything around the altar.

The entire center of the battlefield disappeared beneath writhing spectral bodies and shrieking blue fire.

Recognizing the danger, Synapse pushed a sharp pulse through the broodlink ordering everyone to retreat, and at the same time fired a shot at Mins feet before immediately turning and sprinting away.

The battlefield had become too loud for shouting. Between the ghost army's screams and the chaos of the camp, he could only hope the gorilla woman understood the message.

Luckily, she did.

The instant the shot cracked against the concrete near her boots, she turned and spotted Synapse already running.

"Little fuoh shit!"

Recognition hit hard, and she spun on her heel and bolted.

High above the battlefield, Ashs glowing eyes narrowed as the wind whipped through his hair. Standing atop Grimms skull, he brought his hands together one final time

And every ghost below exploded.

The world vanished in crimson and blue.

The blast tore through the camp like a god ripping his hand through wet paper. Concrete liquified. Tents, altars, cultists, everything caught in the center disappeared beneath the expanding sphere of spectral fire and black lightning.

Screams lasted less than a second, bodies vaporized where they stood.

The shockwave hit hard enough to flatten the surrounding trees and launch chunks of burning debris high into the sky. Blood evaporated into red mist. The remaining cultists near the edges of the camp were ripped apart by the force alone.

Even the air screamed.

John had noticed in time. Or rather, the Vent Mother had. The insect creature burst backward just before the center vanished, wings shredding the air as thousands of vent bugs scattered with her in a frantic swarm. Even then, the edge of the explosion still caught part of them. Bugs ignited midair, their bodies bursting apart into ash and burning ichor.

A towering cloud of black smoke rose into the sky afterward, swollen with necrotic energy and crawling crimson lightning. It twisted upward through the storm clouds like something alive.

Above it all stood Ash.

Balanced atop Grimms skull, clothes whipping violently in the wind, his face remained completely calm as purple light slowly faded from his eyes.

Thunder cracked overhead. The rumbling ground finally stilled.

For a few long seconds, nobody moved.

Burning debris began raining back down through the smoke. Chunks of concrete slammed in the distance as drifting embers floated through the air. Somewhere nearby, something metal hit the ground with a hollow clang.

But everyone just stared. Waiting. The swelling cloud slowly started to thin. And when it finally cleared, silence spread through the battlefield.

Nothing remained. The altar was gone. The demon was gone.

The entire center of the camp had been erased, leaving behind only a gigantic smoldering crater lined with melted concrete and glowing cracks of dying heat.

Lynn swallowed hard.

"Is...is he dead?"

Min stared into the crater, chest heaving as blood dripped from her torn leg.

"Has to be"

"ABOVE!"

Tombs roar shook the battlefield

But before their eyes could snap skyward, another much smaller explosion slammed into the camp below.

Nobody saw what caused it. Or that it was Grimm lying in the rubble.

The ghost slammed into the dirt hard enough to carve a trench through the broken camp, his massive skull cracked, spine-body twitching weakly as black smoke peeled from him.

High above the battlefield, Ash still hung suspended in the air.

A ruined hand gripped his throat.

The cult leaders body barely resembled something alive anymore. Half his torso was missing. One arm had been blown away entirely. From the bridge of his nose upward, everything was gone. Bone charred black. Flesh melted away.

But a grin still stretched across what remained of his mouth.

And even that wasn't the worst part.

Hovering above the cult leaders exposed skull was a pair of enormous horns formed entirely from black miasma. They curled upward through the air like living smoke, and floating between the horn tips, sat a crown of gold.

Not spectral. Real.

The pressure that rolled off it hit the brood like a hammer to the chest.

What they had felt before from the cult leader had only been an imitation. This was different. This felt the same as their creator. The same crushing presence. The same ancient hunger.

A real demon had arrived.

Lord Baal himself.

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