The Summoner choked, tears mixing with blood, until his head fell to the side.

Blood trailed down.

Then, the slabs began to glow.

The five streams of blood—infused with the essence of Azrael, Beltharion, Lilithis, Mothiree, and Azazel—hit the floor.

With a hissing sound like they were on hot steel, the blood began to glow with a sickly, vibrant emerald light, racing along the intricate carvings of the circle like liquid fire.

The Priest threw his arms wide, standing amidst the carnage, his robes soaked in the blood of the elite.

He began the chant, the words twisting his tongue, syllables that were never meant to be spoken by human vocal cords.

The circle formed by the tip of the slabs created a perfect cylinder of light that connected to the eye at the center of the seal.

RUUUUUMBLE.

The underground cavern groaned.

This was no mere tremor; it was a shift in reality. Rocks fell from the unseeable ceiling, crashing into the dark void, but they didn’t hit the ground.

Gravity inverted.

A mist of emerald light seeped from the cracks in the seal. It condensed into droplets, and began to rise.

Rising rain.

Thousands of glowing green droplets floated upward from the ritual circle, defying nature, rising toward the cavern roof like a reverse storm.

"Yes! Yes! She cometh!" the Priest laughed with mad eyes.

The air gained weight, and an intoxicating smell took over. Like fruits, perfume, and rotting meat.

The eye of the circle, where the blood had met and the light had poured, cracked open.

Thimoses scrambled backward to safety, staring down at what was not merely a hole, but a wound in the world reaching so deep, he felt like he could see the past.

A pillar of emerald fire erupted, blasting the ceiling apart, shaking the very foundations of the Dwarf Kingdom miles above.

Outside, it struck the sky and spread through the clouds in waves of green smoke, fading only moments after.

Thimoses shielded his eyes from the blinding light, and when he lowered his hand after the blaze ended, he saw her.

Asmodea.

She was beautiful. In the way a hurricane is beautiful to a dying sailor.

She stood seven feet tall. Her dreadful skin was the color of polished porcelain, possessing a faint, viridian light glowing from within.

Elaborate, shifting tattoos of emerald ink danced across her form. She was wrapped in unearthly clothes that looked like the skin of plants, forming a dreadful dress of death.

Two great, curving horns of obsidian crowned her head, sweeping back like a regal headdress.

She had no hair. In its place, vine-like branches extended out from her head, twisting and curling like a crown of thorns.

And she had eyes that froze the soul.

They were nothing like human eyes. They were slits, glowing emerald in pools of black sclera.

From their essence radiated a malice so ancient it felt like a tangible thing. A truly evil thing.

She did not look like a monster. She looked like the Queen of them.

The Priest hurried to his knees.

He had always expected to be imposed by her reverence, to crumble to her power. But this fear.

This fear was just too much.

His bones were rattling in his skin, his hair had turned to needles, and his fingers were quivering.

Her aura was inevitable. He was sand.

Finding limited control of his own body, he pressed his forehead to the blood-soaked stone, still trembling violently.

"My... my Goddess..." he wheezed.

"Rise."

Her voice was a phantom. It possessed seduction, warmth, and at the same time, terror, death, destruction.

Like thunder wrapped in velvet.

The vibration bypassed his ears and spoke directly to his instinct, to his heart, sending ripples of dread down his spine.

Thimoses scrambled up, tears of ecstasy mixing with the blood on his face. He expected incineration. He expected to be unmade.

He had completed his purpose. If she so desired, he was willing to be smithened.

"Do not fear death now, little key," Asmodea purred, her emerald eyes boring into him. "I still have plans for you."

Thimoses breathed out a sigh of relief.

She turned her gaze to the five corpses bound to the slabs. Her lip curled in a sneer of absolute disdain.

"And these..." She seemed to merely glide on the floor, heading to the dead Elemental Mage.

She trailed a clawed finger down the girl’s cold cheek. "These are the puny things my siblings cast me out to create?"

She hissed, a sound like glass breaking in a cathedral.

"Replicas. Pale, hollow copies of my children. An insult to the delicate chaos I wove into the Firstborn."

She looked around the cavern, her gaze piercing through the rock to the world above.

"They have tainted creation with free will," she spat the words with hatred in her wretched heart. "With morality. With ’emotions’ rather than pure desire. With ’goals’ rather than vanity. This plain, sterile modernity... this is not what I envisioned."

She turned back to the Priest, her expression shifting filled with disgust, and at the same time, with a purpose.

A plan.

"But as I am Creation, so am I Damnation."

She raised her hand. The emerald tattoos on her skin flared blindingly bright.

"I will damn this realm to spite my siblings. I will burn their perfect little ant-farm to ash to spite my brother, Azrael, who dared to think he could cage me."

"This childish game of mortality will come to a final end as all things mortal."

Asmodea clenched her fist.

"The beasts they fight in their little dungeons? The goblins? The lizards? They are nothing. They are dust compared to my true children."

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

Beneath her, the closed seal began to crack open.

Asmodea was free, but her children were still caged.

However, with her chains gone, she could free her spawns with no restrictions.

BLAST!

The gate to Purgatory exploded outward.

The blast burned Thimoses to useless ash in a microsecond. He did not even have the chance to be shocked.

"Come forth," Asmodea whispered.

And they answered.

From the emerald abyss, they flew.

Creatures of nightmare. Not mindless beasts, but intelligent horrors.

Vampires with skin like marble and eyes like blood, screeching in hunger as they tasted the air of the mortal world for the first time in eons.

Werewolves, massive and hulking, their fur matted with the grime of Purgatory, howling their rage.

Banshees, spectral and weeping, drifting like poisonous clouds.

Dullahans, headless knights riding phantom steeds, their spinal-whips cracking.

Nightmares, shapeless shadows that fed on fear itself.

Wraiths, Skinwalkers, Wendigos, Hellhounds, Revenants, Imps, Pure Demons and many more evils.

They poured out of the rift in a swarm of darkness and malice, swirling around their Mother, filling the cavern with a cacophony of shrieks and roars.

Asmodea spread her arms, basking in the screams of her liberated brood.

"Go," she commanded her children. "Feed. Corrupt. Rule."

The walls shook, the slabs began to crumble, burying the bodies of the Awakeners who were already being feasted on by these depraved evils.

"The Age of Mortals is over," Asmodea declared.

"The Age of the Supernatural has begun."