Seraphelle nodded and focused her healing magic on Gattychan’s broken arm, golden light flowing into the shattered bone, beginning the slow process of knitting it back together.

The healing hurt almost as much as the injury—bone regrowth was agonizing, nerves reconnecting sent pain signals screaming through Gattychan’s body—but he endured it stoically.

Three minutes passed.

Seraphelle’s hands glowed steadily, healing magic pouring into Gattychan’s arm. The bone was half-healed now, the break partially mended.

Two more minutes and the arm would be functional. Then she could move to Mikazelle’s ribs, then Rindelle’s arm.

Twenty minutes total to restore the Four Heroes to combat effectiveness.

Then they’d return to Third Line and end this siege.

Seraphelle was concentrating on healing Gattychan’s arm—her hands positioned carefully around the break, divine energy flowing in precise patterns to ensure the bone knitted correctly—when she felt it.

A presence.

Massive. Overwhelming. Malevolent.

Demon lord.

Her healer’s instincts screamed danger a half-second before the attack came.

She tried to raise Divine Sanctuary defensively, tried to manifest golden barriers to protect against the incoming threat—

Too slow.

Corruption energy struck her like a battering ram. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The blast hit Seraphelle’s side with force that picked her up bodily and threw her thirty feet through the air. She crashed into the ground, tumbling, her healing spell on Gattychan’s arm interrupted violently.

Gattychan’s half-healed arm screamed with pain as divine healing cut off mid-process, leaving the bone partially knitted but still broken.

"SERAPHELLE!" he shouted, trying to rise despite his injuries.

Then he felt it too.

They all felt it.

The air itself seemed to darken. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant. The ground beneath them began to decay—grass withering, earth turning gray and lifeless.

And the bloodlust.

Pure, focused, overwhelming killing intent that hit them like a physical force.

It was the sensation of standing before a predator that had decided you were prey. The instinctive terror that prey animals felt when they realized they were being hunted by something far more dangerous than themselves.

The Four Heroes froze in an instant

Not from tactical consideration. Not from strategic planning.

From pure primal fear.

Because they could feel the presence manifesting before them, and it was so far beyond anything they’d fought before that their bodies locked up involuntarily.

Space tore open fifty yards from their position.

Seraphina manifested.

Her true demon lord form was... magnificent and terrifying in equal measure.

She stood eight feet tall, her purple-tinted skin darker than any demon warrior’s, almost black in the dimming evening light. Her eyes glowed with purple-white luminescence that seemed to pierce reality itself. Her hair floated around her head as if suspended in water, each strand moving independently with supernatural life.

Corruption energy swirled around her like a living cloak—purple-black tendrils that writhed and twisted, reaching out hungrily toward anything living. Where the energy touched the ground, vegetation died instantly.

But it was her expression that truly terrified.

Not cold tactical calculation. Not the detached cruelty of a predator toying with prey.

Pure grief-fueled rage.

Her face was twisted with emotion—tears streamed down her purple-tinted cheeks even as her mouth was pulled into a snarl of absolute fury. Her glowing eyes burned with hatred so intense it seemed to warp the air around her.

She looked at the Four Heroes with an expression that promised suffering beyond description.

When she spoke, her voice resonated with power that made the heroes’ bones vibrate.

"You killed them." Each word carried the weight of a demon lord’s fury. "Two hundred of my corruption specialists. I trained them for decades. Centuries, some of them. I taught them magic. I knew their names, their histories, their dreams. They were people. MY people."

Corruption energy manifested in both her hands, dark purple magic that seemed to devour light itself.

"Kael’shiva served me for years. She was brilliant at curse magic, showed exceptional talent. I watched her grow from frightened young demon into confident mage. She called me ’Master’ with respect that took decades to earn."

The corruption energy intensified, beginning to coalesce into weapons.

"Vex’tharis was only seventy years old. So young. So much potential. She had centuries ahead of her to perfect her craft. I was teaching her advanced network casting. She would have become one of my best specialists. Now she’s dead."

Twin blades of pure corruption formed in Seraphina’s hands—not physical weapons, but solidified demonic energy shaped into cutting edges that could slice through steel and flesh with equal ease.

"Dreth’kael abandoned his human family to serve me. Left the Church, rejected his previous life, chose demon service because he believed in what we were building. He gave up everything. And you hunted him through cellars like an animal."

Her voice rose, power building with every word.

"They needed to use a forbidden spell that takes their life force in exchange because you left them no choice. Combined Detonation—a spell so forbidden I only taught it as last resort. Sixty-nine mages converting their entire life force into one explosion, killing themselves to try to stop you. They died afraid. Desperate. Alone."

Seraphina’s grief was transforming entirely into rage now, tears still flowing but her expression hardening into something cold and lethal.

"And you." She pointed one corruption blade at Gattychan specifically. "You stood over their positions and said ’Sorry about this, but I don’t have time to waste on you guys.’ As if they were inconveniences. As if two hundred lives meant nothing."

Gattychan, still frozen partly by fear and partly by his half-healed broken arm, managed to speak.

"They were enemies. Demon mages who’d killed hundreds of our soldiers with corruption spells. We eliminated military threats. That’s war."

"I will kill you," Seraphina corrected coldly. "And now I will show you what happens when you kill two hundred of Seraphina’s people."

She moved.

Not walking. Not running.

One moment she was fifty yards away.

The next moment she was in front of Gattychan, her corruption blade aimed at his heart, moving with speed that exceeded human perception.