Baalrek's voice hammers into my head.

Jacob Cloud. This is no longer Corruption. This is intrusion. You face something far beyond mortals.

Azrakel's eyes snap open, burning with an abyssal light. His body is now fully scaled, each plate of black shimmering with faint gold lines within. His aura erupts higher—far beyond Diamond, far beyond anything I've faced.

The crater glows with a faint, unnatural light. The air itself grows still, like the world is holding its breath.

Azrakel's body shifts. Slowly, impossibly, it rises—not standing, but lifting from the ground as though pulled by invisible chains. His limbs hang loose, his head tilts forward, blood sliding down his chin in slow rivulets. His feet leave the stone entirely.

The sight is wrong. The way he floats makes my stomach turn, as if I'm watching a corpse move without life inside it.

The black scales spread, sealing wounds, hardening into plates that shimmer like oil. Thin cracks of gold pulse beneath them, each beat sharp enough to make the stone under me shake.

I grip Black Flame tighter. My voice comes out hoarse.

"…Who are you?"

Azrakel's head lifts slowly. His neck jerks like it doesn't remember how to work. He doesn't answer. He only tilts his head, eyes glowing with abyssal light—unreadable, inhuman.

Then a voice—not Azrakel's—rolls from his throat. Deep. Ancient. Layered like a thousand whispers stacked together.

"It is sad," the voice says, steady and cold, "to have to wear the flesh of one who knelt to me. But I felt a thread of Karma too great. A thread that could not be ignored."

The air grows heavier, pressing down on me like a mountain. My knees almost buckle.

"Sometimes," the voice continues, each word shaking the ground, "I myself must come and pay the price to sever it. To make sure the weave of fate runs the way it should."

Azrakel's body floats higher, arms spreading. Black flame leaks from his scaled skin, curling into the sky like smoke that refuses to disperse.

King Baalrek's voice is a snarl in my head.

Jacob Cloud—this is Asmodeus himself.

The abyss stares at me through Azrakel's eyes as a slit—golden and malicious—opens in each iris.

Asmodeus smiles at me.

Jacob Cloud. You are about to die.

I swallow. My mouth is dry. I can't steady my breath. The Champions are down. And even if they wake, they can't help.

I have nothing left. My Skills are cooling. My reserves are low.

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"What do I do?" I ask aloud. My voice sounds small.

Silence. I feel King Baalrek thinking. The delay is a weight.

Then, low and certain.

Give me control.

I blink. "What do you mean, give you control?"

Asmodeus just looks at me, amused, through Azrakel's eyes—waiting. A god doesn't concern himself with what I'm trying to pull.

Lend me your body.

Panic flares. My heart hammers. There's no time to argue. No time to weigh anything.

How?

Just say you allow me to take over.

"Do it," I say. The word is forced. I close my eyes. "Take it. Do whatever you have to. Just—just don't leave me dead."

I will return it to you soon, son, King Baalrek answers solemnly, before his tone regains its edge. Right after I beat the living shit out of a god.

The command lands inside me. Cold. Raw. Immediate. My limbs go heavy. My vision narrows. My will dims like a candle being covered by a hand. Panic slides under the surface. I grip the hilts and try to hold on. Something else pushes.

Muscles seize. Bones feel like iron. Breath comes in a different rhythm. A presence floods my chest—older and harder than mine. Black Flame flares, then steadies under a new hand. My feet find the ground with sudden weight. Strength returns in a clean, precise rush.

My consciousness blinks out.

* * *

Jacob's skin shifts at once. The pale red of strain deepens into a solid, burning crimson. Across his face, from brow to jaw, a skull‑like tattoo etches itself in black lines, sharp and merciless.

The translucent horns harden—solid and real—jutting forward with weight. A crown of gold forms above them, not delicate but massive and heavy, pressing down like a burden carved into reality.

The wings stretch wide, longer and broader, each five times its former span. Their edges scrape the air with every shift, black flame coursing across them in violent waves. His body swells, bones thickening, muscle packing on until his frame towers over what it was.

The ground protests. Stone cracks beneath his feet. The wetlands shudder under the weight of something greater than mortal.

Asmodeus stops smiling. His scaled face twists into a snarl. The abyssal light narrows. "Baalrek."

Jacob's mouth opens, but the voice is not Jacob's. It is King Baalrek's—deep, grinding, contemptuous.

"Little black lizard," King Baalrek says from Jacob's body, thick with disdain. "You thought you could take this kid out without any problem?"

An aura to rival Asmodeus's intrusion erupts from Jacob's body.

Asmodeus hisses, voice like broken stone. "You dare show yourself in my presence, Baalrek? Through a mortal vessel?"

King Baalrek laughs through Jacob's mouth. It isn't warm. It isn't human. It's heavy and sharp—the sound of an ancient king who once ruled hellfire.

"Through this boy, I could break ten of the current you. And you know it."

Black flames writhe higher from Asmodeus's scaled form, but King Baalrek's aura crashes against them, pressing them down. The forces grind into each other, tearing the air where they meet.

"Words of a fool," Asmodeus says. "Just like when you were still alive. I will erase this nuisance and you with it."

"Little black lizard," King Baalrek answers, voice shaking stone, "you talk too much. You always did."

"Kneel, Baalrek. Beg for erasure and I won't torment this piece of your soul once I'm done with your vessel."

"I don't kneel," King Baalrek says, raising a hand and summoning a three‑meter trident of black flame. "Not to you. Not to anyone."

He beats those massive wings and takes to the air. "Oh, and by the way? He's not my vessel." King Baalrek slams a hand to his chest. "This is the first disciple worthy of the name I've had."

Asmodeus's slit pupils tighten.

King Baalrek disappears—then reappears a breath later behind him, close enough to whisper. "Your intrusions are slow as always."

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