Chapter Thirty Nine: The Broken King, The Lost Princess

Chapter Thirty-Nine: 

The Broken King, The Lost Princess

The soil of Eden was never meant to taste the copper tang of celestial blood.

Levistus clawed through the vibrant mosses and damp peat with his bare hands, his movements frantic and animalistic. He ignored the way the soil forced its way beneath his fingernails, the way the coarse earth tore at his cuticles until his own blood mingled with the dark loam. He dug with the desperation of a man trying to bury his own soul. He needed her deep—deep enough to be safe from the fires above, deep enough to touch the sacred roots of the garden that Lucifer had promised would act as an anchor.

With a breath that hitched in a ragged sob, he lowered her. Benzosia’s body was a terrifying weight in his arms, her limbs pliant and cooling, a stark contrast to the thrumming, eternal life of the garden around them. He arranged her with a tenderness that broke him, crossing her hands over her chest and smoothing her golden curls, now matted with the crimson evidence of Basileus’s betrayal.

“If there is a way back to you,” he whispered, his voice a ghost in the silvered twilight. “I will find it.”

He pressed the final mound of earth over her, forever obscuring the turquoise eyes that had been his only North Star. When the last of her vanished, replaced by a dark, jagged scar on the garden soil, the golden light of Eden became a physical weight, crushing the air from his lungs. He stood, his knees stained with the earth that now held his heart. He did not brush the dirt from his skin; he let the grit of her grave settle into the creases of his palms, a final, stinging ghost of her touch. It was the only part of her he had left—the cold earth that had swallowed his sun.

“I suppose there is no point in delaying the inevitable.”

He walked with the heavy, rhythmic pace of an executioner who had already seen the end. Behind him, Eden did not sing. The garden held its breath, as if to mourn the life that was stolen and the light it now guarded.

When the great doors finally groaned open to him, the court of the Nessus did not just tremble; it bled. The very stones of the Malsheem, usually cold and indifferent, seemed to pulse with a feverish, sickly life, shrinking from the figure seated upon the throne as if the architecture itself feared its master. High above, the carved ruby stars that had watched over a thousand years of tyranny no longer shone with a dying light; they were liquid. Thick, viscous droplets of crimson heat trailed down the obsidian walls like slow, weeping wounds, pooling in the cracks of the floor until the entire hall shimmered with the wet, metallic mimicry of a butchery. At the center of this geometric nightmare, Asmodeus held court.

The display was as transparent as it was grotesque. To Levistus, it was a grand, bloody tantrum. Asmodeus didn't look like a grieving widower; he looked like a god who had finally realized his own cheap clockwork was flawed and intended to smash the gears simply because he was too arrogant to admit he’d lost the key.

The King sat rigid, the Ruby Rod pulsing in his hand with a rhythmic, sickly light—a mock heartbeat for a man who had clearly forgotten how to feel one. Around Levistus’s chair, the air didn't just cool; it died. A brittle, Stygian frost crawled across the floorboards like a starving predator, silvering the hem of his bloodied shirt and snapping the very air in a mocking, glacial challenge to the heat of the throne.

A minor soul-broker, a spindly devil with trembling hands, knelt at the foot of the dais, stammering a plea for a lost shipment of harvest-grade souls. Asmodeus didn't let him finish. He didn't even speak. He simply pointed the Ruby Rod.

The hall filled with the wet, sickening crunch of shifting bone. The petitioner’s scream was cut short as his own ribs suddenly burst outward through his skin, the white bone curving and knitting together in mid-air to form a jagged, anatomical cage. The devil was trapped within his own skeleton, his lungs whistling through the gaps as he slumped, a living, breathing heap of viscera and protruding bone. Asmodeus watched the slow, rhythmic pulsing of the exposed heart with a hollow, terrifying fascination.

Basileus remained at his feet, a statue of terrified devotion, carefully stepping around the pool of bile spreading from the dying petitioner.

A heavy hand settled on Levistus’s shoulder, the weight familiar and grounding. He didn’t need to look up to know it was Azadiel. It was a jarring realization, a sudden spike of guilt that pierced through his numbness: he hadn’t thought of his friend once since the breath left Benzosia’s lungs. He had carried her to the garden and buried her in the silent dark without giving Azadiel a single moment to mourn the woman they both had lived to protect. But there was no room for anyone else in the wreckage of his mind. Every thought was an altar to her, and every breath he drew without her felt like a slow, jagged agony.

“He hasn’t blinked in three hours,” Azadiel leaned in, his whisper a low vibration that barely masked the tremor in his own soul. “He isn't ruling anymore, Levistus. He’s just... erasing.”

As he let Azadiel’s grounding presence wash over him, the room echoed the feeling –  tense, full and complete all at once – then imploded with a sonic boom that made every occupant still for a breath before screaming and scrambling towards the exits, which slammed closed one by one. In the midst of all the chaos, Lucifer appeared, holy and vengeful, lit up from within with a radiating fury reminiscent of the sight of the war that brought down the heavens. Levistus held his breath, Azadiel’s grip tightened, Asmodeus’s sigh could be heard through the entire chamber.

“Have you figured it out yet, Asmodeus?” Lucifer’s voice was soft as a purr, yet it carried. Asmodeus, if anything, looked like the last tether to his sanity had snapped.

“That’s right,” Lucifer continued, same drawling purr, “Morningstar blood has been spilled in the Nessus. The final sacrifice needed to tie me to this realm. With the death of my sister, you’ve made yourself a prisoner.”

“You’ll not have my crown, Morningstar,” Asmodeus snarled. 

“Oh pssht.” Lucifer waved his hand. “If I wanted your throne, I’d have it. But as I’ve no wish to rule the damned, you’ve secured yourself a permanent job. Tied to the very Nessus itself, yes? You leave, it collapses. Very thorough, yet twisted ancient magic. The very same I managed to avoid.”

“What have you done?” Asmodeus rose abruptly, knocking Bas on his ass, which would have made Levistus smile if the circumstances had been any different. “You can’t–”

Lucifer strode forward to the very base of the dais, all humor washed from his expression, leaving nothing but deadly intent.

“This is your own doing, Asmodeus. All that you wished for, is it not?” he brushed a hand down each of his sleeves before turning to face the attendees still present. “But fear not, I won’t be going far. I think I’ll take up the seat of the Cania, still there for the taking… perhaps no one you can trust to guard the only entrance and exit from the Nessus?” he glanced back to Asmodeus, who was seething at this point. “I’ll take good care of it, in the name of the Hells.”

With a flashy vortex of hellfire, Lucifer was gone, Asmodeus slumping back into his throne with a roar, the walls of the room seeping blood.

“With his reach to the outside severed, he’ll need a proxy—a shadow to walk the realms where he no longer can. Someone to keep the Triad blinded. Whatever the cost, Azadiel, you stay useful. You stay alive.” Levistus’s gaze was a shard of ice as he weighed the King's remaining logic. He was banking on the fact that Asmodeus still valued a perfect tool more than the thrill of a broken one.

“What will become of you?” Azadiel’s voice was barely a breath.

“Death would be too easy” Levistus said, his voice flat. He looked at his own frost-covered hands, the dirt of the grave still etched into the lines of his skin.

“Do you wish to die?”

Levistus looked up then. He saw the blade hidden beneath Azadiel’s cloak, the white-knuckled grip on the hilt. It was an offer of mercy—the only one left in this bleeding hall. Azadiel was ready to cut his throat here and now, to spare him the centuries of torment and anguish Asmodeus surely had planned.

“No,” Levistus said, his voice cold and terrifyingly certain. He reached out, his frozen fingers brushing the fabric of Azadiel’s sleeve. “I know what you're offering, my friend. But put the steel away.”

Azadiel flinched, but he didn't move his hand. “Stygia will not be a throne; it will be a tomb by the time he is done with you.”

“Let it be.” Levistus leaned in, his gaze boring into Azadiel’s. “Tell me. Do you believe it? Lucifer’s prophecy?”

Azadiel was silent for a long moment, the liquid ruby from the walls splashing softly into a nearby pool. “I have to. It is the only thing that keeps the dark from swallowing me whole.”

“I believe it too,” Levistus whispered, a slow, predatory smile ghosting across his lips. “But I will not wait for the stars to align. I will twist the hands of the fates myself if I have to. I will live, because one day, I am going to bring her back.”