Ancestral Lineage

Malgarius glared at Lilith, fury radiating from his crimson eyes. The raw disrespect burned hotter than any wound. She still wasn't taking him seriously—that smug, unshakable calm of hers mocked him with every breath, and it made his rage boil over.

"Empress," he spat, the word twisted between reverence and venom. His voice thundered like a war-drum, each syllable carrying a shockwave that tore through the battlefield. The already shattered Chained Pits groaned in agony as entire cliffs collapsed into themselves, the fetid rivers below turning wild with turbulence. Their battle had long since erased the ground; now, they floated amidst a storm of ruin and collapsing stone, suspended above a wasteland they had created.

Lilith, with her wings spread wide tilted her head. For the first time, her eyes softened—just a fraction. "Malgarius," she said, her voice a low hymn that echoed with strange sorrow, "you are my first creation. Do you truly wish to take this path to the end?"

Her words carried a rare vulnerability, but the flicker of worry in her tone only seemed to sharpen Malgarius' ire. He bared his fangs in a snarl, his aura roiling like a corrupted storm around his body.

"Sentimental?" he mocked, his tone dripping with cruel amusement. "How unbecoming of you, Lilith. Are you so desperate to cling to the past that you forget what we are?" His six-armed manifestation bellowed behind him, its instruments of decay, corruption, and starvation blazing to life, drowning the air in poison and despair.

The sky above them cracked, lightning without color tearing through the void as Malgarius spread his arms wide, his mocking voice now thundering like judgment:

"Aren't you being sentimental… for a demon?"

"It seems you've made your stance clearer," Lilith said, her once-seductive tone turning chilling, her voice resonating with an authority that could curdle blood.

And then—reality cracked.

Behind her, the air split apart as though the very fabric of the Demon Realm could no longer contain what was about to emerge. A red light bled through the fissures, staining the battlefield in hues of passion and terror. Slowly, impossibly, the manifestation of the Paragon of Sins took form.

A towering figure stepped into existence, so vast its head brushed against the unseen heavens of Helheim. Seven faces adorned its colossal head, each one distinct—wrath contorted with rage, lust smiling with honeyed lips, greed with eyes of molten gold, envy with cracked emerald veins, gluttony drooling abyssal ichor, sloth half-closed in eternal weariness, and pride gazing downward with imperious contempt. They shifted, their expressions alive, whispering and hissing like the voices of damned multitudes.

Its body was wrapped in flowing crimson silks, shifting like liquid flesh. The fabric shimmered with beauty one moment and revealed grotesque pulses of vein and sinew the next. Chains unfurled from its back, living things tipped with gnashing mouths that snapped hungrily at the air, tasting the aura of all who dared to remain near. Where its colossal feet touched the earth, the ground bloomed briefly with radiant black roses, only for them to wither instantly into ash.

The Demon Realm itself shuddered. Mountains crumbled at the edges of Helheim, rivers of blood surged as if enraged, and entire hordes of lesser demons screamed and fell to their knees in primal reverence—or abject terror. The skies turned scarlet, painted with the breath of her manifestation, while distant lands beyond Helheim—realms that never bent to demonkind—felt the tremors in their soil, a silent dread slithering into their hearts.

Even the other demon kings, watching from afar in their distant domains, paused. They felt it. They knew it. The Paragon of Sins had unveiled her true visage.

Lilith stood beneath her towering manifestation like a queen beneath her divine idol, her six wings spread wide, each feather dripping with purple and red embers. Her eyes glowed like twin amethysts of forbidden desire, and her smile was regal, terrible, unstoppable.

"Now…" she whispered, her voice carrying across the Demon Realm like a lover's sigh and a tyrant's decree, "…let us see if you can withstand the weight of Sin itself."

What followed next would go down in the annals of history.

The skies of Helheim tore apart. The scarlet clouds bled into rivers of purple flame, and the world seemed to cry beneath the pressure of the Paragon's will.

Malgarius roared, his six-armed manifestation behind him straining against Lilith's colossal Scarlet Mother of Abominations. He threw his fist forward again, decay rolling like a tidal wave as an entire valley ahead of him blackened, trees shriveling into dust, and the air itself turning poisonous. His chalice of ichor poured endlessly, flooding the battlefield with corruption that melted through steel and bone alike.

But Lilith only laughed. A sound soft, melodic, alluring—yet cruel enough to make even elder demons shudder.

"Your decay tastes sweet… like a child's tantrum."

With a snap of her fingers, the ground beneath Malgarius twisted. The chains from her manifestation dug into the earth, piercing through the ichor flood like it was water. They coiled around Malgarius's legs before he could retreat. He snarled, his claws tearing at the bindings, but the chains weren't mere metal—they were sins incarnate. Each chain he touched whispered his own hidden desires back at him. His greed, his envy, his sloth. His heart trembled as they surged through his body like poison.

He tried to swing, his crystalline fists pounding at her aura, but Lilith only stepped forward, her six black wings spreading wide. A single feather drifted from her pinions and landed near him.

BOOM!

The feather exploded into a sea of violet flame, consuming Malgarius's body in an inferno of Lust and Wrath. His skin peeled, his horns cracked, his ichor boiled, and yet she had not even raised her hand.

"Don't look so small, baby boy…" she mocked, her eyes glowing pink and purple, their pull irresistible. For the briefest second, Malgarius faltered again, his mind bent into illusion. His manifestation of Decay fought to shield him, but the Scarlet Mother's seven faces turned as one and breathed out a chorus of sins.

Wrath shattered its weapons.Gluttony devoured its chalice.Envy cracked its horns.Sloth smothered its movements.Greed tore away its crystalline armor.Pride broke under her gaze.Lust drew it closer, helpless to resist.

In one brutal exchange, his six-armed god was reduced to a twitching shadow beneath the Mother's seven-faced enormity.

Malgarius screamed, his body fracturing under the backlash. He threw everything he had left—decay surges, corruption tides, waves of starvation that turned demons into husks at the edge of the battlefield—but Lilith walked through it all.

She was sin. His poison couldn't touch her, because poison itself was born of envy and wrath. His decay couldn't claim her, because she was Gluttony, and all things ended in her maw. His starvation only made her stronger, for hunger was her weapon, not his.

When she finally struck, it wasn't a flashy move. She raised her hand, delicate, slender, almost mocking in its elegance, and pressed her palm against his chest.

"You are not worthy of my throne, Malgarius."

CRACK.

His entire body folded inward, collapsing into black ash and shards of broken corruption. His ichor screamed into the skies, staining Helheim red, before Lilith's chains dragged the last of his essence into the maw of her manifestation. The Scarlet Mother swallowed him whole.

Silence.

The Demon Realm shook, then bowed. Mountains groaned, rivers boiled, and even the thrones of distant Overlords dimmed in acknowledgment. Across Helheim, demons fell to their knees in a mixture of fear and reverence, whispering her name as if it would protect them from her gaze.

Lilith stood tall, her black-and-red armor gleaming in the fires of victory, her wings casting shadows across the horizon. Her manifestation loomed behind her, the Scarlet Mother of Abominations gazing down upon the broken landscape, its seven faces smiling, sneering, weeping, and laughing all at once.

And as she turned her gaze toward the rest of the realm, her smile widened.

"Let them know…" she whispered, her voice carrying on the winds of Helheim, sweet and venomous, "…that Sin reigns eternal."

The ground quaked as her manifestation dissolved back into scarlet mist, leaving nothing but silence, ruin, and the absolute certainty that the Paragon of Sins was unrivaled.