Chapter 7: The Darkest Night
The streets had been transformed into a hellscape under the smoldering orange glow creeping on the horizon. Sections still intact now bore signs of the satanic assault: corpses hung defiled from balconies and lamp posts, strewn viscera, and scrawled arcane blasphemies on asphalt.
Ethan sped his vehicle recklessly through the gauntlet, careening around rubble and wreckage while answering Anna's intermittent distress calls amidst sounds of battle. At last, in the distance flashing among debris, he discerned the refugee camp's perimeter under siege, its makeshift defenses breached.
Slamming the brake, Ethan leapt out with weapons drawn and his eyes scanning for targets through infrared scopes. Cultists swarmed the encampment, dragging survivors struggling and screaming to await transports. He opened fire, felling two with headshots before they realized the attack from the flank.
As the horde turned ragefully upon this fresh threat, Ethan engaged in brutal close-quarters combat, with bullets and blades finding their marks with machine precision. Yet for each foe eliminated, two more seemed to materialize from the ruins. He was being herded and overwhelmed, suffering gashes and blunt traumas as the combat stretched.
Just when all seemed lost, thunderous booms shook the district, and streams of thermite rained from above, incinerating scores of demons. Choppers appeared to be strafing with mini-guns and missiles, clearing a corridor for evacuation. Anna emerged from the fray, bloodied but standing, embracing Ethan with relief.
Our guardian angel returns, she said with a weary smile. Now let's get these people to safety while our friends up top keep those beasts at bay. Ethan helped load the injured onto transports, exchanging fires with assaulting hordes whenever they neared under air support's thunderous assaults.
At last, the final vehicle sped away with its precious cargo. But in that moment, a shell struck one chopper's rotor, sending it into a death spiral amidst a fireball. Ethan and Anna dove for cover as it crashed mere yards away, erupting flames engulfing the intersection.
Through blurred vision, Ethan observed that their situation had become dire: the horde closed from all sides, while above, the remaining chopper circled desperately, laying suppressive fire. With a choked cry, Anna slumped against him, a spreading stain darkening her fatigues from a shrapnel wound in her side.
Ethan clamped down, radioing for immediate medevac while futilely fending off waves of demons clawing at the burning wreckage. He could barely see or stand from blood loss, holding Anna's limp form and praying for a miracle as talons scrabbled ever closer through the smoke. Darkness crept into the edges of his fading sight.
A brilliant light pierced his eyelids then, banishing the encroaching shadows. Ethan gazed up in awe and wondered at a towering radiant being shrouded in effulgent glory, wings spanning the heavens. With outstretched hands, it vanquished the demons with blinding bolts, parting flaming ruins aside to reveal salvation awaiting.
Paramedics rushed forward, bearing stretchers under the air cover's renewed barrage. As Ethan collapsed into blackness, he heard a voice like a roaring tempest: Fear not, for Christ has delivered you from death. Now go—finish what has begun! Darkness shall not overcome the light of the King of King's!
Ethan awoke again in an asylum clinic amid the familiar cacophony of wounded and dying. Yet through it all, one thought echoed: the divine promise that stirred his spirit beyond repair. Rising unsteadily but resolute, he retrieved his kit and ventured once more into the ruins turned purgatory, to shine a beacon of hope against the encroaching shadow.