Insanity

Crystaline beneath him was soaked in blood, some his, most not. Ether bled out of his cracked skin like steam from a dying forge. His claws twitched. His bones ached with fractures that refused to heal. His vision flickered between red haze and shadow.

The monster stumbled too, swaying like a puppet with tangled strings. Its limbs jerked unnaturally, black ichor spilling from puncture wounds that pulsed with the slow poison of Belial's blood.

But it didn't matter. Because Belial was breaking. Not just his body, his mind.

The pain was no longer sharp. It had dulled into something worse, a background noise, a constant throb slowly drowned out by something else. Something primal. Hungry. Something demonic.

He felt it start behind his teeth, like a wire pulled too tight. Then it crept up his spine, a heat at the base of his skull, until even his thoughts came jagged and raw. A crack echoed through his mind, soft at first, then louder.

His breath hitched. Then he remembered. The human war broadcasts, cold and sharp, like glass under the skin.

"Demons can't be trusted. They're born of evil. It's in their blood."

"They wanted war. Trillions dead because of them."

"Cleanse the black-bloods." He laughed, a bitter, hoarse thing.

Beautiful racism, he thought.

He closed his eyes. In the darkness of his mind, he saw fire. Cities burning. Children screaming. Demon corpses hung from light poles like meat. Not soldiers. Civilians. Families. Whole bloodlines erased with fire and blade.

He had seen the pits, mass graves dug with cold precision. And above it all, the same lie: "Demons are evil."

The worst part, the part that stuck, was that his own master had said the same thing. A being of terrible wisdom and deeper regret. "No matter what mask we wear, Belial, there's rot underneath. You can't hide what you were born from." He'd hated those words. And yet, they echoed now with terrifying clarity.

Demons had tried to change and they had really. Tried to smile wider, bow lower, be kind, be gentle. Begged for peace. Raised children in glass worlds, teaching them hope. Belial had grown up around those demons, the ones who never raised a blade. But he also knew, deep down, what he saw in their eyes sometimes, late at night. The thing sleeping beneath the kindness. The inherited wrath.

The personification of the Primordial Demon, buried in every generation.

Maybe the humans weren't wrong. Maybe evil wasn't a curse or a crime. Maybe it was just what remained when sanity finally died.

His eyes snapped open. Belial breathed out slowly. There it was. That heat again, crawling behind his eyes, itching at his fingertips. The pulse of something that had been waiting all along. A sharp pull behind his teeth. The bloodlust.

His claws dug into the dirt. He grinned, a wide, crooked, dangerous grin.

"Ahh...insanity," he whispered, voice raw, cracked open like a wound.

He looked at his hand, trembling., blistered, still glowing faintly with corrupted ether. He had tried to be different. Tried so hard to be more than the blood in his veins. But now, his promises were on a thread, fraying.

he had been acting like a human for too long now...

But if he broke here, if he lost now, his promise would also die. Everything he fought for, gone. So maybe, just for this one fight, being a demon was exactly what was needed.

He rose, slow and twitching. The monster stepped back instinctively. Belials sclera slowly turned black his purple eyes eyes glowing now turning a deep red. His breath fogged the air despite the heat.

He walked toward the creature with a limp, but each step cracked the ground. The monster shrieked and charged, but this time Belial didn't dodge. He caught its strike with both hands still he was pushed back with insane force but he sank his claws into its arm. Ether erupted from the wound, searing into the poisoned flesh like acid. Belial headbutted it. Once. Twice. Three times. The third knocked one of its teeth out.

Blood poured from his scalp. His skull screamed. He didn't care. He roared in its face, a guttural, distorted cry that shattered the air like broken glass. They fought again, savagely. No elegance. No techniques. Only hate. Rage. Teeth.

The monster slammed him into a tree. He responded by grabbing the splintered trunk and jamming it through the creature's side. The wood cracked from the force. The Witness clawed at his chest, tearing across muscle. Belial bit into its neck and tore flesh free with his jaws. It reeled, gurgling. He chased. Fist. Claw. Head. Teeth. Each strike was pure violence. Not skill, instinct. Blood painted the trees.

The monster backed away, too slow. Belial leapt and drove his foot through its knee, shattering the joint. It collapsed to one leg, snarling. Belial climbed its back, howling, and sank his claws into its shoulders, then reached around and ripped open its other eye. It screamed. It flailed. He wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. Because he was already gone. The demon he had always feared becoming had awakened.

The forest around them was a ruin. Trees splintered, their bark scorched by stray bursts of ether. The ground was a churned mess of dirt and blood, littered with fragments of bone and torn flesh. The air stank of iron and decay, thick with the residue of their battle. Belial's chest heaved, each breath a labored rasp. His body was a map of wounds, cuts crisscrossing his arms, his torso, his legs. His left arm hung useless, the bone shattered from a blow he barely remembered taking. His right hand, still gripping a jagged claw, trembled with the effort of staying upright.

The monster, the Witness, was no better off. Its massive frame, once a towering nightmare of muscle and malice, now sagged. One arm dangled, half-severed at the elbow, black ichor pooling beneath it. Its remaining eye glared with a mix of pain and defiance, but its movements were sluggish, its strength fading. Belial could feel it, the tipping point. One of them would fall soon. One of them had to.

He staggered forward, his vision swimming. The heat in his skull was unbearable now, a fire that consumed every thought except one: kill. The promise he'd made to his father, to protect them, flickered like a dying ember. He tried to hold onto it, to remember their faces, their voices. The children who'd looked at him with disdain, the elders who'd trusted him to lead. But the fire was louder. The bloodlust was stronger.

He saw his master's face in his mind, those ancient eyes heavy with sorrow. "There's rot underneath." The words burned. Belial had spent his life fighting them, trying to prove them wrong.

But the humans hadn't been entirely wrong.

He'd seen it himself, hadn't he? The demons who snapped under pressure, their kindness peeling away to reveal the rage beneath. The ones who'd fought back, not out of necessity, but because the bloodlust called. He'd seen it in his own reflection, late at night, when the weight of his lineage. He glint in his eyes, the pull behind his teeth. The thing he was born from.

Now, it was awake. And it felt good.

He laughed again, a low, broken sound. The monster lunged, its remaining arm swinging in a desperate arc. Belial caught it, his claws sinking into its flesh, and twisted until he heard the bone snap. The creature howled, stumbling back. Belial pressed forward, relentless. He drove his fist into its chest, feeling ribs crack under the impact. The Witness clawed at him, its nails raking across his face, but he didn't flinch. He grabbed its head, fingers digging into the soft tissue around its eye socket, and pulled. The creature's scream was cut short as he tore its face apart.

Blood sprayed, mixing with the dirt. The Witness collapsed, its body twitching in the dirt. Belial stood over it, chest heaving, his own blood dripping from his wounds. He should have felt something, relief, triumph, anything. But there was only the fire, the heat, the pulse that demanded more.

He looked down at his hands, slick with blood and ichor. His claws were longer now, sharper, curved like sickles. His skin was wrong, too, no longer the tough, armored hide he'd known but something twisted, blackened, glowing faintly with corrupted ether. He didn't recognize himself. He didn't want to.

The forest was silent now, save for the faint drip of blood and the rasp of his own breathing. He sank to his knees, the ground cold against his skin. His promise was gone, frayed to nothing. He'd won, but at what cost? The monster was dead, but so was the man he'd tried to be. The demon had won.

He closed his eyes, and the fire in his mind roared, the realm war. He saw his people, their faces twisted in fear, not of the humans, but of him. He saw the children he'd sworn to protect, running from the thing he'd become. He saw his master, shaking his head, those ancient eyes full of pity.

"You can't hide what you were born from."

That being evil...

Belial's claws dug into the earth. He wanted to scream, to deny it, to claw the fire out of his skull. But it was too late. The bloodlust evil had taken root, and it wasn't letting go. He'd fought to protect his people, to prove they could be more than monsters. But in the end, he'd only proven the humans right.

He rose, his body trembling, and looked at the corpse of the Witness. Its broken form was a mirror, a reflection of what he'd become. A monster, born of blood and rage. He turned away, his steps heavy, each one cracking the ground beneath him. The forest stretched out before him, dark and finite, and beyond this world somewhere in the cosmos, the world he'd fought for was waiting for his return.