The Price Of Rival

Michael sat cross-legged on the cold, unforgiving floor of the cenotaph.

Before him, the twin spectral forms of Elira Ashborne shimmered with a light that seemed born of sorrow and starlight.

The empty soul-cultivating chair between them was a silent, gaping wound.

He had kowtowed, he had offered his thanks, but words felt like dust in the face of their sacrifice.

Now, he simply waited, ready to listen.

"You have questions," the Elira on the left said, her voice like the rustle of ancient scrolls.

Let's call her the Scholar.

The Elira on the right offered a faint, wry smile. Her voice was sharper, edged with a fire.

The Warrior. "He wants to know why his life has been a cosmic joke. It's a fair question."

Michael managed a weak smirk.

"Something like that. My father's lessons were all about dusty kings and forgettable treaties.

I have a feeling your version of history has a bit more… stabbing."

The Scholar's form wavered, as if in agreement.

"History is always written in blood, descendant. Ours more than most.

Before your world, before any of the worlds you can name, there was only the roiling Chaos.

A soup of untamed energy. From that primordial storm, six great powers clawed their way into existence."

"The Immortals, the Humans, the Devils, the Monsters, the Ghosts, and the Spirits," the Warrior listed off, ticking them on ethereal fingers.

"The Immortals, being the first and most arrogant, promptly built themselves a realm in the sky and called it Heaven, then looked down on the rest of us squabbling in the mud."

Michael grunted. "Sounds about right. The ones with the biggest stick make the rules."

"Precisely," the Warrior affirmed.

"For ten thousand years, there was something that resembled peace. A tense, snarling sort of peace.

But the ambition of the lower realms,our realm, the human realm, the monster realm...it festered. It was inevitable.

The Great War broke out. A conflict that lasted an eternity and cracked the foundations of creation itself.

The sky burned for so long people forgot the color of the sun."

"The Immortals finally descended," the Scholar continued, her tone heavy.

"Not as saviors, but as wardens putting unruly animals back in their cages.

They shattered the warring continents, forcing the factions apart.

They created the Mortal Realm, the Monster Realm, and our home, the Devil Realm, sealing each behind a powerful formation.

It was in this new, violent cage that our family, the Ashborne Clan, clawed its way to the top."

Michael leaned forward, his own ambition stirring in his blood.

"How? What made us so special?"

A flicker of fierce pride ignited in the Warrior's spectral eyes.

"Your great-ancestor, Talon Ashborne. And this."

Michael felt a familiar, terrifying pressure. From the shadows behind the spectral chairs, the sword Veyrith carried (Silence) materialized, hovering in the air.

It devoured the light around it, a sliver of absolute nothingness.

"Talon wielded Silence," the Warrior said, her voice filled with reverence.

"But it was his bloodline skill that made him a god among devils. The Chaos Body. The ability to spin his own shadow and soul into perfect doppelgangers. An army of one."

"He could be in ten places at once, fighting ten battles," the Scholar added.

"No one could tell the real from the shadow.

He was invincible. Through his might, the Ashborne Clan became the undisputed rulers of the Devil Realm.

And I… I was named Clan Guardian."

Her form flickered with a deep, ancient sorrow.

"A title that came with great power, and greater burdens. Our chief rivals, the Omega Clan, were snakes. They proposed a political marriage to unite our families.

A pathetic attempt to swallow us from within. I was to be the sacrificial lamb."

Michael scowled. "So you ran."

"I made a strategic retreat," the Warrior corrected with a sharp grin.

"I told my brother I was going on a training excursion to the Mortal Realm to 'temper my skills.'

I took Silence and left that nest of vipers to their plotting. I chose freedom."

"And that's where you met him?" Michael asked, the name already forming on his lips. "Orion Vael."

A complex emotion, a mixture of profound annoyance crossed the faces of both spirits.

"He wasn't Orion Vael then," the Warrior scoffed, though her eyes softened.

"He was Trot Daemon. A so-called peerless genius from the human Doginals Clan in a dusty corner of the Mortal Realm called the Canglan Territory. Brash. Arrogant.

And utterly convinced of his own brilliance."

The Scholar let out a sound that might have been a ghostly laugh.

"In other words, he was your perfect match."

"He was my perfect punching bag," the Warrior retorted.

"We clashed the moment we met. He saw my Devil Lo and thought me an evil to be vanquished.

I saw his smug face and thought it needed rearranging. We fought. Dozens of times."

Her smile was genuine now, a memory cutting through millennia of grief.

"He was good, I'll give him that. His control of spatial laws was unlike anything I had ever seen.

But he could never, ever get past my shadow clones. He'd defeat one, and two more would take its place.

The look on his face…" She laughed again.

"It infuriated him. It was wonderful."

Michael couldn't help but chuckle.

"Sounds like you two were having fun."

They fucked. Not once, not twice...multiple unholy times.

The kind of fucking that makes ancient spirits turn away in shame.

It wasn't love. It was a cosmic event with moaning.

The light in her eyes dimmed. The joy vanished, replaced by the cold shadow of tragedy.

"We were," the Scholar whispered.

"But our time was cut short. The Omega Clan hadn't forgotten me.

They allied with Trot Daemon's own clan, the Doginals, and that vile cult you know all too well—the Blood Divine Sect.

They sent a false report to my brother, Talon."

"They claimed the realm-sealing formation between the Mortal and Devil realms was unstable," the Warrior seethed, her form crackling with ancient rage.

"A lie. Talon, ever the protector, gathered our clan's elites and journeyed to the Mortal Realm to 'investigate'."

"Orion—Trot Daemon—came to me," the Scholar said, her voice trembling.

"He'd found out the truth. He risked his own life, defied his own clan, to warn me.

It wasn't an investigation. It was a trap."

The Warrior's voice cracked.

"They had created a… a thing. A formation called the Devil Destruction Formation. A weapon designed for one purpose: to erase our bloodline from existence."

Michael's own blood ran cold. The Blood Divine Sect. The name was a curse that had haunted his family for generations.

"He was too late," the Scholar murmured.

"Our forces were ambushed. The sky turned the color of rust, and the ground screamed as the formation activated.

It was a slaughter. Most of our elites, led by a powerful Whisperer from the Ghost Realm, a loyal friend to our clan, managed to fight their way to a hidden passage and escape.

But I… I stayed."

"Why?" Michael breathed, his heart aching for the ancestor he'd never known.

The Warrior's chin lifted, her eyes blazing with defiance.

"To buy them time. I was the Guardian of the Ashborne. I was Elira. I would not run while my family died.

I unleashed the full power of the Chaos Body. I fought."

Her spectral form flickered violently, the memory a fresh wound.

"I was powerful. But they were desperate.

They sent two of their so-called Fairy Immortals, beings of immense power, to detonate themselves on top of me."

BOOM. Michael felt the echo of the blast in his very soul, a cataclysmic explosion of light and power that transcended time.

"The force nearly tore my soul from my body," the Scholar whispered, her voice a thread of pain.

"And in the chaos, as I fell from the sky, I was struck.

A weapon I didn't even see. A curse forged by humans, designed specifically to cripple beings like me.

A cold, insidious poison that latched onto my soul."

Michael's breath caught in his throat. "The Umbral Seal."

"Yes," both spirits said in unison. The word was a venomous hiss.

"My power… it was gone," the Warrior said, her voice breaking.

"Shattered. The Devil Lo that was my birthright turned against me, devouring me from within. My body began to dissolve into dust. I thought it was the end."

She looked at Michael then, a love that spanned ten thousand years of waiting shimmering in her ghostly eyes.

"But then, he came back for me. The rival who could never beat me. The arrogant, insufferable man who I had just fought to a standstill days before.

As I was fading into nothing, Trot Daemon returned. And he tore a hole in reality itself to pull me from the jaws of death."