The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 497: The Final Prophecy

"For my sake..."

"Kir... I offer you the future. The vision I saw for you when I finally found a path for the world that didn’t lead everything to ruin. I offer you time with your loved ones... your constellation. And to step out into a world full of life without knowing the hardship of the millennia it will take to create that world."

Tears fell from Kir’s face, forming on their own as sorrow began to eclipse his anger. "I can’t accept that... not from you. Not after everything you’ve done!" Kir readied himself, summoning Kangetsu into two forms—a rifle in his right hand and a pistol in his left. "I can’t let you live."

"I know," Aeleas said. She stood, drawing forth a weapon that felt immediately familiar to Kir... for he was the one who had killed its previous wielder. From a dagger, the weapon became a spear, and the moment Aeleas lifted it towards the sky, a hundred rays of light began to descend on Kir’s position.

Kir shielded himself and his weapons. Against such a distributed attack, it was easy enough to block, but the real danger came a moment later as Maledict opened a portal from behind him, laying into Kir with a punch that sent him crashing against his own shield.

"Here enough for you?" the Devil of Heresy taunted. "Don’t make me kill you, son."

Kir sank two rounds into Maledict’s chest as an answer, the bullets piercing the thick mana but breaking on contact with Maledict’s skin. Still, they had an effect as Maledict stopped his stride.

"You are not my father!" Kir shouted as he continued to fire, switching modes with a thought as he went from normal rounds through each of the caster cartridges, looking for an opening.

"Think of where you stand, Kir!" Maledict shielded himself as Kir’s lightning round almost penetrated his defensive aura. "We are a family! You stand to gain nothing by resisting what’s already happened!"

Kir sensed a buildup of mana and dodged as Aeleas sent a yellow-white beam of energy through his shields. Her next three shots missed him narrowly, and part of him realized that without her ability to see the future, she stood as much chance of hitting him as any normal mage. All he had to do was trust his senses...

"We can rule together! You can inherit the world!" Maledict shouted, raising a hand and forming a sphere of red-black that crackled with power.

"I never wanted to rule!" Kir fired a force round into the sphere, detonating it above Maledict’s head just as he began to send it forward. The shockwave tore through the space surrounding them, causing the shield around Aeleas to flare for a moment.

When the blast cleared, Maledict stood there, and in manasight Kir saw his aura begin to flow out from his chest as it replenished itself.

Quickly, Kir teleported new rounds into his weapons, physical ones, before firing at Maledict’s head and heart. The first shot missed as Maledict dodged, but the second managed to pierce through the high part of Maledict’s shoulder before his aura could reform.

"You’ll regret that," Maledict snarled. He rose into the air, his form distorting and growing into something truly demonic. A third eye grew on his forehead, and six spectral eyes hovered into being around his face. Four arms sprouted from his ribs, and to each clawed hand he called forth weapons so dense with mana they could only be soulbound ones.

Behind Maledict, his wings disappeared into six blades of black mana that drained the air around him with every flap.

"I’ll regret nothing," Kir shouted back, dodging as Maledict’s downward strike grazed his shield, breaking a line through the hexes. "The people you helped her murder deserve justice!"

Kir dodged another mass of mana from Aeleas, only for Maledict to soar over the beam with a pair of downward strikes that carved their way through Kir’s shields. At the moment his shields broke, Kir forced himself forward, heedless of the tearing sensation in his arm as he drove his horns into Maledict’s chest, managing to impale him slightly with the top two as he pushed Maledict into the beam Aeleas had made.

The act seared off Maledict’s wings, but the devil was not to be deterred as he raised his lower arms to chop at Kir’s midsection with a pair of swords. His attacks met empty air as Kir twisted and teleported above, leaving a pair of rough crescent gouges in Maledict’s flesh that bled black.

Maledict roared, mana surging to his head as his nine eyes began to glow. Multicolored beams of light, each a form of mana with differing attributes, chased Kir even as he teleported and dodged with everything he had, regenerating his arm just in time to raise a six-layered shield that took every beam.

The fight drew out as Kir traded spells with his progenitors, looking for any advantage he could as he slowly ramped up the power he brought to bear against them. Things seemed roughly even, but the more Kir fought, the more he sensed that Aeleas was tapping the infinite power of the dungeons through her throne.

Kir snapped off a shot in her direction, but the bullet was caught by the shield that kept him and Maledict bubbled together, hovering a meter away from Aeleas’ face.

The fight went out of her as she stared at the round meant for her head. "I thought you would understand..." Aeleas spoke as Kir and Maledict continued to fight.

Suddenly a force held Kir and Maledict in place. Though they both struggled, it was for naught. Kir realized that the shield that had surrounded them had collapsed onto their forms, and so he gathered mana to overcome it...

Maledict turned his head as he realized the source of their restraints. "What is the meaning of this, Aeleas?"

"It’s over, Maledict. I tire of this fight." A shattering sound echoed across the space, and Kir’s eyes were drawn to the side opposite of Aeleas.

Through a tear in space, Rainier and Kordia emerged, followed by the rest of the constellation as they took up formation across from the battle. They looked haggard, and more than a little exhausted, but there was determination in their eyes and hearts that Kir could feel the moment he saw them...

Kir burst out of his restraints a moment later, taking on the form that his final evolution had given him for the first time...

A silhouette of stars with six wings of prismatic fire.

His eyes were iridescent suns.

"We took out Vinam," Rain reported, his face serious.

"We’ve been cracking at this place for hours," Malzkael said next. "So that’s the Daughter..."

"Hush, we should find out what the situation is," Kordia said, looking to Kir.

"It is over, Aeleas," Kir affirmed. "Surrender, and I’ll make it quick." With his loved ones at his back, anything was possible...

A sudden cry drew Kir’s attention. He turned to find his family being gripped by strands of midnight black that crawled up their bodies as they fought against them.

"Did you think I could not control who enters this realm?" Aeleas sat. "The moment your family set foot in Araqlun, they were within my power to destroy. All that lives beneath my shelter are within my power... And if you want them to live, you will give up this fight."

Kir accelerated himself. He tried to think, to reason out how he could save them before Aeleas tore into them with the infinite mana she had at her disposal... They were weakened, he realized, by whatever battle they’d fought against the forces of Heaven. Rain had a new scar across his brow. Kordia a small slice missing from the side of one of her foxlike ears. Everyone showed signs of fatigue...

He realized that even if he managed to save most, Aeleas could kill them with a thought. He’d fought her in a space she’d made her own, and now he was failing again...

No... there’s still one thing I can do...

Kir let go of his accelerated thoughtspeed to face the woman who’d birthed him.

"I allowed you this fight to show you the difference between us. To give you a taste of the power that god leaves behind. You have nothing to threaten me with," Aeleas intoned as Maledict, freed from his bindings, returned to her side.

"That’s where you’re wrong..." Kir raised a hand... and stabbed it into his own chest, pulling out the core of his being as he held it tightly.

Aeleas and Maledict’s eyes went wide.

Kir hated it, but he knew... "Let my family go, Aeleas, or I will end myself."

"You can’t!" Aeleas shouted, her voice peaking.

Kir firmed his grip, finding he needed to enhance his strength beyond anything he’d done before just to start to feel something. He let out a small cry as a pain unlike anything he’d ever felt began, like he was crushing his own body-

Relieved gasps sounded behind him as his family came free of the darkness that bound them. Kir eased his grasp with a shudder. "Why?" he asked as he was surrounded by the ones he loved.

"I have lived a thousand lives with you, Kir. A thousand visions of the future, and every one of them ended with Aidaeb’s departure," Aeleas said. "This was the only way... to make you the seed of a better tomorrow. The knowledge from that other world," she looked at Kir and Malz, "the power to shape and destroy," she looked to Rainier and Kordia, "and love." She looked at Ferro. "You needed all of it. To outlast the future that’s ahead. To do better than me... better than us." She put her hand on one of Maledict’s. "Once I saw this was the only way... I watched the possibilities. Without my hand shaping the future... you would have lived, but not thrived. Without purpose... without an infinite goal and people to share it with... your death would become one of growing apathy."

She sighed.

"But if this is the only way you have to punish me for my sins... know that you hold the whole world in your hand... Son."

That final word... that acknowledgement shouldn’t have hurt the way it did, but Kir could feel love in it. She wasn’t his mother, she was Aeleas, the angel who abandoned him to a world that hated him for his demon half. She was the angel who declared herself Demon Lord on the deaths of a billion people... And behind that loving acknowledgement he saw the madness of it. Her words were a threat. If he killed himself, she would kill the rest of the world...

It was over. She’d won.

Aeleas waited.

When Kir finally spoke, he said, "So be it, Demon Lord." Kir reabsorbed his core, the shallow damage to its surface layers already repaired.

The look of pain on Aeleas’ face felt genuine. But it was too little, too late.

Eventually, she nodded, raising her hand to her forehead as she closed her eyes. A moment later, a clear mana crystal formed. A perfect sphere, which seemed to sparkle with hidden facets, its edges blurred in the disturbing way of perfection.

Exhaustion settled on her features as she lowered just a little in her throne, before sending the orb floating towards Kir.

"Take this with you," she said. "It is... my final prophecy. My hope is that you will find this last vision of the future beautiful, even if nothing can be certain now." Kir stored the crystal and took a breath with closed eyes.

He opened them when he felt a portal form behind him, but did not turn away from Aeleas’ eyes.

"No, Demon Lord. One thing is certain."

He turned, staring out at the unmoving city that he knew as home.

His final words to Aeleas, Daughter of Heaven, the Final Demon Lord, before he stepped through the gate were a promise...

"When the world is healed... When your shelters are gone... And when you step off of that throne..." He tightened his fists, releasing his metatron form as he returned to normal. "I will kill you."

Turning, Kir and his family left through the portal Aeleas made.

* 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"Thank you..." Aeleas whispered in the depths of her soul.