Barbatos’s eyes widened slightly as the celestial voice spoke.

  Everything around him, space, Saturn, the devil itself, felt distant, insignificant, as though reality had been reduced to background noise before something infinitely greater.

  Then the voice began to fade.

  Its final words carried both command and trust.

  “Now… destroy that devil.”

  The world snapped back into motion.

  The devil surged forward instantly, crossing the distance between them in a blink, its fist swollen with chaotic atum and aimed directly at Barbatos’s chest.

  Barbatos didn’t move.

  He was still reeling from what had just occurred.

  Instead, he spoke.

  “Melody of the Forgotten.”

  The moment the words left his lips, radiance erupted.

  Blinding, harmonic light devoured Barbatos entirely, swallowing his form before the devil’s punch could connect. The space around him vibrated as harmonic atum answered his call, not resisting, not overwhelming, but embracing him.

  Barbatos smiled.

  He surrendered himself to it.

  His tanned skin fractured, splitting apart in glowing fissures as pure white radiance shone through, like a divine artifact on the verge of release. The cracks spread across his arms, his chest, his face, yet there was no pain.

  Only clarity.

  He glanced down at his transformed body and chuckled softly.

  “So this is acknowledgment…”

  The devil halted mid-charge.

  Its head tilted, curiosity flickering through its monstrous features.

  Then it attacked again.

  Barbatos raised his gaze and commanded.

  In an instant, the radiance within him burst outward, forming a colossal construct, a giant version of Barbatos himself, forged entirely from harmonic light. It stood equal in size to the devil, radiant and resolute.

  Barbatos was no longer standing on the battlefield.

  He was within it.

  Not piloting it, but existing as its core, commanding it as an extension of his will.

  The devil recoiled in fury and roared.

  Barbatos smiled.

  “Come.”

  The devil charged, swinging a devastating punch. The construct caught it cleanly, harmonic light wrapping around the devil’s arm as Barbatos twisted its fist aside and retaliated.

  The counterpunch struck the devil square in the jaw.

  Before it could be sent flying, Barbatos grabbed one of its horns, yanked it downward, and drove his knee into its face.

  The devil screamed.

  With a final heave, Barbatos hurled it toward one of Saturn’s moons.

  The impact carved a crater deep into the moon’s surface.

  Debris scattered into orbit as the devil rose from the wreckage, shaking fragments from its skeletal body. Barbatos hovered above, watching calmly as the devil’s wings unfurled and those eerie eyes reformed.

  Beams of unholy energy erupted in a storm.

  Barbatos summoned a massive blade of harmonic radiance and swung.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The beams were devoured on contact, unraveled and erased by pure resonance.

  The devil staggered back in disbelief.

  Then it rushed him again.

  Their clash shook space itself.

  Barbatos blocked its strike and held fast, but the devil raised one clawed arm and slammed it down. The attack tore through the radiant construct with brutal ease.

  Barbatos hissed and kicked the devil away, retreating as the construct rapidly reformed around him.

  Now he understood.

  Within this form, his strength and speed were unparalleled.

  But durability,

  That had been the price.

  He stared at the approaching devil and muttered under his breath,

  “Then let’s finish this quickly.”

  The construct flared.

  Both combatants dissolved into living light, accelerating to speeds beyond perception. They tore around Saturn and its moons in violent arcs, their collisions producing immense booms that rippled through space.

  Then,

  The devil landed a devastating blow.

  The strike pierced straight through the construct and slammed into Barbatos himself, sending him crashing into another of Saturn’s moons.

  The moon cracked under the impact.

  Barbatos rose slowly from the crater, blood pouring from his mouth like a crimson waterfall. His internal healing surged instantly, mending shattered organs and fractured bone.

  He wiped his mouth and smirked.

  The construct reformed around him just as the devil closed in.

  They clashed again, and this time the moon beneath them screamed under the strain, fractures spiderwebbing across its surface as it nearly shattered apart.

  With a roar, Barbatos forced the devil back and seized its horns.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Kicking with immense force, he launched the devil away, tearing two horn clean from its skull.

  The devil spiraled through space before stabilizing, now left with only two horns remaining.

  It glared at Barbatos with unrelenting fury.

  Human faces erupted across its body once more, screaming in unison like a corpse choir.

  “You insect! You cannot beat me! Nobody can!”

  Barbatos laughed.

  He summoned his blade and pointed it forward.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” he declared.

  “You devil.”

  The devil roared.

  Its remaining eyes began to bleed and explode, their energies converging into a single point, condensing into a catastrophic beam meant to annihilate Barbatos utterly.

  Barbatos’s smile widened, wild and exhilarated.

  His heart thundered.

  He raised his blade, radiant and resolute.

  “Come,” he whispered.

  And prepared to end the devil.

  Within his blade, an impossible radiance gathered.

  Celestial in both sight and nature, it embodied every plane Barbatos had access to, simultaneously. Time, space, harmony, force, and concepts beyond mortal naming folded inward, layering themselves around the translucent blade in bands of light that should not have been able to coexist.

  He didn’t know if such a technique could truly work.

  But instinct told him something else.

  Nothing less would be enough.

  The radiance thickened, forming a sheath of impossible light around the blade. It hummed, not with sound, but with meaning, as if reality itself was bracing for what was about to occur.

  Barbatos raised the blade high.

  Across from him, the devil stared back.

  Unholy atum gathered within its grasp, swelling into a sphere of darkness so dense it warped space around it. The sphere grew… and grew… until it rivaled a small moon in size, its surface crawling with screaming faces and bleeding fractures of energy.

  Then,

  Both stopped.

  For a single moment, neither acted.

  They stood in the empty expanse of space, surrounded by drifting debris and shattered moons, locked in stillness.

  That moment of silence was the most peaceful Barbatos had ever known.

  Then they roared.

  The devil unleashed its attack.

  A beam of unholy atum tore through the void, devouring asteroids and pulverizing moons in its path, its presence alone annihilating matter as it rushed toward Barbatos at incomprehensible speed.

  Barbatos took one final breath.

  He stepped forward.

  With a single, decisive motion, he brought his blade down.

  The strike released a colossal arc of radiant energy, holy, harmonic and absolute. It surged forward and met the beam head-on, the two forces colliding in a blinding eruption.

  For a heartbeat, they were equal.

  Then the arc overpowered it.

  The holy radiance tore through the unholy beam like parchment, shredding it utterly before continuing on without slowing. It reached the devil and cleaved straight through its body, severing it cleanly in two.

  Its regeneration ceased instantly.

  The halves drifted apart, lifeless, suspended in space like the remnants of an ancient war finally laid to rest.

  But the arc did not stop.

  Fueled by its own momentum, it expanded as it traveled onward, roaring through the void until it reached Saturn.

  And split the planet apart.

  Barbatos’s eyes widened.

  “…Damn,” he muttered, genuine surprise coloring his voice.

  Raising his hand, he summoned the last of his strength and bent time itself, regressing Saturn to its original state, undoing the destruction as though it had never occurred.

  The planet reformed in a instant.

  Barbatos let out a relieved sigh.

  The radiant construct dissolved around him. The cracks of light in his skin faded, sealing shut as his form returned to normal. His eyes shifted back to hazel brown, his hair darkened to its natural black.

  Victory.

  Then pain struck.

  A sharp, crushing sensation gripped his chest, as though an invisible hand had seized his heart and was squeezing it from within.

  Barbatos staggered, but did not resist.

  Instead, he smiled faintly.

  “So this is the price… huh?”

  He had known.

  No power ever came without cost.

  Clutching his chest, he breathed heavily and looked out at the divided corpse of the devil, floating silently in the void.

  Instinct told him the truth.

  Activating his acknowledgment, even for barely a minute, had torn through his lifespan. Roughly ten percent of it had been claimed, stripped away as payment for wielding such authority.

  The radiance had not merely empowered him.

  It had consumed his time.

  He lowered his gaze, regret flickering briefly across his face. Then he looked back at the devil’s remains one last time.

  “…Guess this is something I only use when I’m truly forced to.”

  With that, Barbatos vanished.

  The corpse of the colossal cataclysm remained behind, drifting endlessly through the silent expanse of space