The obsidian platform shattered as the 22 warriors descended into the red-soaked abyss of the Tri-Cona Supa. The previous estimate of five hundred crore was a grave understatement; as they broke through the final atmospheric layer, they realized the true scale of the horror. Five hundred trillion demons stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a living, breathing ocean of malice that stretched beyond the curvature of the hellish horizon.
The sheer pressure of their combined murderous intent was enough to crack the armor of the lesser warriors. As they hit the ground, the force of the impact and the surge of the demon tide acted like a centrifugal force, throwing the 22 members into different pockets of the battlefield.
"Protect yourselves first!" Manasa screamed, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of trillions of war cries. "Do not seek the tower yet! Clear your immediate surroundings or you will be buried in flesh!"
The Harvest of the Dark Prince
Karna landed in a crater, surrounded instantly by ten thousand armored ghouls. He didn't blink. He planted his feet into the scorched earth and raised the Vadanga Bow. The weapon pulsed with a heartbeat of pure darkness, hungry for the souls of the abyss.
"You want to see a massacre?" Karna hissed.
He pulled the string back until the air began to liquify. He didn't fire one arrow; he fired a pulse of conceptual erasure.
VROOOM—
The sound wasn't an explosion; it was the sound of space being deleted. A black wave of energy rippled outward in a perfect circle. In the span of a single heartbeat, one crore (10 million) demons were disintegrated, turned into nothing more than fine black soot.
But for every crore he killed, another hundred crore rushed forward. "Keep coming," Karna growled, his eyes glowing with the pitch-black hue of his ancestor Prasad. "I have enough arrows for the whole of Hell."
The Seven Generals and the Mirror of Fate
As the 22 members fought to stabilize their positions, the sea of demons parted. Seven towering figures, each the size of a mountain and draped in armor made from the skulls of dead gods, marched toward the group. These were the Seven Pillars of the Abyss, the Demon Lord's personal guard.
Manasa stood her ground as the first general approached. She swung her sword, Mona Adhaka, in a wide arc, creating a vacuum that decapitated a thousand demons instantly.
"Stay back, children!" Manasa commanded. "These seven are not like the fodder you are killing. Their souls are anchored to the core of this realm."
Suddenly, the air in front of Manasa warped. A woman materialized, floating inches above the lake of demon blood. She was hauntingly beautiful, with skin the color of moonlight and hair that flowed like liquid silver. Her aura was cold, ancient, and terrifyingly familiar.
Manasa's eyes widened. "A Yakshini..."
The woman smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "I am Vichitra Yakshini, the Mirror of the Deep. I have watched you, Healer. I have watched you hide your fangs in the mortal world, pretending to be the wife of a 'Fake' King."
Vichitra's presence was so intense that the surrounding demons stopped their attack, paralyzed by the clashing auras of the two supernatural women.
"Who are you to judge my life?" Manasa's voice dropped to a register that made the ground tremble.
"I am the truth you abandoned," Vichitra replied, summoning a staff of white bone. "I serve the Demon Lord because he embraces the darkness. You serve a man who is a lie. Why do you waste your divinity on these ants?"
The Peak of Anger
At the mention of her family being "ants" and Rudra being a "lie," something inside Manasa snapped. The "Peak Anger" she had suppressed for centuries—the cold, calculating fury of a Yakshini who had seen civilizations rise and fall—erupted like a supernova.
The sky above the Tri-Cona Supa turned a bruised, violent purple. The rain of demon blood frozen in mid-air.
"You talk too much for a mirror," Manasa whispered.
She gripped Mona Adhaka with both hands. Her violet aura expanded until it covered the entire sector of the battlefield, turning the red hell into a purple wasteland.
"You want to see why I chose this life?" Manasa's eyes became twin suns of violet flame. "I chose it because in my world, there is love. In yours, there is only hunger. And today, I am going to feed your hunger with your own soul."
Manasa didn't just move; she erased the distance between herself and Vichitra. The clash of their weapons sent a shockwave that leveled the Seven Generals, sending them flying back into the demon tide.
"Karna! Rudra! Move to the tower!" Manasa roared, her voice echoing like a goddess of war. "The Mirror is mine to shatter!"
The 22 warriors, seeing the terrifying majesty of Manasa's full power, felt a surge of renewed strength. With the Yakshini holding back the Mirror of the Abyss, the path to the Grandmother's cage was finally, bloodily open.The sky over the Tri-Cona Supa was no longer red; it had turned into a chaotic vortex of violet and silver lightning. At the epicenter of this storm stood Manasa and Vichitra Yakshini. When their blades first met, the resulting shockwave didn't just push the demon army back—it disintegrated them. Every Lesser Demon within a three-mile radius was reduced to molecular mist instantly.
"You've grown soft living among mortals, Manasa!" Vichitra hissed, her silver hair whipping around her face like a nest of vipers. She swung her bone staff with the force of a falling moon, each strike leaving a crack in the very fabric of the dimension.
Manasa blocked the blow with Mona Adhaka, her feet sliding back through the lake of demon blood. "Soft? I have learned that there is a power greater than cold divinity. It is the power of a mother protecting her nest!"
They moved like beasts of myth, their speed so great that they appeared as mere blurs of purple and silver light. Every time their weapons clashed, a new shockwave rippled outward, leveling the Seven Generals who were desperately trying to regain their footing.
"You will not be able to stand in front of me for long, Vichitra!" Manasa roared, her violet aura flaring to its peak.
Vichitra let out a chilling laugh, her eyes glowing with a mirror-like sheen. "I have the same feelings, my child! Let us see whose divinity is truly absolute!"
The Ambush of the Dark Prince
On the other side of the crimson battlefield, Karna was a whirlwind of destruction. He was focused entirely on the sea of demons in front of him, releasing black arrows from the Vadanga Bow that erased millions with every snap of the string. He was so consumed by the slaughter that he didn't sense the distortion in the air behind him.
Suddenly, a massive, obsidian-clawed hand erupted from the shadows.
CRACK!
The blow caught Karna squarely in the back. The impact was so immense that it shattered his protective black shroud instantly. Karna was sent flying across the battlefield like a broken doll, his body skipping over the heads of the demon army.
Before he could crash into the jagged rocks of the Bone Tower, a streak of silver-grey light intercepted him. Balaji caught him mid-air, using his spy-scout agility to stabilize their momentum.
"Bava! Are you okay?" Balaji shouted, his face grim as he set Karna down on a small obsidian ledge.
Karna coughed up a spray of dark blood, his eyes struggling to focus. He looked up and saw the monster that had struck him. It was a demon unlike any they had seen—a creature named Trinuda.
Trinuda stood twenty feet tall, his skin made of compressed soul-steel and his four eyes burning with a green, necrotic fire. He didn't carry a weapon; his very limbs were living blades of the abyss.
"Trinuda..." Karna whispered, recognizing the name from the ancient scrolls of the Pits.
"The boy with the Great King's bow," Trinuda rumbled, his voice sounding like a mountain collapsing. "You are fast, but you are fragile. I will crush the Vadanga Bow into dust and use your ribs to restrike the string."
The Wall of Brotherhood
"Not while I'm standing," Balaji hissed, drawing his twin daggers.
"And not while I'm here!" a booming voice added.
Ishana, Karna's brother and the master of raw force, dropped from the sky, his landing creating a crater that sent demons flying. He stood beside Karna and Balaji, his muscles bulging with a golden-red aura.
"Three children against a Pillar of the Deep?" Trinuda laughed, a sound of pure mockery.
Balaji moved first, using his Escape Space technique to reappear behind Trinuda's neck. His daggers struck the demon's skin, but it was like hitting solid diamond. The blades didn't even leave a scratch.
Ishana lunged forward, putting his full Force Aura into a double-fisted strike against Trinuda's chest. The impact caused a boom that deafened the nearby demons, but Trinuda didn't even flinch. He simply reached out and swatted Ishana away with a backhand that sent the boy crashing into the ground.
"It's no use," Karna gasped, struggling to stand. "His skin is anchored to the Tri-Cona core. Our current levels... we just cannot match him."
Trinuda stepped forward, the ground shaking with every footfall. He was a wall of impossible strength, a demon designed to kill Kings. As Karna, Balaji, and Ishana regrouped, they realized the terrifying truth: the "Fake" Amtham and their current skills were being tested by a monster that didn't know the meaning of pain.
Near the Bone Tower, the Demon Lord watched with a cold smile. The family was being dismantled, piece by piece, as the two Yakshinis continued their apocalypti
c duel in the skies above.