CHAPTER 241: BANISHING SPELL

Orrian watched from beyond the veil of reality, his form rippling through dimensions mortals couldn’t perceive, and felt something he hadn’t experienced in millennia.

Awe.

...

Eris walked away from Soren with purpose in every step, creating distance between herself and safety, between herself and the man whose kiss still burned on her lips hotter than any flame she’d ever conjured.

The demons circled her.

They sensed the power radiating from her skin like heat waves off sun-baked stone. It frightened them... anything with the dragon’s mark should have sent them fleeing back to hell’s depths. But they were bound, compelled by Vetra’s summoning to attack, to kill, to fulfill the contract written in innocent blood.

So they came, talons scraping charred earth, fangs dripping sulfur, wings rustling like dead leaves.

Eris stopped walking.

She raised her hands, palms up toward the smoke-choked sky, and closed her eyes.

Then she reached deep. Deeper than she’d ever dared before. Past the seal her father had carved into her soul, past the barriers she’d built to keep herself human, past every wall between vessel and god.

She reached for Pyronox fully.

The dragon’s voice rolled through her mind like thunder across mountains.

For the first time, they spoke to each other.

"This will hurt."

"I know."

"This will drain you beyond the threshold of what your kind can endure. Your mortal frame was never forged to bear divinity in such terrible measure."

"I know." Her voice didn’t waver. "Do it anyway."

A rumble that might have been laughter, might have been approval, might have been both.

"As you wish, Vessel."

Power crashed through her like a dam breaking.

When Eris opened her eyes, they were pure gold... no white visible, no iris, no humanity left in those blazing orbs. Just divine fire given form.

She raised her right palm.

"VOKHARIS."

Fire poured from her hand. Not red-orange flame but molten gold, liquid sunlight given weight and heat. It pooled in the air before her, defying gravity, defying natural law.

"SOL’METH."

The liquid fire began weaving itself into shapes... links, coils, elegant spiraling patterns that hurt to look at directly. Chains made of glowing ash and living ember, each link inscribed with script older than written language.

"AN’THERIAL."

The chains shot outward.

Not toward the demons. Through them. Past flesh and bone and corrupted essence, wrapping around something deeper... around soul, around the fundamental truth of what they were.

Every demon in the district screamed at once.

The chains coiled around them, hundreds of them, all at once. Binding not their bodies but their being, wrapping around the core of their existence and pulling tight with each of Eris’s heartbeats.

They tried to break free. Clawed at chains they couldn’t touch, screamed curses in languages that predated human speech, threw themselves against invisible walls. But they couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything but writhe as divine law froze them in place.

The ground beneath Eris’s feet turned black.

Not burned... unmade. The cobblestones didn’t char or crack; they simply ceased to exist, replaced by smooth obsidian glass that spread outward in a perfect circle. The air itself shuddered, rippling with heat so intense it bent light.

Her body was straining.

Veins glowed orange-gold beneath her skin like molten ore visible through thin crystal. Cracks appeared at her temples, along her jawline, at the corners of her eyes... fine hairline fractures where mortal flesh couldn’t contain godhood. Blood vessels burst in her eyes, but the blood that tracked down her cheeks wasn’t red.

It was gold.

Golden tears cutting paths through ash and sweat, each drop hissing when it hit the ground.

Eris moved her left hand to her heart, pressing palm flat against her chest where Pyronox lived, where the seal had been, where divine fire had taken root in a five-year-old girl and never left.

She called on knowledge that wasn’t hers.

Ancient knowledge. The memory of flame when it was pure, when it was creation before it learned destruction. The secret names given to demons at their making, before they fell, before corruption twisted them into monsters.

The power forced truth from them.

Above each demon’s head, the air itself began to burn. Not with heat but with meaning... fire-script appearing in blazing letters, words written in a language older than dragons, the tongue Pyronox had spoken when teaching mortals to light their first fires.

"SAL’KETH VOR’ITH."

"AETH’MAR SOLMANE."

"KETH PYRIS VOK."

Names. True names. The words screamed and twisted in the air, writhing like living things that knew their revelation meant death.

Eris’s voice changed.

It layered, doubled, became her mortal throat speaking in harmony with something vast and ancient and terrible. Her words and Pyronox’s words, human desperation and divine command braided together into something that made reality itself shudder.

"BY YOUR NAMES, SPOKEN IN FIRE... "

Each syllable burned. She felt her throat blistering, her tongue splitting, her vocal cords tearing under the weight of words no mortal mouth was meant to speak.

"SAL’KETHVOR’ITH. AETH’MARSOLMANE. KETH PYRIS VOK."

More blood trickled from her eyes... gold and red mixed together, divine and mortal bleeding as one.

The demons’ screaming reached a pitch that shattered what few windows remained intact. Their forms began splitting, coming apart at the seams like poorly stitched cloth. Ember and shadow flickered where solid flesh had been, essence separating from corrupted matter.

The names bound them to their origin plane. To hell itself. True names were power, were essence, were soul given sound. To speak a demon’s true name was to hold its entire being in your palm and squeeze.

They couldn’t resist. Couldn’t fight. Could only scream as they were pulled back toward the abyss they’d crawled from, back to eternal fire and torment and the prison they’d been desperate enough to escape.

The gatekeeper watched Eris stand there... mortal woman wrapped in godhood, body fracturing under divine weight, golden blood painting her face like war paint... and understood why the story kept trying to kill her.

She was too powerful to be allowed to live.

Too dangerous to be anything but the villain.

And yet here she stood, spending herself to save people who’d feared her, hated her, condemned her.

"Magnificent," Orrian whispered to the void. "Absolutely magnificent."