Chapter 67 Trapped Monster
(Apollo)
The other scholars flinched. Some turned to flee. Apollo let them run— just so he could chase.
He blurred into motion. He was a storm. A hurricane of claws and wings and raw fury. The world reduced to impact and heat and the delicious crunch of breaking bone under his hands.
He slammed one demon into the floor.
Kicked another into a pillar so hard it shattered.
Ripped a third from the air and threw him through a window of screaming glass.
He tore through everything that moved with merciless ferocity. Ash, bone, severed limb, black blood, sparks of ember, it all covered the floor of the throne room as he ripped his way through it. The throne itself watched in cold silence, a looming silhouette of obsidian and teeth, its carved faces slick with demon blood.
Screams tore through the palace as demons tried to scatter, only for Apollo to fall upon them like a beast unchained.
One tried to shift into smoke.
Apollo’s barbed tail lashed through it, solidifying the cloud long enough for him to seize it and crush it into oblivion.
Another attempted to fly.
Apollo leapt—wings unfurling with a crack of air—caught the demon by the leg and slammed him into the ground hard enough to send shockwaves through the floor.
The palace shook.
Obsidian rained from the ceiling.
“USELESS!” Apollo roared.
Heat burst from him in a shockwave, incinerating half a dozen lesser demons instantly into piles of ash that still screamed as they dissolved. The sound was high and thin, like iron being scraped across bone, then cut off as the ash collapsed into silence.
The remaining demons dropped to their knees, begging, sobbing, shielding their faces.
One dared speak. “M-my king—please—your form—it is—”
Apollo froze. His form. He looked down.
His arms were not arms.
They were twice the size, covered in black scales and molten cracks. His hands were claws—curved like scythes, dripping with heat. His feet had shifted into talons that melted the floor beneath him. His wings—massive, jagged—dragged across the ground in heavy arcs. His horns spiralled twice their length.
Smoke bled from his skin. His chest glowed like a furnace. He had shifted—
No.
He had become. Not the Devil. Not the King. Not the beast he chose to be. This was the form he had not taken in a thousand years. The form of war. The form of death. The form of the old bloodline’s executioner. The form he wore when he killed the Queen. His reflection caught for a heartbeat in a cracked shard of glass—an ancient nightmare given flesh, the same silhouette that haunted Emberborn stories and children’s terror-dreams.
He staggered back, breath fractured and raw. “No…” he choked.
The bond surged—Adelaide’s fear, her flames, her trembling form as she sat in his bed—and it shattered the last of his control. Her heartbeat pounded in his skull, out of time with his own, dragging his monstrous body toward hers with every thud.
His head whipped back, and he roared. Not a sound. Not a word. Not a command.
A beast’s roar.
The foundations shook. The walls cracked. Demons clutched their ears, screaming.
His wings tore wider. His tail lashed violently. His claws gouged trenches into the stone.
He tried to shift back— forced his bones to reshape— forced his skin to lighten— forced his horns to retract— Nothing.
His body didn’t obey. Not even an inch. He was stuck.
Stuck in a shape he had not worn since the night the Queen burned. A shape of primal fear and unstoppable ruin. Somewhere, deep in the magma veins beneath the palace, something old stirred and then went still again, as if recognising an old commander.
No wonder the Emberborn felt him. No wonder Hell trembled. He could barely think. Barely breathe. Barely hold onto the little thread of humanity left in him.
And worst of all, all he could see behind his eyes was her in flames.
Her skin burning, but not burning. Her scream. Then her peace. Her fire curling around her like ancient magic. The mystical look in her flaming eyes. Not the Queen’s cruel, controlled inferno—but a wild, newborn blaze, unsure yet of what it wanted to destroy or save.
“Adelaide,” he rasped, though the sound came out distorted, barely language at all.
Not human. Not Devil. Something else. Something old. Something he thought was gone.
His claws sank into the throne room wall. Stone exploded outward.
He roared again. The sound filled with his rage, fear, hunger, the bond, the fire, her. And then, he fell to his knees.
Even that made the palace quake.
“Shift,” he commanded his own flesh.
Nothing.
“SHIFT!”
Nothing.
He slammed his fist into the ground so hard a crater opened beneath him, molten rock bubbling up around his arm.
He couldn’t shift back. He couldn’t control himself. He was too close to the truth— too close to her— too close to everything he’d buried for a thousand years.
And his body answered the truth before he did.
He was becoming the monster he thought he had killed along with her. His breath came ragged, smoke pouring from his jaws. His vision fractured between red and gold. His limbs trembled violently. The throne loomed just ahead, its jagged back crowned in shadow, and for the first time since he’d claimed it, he felt like the wrong creature sitting on the wrong seat.
“I am… not…” he snarled through broken teeth, “…that creature.”
But he was. And he knew it.
He was the blade that killed the Queen. The fire that consumed her palace. The demon who ended her line.
Except— He didn’t. Not fully.
A faint memory, a whisper of a scream, flickered at the edges of his mind.
A child. Golden flames. A prophecy he had refused to read. A tiny hand wreathed in light, a priest’s voice stuttering over forbidden lines, his own claws closing around a scroll and tearing it to pieces before the last stanza could be spoken.
“No…” he growled.
His wings sagged. His claws shook. His heart—cold for centuries—pounded too fast, too painfully.
“Her fire…” he whispered. “…is not supposed to exist.”
The rage built again— terrifying, uncontrollable— but it collapsed inward instead of exploding outward.
He hunched over, panting, claws digging furrows as deep as graves.
He felt something primal inside him howl in fear.
Not of the truth. Of what he would do when he accepted it. The last time fate had handed him a fire like this, he’d smothered it in blood and ash. What would he do now, with that same fire bound to his own veins?
His vision dimmed. His wings lowered. His body trembled, smoke curling off him in frantic bursts. He lowered his head to the shattered stone floor and closed his eyes.
He was stuck. In this form. In this truth. In this want. In this terror.
He was the Devil. King of Hell. Executioner of the old Queen. And now, he was a monster who could not turn human.
Because the only thing that could calm him— the only thing that matched his flames— the only thing whose touch could ground him— was the one person whose existence should be impossible.
Adelaide.
Her fire had awakened. And so had something inside him. Something ancient. Something bound. Something that should have stayed dead. A forgotten verse of prophecy, written in a dead Queen’s blood, now beating in tandem with his own corrupted heart.
And now Hell itself trembled— because the Devil could no longer control what he had become. Far above the throne room, wards flickered, gates groaned on their hinges, and in the distant Emberborn refuge, marks burned brighter, every watcher turning their gaze toward the Devil’s palace as if they, too, sensed that the story written a thousand years ago had just turned a page.