The creature woven by Satan’s hands, by cruel, callous machinations and depraved dregs, born to lose, destined to desolation, carved by bitter knives and rancorous calculations, was swiftly offered a licentious promise between kin. A bond thicker than creeds of corrupted brethren, a hold, a snare, beheld amongst blood, of past, ancient kings, of fire, of ice, of gods and demons, of infidels and crowns of thorns, condemned, damned, consumed by their own blackened holes and crushed hearts. Across the veins of wretched, deplored ferocity, wrapped in fibers and sinew, tissue and muscle, passed through heinous generations, revered, sanctified by the malicious threads sown in their misaligned cores, cold-blooded seraphs seeking resolution, destruction and retribution. Immorality and iniquity, dabbled and trickling through the sectors and quarters of their heresy, the augured wailing of their victims, the blunt, ruthless contortions of their rugged, ragged dominion. But these mottled elements, these incorporeal, untouchable strands, were suddenly his salvation, sanctified and consecrated liberation, striving bits and pieces once stranded, once tossed, once frayed and left to rot in the withering steads and sentiments of his imperious recherché. How long had it been since he’d seen his kin, thriving on the duned shores, the rippling tides of his birth? How long had it been since he’d laid his piercing eyes upon the reckless, bold grin of his father, tied in this child’s smirk? How long had it been since his rigid gaze had found the indomitable confidence of his mother, ferocious and vivid across the lad’s quiet calamity? How long had it been since the whispers of his sister’s conquests and triumphs bent his ear, encompassed by his nephew’s mere presence? The notion of legacies upheld, of providence molded towards the most demonic infidel, the reaping scythe, the shinigami’s wake, was surprising, shattering and ironic, but as to the reason, the aspects that traced the two together, he remained wholly indifferent. It didn’t matter how they’d traversed the same core, how they’d altered kismet and fortune, only that the same vehemence running, beating and thriving through the savagery, the brutality, of his pernicious, puissant frame was also tied to the boy before him. Reassembled monsters, intertwined behemoths, tangled knots boiling, brewing and invoking in this impious, sacrilegious kingdom – they’d haunt the roughened candor of all the ruthless, relentless halls, rule and denounce, reign and vanquish. Bedlam’s creatures reunited, kneeling on the same sword, the same rapier, pressing knives into flesh, tempests, wraiths and wraths, merged in the baleful outcry of malicious reticence.

Were he capable of touching the blood of his blood, Deimos would have reached out to his fellow fiend, to embrace the last arts of his family, the enduring, everlasting shape of their oaths and assurances, of their pride, downfalls, and augured victories. Instead, he listened to the reeling rasp of his nephew as words collided, truths provided, but couldn’t smother the smirk hastening back across the corner of his insouciant mouth, of his impassive lips abruptly drawn to arduous pursuits. For once, he allowed the detachment, the dispassion, the apathy and indifference to fall away from his seams, reveal the rogue features of a creature proud to discover connections, ancestry and origins had not been so far dispensed and abandoned. The wicked smile matched his nephew’s, conspiring, content, desolation corroded for the merest snippets of verity, veracity and deliverance to a lonely enmity and entity. The lacerating glare of his gaze dug deep into the child’s sights, and the rough grate of his vocals prospered, proffered and bestowed the only worthy decision of the day’s events. A hollow, hallowed command, with all the weight of convictions sown by family, by regard, by antecedents and roots – the cacophony of rancorous, renounced pariahs. “Stay, Belial.” Death found by Gods, picked up in another heedless emblem, vengeance dragged along barbarous commitments and feral, indignant covenants.