Vergil started walking towards the forest, feeling the atmosphere around him change. The air beca denser, charged with an unsettling silence. The trees, with their twisted branches and dry leaves, stood like distorted shadows against the dim light. The ground was covered in dead leaves that crunched under their footsteps, and the wind whistled softly, creating a scene worthy of a horror movie with a generous budget.
Suddenly, a sound cut through the silence of the forest.
WOOO!!!
An owl, camouflaged among the shadowy branches, spread its wings and let out a high-pitched caw, breaking the oppressive stillness.
"KYAAA!!!"
Katharina's cry echoed in the darkness, and in an instant, she leapt closer to Vergil, gripping his arm tightly. Her body trembled slightly, and her wide eyes reflected the pale glow of the moon that barely made it through the treetops.
Vergil arched an eyebrow, casting an amused glance at her. "Really? An owl?"
Katharina hid her face against his arm, murmuring in an embarrassed tone. "Don't judge ! That was scary..."
He let out a slight sigh, but a mischievous smile appeared on his lips. "If an owl scares you like that, maybe this forest isn't the best place for you."
Katharina looked at him with an expression of pure indignation. "If you make a joke of it, I swear I'll leave you here alone!"
Vergil laughed softly, but didn't pull his arm away from her. Deep down, he found it amusing how, despite all her strength and determination, Katharina still had such simple fears. It only made her more human... and, in a way, more charming.
"Co on, brave one. We still have a long way to go." He said, guiding her forward as the forest enveloped them in its dark embrace.
As they walked through the demonic forest, Vergil kept his senses alert. Sothing was wrong in that place. The energy around them was distorted, pulsating, as if sothing invisible was breathing along with the forest. It was an oppressive, suffocating sensation.
Katharina still held his arm, but now her eyes were fixed on the path ahead. The initial fright had passed, replaced by a serious expression.
"Do you feel that?" Vergil asked quietly, narrowing his eyes.
Katharina nodded. "Yes... it's as if sothing is watching us."
Vergil stopped abruptly. The air shook for a mont, and then... absolute silence. The wind ceased. The insects stopped buzzing. Even the leaves stopped moving.
Then, a whisper.
Not words. Not a voice. Just a low, hoarse sound, like the last breath of sothing on the brink of death.
Katharina gripped her dagger, her muscles tensing. Vergil, for his part, felt the strange energy grow stronger. It was as if he was being pulled by an invisible force.
"That's not normal..." he muttered.
Suddenly, a branch snapped to the right. They both turned at the sa mont. The darkness between the trees seed to move, dance and twist. Sothing was there.
And then it ca out of the darkness.
A deford creature erged, its coal-black skin glistening with a sticky texture. Its eyes were glowing red slits, and its mouth opened in a grotesque grin, jagged, sharp teeth exposed like blades ready to tear flesh.
"One of the corrupted creatures..." Katharina whispered.
Vergil didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the creature, but his focus was beyond it. The strange energy... it ca from deeper in the forest. He narrowed his eyes.
Sothing much worse was lurking.
"It's the sa energy as the Ashborn..." Vergil muttered, his gaze turning colder as he rembered Roxanne's father, whom he himself had killed.
Amon had called him the Death Knight... so...
"They're made of death energy..." He narrowed his eyes, feeling a shiver run down his spine. "That's why I can't sense magic. Or demonic energy..."
It all made sense now. These creatures didn't follow the ordinary rules of the world. They were neither living nor dead. They were sothing beyond, existing on an impossible threshold.
"Katharina." Vergil called out, his voice firm, before advancing towards the creature. "Step back a little. I want to test sothing."
Instead of engulfing it in flas and extinguishing it completely, he grabbed it by the neck, lifting it up as if it were a sack of potatoes. The creature struggled, but his strength was absolute.
The instant his fingers touched that corrupted flesh, sothing strange happened. The demon's dark energy began to twitch, pulsing as if it were reacting to Vergil's presence. Gradually, the darkness began to seep into his hands, moving like a symbiotic goo, crawling across his skin in sinuous patterns.
And then... it disappeared inside his body.
The demon in his hand trembled. Its glowing eyes lost their shine and, in the next instant, its blackened flesh returned to normal... as if it had never been corrupted. But soon afterwards, her life drained away completely, and her inert body hung in Vergil's hands.
Katharina watched with a tense expression.
Vergil looked down at his hands, feeling the newly acquired energy pulsing inside him. Sothing was different. Sothing had changed.
And he wanted to understand exactly what.
Vergil unceremoniously let go of the creature's corpse, his eyes still fixed on his own hands. The sensation of that dark energy fusing to his body was strange, but at the sa ti instinctively familiar. He felt no resistance, no rejection. It was as if this power had always been his, just waiting to be claid.
Without saying a word, he moved on.
Katharina hesitated for a mont, but then ran to keep up with him. She had witnessed many bizarre things since eting Vergil, but this... this was different.
As they advanced through the demonic forest, more bodies began to appear. Corrupted creatures, just like the first one, lay on the ground, scattered along the path like traces left by sothing much worse that had passed through. So were shattered, others withered, as if all their essence had been drained.
Vergil knelt down in front of one of them and stretched out his hand. As soon as his fingers touched the dead flesh, the dark energy moved again, crawling into his skin and disappearing inside him. A shiver ran down his spine.
He repeated the process on each body he encountered, absorbing that energy silently and relentlessly. With each new assimilation, he felt stronger, more aware of that peculiar force. His breathing was calm, but his heart beat with a different rhythm.
Katharina watched with a mixture of fascination and apprehension. She didn't understand exactly what Vergil was doing, but she knew it was unusual.
Then the forest began to open up into a clearing.
Right in the center of it was a well.
It was grotesque.
The structure seed to be made of twisted flesh and bones, as if sothing living had dug a hole and then died around it, forming this monstrosity. The surface was covered in a viscous, black substance, pulsating slowly, emitting a damp, unpleasant sound with each contraction. From the bottom, a dense, dark mist rose in spirals, charged with the sa energy that Vergil had been following.
He stopped at the edge, staring into that unholy abyss.
The energy of death emanated from there.
And sothing, deep down, was watching him back.
The putrid, nauseating stench perated the air around the grotesque pit, making the atmosphere even more suffocating. Katharina frowned in disgust, covering her nose tightly as she instinctively backed away.
"That sll..." She complained, her expression clearly annoyed. "Baby, let's get out of here. This isn't normal."
But Vergil didn't even seem to notice the nauseating odor. His eyes were fixed on the well, his mind picking up sothing beyond what the ordinary senses could perceive.
"Go back, I'll be right there," he said, his voice firm and unwavering. "But first, I want to see what's on the other side."
In the next instant, a purple fla glowed at the bottom of the pit, dancing like a shadowy beacon in the sticky darkness of that abominable structure. Vergil narrowed his eyes.
"It's a portal."
Katharina tensed. Her instincts were telling her that this was a bad idea.
"Wait, darling! Don't go alone!" She tried to grab his arm, but...
Vergil raised his hand, and a black and purple fla erupted from his fingers, oscillating with a dense, cold energy. It was a fire that didn't burn like ordinary fires, but devoured everything it touched, as if absorbing the very essence of reality.
The well's response was imdiate. The viscous substance that covered it shuddered and retracted, as if it recognized the energy. The structure pulsed anxiously, almost... euphorically.
Vergil smiled sideways. "Is that what you wanted?"
The fla in his hand was more than power. It was the mark of death.
The last mory of Ashborn still lived inside him, a fragnt of energy that didn't disappear, even after his defeat.
The fla of the Death Knight!
Katharina's eyes widened, but before she could protest again, Vergil looked back, his expression calm.
"I'll be back soon."
Without hesitation, he propelled himself upwards and plunged into the well, disappearing into the purple darkness.
When he was through.
For an instant, everything around him beca an absolute void. There was no sound, no light and no sensation of movent. Just an oppressive silence and a darkness so dense that it seed to swallow up even his thoughts.
Then, suddenly... he fell.
His feet hit the ground with a dry thud, echoing through the empty room. The air around him was cold, laden with a musty sll and sothing more subtle... sothing ancient.
And then, as if the place itself responded to his presence, a torch on the wall lit up with a purple fla, casting distorted shadows all around.
Soon after, another one lit up.
And another.
The fire traveled along the walls like a living wave, lighting torches one by one, revealing the grandeur of the space. Vergil could now see where he was: an imnse corridor, made of black stone, whose surfaces were covered in runic inscriptions and marks corroded by ti. The ceiling was so high that it disappeared into the darkness, and the dark marble floor slightly reflected the purple flas, creating a spectral glow beneath his feet.
The corridor stretched for dozens, perhaps hundreds of ters, until, at the end, a colossal structure revealed itself.
A door.
Not an ordinary door, but a black tal monstrosity, decorated with carvings that seed to move under the torchlight. Shadowy creatures carved into its shape seed to twist and struggle to escape, as if trapped between the layers of cursed material. In the center, a familiar mark glowed faintly...
Vergil narrowed his eyes.
It was the sa symbol he had seen on Ashborn's black armor before killing him.
Without hesitation, he started walking towards the door, his footsteps echoing like the drums of an inevitable trial.
Sothing was waiting for him on the other side.
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