CHAPTER 65: His Name is Azazel

CHAPTER 65: His Name is Azazel

The sun was slowly dying on the horizon, staining the sky a bloody red. The clouds were brushstrokes of greyish smoke that blended with the real columns rising from the broken earth. There, where a battlefield had once been, now only remained scorched ruins and nameless, dismembered bodies, forgotten by time and history.

Amid the sepulchral silence, amongst the ash and dust, stood an inhuman figure.

He stood over eight feet tall, with shoulders as broad as fortress gates, and muscles that seemed forged from stone. His skin was leathery, stained with earth, dried blood, and memory. He wore a coat made from the hides of beasts, covering his back as if he were the king of some ancestral hell. His face was brutal, his eyes—one of them with a vertical pupil, like a reptile's—shone with indifference as he slowly chewed a piece of human flesh, still bleeding. The crunching of tendons between his teeth could be heard, as if he were devouring not just meat, but the past of the deceased.

Calm. Serene. As if this act were the most natural thing in the world.

Then, footsteps. One, two, and then the crunch of branches and bones under firm boots. A figure approached from the edge of the ruins: a middle-aged man, with a pale face marked by a deep scar that crossed his forehead from side to side, a line of sutures still visible like a grotesque iron crown.

The man stopped a few meters from the monster. Then, without a word, he knelt before him.

"Azazel..." he murmured with reverence, his voice broken by weariness or obedience.

The beast looked up, without stopping his chewing. He observed the newcomer as if he were an insect that had landed on his shoulder. There was a long silence. The crackling of distant embers seemed to be the only thing breathing.

"Are you still alive, Malakor?" Azazel finally grunted with a twisted, savage smile, where his fangs showed like dagas.

"Barely," replied Malakor with a bow of his head. "I have come to speak to you... about a name."

Azazel spat a bone onto the ground.

"Make it good."

"Ten years ago, I came across a descendant of yours," said Malakor, his gaze fixed on the dust. "A certain... Phoenix Roger."

The silence was immediate, then broken by a laugh that made the stones vibrate. Azazel leaned back, laughing from his gut as if mocking the entire universe.

"A descendant of mine? I don't care in the slightest. Let him burn or rule, it's all the same to me."

"You shouldn't ignore it," insisted Malakor, without raising his eyes. "That name will come back to you... sooner than you think."

Azazel looked at him for a long moment. Then he stood up, his shadow covering Malakor like a living tombstone.

Malakor slowly rose to his feet, brushing the dust from his knees. He didn't seem to fear the creature before him, although the atmosphere was thick, almost suffocating. Around them, the dead battlefield seemed to listen to every word with spectral attention.

"We will meet again, Azazel," he said with a firm, but not arrogant, voice. "I don't know if as allies or enemies, but that day will come."

The giant did not respond immediately. He only observed him with his reptilian eyes, narrowed, as if measuring him for the last time. Malakor turned and began to walk away through the ruins, his figure shrinking into the shadows of the twilight until he disappeared completely.

Azazel remained silent, motionless. Only when he was sure that Malakor was gone, did he tilt his head slightly and sketch a smile laden with a certain malice.

"Children..." he murmured to himself, letting the piece of meat he still held fall. "How many have come from my blood..."

He looked up at the orange sky, now almost black, where the last lights were extinguishing like dying embers. That thought—a mix of pride, indifference, and a twisted ancestral instinct—made him remember the decades he had roamed the world, leaving his mark on places forgotten by God and man. He never worried about what he left behind. It never mattered to him.

But now... a name resonated with a strange echo: Phoenix Roger.

Azazel closed his eyes for an instant. He didn't know if it was intuition, dormant memory, or a premonition born from chaos, but something in his gut told him that name would cross his path again.

And when that happened... something would change.

The smile returned to his face. Not out of affection. Not even out of interest. It was the smile of a predator scenting another, even without having seen it.

"We will meet, little one... if you make it that far."

The wind blew strongly through the remains of the battlefield, lifting ashes and broken bones as if the earth itself were shuddering. And in the midst of that world which no longer had a soul, Azazel stood alone, waiting for the day when his past and his lineage would collide with fire and destiny.