Light and dark, forever bound.
“FIND THE GIRL.”
The voice brought him back with a jerk. It thundered inside his head, soundless yet so loud it made him wince. The Dark One began to feel a familiar rage. Why would his master depend upon a child? He was the one who would command Belial’s army; he would bring about the fall of Caldeum and the rule of the Burning Hells. The old man Deckard Cain was blind to his machinations. Cain’s power was weak; he was a pawn in a much larger game.
The Dark One stood on the floor of a vast chamber. The hellfires raged all around him, and the screams of the damned nearly brought him to his knees. The clanging of iron beaten into the shape of weaponry rang out. Blood flowed like a river against his shins—atrocities, torture, beheadings, those skinned and burned alive, all of it happening at once. He was occupying the same space across centuries of time, a world that had existed this way for even longer than the creature that stood in his way could remember.
Belial rose up before him. The demon’s yellow eyes locked with the Dark One’s and held them. “Your power is impressive,” the beast said. “You have conquered time. Yet you are nearly overcome. You have so much to learn, to become the master you would claim to be.”
“I can raise them alone,” the Dark One said. “You don’t need the girl. Let me try.”
“Try?” Belial seemed amused. “You show your weakness with such a word. And why should you turn away from her and her companions? Your chance at redemption is at hand. This man Cain has stained your family name with his own. Betrayal tastes worse than death, does it not? Don’t you want your revenge?”
The Dark One felt his pulse quicken. “I do, my lord.”
“I thought as much. Did you know there was demonic magic in his blood? How else do you think his ancestor overcame yours? Through charm and persistence? No, through trickery and the power of the Burning Hells. Even now, history has been revised. The world believes a lie, and the truth has been buried, just as Tal Rasha was buried beneath Lut Gholein.”
“I—”
“Lure the girl here, bring Al Cut to life, and take your revenge on the old man. It is the right way, and the only way.”
“I understand, my lord.” The Dark One was growing dizzy with the effort of maintaining his place in time; the plates were shifting with increasing speed, and he was in danger of becoming lost among them forever. He managed to steady himself long enough to focus on the great beast before him. “I must go now, and use this vessel . . . for other purposes.”
Belial laughed, the sound shaking the cavern like the screams of a thousand dying men. “Do not tell me what you must do. But very well. I shall exit gracefully. Play with your toys, but do not forget what I have told you.”
The temporal plates shifted, absorbing the blood and swallowing Belial and the cavern in an instant. The Dark One found himself in another cave, this one nearly as vast as the one before. An entire city stood all around him, and he saw every moment of every year at once. Its buildings and streets were dusty, broken, and teeming with life. A mage battle raged next to children at play, each oblivious to the other. Generations of people crossed by and through each other like ghosts.
He paused, focusing every effort of his will upon the present day and the spirit he had come here to contact. Slowly, the ghostly images faded away, until he was left with silence, dust, and decay. He could feel the blood of ages throbbing, the energy of Al Cut vast and untapped, a river dam waiting to give way.
“Lɪft ðә vel frә hɪz ajz,” he said.
The ground began to glow as the rune, the mark of Belial, traced a pattern through the dusty street. The ground shuddered and split with a rumble, and he caught his breath as a skeletal hand reached up and clutched the side of the abyss.
“I have awakened him,” the Dark One whispered. “He is here.”
Sometime later, he opened his eyes. He was back in the chamber below the Black Tower. The blood was gone, his cloak dry. The candle flickered, nearly burned to the floor. But the connections he had made remained, a thousand bloody threads reaching out in all directions.
His army shuddered with ecstasy, waiting for him to command them.
A noise from above made him look up. The man hanging from the chains was staring back at him. But his gaze was very different now. The Dark One released the chains, letting the wheel they turned upon lower the man to the ground.
The man stared at him, a new confidence and sense of power evident in his eyes. This was clearly not Belial, nor was it the spirit of the man who had owned his fleshy shell before. The Dark One felt a shiver run through him; he had done it. Until this moment, a part of him had wondered whether it was possible. He had raised a man from the dead, but not just any man. The one who would command his troops as they marched through Caldeum and lay waste to humankind.
And he, the Dark One, was this man’s master.
The Dark One smiled. “We have much to discuss,” he said.
Far beneath him, something immensely powerful shook the earth with a low moan like the sound of some giant awakening beast. The final sequence had begun: the End of Days, as it had been written.
The Lord of Lies would not wait much longer.
Part Three
The Lord of Lies
23
The Road to Gea Kul
The portal closed with a hiss and snap of energy as he stepped through to the cold floor. Deckard Cain looked around in wonder. He was standing on a wide stone platform within a massive shadowed chamber, great columns and arches marching across it, and beyond them a set of huge stone steps that descended to another level marked by guttering fire pits. Beyond that lay darkness.
It was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Colors shifted before his eyes, and shapes seemed to move and bend with the light. Before him was a fireplace nearly twice his height, its flames roaring like a furnace. Heat radiated outward. Swords, hatchets, and hammers had been mounted to the stone above it, shining in the flickering glow.
Something—someone—stood next to the fire, burning with his own inner light.
Cain’s breath caught in his throat, and a chill prickled his skin. All these years, first spent in denial, then a gradual understanding and acceptance as his studies of Jered’s texts and those from Tristram Cathedral had led him to the same conclusion: the truth of another phase of reality, the existence of a realm outside Sanctuary, ruled by beings who were not mortal. Yet there had still been a small seed of doubt within him, even as he witnessed demons overrun his town. His logical side still sought out a rational explanation. These creatures he saw might have been born from natural mothers, suffering birth defects or some other form of mutation. He was a man of science and learning.
The archangel unfurled his wings.
Bolts of white-hot light sprung up from his back, crackling with energy and enveloping him in an aura bright enough to make Cain shield his own eyes. They were not wings at all, Cain realized, at least not the way humans would have described them, yet he recognized them from his studies. The streaks of light were in constant motion, in harmony with a sound like music, undulating as wings might under a strong wind.
“Tyrael,” Cain whispered. Tears filled his eyes, making it difficult to see. “The archangel of Justice. Founder of the Horadrim.”
“Welcome to the Pandemonium Fortress,” the archangel said. “I knew your ancestor Jered well. I have been waiting to meet you for a long time, Deckard Cain.”