Witchbound Villain: Infinite Loop
219 – Return

SPLAT!

Burn’s metal-heeled boot came down nonchalant yet hard, grinding a blackened, writhing mass into the cold stone beneath him. It squelched, a mangled hand-like appendage twisting, resisting, before finally giving way—reduced to a pulped mess that barely resembled flesh.

He lifted his foot, watching the viscous remains twitch and slither, as if still trying to reform. Even now, these things refused to die completely.

Burn exhaled, straightening as he surveyed the battlefield.

The chamber was a ruin. A massacre.

Every last one of the demon lord’s subordinates lay in heaps of twisted, half-liquefied forms, their bodies strewn across the room in grotesque shapes—some still smoldering, others convulsing as they clung to whatever unnatural force had kept them moving. The walls were streaked with dark ichor, the air thick with the stench of burnt corruption.

And yet, despite all his efforts, despite the destruction he had wrought, they weren’t truly gone.

They slithered. They groaned. Their shredded consciousnesses still clung to existence, writhing like maggots in a corpse, desperate to persist.

It would be easy to erase them completely.

If he so wished, he could summon even a fraction of the dying sun’s heat—the inferno he had absorbed and carried within him. A mere sliver of it would be enough to burn them to oblivion, to sever whatever cursed tether held them to this world.

But he didn’t.

Not yet.

This place, for all its filth and horror, was not just a den of abominations. It was a prison. A factory of suffering where innocent slaves were shackled, forced to build monstrosities under the demon lord’s will. If he unleashed that kind of destruction now, they would perish along with their captors.

And there was another reason.

A far more personal one.

Burn turned, his gaze locking onto something propped against the far wall.

A grotesque figure. A severed head.

A head stitched into blackened, rotten mass, bound in pulsing necrotic veins, its flesh charred and corrupted beyond recognition—beyond humanity. Yet even in this wretched state, he knew what he was looking at.

Who he was looking at.

A slow, rattling breath escaped its lips, the fogged, lifeless eyes flickering open.

Burn stood there, still as stone, his hands flexing at his sides.

“You saved me for last, brother.”

The voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper, yet it carried a knowing amusement, like an old joke between them. Aroche’s mouth twisted into a smile—if it could still be called that—black, oil-slick tears spilling from the corners of his ruined eyes.

Burn exhaled, steady. “Aroche.”

A chuckle rattled through the severed head, the sound thin and brittle, yet somehow still full of resignation. His eyelids fluttered, weary, as if the mere act of keeping them open was an effort. “I had a feeling you’d come for me,” he murmured. “When did you know I was here?”

“Today.”

Aroche let that sit between them for a moment, blinking slowly, as though savoring the weight of the answer. When he opened his eyes again, there was something clearer in them—something closer to the brother Burn remembered.

“Then you’ve decided.”

Burn gave a single, measured nod.

Aroche’s form trembled, what remained of his arms convulsing as one of them twisted grotesquely, something metallic forcing its way out from within the corrupted flesh. A sword, jagged and slick with the remnants of whatever foul magic had bound him to this state. It jutted free, gleaming in the dim light, trembling like a dying heartbeat.

He grinned, the expression sharp, a ghost of his old self beneath all the rot. “See you in my next life, brother.”

His grip firmed around the sword, steady despite everything.

“I know you’ll still be alive when I get there—if I get there at all.”

The sword came first. A lunge, sharp and sure, a desperate echo of the warrior Aroche once was. Burn could have stopped it with a thought, with a flick of his fingers, with nothing at all. But he didn’t.

CRASH! CRACKLE—RUMBLE—

Instead, he moved—sidestepping just enough for the blade to graze the air beside him, the energy bouncing off the wall and crushing it. He let the momentum carry Aroche forward, let him feel the motion, let him fight. Because that was what Aroche was. Not a monster. Not a corpse. Not a mistake of necromancy.

He was a warrior.

And warriors did not die whimpering.

Aroche pivoted, his corrupted limbs seizing with tension before snapping back into motion, a grotesque mimicry of the precision he once wielded. His blade sang as it slashed through the air, and Burn met it—not with his hand, but with a pulse of heat that warped the metal just before impact.

CRASH!! CRACK—HSSSSSHHH—

Another wall crumbled, but melted before its solid form touched the ground.

Aroche adapted.

He always did.

The blade crumbled, but his grip tightened. In a heartbeat, he turned the broken hilt into a dagger, shifting his momentum to close the distance, his free arm splitting open into jagged tendrils. They lashed out, seeking, finding. Burn let them strike—let the heat of his body sear them away on contact.

Aroche didn't hesitate. He never hesitated.

Twisting out of the failed attack, he forced his body forward, flesh straining, corruption writhing—but he did not stop. His movements were his, still laced with the brutal efficiency Burn had known all his life. The motions were second nature, burned into him long before death ever touched him.

Burn caught his wrist mid-spin.

For a moment, they were still.

Then Aroche wrenched himself free, the force behind it strong enough to crack the ground beneath them. He staggered—but he didn’t fall. He pressed forward, blade forming anew, reforging itself from the very corruption eating him alive.

He did not beg.

He did not despair.

He fought. Fiercely. Brutally. Honorably.

Burn let him, meeting every strike with the patience of a man who knew what this battle was—not a struggle for victory, but a warrior’s final march.

The corruption burned away with every impact, his body breaking, reforming, breaking again. And yet he kept moving. Kept fighting. Until finally, at last, the remnants of what once was could fight no longer.

"If I can save Blair..." Morgan had whispered that night, voice laced with something dangerous—hope. "We might be able to save Aroche."

Burn had fallen into what could be an eternal silence. He hadn't dared to hope, the courage needed to believe it was too enormous. Because to hope meant to be willing to hurt again.

"But you have seen my memory."

Aroche stood before him now, barely holding himself together. The corruption had patched him back together, but only in the way a careless child might stitch up a broken doll—mocking the original, distorting it beyond recognition.

His left arm was half-formed, fingers twitching with a mind of their own, barely responding to his will. His ribs, exposed where the necrotic flesh had peeled away, rose and fell with an eerie mimicry of breath. His legs trembled under his own weight, yet he still stood. He still met Burn’s eyes.

"The spell I made to purify this world," Morgan had continued, "a ten-circled spell I prepared my soul for five hundred years… I might be able to modify it. Purify his soul—restore his body."

Burn had hesitated.

"What is the price?"

"All the soul of mine I have been saving up until today," Morgan had answered.

Aroche’s face—if it could still be called that—was a ruin. The once-proud lines of his jaw had been overtaken by seeping black veins, the left side twisted where flesh had been forcibly regrown, uneven and sickly. One eye remained, a dim ember flickering within the abyss, sharp and clear in the way only Aroche’s ever had been.

Burn could have him back. His best friend.

But would he really be the Aroche he once was?

He had died.

Wouldn’t it be cruel? Wouldn’t it be painful to force him back into the living, to drag him out of the peace he might have almost found, only to throw him back into this wretched hell hole?

"Then, how about you ask him?"

Burn had frowned at that.

"How could I ask him that?"

Giving him a choice to stay? Giving him a chance to bear the burden of living again, in a world that had done nothing but betray him? With him, no less?

Aroche let out something that might have been a chuckle, had his throat not been so ruined.

“Even now, even in death,” he murmured, his voice laced with something bitterly amused, “I manage to be nothing but a burden to you.”

His head lifted, slow and deliberate, meeting Burn’s eyes with something like resignation.

“I thought, just once, I could help you carry it—the weight of sovereignty.”

Through betrayal. Through unshakable loyalty.

“But instead, I wake up in a body forced to betray you instead.”

Black liquid spilled from his eyes, slow and viscous, thick as tar—mocking the very concept of tears.

His lips twisted in something almost like a smile. A ghost of what it should have been, warped by everything that had been done to him.

"Brother—if it means anything now, forgive me."

Burn exhaled.

Of course Aroche would ask for forgiveness. Even when he had nothing to apologize for.

"Caliburn, trust me and ask him," Morgan had insisted.

"Give him the honor of choosing his own second chance."

Burn let out a slow, measured breath.

Then, steady, certain—he asked,

“Aroche. Do you want to return?”

CRASH!

The ground beneath them erupted.

A violent explosion of shattered stone and debris shot skyward as something tore free from the depths—something unstoppable. 

Dust and jagged rock sprayed in all directions, obscuring the air in a thick cloud. The force alone sent shockwaves rippling through the ruined chamber, cracking the already broken walls and snuffing out whatever lingering silence had settled.

And then—they flew.

Like projectiles fired from the earth itself, two figures burst into the open sky—Isaiah and the Demon Lord, locked in a brutal clash mid-air.