The demon blood was already here.
Everywhere here—soaked into the ground above, smeared across the surfaces of every section of the stronghold he had walked through, coating the rubble and the fractured earth and the walls of every passage he had descended through to reach this chamber.
The altar had not needed him to go find enemies.
He had already provided the proof.
It had only needed to be told who was claiming it.
His blood had done that.
And the blood of over a hundred demons, distributed across every level of the stronghold above him, had done the rest.
He stood in the corner of the chamber looking at the glowing altar and arrived at this understanding with a slight delay—the delay of someone whose mind had already been calculating how long the next phase of the process was going to take and was now revising that estimate dramatically downward.
The glow held steady.
Warm. Patient. Indifferent to his surprise.
One of seven.
Done.
