Thomas looked at the darkness in the distance. The lights were still lit, one after another, like a glowing river slowly flowing through the dark.
"Hell is vast. The demons controlled by Crowley are only a portion of them. Countless others are hiding out there. Those are the troublesome ones."
Isaac fell silent for several seconds. He looked at those lights, then at the deeper darkness beyond them, which had yet to be illuminated.
"We'll do our best to hold what we have first, then clear them out bit by bit."
"Will there be enough time?"
Isaac turned to look at him.
"There's no rushing this sort of thing. Demons are constantly being born. This is a long-term undertaking. When we're gone, there'll be the next generation of young Demon Hunters."
Thomas froze for a moment. He looked at Isaac's dark-red, pupil-less eyes for a long time.
Then he smiled.
"Then it's still a long way off. We ought to do as much as we can."
He turned and walked down from the watchtower, the iron stairs creaking beneath his feet.
"I'm off. There's work tomorrow."
His footsteps gradually faded, vanishing beneath the watchtower.
Isaac stood alone atop the watchtower, looking at the distant light.
Three days later.
Wu Heng arrived at the altar in the deepest part of the palace. This was where Crowley had once collected Hell's origin.
Ancient demonic runes covered the ground, with dark-red light frozen within every line. At the center of the altar floated a mass of dark energy, like an eternally unextinguished black hole, slowly rotating and absorbing all the light around it.
Wu Heng stood before the altar, with the ten Demon Hunter Knights standing behind him.
The Puppet Wraith rose from behind him. Twelve dark-gold tentacles spread through the darkness like