Maximus almost knocked me down on the first punch. 

I dodged out of his reach at the last minute and brought my elbow up to his chin, knocking him back for a moment. He glared at me and lunged forward again, but I quickly blinked three times and disappeared from his sight. I sidestepped and punched him square in the jaw, yet as he staggered back and I felt slightly victorious, my invisibility stopped working. 

He laughed at me as blood trickled down from his mouth. "The Great Roman's powers are waning! Satan was right. You're not demon enough to compete with me anymore." 

I glared at him and flung a fireball at his head to try and prove him wrong, but the flame pathetically fizzed out before Maximus' feet. He grinned at me and sent his own one back. 

The fireball dwarfed mine in comparison and I had to fling my body away to avoid its trajectory. The flame sizzled past me but I felt its fiery passion linger on my outstretched arm, which had been too slow to avoid the heat. The skin by my shoulder burned and I let out a yelp of pain, trying to immediately heal myself as I fell to the floor. I got to my feet quickly but my normal, pain-relieving power felt strangely slow and weak. My arm continued to throb and ache when it shouldn't have.

Sadly Maximus was right. I didn't realise doing good would leave me so defenceless, but that's exactly what had happened. I should've thought a bit harder before launching head-first into a fight to the death. Evil never obeyed those who didn't indulge in it. 

I knew I couldn't fight based on power anymore. I had to find another way to beat him. Somehow. 

But things didn't look very promising at the moment. 

He made another lunge towards me and I quickly sidestepped him, narrowly missing his chunky hands as they aimed for my throat, before aiming a powerful kick at his back. 

The action was draining but had the desired effect of knocking him down to a staggering decent. He cursed and tried to fling a fireball my way, but he was off-balance and the inaccuracy allowed me to send him another kick, this time to his gut. He let out a groan and shot a bolt of electricity towards me. 

I had to dive to the side to avoid it and I landed on my injured shoulder, lacing my body with pain as I hit the ground. I gritted my teeth and slowly got to my feet, arm pulsing, but Maximus had made a speedy recovery. I didn't have the time to dodge his next attack. 

The punch to my gut was unexpected and sudden. I doubled over as a sickening pain raced through me, but before I could even process it I felt stinging electricity sizzle through my skin like a thousand blazing needles of horror. I was at the mercy of Maximus' terrible power.  

I fell to the ground and, like a rag doll; my arch-nemesis picked me up by the throat and choked me above the grassy floor, my feet hanging aimlessly below. I struggled and struggled as the air started to leave my body, desperately trying to loosen his tight hold any way that I could. My own strength failed me so I tried to shock him with electricity, but he merely cackled at the pathetic attempt to hurt him. Nothing was working. 

I knew it was time to accept that I was going to die. 

There was one last thing I could try. It was something I never would have considered at any other moment in my life as a Hybrid, but I couldn't see an alternative solution. There was nothing else I could do. 

Besides, if the powers of evil had deserted me perhaps it was the right time to look towards the powers of good. 

Lord God, help me...please, I begged to the Creator silently as my last breath approached. I didn't really want to die pathetically crying for assistance, but if there was a chance to live I would have to put my pride aside. It was finally time I did anyway. 

Maximus' grip suddenly slackened and I fell to the floor with a thud, shocked but mostly relieved to see that I was still alive. I looked up at him to discover what on earth had caused this bizarre display of mercy, but his expression caught me off guard. 

He was looking at me like I was his worst nightmare. 

I glanced down at my body to see what he was staring at, and I was surprised to see that I had become bathed in an ethereal glow of white light. As I looked at myself I felt a sense of renewal and power surge through me, and I stood up to face Maximus once again, my injuries forgotten. 

"What..." He gulped, absolutely terrified. "What is...going on?"

Wisdom previously unbeknown to me flowed in and overtook my limited thoughts and feelings. "The Lord God Almighty has gifted me temporarily with the power of your kin who did not choose to follow Lucifer, and therefore fall from grace. For this moment in time you are looking at what you could've been, had you not chosen to pursue your greed." 

He gaped at me. "Wh...what...how...?" 

"Because I asked the Lord for help, and He provided." I smiled and stretched out my hand. "And now it is time for you to burn in the fiery lake of Hell." 

White light streamed out from my palm and shot into Maximus' chest. He let out a scream of sheer agony as soon as the light connected to his skin. I watched him stagger back and shake and shudder as the pain utterly consumed him, until his body began to burn in a white flame and turn to dust. A moment later the screaming stopped and a small, ghostly-black spirit appeared from the carnage- an essence of the demon that had just been destroyed. It lingered for only a second until it was dragged down by some invisible force to the dark depths of Hell, never to be seen again for another five hundred years. 

It still felt too short. He deserved to rot there forever. 

I shook my head and smiled despite of myself. Maximus was gone and everything was okay. Finished. Done. Complete. I could try live in peace from now on. 

Or so I thought. 

A burst of pain suddenly erupted within me and I immediately crumpled to the ground, my body unable to handle such an intense form of torture. I cried out as my chest burned with an invisible flames, scarring my precious organs within as it raged unrestrained inside of me. I felt like I was on fire. 

And in that moment I grasped what this was. I had just destroyed Maximus with the power of God's angels, killing his darkness with the most invincible of light known to this world, forgetting that, unfortunately, my soul was made up of darkness too. 

Which meant I wasn't safe from it either. 

I had gained the power to kill demons and in doing so would destroy myself. 

I guess it was time to accept the consequences of my decisions. If dying was the only way to keep the ones that I loved safe than so be it. 

The pain suddenly got worse. I yelled out a bunch of curses as the fire within became stronger and stronger by each passing second. 

"Roman!" I heard a voice yell, and despite my dizzying agony I saw Carmen, Darcy and Spence running towards my collapsed body in the near-distance. 

Carmen sank to her knees as soon as they arrived, placing a hand on my chest as her eyes began to well up with tears. Her voice became choked up and panicky. "Roman? Roman! What's going on?" 

"Did...did you handle the book?" I ignored her, my voice urgent as I felt death come closer and closer. "Did you give the book to the Guardians?" 

"Yes," Robbins replied with pity. "Yes. It's completely safe for another two millenniums." 

I nodded and let out another cry of pain. "G...good. Well...done. I'm proud of you...Ah!" 

"Roman," Rivers were running down Carmen's face as she leaned in closer to me. "What is happening to you!" 

I visibly flinched. Somehow her distraught tone was even more difficult to bear than the pain of my death. "Max...Maximus and I...we fought to the d...death. I won...but it came at a cost." 

"What cost?" Her voice was small, almost mouse-like, in my final hour. 

I managed to raise a weak hand to her cheek, softly wiping away a fresh set of tears that had just appeared. She knew exactly what I was going to say. 

"My life." 

She shook her head, a fit of denial raging across her expression. "No, no, no, no, no! We...we can get help...we can find someone to help you. There must be..." 

I put one of my fingers on her lips to silence her. "There's nothing...Ah...that you can...do. Just stay with me before I go." 

At those words she lost herself to sobs, burying her face in my chest as the pain suddenly reached a new level of unbearable. I let out a scream of agony, not unlike the one Maximus gave before his final moment, and I knew then and there that death was seconds away from taking me. 

I forced my eyes to close. I didn't want Carmen to have my lifeless orbs as her last memories of me. 

The agony surged to an all-time high and I couldn't hold on to life any longer. This was the end. 

The pain stopped. And I knew then that I had died. 

Death was a strange thing, really. I spent all those years living and working in the Underworld and yet I'd never really given it much thought. I had never even tried to guess what I would feel after I had passed on. 

I mean I'd kind of expected to just burn. After all, according to Satan demons ended up in the lake of fire when death had finally caught up to them. But I just felt...nothing. No fire. No flame. Nothing. 

I supposed I should open my eyes, although I didn't want to. I would rather experience no emotion than the torturous pain of Hell, which my sight would reveal to me all too quickly. I kind of wanted to hold onto this rather peaceful version of death. 

I vaguely heard a voice in the distance, and I almost let out a sigh. This tranquillity wasn't going to last for much longer. I just knew it. Life in Hell wasn't like this at all. 

The same voice suddenly sounded from a lot nearer to me, as if the speaker were right up close, and out of the shock my eyes suddenly blasted open. I was ready to see the murky depths of my doom in its black and red wonder. 

But I didn't see the blood and smoke of Hell. I saw something quite different. 

"Roman?" 

Shocked, watery emerald orbs met my gaze and I suddenly felt myself gaping as I became accustomed with my surroundings. I was back. Back on the field with the monastery. Back to the place where I had just died. 

And it was none other than Carmen who was staring back at me.

Could this be some sort of awful trick? I called out her name to check that this world was real enough for me to speak in, and sure enough the words came out. What was going on? 

"I don't understand." Her voice was still choked up and full of confusion and grief. "You were dead. Your heart stopped beating. I heard it. You were dead. You died." 

I pulled myself up into a sitting position and said her name again, testing the waters. I stretched out a hand and stroked her tear-stained cheek. 

It was as soft as it always was. 

"This is real." I had meant to keep that to myself, but I ended up saying it anyway. "You're real. Carmen." 

She let out a sob and flung herself into my chest, wrapping her arms around me tightly as I rocked her back and forth gently, like a child who had lost their most important toy. 

"I think I understand," a voice from opposite me came, and I looked up to see Robbins smiling down at me, flanked by Victor and Spence- the latter of which clearly sharing some of Carmen's distraught. I smiled for a moment. Maybe our friendship wasn't completely ruined. 

"You do?" I concentrated my attention on Darcy, who was now grinning widely. 

She clapped her hands together in glee. "Yes! Yes I do! By the grace of the Lord I think a miracle happened here today!" 

I frowned. "What? I'm confused." 

"You did die," she confirmed. "For a moment at least. Your heart stopped beating. But maybe it was just a part of you that did." 

"A part of me?" 

She positively beamed at the question. "The demonic part of you. I think God caused the evil in you to die, and allowed the human in you to live with his amazing power!" 

My eyes widened and Carmen's head shifted from my chest to peer up at Robbins. "Are you sure?" 

"Yes!" She exclaimed, her eyes bright. "Try make a fireball!" 

I closed my eyes and attempted to feel the energy course through my veins, waiting for the build up to allow me to make it surge. But...there wasn't any energy. I felt no fire. No power. Nothing. 

I reopened my eyes and grinned. "I can't." 

She let out a cheer and jumped up in sheer joy. 

"This means that," I paused, my face glowing as I looked around at the people I now cared deeply for. "That I'm no longer tied to Lucifer." 

He was gone.