The world had gone blind.

No hymns. No pulse. No breath.

Just ash – layered thick across the skeletal sprawl of Chengdu, still drifting like memory through the blood-tinged light. Where once the fungal cathedral loomed, now there was only a crater: glassed, blackened, and humming with the death-rattle of collapsed soulfields.

Verrine crawled from the centre of it. Every movement left streaks of herself behind – sloughed skin, burnt flesh, trails of steaming ichor.

Her once-glorious hair – that luminous jade waterfall she'd preached beneath – was now burned to patchy clumps, some fused to her scalp, others drifting loose in strands of ash and blood. Her skin had split open in places, peeled back like paper over flame, bubbling where bone had been flash-boiled beneath the surface. Her right arm ended at the elbow in a bloom of scorched marrow and glass. The left dragged her forward, fingers blackened and fused, knuckles scraping trails through molten concrete. Her temple was cratered inward, cheekbone shattered, jaw exposed through a lattice of melted flesh. Her mouth – once stretched in radiant sermons – now hung torn, twitching with pain and disbelief.

She had been divine – a vessel for harmony. Now she crawled like a sermon gone wrong.

Eligos— General Wang – was nothing but a charred outline fused to the pavement. Just a shadow now. His flesh gone. His soul long consumed in the blast.

They're gone, she thought.

The voices.

The Choir.

The great thousand-throated harmony that had sung with her since her first breath – it had gone silent. Not disrupted. Not paused. Ripped out.

Like a song unspooled at the spine.

She reached for it, trembling hands clawing at the air, the ground, her own throat. But there was only silence. And the silence screamed.

I was chosen. I was exalted. I was supposed to—

A cough tore through her lungs. Blood dribbled from her lips, dark and wrong. Her ribs clicked as she gasped. She could barely keep her shape. Her once-pristine body rippled at the edges, trying to fragment – unstitch – collapse.

She had power.

Had.

And someone had taken it.

The air around her crackled. Not with heat. Not light. Something else. Something worse.

Awareness.

It descended like pressure. Like being watched by the concept of judgment itself. Not from above, but from within the dust – like the atoms of the world had remembered what it meant to kneel.

The wind died.

The crater stilled.

And then – footsteps.

Soft. Bare.

A shadow flickered across the glassed earth – small, child-sized, crowned in distortion.

Verrine raised her head.

Every fibre in her broken body resisted. But her eyes found him.

The boy.

Thirteen years old. Pale. Smiling.

The air bent around him – not just heatwaves, but space, logic, cause. Glass liquefied under his feet as he stepped forward.

His red halo dripped like an open wound, painting the air with threads of bloodlight. Eyes too old. A smile too calm.

She had seen demons. She had been one.

But this wasn't demonic.

It was divine.

Perverted. Awakened. Awful.

"No," Verrine whispered, her voice a thread of smoke.

"Not you."

And he smiled wider.

…………………

The ash shifted.

Not from wind.

There was no wind now. Not here. The world at the centre of the crater had forgotten motion. Forgotten noise.

But something moved anyway.

A ripple passed through the smoke – not air, not heat. The kind of ripple that peeled back layers of reality so something older could step through.

Verrine's blood froze.

She turned her head – barely – and her breath caught. Or maybe it was taken.

A child walked through the ruin.

Thirteen years old, barefoot, unburnt. Pale skin gleaming like it was made from ivory and blood. A schoolboy uniform hung loosely on his frame, untouched by dust, somehow sharper than the world around it. His eyes were too dark, too still. And above his head—

A halo, jagged and red, rotated slowly, dripping something thicker than blood. Each drop sizzled as it touched the ground, boring small holes into the glassed ash.

Verrine tried to rise. Couldn't.

Her limbs shook uncontrollably, not from pain, but from something more primal – recognition.

It wasn't just that Moloch was here.

It was that the world had allowed him in.

Space rippled around him. The glass under his feet restructured itself, reforming into elegant lattice patterns before dissolving again into ash. The radiation didn't touch him. Time didn't quite touch him. He moved like gravity had forgotten how to say no.

Verrine's breath came in ragged, terrified gasps.

"No," she whispered. "Not you."

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He stopped five metres from her. Tilted his head, like a curious animal examining something smaller.

And smiled.

It wasn't malicious. It wasn't angry.

It was disappointed.

"Verrine," he said, voice soft and lilting, barely louder than the crackle of burnt wind.

"You've made quite the mess."

She tried to speak, but it came out a wet gurgle. Her voice had turned to iron shavings in her throat.

"I tried—" she rasped. "I tried to save them. Please… forgive—"

Moloch's smile deepened. Not cruel. Just knowing.

"Forgive?" he said. "No, Verrine. I don't think forgiveness is what you need."

He knelt, neatly, resting one elbow on his knee as if settling in for a classroom story. All around them, the crater pulsed faintly – his presence drawing out the echoes of the dead, soft outlines flickering in the dust. Children. Women. Smoke-wreathed silhouettes, trapped in moments of prayer or flight.

"You always liked worship," Moloch said gently. "It made you feel clean. The choir, the bloom, the sermons. Very pretty."

He reached down and touched the ground beside her.

The stone twisted. The ash curled backward into vines. Burned roots. Fungal filaments screaming silently before dying again.

"But you stole my plan."

The tone shifted. Just slightly. Still calm. Still quiet.

But the temperature of reality dropped a degree.

"Unchain Heaven. Kill the King. Take the Crown. You thought I wouldn't notice?"

She shook her head, barely able to move.

"I… I didn't—"

"You did," Moloch said.

He stood. Slowly. Dust floated around him like reverence.

"And you rushed it. You weren't ready. You nearly woke Him before I was finished."

His smile disappeared.

"And that, Verrine… that's the only thing I don't forgive."

The sky above them shimmered – not light, but structure. Invisible chains trembled in the stratosphere, ancient bindings groaning just outside time.

Moloch raised his hand.

Dark red light bled upward, stitching the fracture closed. The air screamed silently as the gap sealed – space contorting, folding back into place.

The world, for a moment, exhaled.

Moloch looked back down.

"Come," he said, extending his hand like a schoolboy offering a dance.

"I'd like you to meet my Acolytes."

Verrine didn't reach for him.

But her body rose anyway.

Her mouth opened in a silent sob. The ground beneath her had already become a throne of crawling roots.

…………………

The sky above flared – no longer light, but structure. Something higher than weather. Invisible chains curled through the upper atmosphere, vibrating just out of sync with reality. The ozone buckled. The clouds sagged.

Moloch lifted his hand.

Red-black tendrils bled upward, threading through the air like stitching wire. The rip at the edge of space – what Verrine had torn open with faith and stolen Hellfire – screamed. Not aloud. But through bone. Through soul. Like it remembered being whole.

And now remembered what it had lost.

With a simple gesture, Moloch sealed it.

The sky closed like a zipper of bleeding silk.

The moment ended. The pressure faded. And for one breath, the world remembered silence.

Verrine wept. But her tears were thin now – just smoke and pink fluid leaking from ruptured ducts. She was still suspended above the crater floor, twisted on her own roots, hanging like a failed prophecy.

"You nearly woke Him," Moloch said, brushing ash from his shoulders like it offended him. "Do you know what that would've meant?"

She didn't answer.

She couldn't.

"He dreams behind the Veil. Still chained. Still asleep. But the prayers are growing louder. Your little performance? It fed Him. Even your death would have fed Him."

He stepped closer.

"You weren't the solution, Verrine. You were the trigger."

She let out a rattled moan, half-conscious.

"You thought the plan was to open the gate." He tilted his head. "That's what makes this so sad."

He knelt again, not out of mercy, but the theatrical kind of pity only tyrants afford.

"The plan… is to kill Him."

The air pulsed.

"I will walk into His throne-room while He still sleeps. I will slit His golden throat with His own words. I will take His chains for my crown."

Moloch's voice was calm. Almost reverent.

"Because I deserve to. Because I am the only one who waited."

His gaze dropped to Verrine again – no longer angry. Just tired.

"You were always impatient. You needed worship. A thousand voices humming in harmony just to keep your ego intact. But real power?" He spread his arms wide to the crater. "Real power doesn't need to be believed. It just requires… sacrifice."

She blinked slowly, tears evaporating as they touched her blistered cheeks.

"I didn't mean to betray you," she croaked.

Moloch smiled.

"I know."

And somehow, that was worse.

…………………

Moloch stood in the centre of the crater, arms folded behind his back, watching Verrine hang like an insect caught in resin.

He didn't move.

Didn't gloat.

He simply observed her.

Verrine twitched on her root-throne, black tendrils coiled around her ribs and throat, pulsing faintly with red light. Her spine was curved unnaturally now, bent forward in a posture just shy of supplication. Her eyes rolled beneath cracked lids.

Still alive.

Still herself.

For now.

"I don't need to kill you," Moloch said. "You already died. Back when you thought the simple faith could replace my sacrifice."

He stepped closer.

With each pace, the roots around Verrine grew – twisting tighter, whispering in voices that shouldn't exist. They hissed in reverse tongues, syllables that left frost on the walls of the mind. They weren't vines. Not really.

They were ideas.

Twisted around a body that no longer got to choose what it believed in.

"You wanted to unchain the throne," Moloch continued. "But you didn't understand the locks. You were just rattling them. Loudly."

He raised his hand.

Not to strike her. Not to finish her.

But to rewrite her.

A flicker of red light passed between his fingers and her brow.

Her eyes snapped open.

She screamed.

Not a human scream. Not even a demonic one.

It was the scream of a choir reversed. A sound collapsing in on itself. Notes devoured by silence. Her voice hit a pitch the air couldn't carry – and something in the glass nearby shattered without ever being touched.

"That's better," Moloch said gently. "No more sermons. Just obedience."

Her mouth opened and closed, spasming like a broken hymn.

The black roots pulsed again – once – then settled. The light faded. Her body slumped forward, twitching. Not dead.

Bound.

He crouched beside her.

"When I bring down the throne, I'll need witnesses. You'll be one of them. Broken. Silent. And watching."

He touched her face with the back of his hand.

Her skin blistered beneath it.

"Come, Verrine."

He turned and walked.

Behind him, the root-throne creaked and began to move. It didn't walk. It dragged. A mass of silent agony and coiled memory, trailing what was left of a god.

…………………

The crater settled behind them.

No ash stirred. No birds cried. The city had become a bowl of glass and bone – silent, blackened, irradiated.

Moloch walked alone at the centre of it, hands clasped neatly behind his back, his bare feet moving lightly over the fractured surface. The root-throne dragged behind him in stuttering jerks, tendrils carrying the shape that had once been Verrine like a memory no one wanted to claim.

Above them, the clouds curled into impossible shapes – slow vortices that defied thermals and physics. The sky hadn't healed. It had been silenced.

But Moloch wasn't watching the sky anymore.

He was watching time.

A translucent glyph hovered beside him. A spiralling countdown composed of contracting numerals – written in a language older than breath, born in the first scream.

Each second that passed, the spiral coiled tighter, faster.

His smile had faded.

"No more delays," he murmured.

He raised one hand, and the glyph vanished. Replaced by another.

A face. Projected from memory.

Max Jaeger.

Sweat-soaked. Blood-marked. That haunted expression carved into him like it belonged.

Moloch stared at it in silence.

Then, softly – like he was praying to something only he understood:

"You're the final piece."

His voice was warm. Almost gentle. But underneath it trembled something vicious.

"You were never meant to survive, Max. Not Singapore. Not Aamon. And certainly not here."

The projection rotated slowly. A line of soulfield data ran beside it—erratic, volatile, impossible.

"You unlocked potential without debt. Awakened souls without chains. Do you understand what that means?"

He spoke it like a love confession.

"No years of temptation. No whispered promises. No slow corrosion of guilt. Just raw, unshaped power. And you give it freely."

His fingers curled.

The projection flickered.

"You were a flaw in the system. A fracture. But now… now you're the solution."

The world around him pulsed once – deep, resonant.

"With you, I can bypass the Contract entirely. No more waiting. No more pacts with weak men obsessed with lust or greed."

His smile returned.

"You'll give me the power I need. Armies in days. Not centuries."

He turned.

Behind him, the landscape seemed to breathe – a wave of distortion rippling through the dead soil. Whatever energy had erupted here, whatever spiritual laws had broken… they hadn't healed.

They'd shifted.

"So, I'm on a clock now," Moloch said quietly. "The King is stirring. And once He wakes, there will be no more room on the throne."

He began to walk again, barefoot and calm, trailing godhood behind him like smoke.

"You have something I need, Max."

"And when I find you—"

He paused.

Looked at the air.

Smiled again.

"You'll give it to me. Whether you mean to or not."

The root-throne creaked forward, trailing molten grooves in the ground. The broken husk of Verrine twitched once. She was watching. Barely.

But Moloch didn't look back.

He was already thinking ahead.

Already moving.

Because the race had begun.

And somewhere across the world, Max Jaeger still believed he was the one holding the match.

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