Day 2413.

The red dome pulsed in rhythm with her breath.

It was not glass, nor crystal, nor any material that belonged to the world of physics. It was memory hardened into form — layers of light folded again and again until they became something more than light, more than aura, a shell that enclosed her in warmth and defiance. From the outside it looked opaque, a red cocoon hammered smooth by storms. From within it shimmered like a living thing, glowing softly with each rise of her chest, dimming when she allowed herself the quiet of sleep, and humming faintly whenever emotion broke through the cracks of her silence.

Liz sat cross-legged at its centre, armoured in the remnants of herself. The plates were not ornamental. They had not been given to her by any god or demon. They had grown from her, forged in that moment when she had clawed her way back from being the Wretch and remembered her name. Her ribs were sheathed in translucent bands of crimson shell that curved and pulsed like molten glass. Her shoulders carried crown-shaped guards that flickered at the edges as though half-dreamed into being. Her hands wore gauntlets of light that sparked whenever she clenched her fists, the red glow running down her forearms like rivers of molten iron.

Above her head, her halo burned. It was no longer the pale shimmer of a victim's brand, nor the false radiance the Devourer had mocked her with. It glowed deep crimson, jagged at the edges, as if hammered from blood and fire into the rough shape of a crown. It did not rest on her brow like something bestowed. It rose from her — a mark of survival rather than grace, a coronation carved from pain.

Her armour was not heavy. It did not weigh her down. It was hers, and that made it lighter than breath.

She touched the floor with her palms and felt it answer. Not with stone, not with earth, but with warmth. The polished surface rippled beneath her touch, and from its sheen images stirred: her father crouching at her bedside when she was small, his hand rough but steady on her hair; her mother's eyes, tired but still soft with love; Dan's laugh, too loud, too alive; Alyssa rolling her eyes with mock disdain; Chloe whispering secrets through the cold bars of a hospital bed. Even Jack appeared — awkward, smiling, holding out a paper crane folded from the corner of a prescription sheet.

They were echoes, not ghosts. Not illusions meant to torment. They were fragments she had chosen to keep, pieces she had torn back from the Devourer's hunger and set here in the dome as anchors. The rest — the screaming faces, the betrayals of memory, the endless mouths gnashing in the dark — she had burned from herself with the red flame.

The dome was not only shelter. It was declaration. It said: I am still here. And this is mine.

Outside, the wind rasped across its surface. The ash and black sand hissed as they slid over the barrier, carried on the stale breath of the dream that had once devoured her. Somewhere in that wind the Devourer still circled. It was weaker now. Smaller. No longer the Titan that had towered over her sky and drowned her in screams, but something leaner, more desperate, gnawing at the edges of her defiance. It touched the barrier sometimes, and every time it did it recoiled, harder than before.

She had stopped healing long ago. Healing belonged to the world outside, to bodies and skin and the things time could mend. What she did here was something else. She was adapting. Armouring. Becoming.

Liz closed her eyes and inhaled. The dome inhaled with her, pulsing brighter with the breath. She exhaled and it dimmed, like the whole structure existed to mirror her heartbeat. She flexed her fingers, and the gauntlet light rippled down her arms like lava finding new paths through rock.

Liz wasn't at peace, she was preparing.

***

Liz rose from the centre of the dome, the red aura whispering against her skin as if reluctant to let her go. Her halo burned brighter than before, a crown of light carved from memory and defiance, casting fractured patterns across the inner surface of her sanctuary. For a heartbeat, she hesitated, listening to the hum of her armour, feeling the weight of what she carried. Then she stepped forward.

The dome parted for her like molten glass, the membrane sliding across her skin before sealing tight again. Warmth fell away, replaced by the breath of the dead land outside. The air reeked of ash and iron. The sky sagged heavy and cracked, veins of red-black lightning crawling across its underbelly. Even the ground shifted uneasily, sighing under her boots, as though resentful of her intrusion.

She walked steadily, not rushing, not faltering, the crimson glow of her aura pulsing with each step. Every impact pressed a faint ripple of red into the soil, not footprints but scars, searing the residue of memory beneath her. This land was not made of dirt. It was made of her — fragments of stolen faces, splinters of broken days, echoes of screams that were never allowed to fade. The Devourer had once wielded these fragments like a knife, drowning her in illusions until she couldn't tell what was hers and what was its. Now she looked down at the shifting shapes without fear.

Jack's broken smile flickered under the ash. Chloe's hand reached upward, smeared in shadow. Her own reflection shivered in the ground, lips mouthing silent pleas. She did not avert her eyes. She let them linger, let them watch, let them wither in the glow of her aura until the false faces dissolved back into nothing.

"This is mine," she murmured, voice rough but steady. "Not yours."

Once, the Devourer had towered over everything, its presence a cathedral of hunger that filled the sky. Its voice had choked her breath, its weight pressed her into the dirt until she thought she would never rise again. But with each encounter, it had diminished. Every strike she had survived carved something away from it. Every refusal had shrunk it. The god that once ruled her nightmares was being whittled down, piece by piece, into something that crawled instead of soared.

She stopped at the crest of a ridge, the plain below opening into a wide bowl of smoke and ash. The ember inside her chest pulsed once, and her aura answered. Her gauntlets sparked faintly, and her halo flared until it painted the air in red, bending the haze into trembling waves.

A flicker moved across the plain. Not the Titan, not that impossible enormity that had once swallowed the horizon. This was smaller, leaner, a shadow scuttling fast and then freezing still. Its body was twisted, insect-thin, riddled with too many eyes. They glowed faintly, all looking in different directions, but a few locked on her, glimmering with recognition.

It saw her.

Her lips curved, not in kindness but in memory of how it had once smirked through her own stolen face. She raised a hand, not to strike but to signal. A pulse of red aura rippled outward, spreading across the ridge in a perfect circle. It wasn't an attack. It was a declaration.

I see you. I want you to know that I see you.

The shadow twitched. Its body jerked sideways, vanishing into the haze of ruin.

Liz exhaled slowly. The silence that followed wasn't emptiness — it was weight. Pressure. She knew it was still watching. Always watching. But now the pressure pressed both ways. For the first time, she felt it recoil.

"Run," she whispered, and her voice was almost gentle. Almost amused.

Her aura flared once in agreement, the halo above her head burning like a crown of thorns set aflame. And with that, Liz stepped down from the ridge into the plain, every motion deliberate, every step another cut into the Devourer's silence.

***

It came from behind, like it always did.

The ash shifted in silence, the plain rippling like a sheet drawn tight, and the thing lunged from the haze — a blur of sinew and shadow. Not the Titan that had once crushed the sky, but something smaller, meaner, a remnant clinging to the edges of what it had been. Its limbs were whipcord thin, bent insect-sharp, ending not in hands but in blades grown from stolen bone. Its mouth had shrunk to a slash, the teeth too human to belong to any god, and its eyes multiplied across its torso in frantic constellations, all watching, all afraid.

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Liz turned as it moved, too quickly for thought, her whip already cracking into being. A streak of red fire tore from her hand, lashing the air with a sound like a scream forged in iron. It caught the creature mid-lunge. The impact lit the plain with a searing flash, and the Devourer shrieked — not the cathedral-voice that once drowned her, but something thin, broken, desperate.

It staggered back, tendrils flailing like eels torn from boiling water. Liz didn't give it space. She swung again, the whip lashing across its chest. The strike left a glowing gash down its form, a wound that hissed and bled black smoke. Another lash followed, then another, each one ripping fragments from its shadowed body until the plain stank of burning flesh.

"You always came from behind," she said, her voice ragged but strong, rising above the hiss of its wounds. "Always when I was weakest. Always in the dark."

The Devourer hissed back, but its eyes darted, restless, unable to hold her gaze. It lunged again, this time with a spear of bone that lengthened from its arm, the tip twisted into the shape of her father's face. The mouth on it smiled, her father's smile — too wide, teeth too sharp.

For a moment, the sight hit her like it always had. A jolt of memory, a twist of pain. But the ember in her chest flared, and the halo above her head burned red-hot, its light carving across the illusion. The false face flickered, cracked, and dissolved under her glare.

"No," Liz said, her voice low and shaking. "Not him."

Her whip answered before the thing could strike, wrapping around the bone-spear mid-thrust. She twisted, yanked, and the limb snapped sideways with a wet crunch. The Devourer shrieked and reeled, tendrils curling back like scorched paper.

Liz stepped forward, dragging the whip taut, pulling the writhing limb closer. Her gauntlet flared, light rippling down her arm, and she struck once — a single punch into the creature's stolen face. The blow cracked its skull inward, black ichor spraying across the ash.

The Devourer collapsed to its knees, spasming, limbs clawing at the dirt.

Liz stood over it, her whip coiling at her side, red aura flickering across her armour in jagged arcs. Her breath was harsh, blood still damp across her ribs, but her eyes blazed. She could see it now, stripped of its grandeur, stripped of its masks. The Titan was gone. What remained was a parasite — frantic, pathetic, a coward pretending at godhood.

"You're not the one hunting anymore," she whispered.

Her aura flared. The whip ignited again, brighter, sharper, humming with memory.

The Devourer twitched — then turned. And for the first time, it fled.

***

The Devourer fled across the ash plain, its limbs dragging ragged shadows behind it, body collapsing and reforming with every frantic movement. Once, it had filled horizons with its cathedral of mouths. Now it skulked like an animal, crouched low, darting between the ruins of memory it had once conjured to break her.

Liz pursued.

Not running, simply walking. Determination fuelling each step. Each strike of her boots left a faint glow, the red aura burning into the ground, reshaping it as she passed. The terrain writhed beneath her, but it could no longer decide what it was — fragments of hospital halls bled into classrooms, forests dissolved into skeletal ridges, faces appeared and disappeared in the walls of ash. The Devourer's illusions stuttered like broken film reels.

"You built this place from me," Liz said, her voice carrying farther than it should, shaking the plain with every syllable. "Every scream. Every wound. Every memory I tried to bury. You made it your cathedral."

The Devourer froze mid-stride, its many eyes swivelling back toward her. They flickered — Jack's stare, Chloe's tears, April's smile, her own young face weeping. The choir of voices returned, hissing through the broken air:

"You failed." "You burned her." "You will always crawl."

But this time, Liz didn't flinch.

She lifted her hand, and the whip of light cracked once across the plain. The strike wasn't aimed at the Devourer. It cut the air itself, slicing through one of its conjured faces — her mother's — the image splitting down the middle before it dissolved into ash.

"You don't get to wear her anymore," Liz whispered, her voice trembling with fury. "You don't get to wear any of them."

The Devourer shifted again, desperate, its body rippling into new masks. A dozen younger Lizzes bloomed across its torso — one crying in a school uniform, one screaming as flames curled around her bed, one no older than five clutching a stuffed rabbit scorched half to ash.

"Lizzy," they begged in unison, voices overlapping in a fractured choir. "Stop fighting. You're only hurting yourself."

Her knees buckled for half a breath — because part of her wanted to believe it. That surrender might end this. That if she just lay back down in the ash, the pain would finally close its jaws.

But then her halo flared, jagged and burning like a crown hammered from blood. She bared her teeth, tears streaking her face.

"No," she said. "Not anymore."

The Devourer recoiled. Its limbs stuttered, faltering mid-motion as though the thought of retreat had burned into its muscles.

Liz stepped forward again. The halo above her shimmered hotter, no longer just a crown of firelight but a brand of judgment. Her armour hummed with heat, and the ground around her warped beneath the aura. For the first time in this endless war, she wasn't just surviving inside its maze — she was rewriting it.

The air convulsed. Faces bloomed across the Devourer's torso in a frenzy, mouths opening in a thousand screams. It lunged again, desperate, lashing a dozen tendrils tipped in blades and hooks.

Liz didn't retreat.

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and the whip dissolved into flame. In its place rose a wall of light — a flood of red memories bursting outward, not shields, not weapons, but moments.

Her father lifting her from a burning house. Her mother humming while stirring miso. Chloe laughing so hard she cried. Jack folding a paper crane. Alyssa's voice sharp with sarcasm. Dan's arm steady at her side.

The memories ignited into fire and surged outward in a wave, colliding with the Devourer's assault. Its tendrils shrieked and recoiled, dissolving into smoke the instant they touched the blaze. The faces screaming from its body cracked and bled, their illusions burning away under the weight of what was real.

The Devourer screamed. Not a roar. A scream. Thin. Cornered.

Liz opened her eyes. They burned bright, reflecting the firestorm around her.

"This was never your church," she said, her voice steady now. "It was mine."

And with each word, the Devourer shrank.

***

The Devourer stumbled backward into the fog, its limbs collapsing under their own weight, its illusions unravelling like old cloth. Where once it had towered as a Titan, it now hunched like a malformed shadow, sinew stretched too thin, bones jutting at wrong angles. Its many mouths screamed without sound, the noise caught in its throat as if even its hunger had been stolen from it.

Liz advanced, her aura burning brighter with each step. The crown of light above her pulsed like a heartbeat, the whip coiling and uncoiling in her hand as though eager for blood. The air no longer belonged to the Devourer. It hissed and folded away from her, the ash retreating in swirls of smoke.

"You took everything," she said, her voice quiet but carrying, the words layered with the fire that hummed through her veins. "Every memory, every name. All my hope. You thought I would crawl forever."

The Devourer whimpered. Not roared. Whimpered — its massive torso caving inward as if ashamed. The faces across its body blinked out one by one, April's smile fading, Jack's tears dissolving, even her own younger face burning away in silence until all that remained was a single, shrunken shape.

It was her.

The Devourer's last mask stood in front of her — a girl, twelve years old, barefoot in the ash, her hair matted, her hands cut and raw. She looked up at Liz with wide, tear-streaked eyes, lips trembling.

"Lizzy," the copy whispered. "Please… don't hurt me. I'm you."

Liz's heart clenched — but only for a moment.

"You're not me," she said, stepping closer, her whip of light hissing across the ground. "You're what you made of me."

The child-mask reached out a hand, bloody and shaking, as if to touch her cheek. The gesture trembled with every ounce of manipulation the Devourer still had left.

Liz raised her whip. For a heartbeat, the mask smiled, thinking it had won. Then the red light cracked forward, cleaving the illusion in two. The child dissolved in a burst of ash and shrieking shadows, and when the smoke cleared, the Devourer had nothing left to hide behind.

It crawled now. Just a black, withered thing dragging itself through the dust, faceless, voiceless, a parasite exposed.

Liz stood over it, every part of her armour burning like molten glass, her halo a crown of red fire. Her chest heaved with exhaustion, her wounds still bleeding, but her voice was steady.

"You don't own me anymore."

The Devourer writhed, folding in on itself, its limbs collapsing into shadow. It slithered into the cracks of the plain, a parasite retreating deeper into the marrow of the maze. Not destroyed or silenced. Just driven back — for now.

Liz exhaled. Her whip dimmed but did not vanish, coiling once more around her arm like a promise.

For the first time since the forest had claimed her, the world was silent — not the silence of suppression, but of absence.

She lowered to her knees in the ash, her aura flickering. And across the distance, a thread tugged through her ribs.

A pulse.

Not from the maze. Not from the Devourer.

From beyond. From the real world.

Dad.

Far away, in the waking world, Max's fire surged again, spilling into her veins through the thread that bound them. His voice did not carry here, but she felt it — a weight pressed into her palm, a vow burned into her blood. She wasn't alone. Not anymore.

She whispered it to herself, her lips cracked but sure.

"I am Liz."

The name burned in her throat, broken and blood-soaked, but it was hers. She pressed it into the silence like a blade, carving the word deep into the marrow of the maze.

And for the first time, the forest didn't answer back — because it knew she would cut it again if it tried.

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