The red sky screamed.

Not with sound – with pressure. With chaos.

The Devourer came at her again.

It moved like a swarm stitched into one body – tendrils, jaws, wings, and limbs all slamming forward as one tide of madness. It shrieked not with words, but with hunger. It wanted her soul – no, it wanted her gone. Unmade. Eaten.

Liz stood on the fractured edge of her broken mind-dome, both palms raised. Her fingers bled red threads of energy that cracked like whips in the air. The battlefield around her was dust and flame. Her hair clung to her face, soaked in psychic sweat. Her jaw clenched. Her breath hitched.

The Devourer struck – again – and again —

She blocked the first two hits.

The third tore across her side and sent her spinning.

No! Not now – hold it together!

She landed hard, rolled, dragged herself up.

The Devourer's shadow loomed again.

It was relentless lately. Desperate. Every attack heavier, faster, more insistent – as if it knew something she didn't.

She staggered to her feet, red whips spinning behind her like living fire.

"I'm not giving up," she growled. "You can crawl back into whatever pit you came from—"

The Devourer lunged.

Liz screamed and hurled every ounce of her will into her whips. They struck with thunder – slamming into the Devourer's front, staggering it—

And then…

It stopped.

Mid-charge.

The Devourer froze – a twitching, twitching convulsion of mouths and claws – and turned its head. Slowly. Almost like an animal scenting something it couldn't see.

Liz blinked.

What—

The Devourer let out a different kind of scream this time.

Not rage. Not hunger. Terror.

It recoiled.

Its body rippled. Shrank. It stumbled backward from her. No – not her.

From something behind her.

Liz turned.

Nothing was there.

Yet.

The Devourer screeched again – then fled in terror.

It didn't slither or stalk. It ran. Melted back into the shadows of the broken mindscape like it was afraid the ground itself might swallow it.

Liz stood there panting, sweat and blood sliding down her temples.

"That wasn't you," she whispered, eyes still scanning the horizon.

"Something else just walked in."

She could feel it. Like a change in gravity. Like a black hole appearing in the centre of her chest. It was real.

Not a trick. Not an illusion. Not another of the Devourer's games.

Her hands began to shake.

And somewhere, in the distance, something exhaled – and the air grew colder.

…………………

Liz's knees gave out.

She collapsed onto cracked stone, hands shaking, ribs heaving with every breath. The psychic fire around her flickered uncertainly, the red strands of her energy trailing behind her like torn banners.

The Devourer was gone.

But she wasn't relieved.

Something worse was coming.

She could feel it in the bones of the mindscape. In the weight of the sky. In the tremble of the dome fragments that still floated in the distance like shards of stained glass.

Too quiet, she thought. Too cold.

Her hand brushed the ground. It didn't feel like stone anymore. It felt like glass. Like memory.

A shimmer passed over her vision.

And then – warmth.

Gold.

It was subtle. Barely there. A flicker. A breath of heat in the dark.

She turned, and he was there.

Her father.

Not fully formed. Not real.

But enough.

A silhouette of fire and broken armour. A hand reaching toward her through the veil. Eyes filled with grief and fury and love.

"Dad…"

She whispered it before she could stop herself.

He didn't speak — but she felt him.

His presence anchored her. The Devourer couldn't touch her when he was there. The fear had shrivelled. Her own fire had burned brighter.

Just for a moment… she remembered who she was.

Not a Wretch. Not a vessel. Not a prisoner.

She was Elizabeth Jaeger. Daughter of Max. Fighter. Survivor. Liz.

You came for me… you really did.

But then—

Something pulled.

The image shimmered, cracked.

The warmth receded.

The golden thread between them snapped like a dry tendon.

Liz gasped, clutching her chest.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"No – no, wait—!"

Her father's shape was ripped backward into the dark. Not faded. Torn. As if something had grabbed the tether and severed it.

She screamed.

"DAD—!"

But the image was gone.

Only blackness remained.

She fell forward, hands hitting the glass. Her tears burned against her cheeks.

He couldn't stay.

This place would have broken him.

She bowed her head.

Alone again.

"But you tried," she whispered.

"You tried…"

And then…

She felt it.

The warmth didn't return.

But the pressure did.

A weight so immense it pressed into her teeth.

Into her soul.

Something had found her.

And it wasn't her father.

…………………

The wind didn't return.

But something else did.

Liz lifted her head, still kneeling in the ruins of her psychic battlefield, eyes bloodshot and heart pounding. Her aura flickered low, barely holding shape around her shoulders like a second skin.

The light had shifted.

No longer red. Not gold. But black – tinged with rusted crimson, like the inside of a dying star.

She felt it before she saw it. A pulling in her bones. A tightening in her lungs. A sense that her soul was being observed by something that didn't blink.

She stood – slowly, shakily.

The fractured stones beneath her feet pulsed once, then cracked outward in a perfect circle, like pressure had dropped across the whole plane.

And then—

Footsteps.

Barefoot. Deliberate. Soft. Wrong.

From beyond the edge of the shattered dome, a boy emerged.

Thirteen, maybe. Pale skin. Thin frame.

His black hair hung damp and uneven over his forehead, like he'd crawled out of a river of oil.

He wore no shoes. No wounds. No emotion.

His eyes were pure void. No whites. No iris. Just depth.

And above his head— A blood-red halo, floating like a dying sun, rotating in silence.

Liz's legs nearly gave out again.

Her nose started to bleed.

So did her ears.

Her vision doubled. She tasted iron. Her aura shrieked and recoiled, pulsing erratically like a wounded animal.

And somewhere outside – in the real world – her body convulsed.

Blood streamed from her nose and eyes inside the pod. The pulse sensors flatlined for a full second before spiking back into chaos.

But she barely noticed.

All she could do was stare.

"You're… not mine," she breathed.

The boy smiled.

No teeth.

Just a curve of suggestion. Something that had studied the concept of smiling but never learned the human part of it.

"No," he said softly.

"You don't belong to me yet."

His voice wasn't a child's. It wasn't even male or female. It was age rendered smooth – something that had existed too long to care about identity.

Liz summoned her whips without thinking – two blazing arcs of red soul-energy erupting from her arms with a snap that cracked the air.

She lashed forward – pure instinct, raw fear.

The whips struck—

And dissolved mid-air, like silk threads dipped in acid.

The boy didn't move.

Didn't even flinch.

He tilted his head. The halo above him pulsed once, and the ground beneath Liz's feet groaned like a dying creature.

"Are you afraid?" he asked, stepping closer.

"You should be."

Her vision blurred. Her aura tried to re-coalesce, but it cowered, crackling in shallow sputters.

"Who are you?" she rasped.

He stopped a few feet away.

Bent slightly at the waist. Tilted his head again. Looked through her, not at her.

"I'm the one who found you."

"Or more precisely…"

"I found him."

He tapped two fingers gently against her chest. Right over her heart.

Liz cried out as a spike of heat erupted beneath her ribs. Her knees buckled.

"And for that…"

"I'm going to be very thankful."

…………………

Liz screamed.

Her soul burned – not from fire, but from proximity.

Where the boy stood, the air fractured. The architecture of her mind – already unstable – groaned like glass under pressure.

She clenched her fists, forcing herself upright through the pain.

No. Not again. I'm not going back. I won't.

She dragged in a breath and summoned everything she had left.

The red whips spiralled inward, curling into the shape of a breastplate – a psychic armour that clamped around her chest and shoulders. Her skin shimmered with layered plating. Her boots reformed. A helmet sealed over her skull, the eye slots glowing red.

The gauntlet on her left hand was forged from the moment she refused to scream. The breastplate from the time she starved the Devourer for three days. The helmet… was her silence. Her shame.

Her last line.

And around her, the broken landscape responded — a new dome rising in jagged panels of stained crimson soulglass. Protective. Beautiful. Desperate.

She raised her head. Her voice cracked through the helmet's modulator.

"You don't get to have me. Not you. Not anyone."

The boy paused, still watching with that same flat smile. Then… he sighed. Softly.

"How quaint."

He lifted one hand.

Not fast. Not angry.

Just a lazy flick of his fingers.

The air bent.

CRACK.

The dome shattered like crystal under artillery.

It didn't explode outward – it imploded. Every shard ripped backward, drawn in toward the boy's halo like gravity had reversed.

Liz screamed as her barrier collapsed. The shockwave hit her soul like a sledgehammer. Her armour cracked at the collar. Then at the knees. Then at the core.

No—NO—

Her helmet burst first, a wave of static pouring into her ears.

Then her chest plate shattered, sending splinters of red light cascading around her.

The rest of her armour peeled away in a dozen pieces, like glass sloughing off burnt skin.

She dropped to the ground – naked again, exposed and small, fire guttering around her like smoke from a dying match.

Her eyes were wide, but empty.

Her mouth moved, but no sound came.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

The boy walked toward her. No rush.

Liz curled in on herself. Folded. Mind breaking.

The cracks in her psyche – stitched together over weeks of brutal resistance – split open again.

She was the Wretch again. The girl in the red room. The thing that screamed for help but no one came.

The boy knelt beside her.

His bare feet didn't touch the floor.

His halo hummed.

"Aamon," he said softly, "was worse to deal with than most."

His fingers hovered inches from her temple.

"The chaosbringer. The soulburner. Lord of screaming Hellfire. He wouldn't follow the script."

He sounded irritated, like a man talking about a long-dead rival at a dinner party.

"Burned my Archivist. Incinerated a thousand-year archive of pacts just to make a point."

Liz couldn't speak. Her nose was bleeding again.

"I had to move three entire battalions just to corner him."

He leaned closer, smiling with cold admiration.

"But you… you've done the impossible."

He tapped her sternum again, gently.

"You buried him."

"I wonder how?"

…………………

Liz didn't answer.

She couldn't.

The words were there – somewhere – but her mouth couldn't form them. Her breath wouldn't come. Every part of her felt like it was being held in place by a force that didn't care whether she broke or endured. Her ribs ached with phantom pressure. Her soul itched from within.

Moloch – if that's what he was – watched her with mild interest, like a child staring into a cracked mirror.

"You're not much to look at now," he mused.

"But that's the nature of vessels. You're only ever judged by what you carry."

He walked slowly around her, hands clasped behind his back. He never looked directly at her again – just circled, like he was measuring something deeper than her form.

"Aamon was never supposed to make it to your world. And yet… here we are."

He looked up – past the broken sky. His eyes tracked something only he could see.

"Hellfire. I always hated it. Too loud. Too wild. Too permanent."

His gaze returned to her – still kneeling, still bleeding.

"Do you know what it does?"

"Not just burn flesh. Not just soul."

"It erases things."

"No revival. No memory. Just gone."

He crouched.

His red halo dimmed – just slightly but Liz felt the temperature drop further. The colour drained from the air. Even the dreamscape seemed to shrink, like it feared to occupy the same space as him.

"He was going to burn all of us eventually. Even me."

A pause. A moment of stillness so dense it felt wrong.

"But you?"

"You did what I couldn't."

He placed a hand gently – too gently – over her sternum again.

"You swallowed him."

He tapped her sternum again, more thoughtfully this time.

"But that's the part I don't understand yet."

He began to pace slowly around her again, like a tutor trying to solve a difficult riddle.

"Aamon was too wild to enter anyone gently. His essence was chaos incarnate. He would have devoured you – mind, body, soul – in seconds."

He paused behind her, hands still clasped, head tilted.

"So how did it get in?"

"How did he get in?"

Liz didn't answer – couldn't.

But Moloch continued, softly musing aloud:

"It had to be your father."

"Max Jaeger. The anomaly."

He almost smiled again – amused, not pleased.

"That broken man passed something into you. Not Hellfire — that would have scorched you clean. But the essence, the core of what Aamon was..."

His voice lowered, but there was a strange reverence to it now.

"He gave you this power without the fire."

He crouched beside her again.

"Why, I wonder?"

"Did he do it knowingly? To protect you?"

"Or was it just grief in motion – power transferred like a dying man's whisper?"

He tilted his head to the other side. The red halo above him spun once.

"Either way... it worked."

"And now you carry what used to terrify even me."

His smile faded.

"So, thank you, Elizabeth."

"You've saved me a great deal of trouble."

Liz whimpered. Her skin seared beneath his palm, though there was no heat.

"And that means…"

"…you're mine now."

Her body convulsed. She coughed blood into her palm.

His smile widened. Still no teeth. Just void and intention.

"But not yet."

He stood.

Above them, the sky cracked again. Not in the dream. Somewhere else.

He looked toward it and exhaled with satisfaction.

"Looks like one of my kin has sent dogs to fetch you."

He glanced down at her – small, shaking, silent.

"How sweet. They think they're saving you."

He stepped back.

The red halo flared brighter, casting long shadows across Liz's body.

"Don't die yet, Elizabeth."

"You're still blooming."

He raised his hand—

And vanished.

Just like that.

The pressure broke.

The weight lifted.

Liz collapsed.

Face down. Bleeding. Gasping.

Her soul cracked but not shattered.

Her mind fragile but intact.

And as the silence returned, broken only by her shaking breath—

She whispered one word:

"Dad…"

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