[T-minus 33 Days Until Dimensional Event Ritual Completion]

The silence after battle was worse than the violence itself.

Max stood in the wreckage, chain dragging faintly behind him – much shorter than it should've been, scorched from the fight with Mammon, most of its length lost when the gold transmutation shattered it into fragments. What remained was barely more than a flail. He could still channel Soulfire through it, but it wasn't enough. Not for what was coming.

Ferron crouched near a rusted guardrail, his forging tools laid out in a small metal case on the concrete.

He glanced at Max, then down at the half-chain, clicking his tongue in disapproval.

"That's not a weapon," Ferron muttered. "It's a liability."

Max didn't argue. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and stared into the thick green mist seeping across the ruined highway ahead.

Ferron picked up a thin strip of purified steel and tapped it against his knee.

"I'll need time to forge you a new one. A proper weapon, soul-anchored. Chain, blade, something that'll hold your Soulfire. Maybe even amplify it."

Max nodded once.

Victor sat slumped against a toppled road sign, panting hard, shirt ripped open to reveal deep, mostly-healed claw marks across his shoulder and ribs. His skin still shimmered faintly where Dan's healing had closed the worst of it.

He looked up, eyes dark. "You know... guns would be real nice about now."

Ferron snorted. "Against humans? Sure. Against demons? They'll laugh at you."

Victor raised an eyebrow.

"Demons don't die from physical damage," Ferron explained. "Not properly. Shoot them, stab them – they'll fall, but unless you hit the soul, they get back up. Especially anything stronger than a Fiend."

A pause.

"Contractors are the same. Human enough to bleed. Demon enough to crawl back together."

He looked at Alpha and Omega – standing silent sentinel at the road's edge, their rifles steady, visors glinting. "They use soulbonded bullets. Coated in prayer glyphs, bound through ritual. That's what kills for real."

Victor cracked his neck, wincing. "Do I get those?"

Ferron gave him a flat look. "You had one. Remember your cleaver? You lost it."

"That wasn't my fault."

Ferron stood, brushing dust from his coat. "You'll wait. I'll remake Max's weapon first. Then, maybe, I'll see about bullets."

Victor muttered something rude under his breath.

Nearby, Dan knelt on the cracked pavement, his palms glowing faint gold. A ripple of his aura pulsed outward – soft and warm, like sunlight through storm clouds. The wounds on Max's arm stitched closed. The bruises under Alyssa's eyes faded. Chloe exhaled sharply as the cut on her thigh vanished.

The healing wave rolled over them all – steady, focused, controlled.

But Dan looked pale. Exhausted. Sweat beaded on his brow.

"I'm... good," he said quietly. "Just... need a minute."

Max met his eyes. "You're stronger than before."

Dan gave a weak grin. "Category 2, remember?"

Alpha and Omega stood nearby, weapons lowered, staring out into the mist. Their posture was tense – even for them.

Around the team, the battlefield lay in grim silence. The bodies of Chamber Theta were gone – vaporized, shredded, or reduced to smears. What remained were the lesser dead. The broken puppets. The bloated husks. The mist had seeped into all of them – feeding the rot, slowing decay.

None of them smelled like death.

They smelled like something still breathing.

Alyssa and Chloe stood apart from the group, staring down the road.

Neither of them spoke.

Finally, Max walked to their side and followed their gaze.

Chengdu.

Or what was left of it.

What should've been a city skyline was drowned under a shifting ocean of green mist. Towers tilted at wrong angles. Streetlights sagged like wilted stems. No birds. No traffic. No sound. Just a pressure, thick and invisible, pressing down against the lungs.

Victor stepped up beside them.

"That's not a city," he muttered.

"No," Max said quietly. "It's a womb."

Ferron stiffened.

Alyssa made a face. "Ewww."

"What kind of womb?" Chloe asked, her voice a whisper.

Max's voice was iron.

"One that doesn't want us leaving alive."

No one spoke after that.

The team stood there a long while, staring into the mist – battered, rebuilt, and changed.

And when they finally stepped forward into Chengdu's green throat, they didn't do it as soldiers.

They moved like survivors.

Like people who'd already died once and were still too stubborn to lie down.

…………………

The city welcomed them with stillness.

Max stepped through the outer ring of Chengdu's green fog, boots crunching over gravel and bone splinters. At first, the road ahead resembled memory – familiar in the way nightmares often were. Cracked asphalt. Faded lane markings. A broken overpass overhead. But ten steps in, the world changed.

The buildings began to lean.

Not in the way ruined cities collapse from time and stress but as if bowing in reverence. Windows bulged and sagged, frames stretched long like soft wax. One storefront sagged forward, glass oozing down in glistening beads, pooling like tears.

Dan stopped beside a derailed bus that had crashed into a fruit stall. Half the vehicle's front was peeled open like a ribcage. Inside, the passengers were still in their seats.

But not human anymore.

Veins trailed from their arms into the leather. Their backs had fused with the seats, their fingers embedded in safety straps. Faces twisted upward, eyes wide, mouths frozen in glassy ecstasy.

"Still smiling," Dan whispered.

"They're not dead," Ferron said, kneeling beside the nearest. He didn't touch it. "Or if they are... the soulfield hasn't let them go."

Max didn't answer. He kept moving.

To the left, Chloe paused beside a collapsed office complex. Its facade had buckled inward, glass replaced by a translucent membrane. She reached out and phased – just for a heartbeat – her hand slipping partway through the warped stone.

She jerked back with a strangled gasp.

Max turned instantly. "What happened?"

Chloe was pale. Shaking. "Something tried to come through me."

Ferron's face darkened. "The soulfield's active. Sentient. That wasn't a wall. It was looking back."

Dan muttered, "This city isn't corrupted."

He looked up into the mist, expression tight.

"It's dreaming."

The silence after that was total.

They moved again – cautiously. More cars lined the highway, each twisted into grotesque still lifes: children in car seats with faces hollowed by spores, a motorcyclist embedded halfway through a wall, helmet fused to concrete like a tumour.

And then they saw the billboard.

It loomed above a flattened mall structure, suspended on veined pylons of green-black bone. At first glance, it was just a portrait: a woman standing in the mist, arms outstretched like a saviour.

Her face was radiant. Chinese. Middle-aged, sharp-jawed, smiling. Her eyes bright, almost maternal. Her hair was green – not dyed, but alive. Moss or grass or some living strand. A robe of medical gauze hung from her shoulders, billowing in still air.

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"She's... beautiful," Chloe said quietly.

"She's a fraud," Alyssa muttered.

Max didn't blink. "That's her?"

Ferron nodded slowly. "The root of the rot. Lady Verrine."

But the image wasn't paint.

As they moved, her eyes followed them. Just a few degrees at a time. The pupils shifting like a security camera lens, tracking the movement of each team member.

Below the billboard, a semicircle of people knelt on the highway – maybe two dozen.

Uniforms. Civilians. Children.

All were silent, heads tilted upward in reverence. Veins from their bodies traced into the soil, thin and wet, like spider roots anchoring them in place. Their faces were peaceful.

Their mouths were sewn shut.

Fine golden thread glimmered in the light. The stitchwork was delicate, practiced. Worshipful.

Soft sounds came from their throats. Not words. Just breath. Whispered prayers without syllables.

No one moved.

Max stepped forward and stared at the face on the billboard.

"Is she a demon?" he asked, finally. "Or a Contractor?"

Ferron answered slowly. "If she was just a Contractor, the city wouldn't be… like this."

A pause.

"And if she's a demon... she's one that learned how to pretend to be human."

Victor exhaled through his nose. "I hate her already."

The billboard flickered.

The smile grew.

The golden hair waved, just once, though there was no wind.

The air thickened – like something huge had just exhaled.

Max turned away.

"Keep moving."

And one by one, they stepped past the kneeling congregation, past the smiling face above, and deeper into the dream of Chengdu.

…………………

The fog parted around a hospital.

Or at least, what had once been one.

Twin towers of steel and glass loomed over the street, their surfaces warped with pulsing veins of bioluminescent green. A massive silk banner hung from the second floor, billowing unnaturally in the still air. It bore golden calligraphy, delicate and precise.

Ferron read it aloud. "仁爱阁."

"The Mercy Pavilion," he translated.

Max narrowed his eyes. "We check it."

"No survivors in this city," Victor muttered.

"Maybe intel," Max replied, already moving.

The sliding doors parted as they approached – not with mechanical hiss, but with a moist suction, like lips peeling away from glass. The smell that hit them was antiseptic... overripe. Sweet like rotting peaches.

Inside, the lobby was immaculate.

Polished marble gleamed beneath their boots. Potted plants – perfect, waxy, gently swaying — lined the corridor. Soft piano music played from nowhere.

And behind a reception desk made of fused bone and lacquered wood sat a woman.

White uniform. Green hair. Unblinking eyes.

She smiled.

"Welcome to the Mercy Pavilion," she said in flawless English, every syllable too clean, too practiced. "Lady Verrine sees all, heals all. Please take a number and breathe deeply. The Gift awaits."

Her lips didn't move.

Ferron stepped forward slowly, voice low. "That voice isn't coming from her throat. It's from the stomach cavity."

Max frowned. "So, what's the mouth for?"

Ferron tilted his head. "Decoration."

Chloe stepped closer to the reception desk. The woman's pupils dilated slightly, tracking her.

"She's not human," Chloe whispered.

The receptionist smiled wider. "We're all more than human now. Better. Blessed."

The team moved past her.

No attempt to stop them. No alarms. Just the same cheerful gaze – like a welcoming nurse in a commercial for end-of-life care.

They passed through security gates that pulsed when touched, like the nerves of something dreaming. The elevators hissed open before they reached them, but Max motioned for the stairs.

The second floor was pristine – absurdly so.

White walls gleamed with polished lacquer. Posters lined the hallway, each featuring portraits of patients with radiant, glowing eyes and slogans in Mandarin and English:

"Reclaim the Light." "Let Go of Suffering." "Every Wound Is a Door."

At the end of the hallway was the record room.

Victor kicked the door in.

Inside, it was chaos.

Medical files, charts, and hand-scrawled pages were pinned to every surface with surgical tools. The air reeked of copper. The overhead light flickered and buzzed like an insect's wings.

Dan stepped forward first, brushing aside a chart.

"Terminal lymphoma," he muttered. "Cured."

He grabbed another. "Late-stage dementia. Restored."

A third: "Multiple personality disorder... merged."

Each file ended the same way.

Patient transferred to Room 9. Status: Enlightened.

"Enlightened?" Alyssa repeated.

"Sounds religious," Chloe whispered.

"Sounds like a cult," Victor snapped.

At that moment, something shifted.

A soft click echoed down the hallway.

A door opened.

Operating Room 9.

Its light spilled into the corridor – warm, golden, inviting.

Against his better judgment, Dan took a step forward.

Inside, the room was spotless. The floor gleamed, lined with veins pulsing under glass. Monitors showed no vital signs – only glyphs and soundwaves, singing a lullaby in no known language.

At the centre lay a surgical bed.

And on it – a man.

Half-conscious, chest split open and delicately pinned apart with golden forceps. His organs were intact, cradled in vines and softly pulsing tendrils that glistened green.

His eyes fluttered open as Dan stepped closer.

He smiled and spoke in fluent English.

"Welcome," he said, voice honey-sweet. "Lady Verrine sees you. Your burden ends here. Come – lie down. Let her take what you don't need."

Dan's foot moved forward.

Chloe reached for him.

He didn't stop.

The man stretched one trembling arm, reaching out. His fingers left a slimy trail of fluid on the white sheets. "She makes us clean. No more pain. No more guilt."

Max's voice snapped like a whip. "Dan. Back."

Dan blinked – confused.

And then Victor moved.

He grabbed Dan by the collar and yanked him out of the doorway just as one of the surgical vines lashed toward his ankle. It struck the floor instead, where it melted through the tile.

The man on the bed sighed. "Some wounds only heal if you let them in."

His smile never faded.

Neither did the buzzing in the walls.

Max slammed the door shut and wedged Ferron's blade through the handle.

"What the hell was that?" Alyssa hissed.

"Not sure," Ferron said. "Maybe the first step of a ritual."

Max turned back toward the corridor, eyes hard. "We're moving. No more detours."

Behind them, the man in Room 9 began humming – soft and bright, like a children's program.

Lay down, lay down / the weight of the flame... / Lady Verrine will call your name...

They didn't look back.

…………………

The road curled downward.

The deeper they walked into Chengdu's festering maze, the more the city abandoned even the illusion of being human. Skyscrapers turned inward, bowing toward some unseen heart. Trees bore no leaves – only tongues. Billboards blinked in cycles of ecstasy and obedience.

Then the street opened.

A wide roundabout, unnaturally symmetrical, emerged from the mist – a cleared circle at the heart of the spiral road. At its centre stood a fountain, and the team stopped cold.

It wasn't marble.

It wasn't even metal.

The structure rose ten meters high – a twisted pillar of bodies, carved in waxy stone or perhaps sculpted flesh. Dozens of human figures: men, women, children – all in poses of worship.

Hands clasped. Eyes closed. Mouths open in silent prayer.

Water trickled from their mouths – or what passed for water. It was red-brown, almost syrupy, flecked with flakes of gold and black.

It pooled in the basin, congealing into a soup of reverence and rot.

Alyssa looked away, gagging softly.

Dan muttered a quiet blessing under his breath, golden light flickering at the edge of his palm, but it dimmed immediately. Whatever was in this place – it didn't want cleansing.

Ferron crouched beside the fountain's stone base, fingers tracing something embedded in the lower ring. The others gave him space, uneasy.

The carvings were intricate. Glyphs. Coiled and spiralling, like intestines etched into wet stone. Ferron muttered as he read them, eyes narrowing.

"Exorcist architecture... twisted."

He looked up slowly. "These aren't just decorative. This is a corrupted soul-prayer spiral. It's the kind used in sacred rites... but the anchor's inverted. A downward spiral."

"To what?" Chloe asked.

Ferron stood, brushing his hands clean.

"Completion," he said. "Or what someone thinks is completion. Each circle is a step. A sacrament. A surrender."

He nodded at the base of the fountain, where the glyphs became words – engraved in Mandarin and written with reverent precision:

"The Nine Circles of Verrine." "Each step a surrender." "Each surrender a healing." "Wholeness lies in letting go."

"Letting go of what?" Victor asked.

Ferron's mouth tightened. "Everything."

The mist thickened as they stood there – curling around their ankles, rising to their knees. The air smelled sharp and sterile. The silence pressed closer, like breath on the back of the neck.

Max moved to the edge of the roundabout, eyes scanning ahead.

Alyssa lingered by the fountain, staring at the faces. Each one seemed unique – almost lovingly crafted. Parents. Lovers. Soldiers. All captured mid-prayer.

"They believed it," she said softly.

Chloe turned to her. "Believed what?"

"That Verrine would save them." Alyssa's voice cracked a little. "That pain meant purpose. That surrender would fix them."

She looked down at the slow-dripping blood.

"Do you think Max would do it?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

Chloe frowned. "Do what?"

Alyssa's gaze stayed fixed on the fountain. "Burn the whole world... if it meant saving Liz."

Chloe didn't answer.

No one did.

Behind them, Ferron exhaled and traced a protective sigil in the air, a flicker of red-black light. "This isn't a battlefield," he muttered.

"What is it?" Max asked.

"A conversion site."

The mist around the fountain pulsed once – as if hearing them.

They moved on.

But none of them looked back at the fountain – at the sculpted worshippers whose mouths never stopped bleeding.

And none of them spoke of the question Alyssa had asked.

Because the truth was heavy, and it was following close behind.

…………………

The mist thickened to a wall.

Not fog – not anymore. It congealed, dense and pulsing like spoiled milk, tinged green with a faint gold shimmer just beneath the surface. Each step forward was like pressing into a fever dream – the texture of the air changed, heavy with moisture and memory.

And then the city changed again.

The alleyway bled into an open plaza.

Not wide, but tall – the buildings on either side had fused into a ribbed arch overhead, their windows sealed by stretched skin, forming something that was not architecture but anatomy. The road beneath their feet grew veined, laced with roots that pulsed faintly in time with a distant heartbeat none of them could locate.

At the far end of the plaza stood a gate.

Not stone. Not wood. Something grown.

Tarnished prayer beads dangled like tendons. Scalpel handles and shattered syringes were woven through loops of braided IV tubing. Medical tools. Spinal discs. Burnt incense cords. A halo of surgical masks ringed the top like ceremonial teeth.

Max stepped closer. The gate breathed in.

And then – it spoke.

Not aloud. But inside each of their minds – a warm, coaxing voice – feminine, calm, smooth as a pastor's final benediction:

"Those who seek healing… must surrender." "Those who suffer… must step into faith." "She is waiting. She understands."

The team froze.

The script above the archway pulsed in gold and black characters. Chloe stared at them, then looked to Ferron.

His voice was quiet. Almost reverent.

"Classical Mandarin," he said. "It says—"

第一环：质疑。 Circle One: Doubt.

Dan took a step back, instinctively. "So, we're here already."

"No," Ferron said. "We've been here. We're just being told what to call it now."

Beneath the arch, the gate slowly began to unfurl – not opening like doors, but peeling apart, like tissue separating along an incision line. From behind it, green fog spilled in waves. The light changed, dimming slightly, as if even the mist was being filtered through something deeper – not just air, but thought.

Chloe shivered. "It's colder."

"No," Dan said softly. "It's closer."

Victor glanced around. "Anyone else hear whispers?"

Alyssa nodded. Her voice was hoarse. "They're not just whispers."

They listened.

The sound was barely there – a rhythm of questions pressed into the space between heartbeats:

"Why didn't you stop her?" "Who did you fail first?" "Are you sure you were ever strong enough?"

Max's eyes narrowed. "It's already started."

Ferron approached the edge of the gate, palm outstretched. His hand passed through the opening – and when it returned, his fingers trembled, the skin flushed with phantom pain.

"She's using liturgical architecture," he muttered. "Each Circle is a psychic and spiritual imprint – a wound carved into reality. You don't just walk through it. You offer yourself."

Alpha and Omega scanned the corridor ahead, their postures tighter than usual.

"This is not a demon hive," Alpha said. "This is… manufactured."

Ferron turned toward the others. "Whoever Verrine is— whatever she is, she didn't build this. She became it."

The mist surged forward slightly – not hostile, but eager. Like a lover taking your hand and whispering: it's okay now. Just come inside.

A long silence followed.

Max stepped up to the edge of the gate, looking into the green glow. He turned back to face his team – eyes steady, voice flat.

"Liz is here somewhere. We go through."

No one questioned it.

He stepped forward – and vanished.

One by one, the others followed. Chloe, Alyssa, Dan, Victor, Ferron, Alpha, Omega.

Each swallowed by the fog.

Behind them, the gate shivered once – and closed.

Not a sound. Not a click. Just finality – like a heartbeat stopping.

And so they entered the First Circle.

Where the questions didn't ask to be answered.

They demanded it.

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