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

The sanctuary was gone.

What remained behind it was worse.

Max stepped out into the courtyard and stopped. The others followed – one by one – and said nothing.

Where once a seven-tiered pagoda had stood, only the wound remained. A yawning crater stretched across the courtyard's heart, rimmed in cracked stone and twisted roots. The edges had once been ornamental, etched with lotus motifs and guardian lions – now those patterns bled, literally, the stone slick with crimson ichor where the carvings wept.

And from the centre of the hole, a spiral staircase descended.

Not newly built.

Inverted.

The entire pagoda had folded in on itself, swallowed downward like a throat swallowing a relic – bricks, beams, prayer wheels and all. The stairs coiled counterclockwise, wide enough for four to walk abreast, but narrow enough to feel like a trap. The tiles were scorched in places, warped in others, pulsing faintly underfoot with bioluminescent veins.

"Someone turned a temple into a mouth," Ferron muttered.

Alpha crouched at the edge, gaze scanning the symmetry. "Structural inversion. Engineered collapse. But preserved purpose. Remarkable."

Victor sniffed the air. "Something's bleeding down there. And it's not dead yet."

Max stared down into the spiral. The air changed with every step – each tier seemed to breathe. The scent of incense was still there, clinging to the memory of prayer, but it was layered now with bile, burnt grain, and something unmistakable:

Hunger.

Not his.

Theirs.

"The Circle's below," Max said. He didn't know how he knew. He just did. "This is the way down."

Dan didn't answer. He'd gone still. His jaw was tight. His golden aura sparked once at his fingertips, then flickered out like a candle denied oxygen.

Max glanced at him. "You good?"

Dan nodded too quickly. "Yeah. Just... hungry."

Victor grunted. "Same. Except I want to eat whoever built this thing."

Max started forward.

Each step felt steeper than the last. The spiral tightened, the light dimmed. Chloe pressed closer to Alyssa. Ferron drew his kusarigama and held it loose in his hand, the chain whispering against the stone.

Etched along the walls were old sutras – prayers once carved by monks into the pagoda's interior. But now they had been half-devoured by mould. Some were rewritten entirely, the characters twisted – phrases of compassion and liberation overwritten with bargains, feasts, offering.

Suffering brings clarity.

Clarity breeds hunger.

Feed the starved. Or become the meal.

Max paused at the next platform – where the spiral widened briefly into a flat landing. A weathered gong hung overhead, inverted, its underside now blackened with soot. His hand brushed it by accident.

It chimed.

Once.

The sound rang low, guttural – not metal on air, but flesh on bone. It echoed down the spiral like a warning. Or a welcome.

And something below moved.

Max looked into the depths of the inverted pagoda, jaw tight.

They weren't entering the next Circle.

They were being swallowed by it.

"I don't like this," Victor muttered, hunched beside him. "It smells like a kitchen."

Max didn't answer. The fire inside him was unquiet. Churning. Listening.

Because his Soul Prison power had awakened.

…………………

The staircase ended in a warped prayer hall.

Or what used to be one.

Now, it was a feasting pit.

The walls still bore remnants of carved mandalas and golden Buddhas but their faces had been scraped off, replaced by maws. Stone mouths, rimmed in teeth, frozen in open hunger. Bones littered the corners like rice husks. Candles made of fat sputtered in hanging jars.

And in the centre of it all:

A long wooden table. Splintered, stained black, still whole. Plates made of porcelain, iron, bone. Dozens of them.

Laid with food.

At first, it almost resembled a banquet. Roast fowl. Steamed buns. Blood oranges in carved bowls.

But then the details surfaced.

The duck still breathed, its spine flayed and organs spilling between lacquered legs. A pile of ribs grinned from a plate, each one notched with demonic runes. A child's sneaker poked from beneath a steaming mound of rice. Something that looked like a demon's flayed hide had been folded like dumpling wrappers. A severed head – human – grinned blind and smiling beside a bowl of red broth.

And around the table sat thirteen demons.

Most were husk-level – degraded, nearly mindless, faces lost to gluttony. One gnawed at its own hands between bites of charred flesh. Another wept as it fed itself a stew of spines, using a dislocated finger as a spoon.

Three were fiend-class – fanged, plated, elegant in their butchery. One used a cleaver made of ribbone to dice chunks of fat from its own bloated thigh and serve it to the others.

At the table's head sat the last one.

A corruptor.

Massive. Toad-skinned. Stomach slung low like an altar. Its hands were mouths. It fed itself by pressing its palms to the food and letting the teeth inside devour it. Slowly. Religiously.

It didn't speak.

None of them did.

They just ate.

Tearing. Chewing. Suckling.

The sound filled the room – wet, rhythmic, obscene.

The team stopped just inside the threshold.

Max clenched his jaw. "What the hell…"

Alpha's voice was flat, clinical. "One Corruptor-class. Three Fiends. Nine Husks. No clear hierarchy. Combat state: dormant. Intent: consumption. Tactically neutral."

Omega grinned, teeth sharp. He crouched, curling his fists into the bone around his arms. The armour of his awakening unfolded – plates of calcified hunger, white and ridged, wrapping his chest and shoulders like ribs turned outward.

Ferron's eyes narrowed. "They don't care we're here."

"Should we attack?" Chloe asked quietly.

"No," Max said. His voice was strained. "Wait—"

Because he felt it.

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Something shifted inside him.

The Soul Prison stirred.

Not as a whisper. Not as a flicker.

As a roar.

Blue Hellfire surged behind his sternum – not pain, not power. Appetite. A demand. Every demon at the table lit up in his vision like food. Not as a hunter sees prey. But as an addict sees a vein.

And beside him, Victor growled.

Not at the demons.

At himself.

His muscles bulged – teeth too long in his mouth. His hands twitched into claws. Slits of bone slid from beneath his skin.

Max turned. "Victor—?"

"I'm fine," Victor hissed. "Just... don't touch me."

He shook, chest heaving. His pupils were blown wide. The Chimera in him – the beast of stitched instincts and fractured hungers – was pressing against the seams. It wanted to eat. To tear. To join.

Max took a step back.

His chains flared.

Unbidden.

Hellfire surged from his spine, erupting outward in veins of blue flame – not upward, but outward, horizontal, like leashes snapping free. They weren't aimed. They were drawn.

Drawn to the closest four demons.

Two husks. One fiend. One bloated hybrid in the middle of swallowing its own tongue.

The chains wrapped them – neck, chest, limbs – and yanked.

Screams cut the feast.

Not fear.

Fury.

The bodies convulsed as the Soul Prison activated. Max felt their essence tear free – not just flesh, not just spirit. The contract signature inside them. The kernel of identity.

And Max's body drank it.

It didn't feel like victory.

It felt like vomiting in reverse – a rush of filth and heat up his spine, down into his lungs. Power tore into him, raw and unfiltered. It didn't settle. It spiked. Like injecting lightning straight into bone.

His skin crackled. The air around him warped, bending from the heat of blue Hellfire leaking from his pores.

And then it stabilized – not calm, but contained. Muscles flexed. Veins lit with molten current. His vision sharpened. Reflexes realigned. Every nerve in his body screamed the same truth:

He was stronger.

Faster. Sharper. Hungrier.

His body pulsed with soul-energy – four demons now part of him. Not voices. Not memories. Just fuel. A furnace rekindled.

Ferron watched him, expression unreadable. "That wasn't a technique," he muttered. "That was feeding."

Chloe took a half-step back. "Max… are you okay?"

Max didn't answer at first. He was still burning inside. Still full. And somewhere deep beneath the new strength, he felt it. The chains didn't just pull.

They craved.

And for a moment, Max didn't feel stronger. He felt eaten from the inside out.

The chains fell limp, then disappeared.

The bodies of four demons collapsed.

And the room finally noticed them.

Thirteen had feasted.

Now nine remained.

All of them turning toward Max.

The Corruptor stopped chewing.

Opened one hand.

Licked its palm-mouth clean.

And smiled.

…………………

It began with a tremor. Not from the ground – from Victor.

He stood still at first, back hunched, claws twitching at his sides. His breath rasped, shallow and erratic, like a furnace trying to contain a storm. The stench of meat filled the hall — burnt sinew, blood-slick bones, rotting marrow – and it fed something in him. Woke it up.

Then he moved.

A low growl tore from his throat – not human, not beast, but something between. His spine cracked. Shoulders snapped backward with a wet pop as bone tore through skin. Wings – vast, leathery, veined with silver – unfurled from his back like scythes made of flesh. His face twisted, jaw elongating, nose flattening, teeth warping into a predator's snarl. Eyes blazed gold. A lion's roar, layered with something ancient, detonated from his chest – a sound of dominion.

And then he leapt.

He crossed the hall in a blink. A blur of claws and wings and fury.

The nearest fiend-level demon barely looked up before Victor crashed into it – drove it down into the table, splitting wood and bone and flesh in one devastating slash. Blood sprayed across the feast. A second blow ripped the demon in half.

Victor didn't pause.

He dropped to all fours and devoured – hands tearing food from the desecrated table, jaws chomping meat with feral desperation. Human. Demon. Beast. It didn't matter. He chewed and swallowed like he hadn't eaten in years.

A second fiend rose, shrieking, but Victor was already on it. A wing smashed the creature into the wall. His tail – long, reptilian, coiled in bone spikes – lashed through another husk's neck.

The feasting demons screamed now. The hunger had been broken.

But Victor was only beginning.

At the entrance, the others held.

Ferron didn't draw his weapon. Yet. His expression was tight, calculating. "He's not attacking us. Not yet," he murmured.

Dan staggered backward, a hand clamped to his chest. His golden aura pulsed, weak and conflicted. "He's gone full berserker," he whispered. "Max…?"

Alyssa shook her head, one hand still clenched at her side. "He's not thinking. Just eating." Her stomach twisted, but not from fear – from appetite. The smell clawed at her, too.

Chloe looked pale. Not possessed. Just uncomfortable. "I don't think he'll stop on his own."

Alpha tilted her head slightly, eyes tracking Victor's movements like a machine watching a predator. "Output level increasing. Form: unstable but dominant."

Omega grinned – not in fear. In appreciation. "He's beautiful," he muttered. "I want to see how far he goes."

The others looked at him.

He shrugged. "Not saying we don't stop him. Just saying – let him eat first."

Victor tore another limb from the feast.

He was lost in it now.

Not rage. Not violence.

Hunger.

And the worst part was – part of him liked it.

…………………

Dan stood frozen near the threshold, just behind Ferron. The heat of Max's blue fire still echoed in the air, sharp and bitter on his tongue. Hellfire had carved the room in two – the dead half, steaming and cracked, and the living side where demons gorged on blood-slick meat like pigs at a trough.

Victor's roar still rang in the rafters.

But Dan barely heard it.

His own heartbeat drowned everything else out – whump-whump-whump – too loud, too slow, like it belonged to something larger than him.

He could feel them now.

The voices.

They weren't words, not exactly. More like instinct carved into flesh. A whisper behind his ears. A pressure behind his eyes. Soft, seductive.

Take their hunger into yourself. Suffer for them. Burn for them.

His hands trembled. Not with fear. With want. Not for food. Not even for salvation.

To help. To bleed. To carry it all.

He stumbled forward, past Ferron's outstretched arm.

"Dan," Ferron warned. "Stop."

But he couldn't. Not yet.

The hall shifted.

Not physically. Not even psychically. It morally shifted – every scream of hunger, every moment of consumption, began to feel holy. Like penance. Like truth.

He looked at the feast and didn't see monsters.

He saw need.

Thirteen demons eating not out of gluttony, but desperation. And wasn't that what he felt too? This ache to be enough – to hold someone's pain and call it grace?

A glistening strip of red flesh slumped from the table.

Dan stared at it.

And for a moment, he imagined picking it up. Not eating it. Holding it. Absorbing its weight so no one else would have to.

Take their hunger into yourself. Let them be free.

A part of him started to step forward.

Then a hand caught his.

Alyssa. Firm. Grounded. Unshaken.

"You're doing it again," she said, voice low.

He blinked. Her eyes met his – fierce and exhausted and real.

"You don't have to bleed for everyone, Dan."

He looked away.

"I know," he said. "But what if that's the only thing I'm good at?"

A pause.

She didn't slap him. Didn't yell. Just leaned closer.

"Then be good at it later. Right now, we survive."

And something in him exhaled.

He let her pull him back.

Ferron placed a hand on Dan's shoulder – not to stop him this time. To anchor him.

Behind them, Alpha spoke in her calm, surgical tone: "He is stabilizing. Threat level reduced."

Omega grinned, still covered in chitinous bone.

"Aw, I was hoping he'd go full martyr and start glowing."

Dan looked up at the carnage – Victor feasting, Max still steaming, and the demons not yet reacting.

He didn't feel cleansed.

But for now, he felt enough.

And that would have to do.

But even as he turned away, some part of him still looked back.

Still wished the hunger had meant something.

Still believed that bleeding for others was the only way he'd ever feel clean.

…………………

The hall groaned as silence fell.

Victor snarled, blood dripping from his lion maw, claws half-curled around a half-eaten demon limb. His pupils were pinpricks – pure instinct, pure hunger. The snake-tail writhed behind him, still tasting the air. Wings stretched wide, bone and membrane soaked in glistening red.

Max took a step forward.

Victor turned.

And something in him snapped.

He roared – not in challenge, but in claim. His bestial legs kicked off the banquet table. Plates shattered beneath him. In a blink, he was airborne, fangs bared, claws wide.

Max raised his hands too late.

The impact slammed them both into the pillar of the feasting hall.

Max's ribs cracked. Fire flared along his spine.

Victor's claws tore into his jacket – not aiming to wound. Aiming to open. To consume.

"VIC!" Dan shouted.

But the words didn't reach them.

They were gone – swallowed by the Circle.

Max's Soul Prison ignited.

Chains of blue Hellfire burst from his ribs, wrapping Victor's limbs, binding his throat, trying to drag the soul out.

Victor shrieked, twisting, snapping one chain with a burst of brute force – only to find another coiling around his heart.

And still, he bit.

Flesh tore. Blood hit the wall.

Max flinched – not from the pain. From the desire.

Part of him wanted to devour Victor. Wanted to rip the corrupted soul free, absorb its strength, end the fight.

Max wanted to let it happen. Let Victor die.

Just rip the soul free. Absorb the power.

Wouldn't that be easier? Cleaner?

He bit his tongue. Hard.

No.

If he started feeding on friends, there'd be no one left to save.

They rolled again – wings beating wildly, fire burning brighter.

Until—

Their eyes met.

For one breath.

And something broke.

Victor's lion face faltered. The hunger dimmed.

Max's chains loosened.

They froze, breath heaving, locked in claw and flame.

A scar on Victor's brow. The old one. From a motorcycle accident, years ago.

Max remembered patching it up with a beer bottle in one hand and a dumb joke in the other.

And Victor remembered the scream Max made the night April died – the sound of a man already burning.

They saw each other again.

Really saw.

Max released the chains.

Victor pulled back his claws.

The spell shattered like porcelain.

Around them, the Circle of Hunger collapsed inward – the food rotted mid-air, blackening, curling into ash. The remaining demons wailed, starved now not of meat, but meaning. The hunger had no power if it couldn't twist love.

Dan staggered forward. "Max— Vic—!"

Alyssa caught his arm.

"No," she said quietly. "Look."

The light shifted.

Not brighter.

Cleaner.

The mist retreated. The grotesque feast dissolved. The path forward emerged, cut in cracked black stone and glistening marrow – a stairway leading deeper into the earth, the next Circle pulsing faintly below.

Max panted, knees buckling.

Victor collapsed beside him, claws slack – too tired to rage, too ashamed to speak.

They said nothing.

Didn't need to.

They had tasted the worst in each other.

And stopped. It was enough.

Max wiped the blood from his mouth. "Let's go."

Victor grunted, dragging himself upright. "Next circle better have salad."

Ferron stepped forward. "Doubt it."

Chloe, Alyssa, and Dan moved in close.

Even Alpha and Omega looked... almost impressed.

And behind them, the Circle of Hunger died.

Not in flame. But in mercy.

The air changed.

A breeze stirred dust from the ruined table – not a hiss, not a gasp, just wind. Normal. Mundane.

The scent of burning fat faded. The silence wasn't holy or cursed. It was just quiet.

For the first time since entering Chengdu, Max felt something familiar: A world trying to remember itself.

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