[T-minus 2 Days Until Dimensional Event Ritual Completion]

Victor hadn't moved in hours.

Not because he was injured. Not because he was tired. Just… because he couldn't think of a reason to.

He sat beneath the same crooked pine tree he'd claimed days ago. Or had it been weeks? One leg stretched out, the other drawn in. His arm hung across his knee, limp. The claws at his fingertips were gone – retracted days ago and never called back.

No threat. No prey. No need.

A fly landed on his wrist. He didn't flick it away.

The chimera inside him had been silent. Not asleep. Just absent. Like a tenant that had packed up and left without saying goodbye.

Once, that had terrified him. Losing the monster. Losing the thing that had made him feel powerful when everything else had burned.

Now?

It was a relief.

No hunger. No shame. No need to fight the red in his blood. Just grass beneath him. Breeze on his cheek. Voices silent. World still.

He looked across the park.

Max lay sprawled on the path, one arm bent awkwardly behind his back. Dan sat against a tree, head lolled. Alyssa and Chloe were barely breathing, curled like leaves that had given up on falling. Ferron's back was straight, but his eyes were glass. Alpha and Omega hadn't moved in days.

They looked peaceful.

He envied them.

Victor flexed his fingers, expecting to feel the thrum of power beneath his skin. There was nothing. No fire. No itch. No rage.

He pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat was slow. Steady. Meaningless.

"I think I'm done," he said softly to no one.

He laid back on the grass, arms splayed beside him, eyes fixed on the sky. It was blue. So blue it made him feel like a child again – like staring up from a field where nothing had gone wrong yet.

He closed his eyes.

Hibernation.

And for the first time since he was a boy, he didn't feel like a soldier. Or a weapon. Or a beast.

Just a body. Still breathing. Ready to sleep through a long winter. Waiting for the world to forget him.

…………………

The park was perfect.

Too perfect.

Still.

A warm breeze stirred the grass, but no one noticed. No eyes tracked its movement. No breaths quickened in response. There was no sense of danger. No flicker of memory. No reason to speak.

The Circle had done its work.

The team remained where they had fallen days – or was it weeks – ago, scattered across the park like forgotten memorials.

They were alive. Their hearts beat. Their lungs moved. But that was all.

Dan sat cross-legged near the cracked base of the fountain. His notebook lay beside him, pages fluttering in the wind. He didn't reach to catch them. His eyes were open, staring ahead, but not seeing.

A trail of ants climbed across his hand. He didn't move. He didn't feel them.

His golden aura was gone.

Ferron knelt beneath the shadow of the bamboo trees. His lips moved soundlessly, repeating a mantra that no longer meant anything. His kusarigama lay across his knees, the once-sacred chain dulled with dew and neglect.

He had forgotten the last time it had felt sharp in his hands. Forgotten why it mattered. Forgotten what it was meant to fight.

The words he spoke were hollow now – syllables without shape, echoes of a faith that no longer burned.

He kept reciting anyway. Out of habit. Out of nothing.

Chloe lay curled beside a garden bed of white lilies. Her hand reached absently toward one, but she didn't pluck it. Didn't smell it. She simply rested her palm on the petals, unmoving. Her face was calm. Not content. Not numb.

Empty.

Alyssa was propped against a bench, eyes open, face slack. Her boots were half unlaced. Her blade still lay across her lap – unsharpened. Her fingers rested on its hilt, but her grip was loose. As if it belonged to someone else.

The girl who snarled. Who stabbed. Who protected.

Gone.

Alpha stood sentinel beside the fountain. She hadn't moved in thirty-two hours. Her HUD read nothing. Her external diagnostics were offline. Her tactical log repeated a single corrupted entry:

"Mission ongoing. Mission ongoing. Mission—"

[DATA NOT FOUND]

Omega slouched across from her on the ground, bone armour partially retracted. One eye half-lidded, the other fixed on the horizon. He blinked once every few minutes. Sometimes not at all. No thoughts stirred behind his stare.

The beast in him was still. The thrill of combat – gone. He had forgotten why he needed it in the first place.

"I think I was built to break things," he had whispered hours ago.

No one answered.

Max lay in the shade, arm slung over his eyes. His fingers still curled loosely around Ferron's chain. His lips parted now and then, as if on the edge of a dream or a name.

But nothing came out.

Not even Liz's.

Above them, the sun climbed. Then fell.

And none of them moved.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It was peace.

Beautiful. Empty. Absolute.

And if something didn't break soon— —there would be nothing left to rescue.

…………………

She had tried everything.

For days. Weeks. Maybe longer. Time had no meaning inside the red—it looped, stretched, collapsed into itself. But she remembered what Verrine said. If you turn from my salvation, Moloch will peel your soul bare.

She remembered.

And she refused.

She had clawed at the walls of her prison. Bitten into the silence. Screamed until her throat dissolved. And nothing had answered. Not the Devourer. Not Moloch. Not even the red.

Except once.

She'd felt it. Her dad's presence. Faint. A heartbeat across the void.

And now – it was gone.

That was when the panic began. Not the wild, helpless kind. The cold, sharp kind that settled into her bones like steel.

"No."

She pushed outward with her mind, soul flaring like a blade dragged across stone. Pain flooded in – not from outside, but from the inside. Her will – her identity – was burning to reach something, anything.

But the world remained sealed.

So she stopped reaching blindly.

And started cutting.

She pulled herself inward first, tightened around the cinder in her core – the last thread of who she was: Liz Jaeger. Not a gate. Not a vessel. A daughter. A sister. Someone who had been promised rescue.

And if rescue wasn't coming, then she would tear the walls to the outside world down herself.

The red rippled.

Faint. Subtle. Like a muscle flinching before the strike.

She poured everything she had into it – grief, rage, stubbornness, love. She pushed deeper, not toward light, but toward clarity.

And for the first time since falling into the red, the silence fractured.

Not shattered. Just... cracked.

And through that crack – she saw.

Not clearly. Not with eyes. But perception twisted around her like steam. A map formed, made of sensation and soul.

She could sense them.

Chloe. Soft, flickering like candlelight in fog. Alyssa. Sharp, jagged heat that kept sputtering. Uncle Dan. Dimming. Almost gone. And Max—her dad—faint as breath on glass. A dying ember.

She couldn't touch them. Couldn't call out.

But she knew where they were.

And one absence struck her harder than all the rest.

Jack.

Nothing. Not even a shadow. Like he'd been erased.

Liz swallowed the scream that wanted to follow. There would be time for grief later. Or maybe not. She didn't care.

Only one thought remained.

"Dad. I'm coming."

The red pushed back. Thick. Resistant. It didn't want her to leave.

So she gave it an ultimatum.

She didn't plead. She didn't whisper.

She detonated.

Her soul surged outward in a burst of raw will – no shape, no language. Just refusal. She wasn't a prisoner anymore. She wasn't a symbol or a warning or a gate.

She was a weapon.

And she would not be forgotten.

The world trembled.

Somewhere far above – so high she could barely feel it – the park fountain cracked.

The silence wavered.

And for the first time in forever, Liz reached for her father.

…………………

Max lay in the grass, limbs limp, face tilted toward a sky that never changed.

He didn't blink.

Didn't breathe deeply.

Didn't care.

There was warmth on his chest where the sun hit him, and something metallic curled around his wrist. A chain. Heavy. Meaningless. He couldn't remember why he wore it.

He couldn't remember what he was waiting for.

He knew there had been fire once. Something inside him – hot, violent, alive. But now it was distant. Like a story someone else had told him about a man who used to burn.

He couldn't remember her name.

There had been a girl.

Someone small, and fierce, and—

A tremor.

It passed through the earth, subtle but wrong. Like pressure rising beneath old stone.

Max's brow twitched.

The sunlight dimmed for half a second. Not visually. Spiritually. As if some truth had stirred beneath the grass, behind the trees, inside the bones of the world.

Then it hit him.

Not a word. Not a voice. Not even an image.

Just impact – like a hand slamming against the inside of a sealed door. A pulse of presence.

Familiar. Fractured.

Liz.

Her name carved itself into his thoughts like fire on paper.

And suddenly the world wasn't warm. It was suffocating.

He sat up violently, gasping like a drowning man breaching the surface. The air was thick. Sweet. Wrong.

His skin felt too soft. His muscles ached with disuse.

He looked down at his hands – steady, clean, unscarred. Lies.

The chain around his wrist glinted in the light, and this time, he felt its weight. Really felt it. Cold. Real. Heavy with memory.

"Liz," he whispered aloud.

Nothing answered. Not in sound.

But he felt her. Far away. Threadbare. Screaming without voice.

She had reached him.

And he had forgotten her.

Max doubled over, a growl clawing its way up his throat. Shame. Horror. Grief. They flooded back like blood through frostbitten veins.

Too much. Too fast.

He needed to move. To think. To feel.

But everything inside him was still numb.

He clenched his jaw. He needed pain.

He reached down and dug his nails into the meat of his palm, hard enough to tear skin. The sting was sharp. Immediate. It snapped something loose in his chest.

He welcomed it.

He pressed harder. Blood welled up. Hot. Real.

"More."

He rolled up his sleeve and shoved the fresh wound against the metal edge of the chain, grinding it until the pain screamed through his nerves.

And finally, the fire inside him flared – small, unstable, but alive.

Hellfire licked at his heart.

He clenched his fists, shaking with the flood of returning awareness. Names came next – Dan. Alyssa. Chloe. Ferron. Victor.

All of them, gone. Still here. Fading.

He looked across the park.

Chloe lay like a broken doll beneath a tree. Alyssa, eyes open but vacant. Dan's chest barely rose. Ferron hadn't moved. Victor was sprawled beside the bench, mouth slightly open. Alpha and Omega looked like statues, preserved in a moment too long.

"No."

His voice came out rough. Unused. But it was his.

He forced himself to his feet, swaying hard. His legs felt like glass, but he moved.

One step.

Then another.

And as he staggered toward Chloe, fire flickered along the chain again—pale blue, like memory reignited.

"You reached me," he whispered, breath ragged.

"Now I'm coming for you."

…………………

Max dropped to his knees beside Chloe and gripped her under the arms.

She didn't stir.

Her skin was warm, her chest rising in slow, even breaths but her eyes stared blankly at nothing. A doll in the grass. Gone without leaving.

Max clenched his jaw, braced his feet, and lifted.

Muscles screamed. Bones popped. He didn't care.

His legs powered forward, boots tearing into the soft, perfect earth. He dragged her – half-carried, half-hauled – toward the park's edge, where the trellises ended and the air began to rot.

It hit him like a wall.

The moment his foot passed over the threshold, the grass turned grey. The sunlight warped. The scent of jasmine curdled into mould.

The air outside was wet. Fungal. Sharp with spores and burning metal.

The real world.

Max grunted and stepped over the line, pulling Chloe behind him. Her head lolled. Her breath hitched.

Then—

A gasp.

Tiny. Fragile. But hers.

Max turned and roared, the fire in his throat peeling the silence apart.

"One down."

He turned back. Limped toward the others.

Dan was next.

He was heavier – his frame solid, dead weight but Max's strength had always gone beyond the human threshold. Blood still ran from his split palm. It dripped onto Dan's collar as Max lifted him like a sandbag.

Back through the grass. Back through the lie.

The pain in Max's shoulder lit up as he crossed the barrier again – like walking through fire backwards.

Dan coughed as if drowning on dry land.

"Two."

Alyssa.

She didn't resist. Didn't blink.

Her hand slipped from her blade as Max hauled her upright.

"You're not dying here," he muttered. "You're not fading. You're rage. Remember that."

Her lip trembled just before they passed the threshold.

She screamed.

Not a word. Not a sound.

Just a soundless rupture as her mind tore loose from the Circle's grip.

"Three."

Ferron.

Max found him still cross-legged, blade across his lap like a fallen monk. Max lifted both – man and weapon – and ran. His boots hammered through the cobbled path, through the dirt, through the lie of green.

The moment Ferron crossed out, his eyes snapped open. He vomited water and bile, shaking.

"Four."

Victor.

Max didn't carry him. He dragged him.

Victor's boots gouged twin furrows in the soil. His body flopped, deadweight—but not dead. Max gritted his teeth, refusing to let go.

"You can turn into monsters," Max hissed. "So start fighting like one."

The moment Victor's foot scraped the threshold, he snarled awake—eyes blazing, animal again.

"Five."

Alpha and Omega.

He took them together.

Slung Omega across his shoulders. Grabbed Alpha's wrist like steel cable.

Both felt like hauling mannequins – heavy, perfect, unyielding.

Max stumbled beneath their weight, back muscles tearing, ribs shrieking. Blood ran freely down his arm now. His chain pulsed dim blue as the Hellfire inside him flared – not for destruction, but for resurrection.

He collapsed over the line, their bodies hitting the ruined asphalt with a crash.

Omega twitched.

Alpha blinked.

"Six. Seven."

Max fell to his knees.

The city outside the park was a corpse. Fungal blooms clung to street signs. Buildings leaned under moss and rot. The sky was a sickly gold.

But it was real.

Max stood, eyes burning, chain wrapped tight around his bloodied fist.

"Liz… I did it."

A whisper answered, just once. Not words. Not breath. Just a flicker of warmth in his chest.

She had felt him.

And now he was back.

So was the war.

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