[T-minus 18 Hours Until Dimensional Event Ritual Completion]

Chengdu's heart was still beating.

But it wasn't blood that moved through its veins anymore. It was worship.

Kuanzhai Alley – once a grid of ancient streets, teahouses, opera halls, and neon-lit cafés – had become a temple of human surrender. Its black brick walls, Qing-dynasty rooftops, and bamboo-shaded courtyards still stood, but they no longer belonged to tourists, or scholars, or old men selling sugar art.

They belonged to her.

The streets were clean. Too clean.

The red lanterns still hung above the flagstones, swaying softly in the wind, but their tassels were soaked in prayer-script – scrolls of repentance, gratitude, and self-erasure. Thousands of pages handwritten in black ink, strung like spider silk from eaves and alley arches.

Where vendors had once cried out for customers, worshippers knelt in total silence, heads bowed to the ancient stone. Some were clothed in red robes marked with nine-ringed halos. Others wore nothing but ash and blood. Skin flaked from their hands where they had knelt too long. Mouths twitched soundlessly in repetitive devotion.

They had come willingly.

Above them all, mounted on poles like forgotten flags, fluttered images of the saviour – not a photograph, not a likeness. Just a single open eye etched in gold ink over crimson paper. A slit pupil. Ringed in chains. Always watching.

General Wang walked down the alley without looking at them.

His uniform was immaculate. Double-breasted, dark green with a silver belt. No medals. Just the red patch of the People's Liberation Army, perfectly cantered, as if this were still just another wartime inspection.

Agent 49 followed two paces behind. Younger. Taller. His face was unreadable, but his eyes never stopped moving – tracking the motionless crowd, the still-flickering lights, the oppressive silence. His breath steamed in the air, though the air was not cold.

They stopped at the end of the alley.

There stood the old manor house. Its wooden beams were lacquered black, its windows latticed and clouded. Two guardian lion statues flanked the entrance. Their mouths had been filled with red wax and teeth carved from bone. A brass plate still hung beside the doorway:

巴蜀文化遗址 | BASHU CULTURAL SITE Preserved since 1796. Do Not Enter.

Now it was the entrance to the Ninth Circle.

Wang turned toward Agent 49.

"You will not enter with me."

A flicker of hesitation passed over the younger man's face. Barely perceptible.

"Sir?"

Wang didn't blink. "You are to leave Chengdu. Travel to Hong Kong. Prepare Protocol Nine. No one else is to know."

"What's the purpose of—"

"Just be ready." His voice was clipped. Mechanical. Already halfway into another world.

Agent 49 looked past him, toward the door. Then back. His voice lowered. "How much time do we have?"

Wang adjusted his cufflinks.

"Less than one day."

They held eye contact for a long moment. There was no warmth. No anger. Just inevitability. Then Agent 49 saluted.

"Understood."

He turned and walked back the way they came. Past the kneeling devotees. Past the paper banners. Past the city that no longer recognized itself.

Wang remained still.

Then – his posture cracked.

A tremor ran through his jaw. Beneath his eyes, the skin twitched, pulling back in a way no human face should move. He exhaled through his nose, and the breath came out dry and hot, tinged with brimstone.

Eligos stirred.

With slow precision, General Wang reached out and pressed his palm against the ancient wooden door.

It didn't creak. It didn't resist. It simply opened.

And the Archduke of Precision stepped inside.

…………………

The wooden door shut behind him without a sound.

The hallway beyond was narrow, built in the style of old Sichuanese manor houses – stone floor, creaking beams, paper lanterns hanging in intervals of nine. But none of it was untouched.

The walls pulsed.

Not visibly. Not like breath. But subtly, like muscle tension beneath painted skin.

Wang walked forward, boots echoing with unnatural weight. Each step left faint black scorch marks on the stone tiles. He said nothing. There were no guards. No ambient sound.

He passed nine lanterns. Then nine archways. Then nine stairs downward.

Each descent felt shallower than the last.

The air grew warmer. Then thicker. Then… reverent. The way air sometimes clung to cathedral ceilings. But this wasn't incense or candle wax. It smelled of myrrh and sulphur. Iron and cleansing oil.

At the final step, he stopped.

A brass-framed mirror stood against the wall. Dustless. Flawless.

General Wang looked at his reflection.

His uniform was impeccable. His medals glinted faintly. His expression remained controlled.

But the lie was so thin now, it was almost embarrassing.

He removed his cap.

Unbuttoned his coat.

And began to change.

It started in the throat.

The skin beneath his jaw peeled like wet paper, revealing sinew – not pink, but dark, veined obsidian threaded with molten gold. His mouth widened – not through flexing, but by splitting. The jaw unhinged. The bones beneath shimmered like volcanic steel.

His eyes dissolved.

What replaced them were twin glass spheres – one black, one red – each etched with a military campaign map that shifted slowly, endlessly.

From his back unfurled a set of winglike structures – not feathers, not flesh. Tattered flags. Battle banners shredded by centuries of wind, soaked in ash, scorched at the tips. They twitched with memory.

His spine cracked audibly. Shoulders hunched. His chest expanded, bones pushing outward like the hull of a ship being reforged from within.

His legs stayed human. His boots did not.

They split into segmented claws – black iron plated with brass, with rows of infernal script carved into the ankles. Marching orders.

When the transformation was complete, Eligos stood tall.

He wore the full uniform still.

Badges. Insignia. The red star of the PLA stitched over his monstrous heart.

A soldier. Still.

But now – one who had no allegiance but revelation.

He looked again into the mirror. It no longer showed his reflection.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Only a vertical red thread, thin as hair, stretching from some point deep below to somewhere impossibly high above.

He raised one clawed hand. Not in salute.

In readiness.

"Let the world fall orderly."

The mirror evaporated.

The wall behind it opened like a throat.

Archdemon Eligos stepped into the sanctum of the Ninth Circle.

…………………

The Ninth Circle was open to the sky.

What remained of Chengdu could see it – every supplicant, every zealot, every trembling survivor lining Kuanzhai Alley and the upper terraces of the city. They stared upward, eyes watering, faces slack with awe.

Where there had once been rooftops, there was now a crater of impossible geometry, a hole carved directly through the foundations of architecture and faith. Blackened towers ringed the circumference like teeth. And at the centre of the wound stood Demon Lord Verrine, haloed by fire and faith.

Above her, a red-blue beam rose into the clouds – a perfect vertical strand of siphoned fire, so thin it was almost invisible to the naked eye, and yet no one could look away. The line drilled skyward, burrowing through the firmament.

At its apex, the sky was changing.

The clouds were bleeding. A rift had opened.

It wasn't wide. Not yet. But the edges frayed and curled like wet paper dipped in acid, and something on the other side was moving. Something that breathed not air, but silence. Something that watched.

And below it all, at the bottom of that sacrificial spiral, stood the sanctum.

The chamber was vast – an underground vault made visible to the heavens, a temple torn open like a stage for godhood. The floor was a mosaic of broken scripture: human prayers, demonic contracts, mathematical sigils, and exorcism seals – all carved together in a perfect ninefold spiral, then shattered and reassembled with golden resin like a battlefield reinterpreted as art.

The walls shimmered with subdermal light – veins of red pulse beneath stone, glowing in sync with the breath of the rift above.

There was no roof. Only sky.

Only judgment.

At the spiral's core, tethered by pylons etched with crawling script, floated Liz Jaeger's containment pod.

It spun slowly, the outer sphere still intact, but showing signs of stress – dimpling, flickering, one side visibly caved inward. A surgical hole had been carved through its apex: needle-thin, bloodless, perfect. From it, a stream of blue fire lifted endlessly upward.

Feeding the rift.

Power drawn from a human soul.

Verrine stood directly below it, arms extended, face lifted toward the heavens. Her skin glowed with a gloss of spiritual overexposure, eyes closed not in peace, but calculation. Each breath aligned with the fire's pulse. Each word she spoke etched unseen corrections into the air.

The siphon obeyed her will like thread drawn through bone. Every soul fed the vertical flame. Every wound mapped the next correction. Resistance didn't halt the ritual – it fine-tuned it.

She was rewriting reality by hand.

Above Verrine, something hung in the open air – an unseen structure casting no shadow. The sky trembled gently around it, as if recoiling from pressure without form. And from somewhere just beyond human perception came a sound: a layered tone, both sacred and sickening, like an unearthly choir split between serenity and screams.

It didn't echo. It radiated – into the bones of the chamber, into the teeth of the devout watching from the rim above. The melody had no language. But those who heard it instinctively lowered their heads.

It was almost time.

The air here wasn't hot. It was righteous. Like cathedral air moments before execution. It tasted of old parchment and white flame.

Eligos stepped forward from the edge of the spiral.

In his true form now – towering, skin blackened and veined with brass, adorned in the uniform of the People's Liberation Army – he made no sound, but the ground recoiled faintly under his boots.

The heat rolled over him. He welcomed it.

He passed the pylons.

No resistance.

No wards.

The sanctum accepted him.

He stood for a long moment, watching her. Watching the girl.

Liz.

Still armoured. Still trapped. Her psychic armour flickered – red light like cracked bone around her chest. Her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed in sleep that wasn't sleep. One hand twitched against her thigh.

She was fighting.

He could see it in the tension of the sphere. In the faint shimmer that resisted the siphoning beam.

But the wound in her shell remained.

The hole couldn't be closed.

And the fire kept rising.

He moved closer.

"It's working," Eligos said quietly.

Verrine didn't turn.

Her fingers moved subtly – conducting the siphon like a choir.

"Of course it is."

He watched the fire twist around her wrists – coiling, consenting, laced with something ancient and half-remembered. Aamon's breath. Liz's will. Heresy given form.

He studied the rift.

It was wide enough now to hear it. Not a voice. Not music.

Something like a breath being held on the other side of death.

He stared at the girl's face.

Still. But not surrendered.

"She's fighting," he said.

Verrine nodded once. Barely audible.

"Let her."

The glyphs spun faster.

The beam sharpened.

The rift listened.

And from far above, in the clouds that no longer obeyed gravity, something vast and stirred from its slumber.

…………………

Inside the red, there was no time.

Only breath. Only weight.

The sphere had once been solid – her fortress, her crucible, her declaration of identity against the world. But now… it trembled.

Faintly.

Like a drum skin stretched too tight.

Liz floated at the centre, knees pulled to her chest, armour dull with exhaustion. Her psychic skin – once radiant with razor-sharp conviction – flickered at the edges, like light refracted through deep water. Her breaths were shallow. Her thoughts slower.

She didn't know how long she'd been bleeding.

But she felt the wound.

It wasn't a cut, not exactly. More like a pressure – upward, always upward. A slow, surgical siphon that bypassed pain and instead eroded her from within. Her soul didn't hurt. It thinned.

Her hands twitched against her chest. One of them clenched. The other stayed limp.

The red around her rippled.

There was a hole in the sky.

Small. Precise. No wider than a hair.

But it pulsed.

Every few seconds, something moved through it. A shimmer of heat. A wisp of blue fire. A strand of herself – ripped loose without her permission.

It wasn't just energy being stolen. It was intention.

Her dreams. Her memories. Her rage.

Every stolen flicker of fire drained more of her will to fight.

She reached upward, eyes narrowing. The sphere buckled slightly under her strain. Red veins pulsed along its walls—reactive, instinctive. The system trying to defend itself. But the siphon thread had pierced too deep.

She couldn't close it.

Not yet.

Her thoughts coalesced into shape.

First: Dad.

She reached for him – not with her voice, but with that strange tether between them. That sliver of psychic resonance they had shared back in the Circle of Peace. It had flared bright for a moment… and then faded.

Now? She found only static. A dull warmth, muffled behind distance and noise.

Still there. But out of reach.

Her heart clenched.

Dad... don't forget me again.

She pressed her hand to the side of the sphere, willing strength into it. The armour along her spine buzzed faintly, stabilizing her thoughts. Her eyes locked on the pulsing breach. On the stolen fire.

The fire inside her wasn't something she was born with.

It had come from him – from Max. From her father.

That night in Singapore, when he held her pod, when his voice cut through the dark, something had passed between them. A spark. A flood. A gift she hadn't asked for but had clung to like breath.

It had been the only reason she'd survived. The reason she built the red. The reason the Devourer hadn't devoured.

Verrine had called it Aamon's fragment.

Liz didn't know what that meant. Didn't care.

To her, it wasn't some ancient relic or demonic heirloom. It was her father's will, burning inside her.

And now they were stealing it.

Siphoning it - slowly, carefully – through her skull and into the sky, like she was nothing but a vessel. A pipeline. A battery for someone else's godbreaking ritual.

Her fists clenched.

You don't get to drain the only thing that kept me alive.

Not without consequence.

Verrine. She could feel her – outside. The touch was too precise, too sterile to be demonic. It was cold. Controlled. Almost maternal.

Liz's lip curled.

She remembered Verrine's voice in the Circle of Mercy. That calm, patronizing certainty. That conviction that she could save everyone by breaking them apart and rearranging the pieces.

"I'm not your cure," Liz whispered to the red.

"I'm not your gate."

Her limbs felt like stone. Her aura frayed at the edges.

But deep inside, something still burned.

Not the fire Verrine was stealing.

Something older.

Something hers.

You don't get to use me and throw me away.

Not anymore.

She rotated slowly in the air, facing the hole above her.

No spells. No lashing out.

Instead, she focused.

She pressed her palms together. Closed her eyes.

And began to reclaim her shape – not just her power, but her centre. Her edges. Her mind.

The breach couldn't be closed yet. But it could be resisted.

And the girl inside the red sphere wasn't ready to go quietly.

…………………

The air beneath the rift shimmered with pressure. A storm without wind. A hum without sound.

Demon Lord Verrine stood at the centre of it – her posture statuesque, her robes trailing across the scorched mosaic floor like ink spilled in a pattern only she could read. Blue fire traced lazy spirals up her arms and pooled briefly at her collarbone before lifting skyward, drawn to the needle-thread of light extending from the girl's pod into the breach.

Eligos remained still, one hand resting on the hilt of a ceremonial sabre that had not left its scabbard in decades. His glass eyes tracked the curvature of the fire, watched it tighten as the siphon narrowed further.

He did not breathe. Not visibly. But somewhere beneath the layers of bone, brass, and bloodless order, something shifted. Not hesitation – never that. But a flicker. An old military instinct noting the flaw in a perfect plan.

The burn rate had increased. The girl was weakening.

"You're close," he said, voice reverent.

Verrine's eyelids lifted just enough to reveal irises gone fully white.

"I am inevitable," she murmured.

She turned her face to the beam.

"I built this with nothing. I was given rot and silence and memory – and I made salvation from it. I made hope."

The fire coiled tighter.

"I was born in the aftermath of plagues. Raised in the hunger of cities that fed on their own young. I saw the way humans break themselves trying to pretend they matter. And when they finally stopped praying to the sky – I answered anyway."

She stepped forward, just once.

The fire flared.

"Not because I wanted worship. Not because I crave dominion. I do not hunger. I do not burn. I do not devour."

Her hand rose, fingers trailing through the flame without pain.

"I save."

Her voice shifted. Not louder, but deeper. It filled the chamber the way certainty fills silence.

"All they've ever done is suffer. All they've ever known is betrayal – by demons, by gods, by each other. I am not the punishment. I am the algorithm that makes their pain make sense. I am the pattern behind the blood."

She turned to Eligos.

"And this girl..."

Verrine turned her eyes to the pod, to the flickering red sphere, to the soul she was slowly hollowing out.

"She was anomaly wrapped in longing. A flicker of will born in the wrong system."

She tilted her head slightly, almost in pity.

"A girl who believed she could burn her way out."

Verrine's hand swept gently through the air, as if brushing aside a wrinkle in silk. "But she is not the threat. She is not the cure."

A pause.

"She was only hope, and hope is the kindest lie."

"She no longer matters."

Eligos nodded. "Then why not end her?"

Verrine smiled.

A soft, merciful smile.

"Because she's useful. And because I am kind."

She turned her gaze back to the fire.

Above them, the rift twitched. The clouds around it no longer moved naturally. They churned like skin reacting to fever.

Verrine raised both hands.

The glyphs suspended in the upper atmosphere pulsed, once.

"They will all be saved. Even the ones who do not want to be."

She stepped into the fire without flinching.

"I will save all."

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