Kaaz lunged forward, blade-arm howling through the wind—obsidian teeth churning in his wake like a grinder of glass. His Fracture still spun, razors shrieking around him in a lethal storm.
But the air wasn't his anymore.
The wind was wet.
The snow was red.
And the battlefield had beco hers.
From beneath the frost, a forest of thorns rose, crimson and coiling, veined with flickers of glowing mana. Vines lashed upward, not wild, but deliberate and calculating. They surged into the gaps between his razors, threading through the spaces between his counters.
Kaaz turned, but the ground itself betrayed him. It split open in a blooming spiral, and from its depths, blood poured—not thin, not airy—thick, viscous, heavy. A sea.
It swallowed his legs. Then his waist.
"Tch…!" He slashed downward, carving a shockwave through the flood, but the blood reford, shifting around him like it had a mind, like it knew.
Above him, Asmodea hovered—no wings flapping, no feet touching ground.
She rose with her garden. Wrapped in ribbons of thorned roses, her body now glowing from within, petals of blood hovering in orbit around her like a corona of ruin. Her hair flowed like a river through the air, eyes blazing with fury and desire.
"You said I was shallow," she said, voice soft, coiling through the blood. "That I was just a performance."
She stepped forward in the air, vines responding to her every movent, each of her breaths, drawing tighter around Kaaz "Then behold my performance!"
"But I'm not a late blooming rose in winter!"
"I am the garden."
Kaaz let out a grunt—his obsidian arm hardened, gleaming like polished stone, and he surged forward one final ti, razors blazing behind him.
But her vines t him in mid-air.
They didn't block.
They devoured.
Dozens wrapped around his arm, then his legs, then his throat. The sound of tearing flesh was muffled by the sea—not a splash, not a scream. Just red. Endless red.
He tried to speak—she closed his mouth with a wall of petals.
"Sleep now, number three."
The blood thickened, becoming solid. A cocoon of crimson thorns surrounded his body, trapping him, crushing slowly inward with the sound of cracking armour and bone.
"This garden doesn't grow weeds..."
She hovered in silence.
Her blood fell like rain. The battlefield below churned in slow pulses, like a heart still beating.
She landed softly, barefoot on the snow that no longer felt cold. Her dress of thorns retracted, falling into place like silk made of power and pain.
Asmodea looked down at the vine-wrapped grave.
Kaaz did not rise.
Not this ti.
"That's one."
She turned toward the storm—toward her sisters.
The world was quiet again.
No razors.
No frost.
Only the soft hiss of blood receding, soaking back into the soil as if the battlefield itself bowed to her will. The thorn cocoon that entombed Kaaz pulsed once, then cracked like a dried rose husk, collapsing into a slick, red mound—lifeless.
Asmodea stood over it, legs trembling.
She wasn't glowing anymore.
Her Empress form hadn't vanished, but it had dulled—her petals were darker now, wilting at the edges, heavy with exertion. Her bare feet squelched through snow turned to mud beneath her weight.
She winced. A cut beneath her ribs opened wider as she moved—her blood magic no longer surging to heal it.
But she didn't stop.
She turned.
Looked toward the swirling white horizon.
Sowhere beyond the veil of blizzard and thread, her sisters were still fighting.
Sowhere… they were still bleeding.
She took a single step forward.
Then another.
"I'm not done."
Her voice cracked, low and tired.
Not triumphant.
Not dramatic.
Just the truth.
Her arms trembled as she looked towards the opposite direction, towards Asmodeus.
She didn't know the direction, couldn't sense his aura, but Asmodea just knew...
"He is waiting for ."
—
anwhile,
The silk whispered.
It moved with no wind. No pull. No gravity. Just motion.
Lumina stumbled through the threads, dragging her body through the impossible geotry Yuzuha had spun. Each step pressed through a curtain of gauze, each breath filtered through strands that weren't hers. The web no longer clung to her fingers like a lover—it recoiled from her. Mocked her.
Her spider legs twitched behind her, scraping the walls as she moved, but even they felt distant now, wrong, crooked, monstrous.
"Eight legs and still so slow," ca the voice.
It didn't echo. It lingered. Whispered along her silk lines, curling through her eardrum like a teasing needle.
"You've always been the ugliest one."
Yuzuha erged from a mirrored arc of thread, barely five paces away—her kimono folding perfectly around her, hair sleek and untouched, her fingers outstretched in mock concern.
"He hasn't touched you since that night, has he?"
Lumina didn't answer.
She couldn't.
Her chest was tight. Not with fear—with sha.
"You know why, don't you?" Yuzuha cooed, stepping slowly.
"He couldn't bear to look at what you are. He had to—what's the word? Endure it."
"No," Lumina murmured, but the word barely left her lips.
A line of thread snapped beside her ear.
Not Yuzuha's.
Hers.
She was unravelling her own web—doubting it, doubting herself. Every step forward made her silk falter. Every instinct she followed looped her in circles. Her map, her mory, her instincts… all beca twisted and wrong.
"If he loved you," Yuzuha said, appearing again—this ti above her, crouched in a funnel of silk, head tilted like a spider admiring prey—
"He would've asked for more. But he didn't, did he? Just once."
"You think he loved it?"
"That thing attached to your waist?"
Lumina tripped. Her spider leg snagged in a thread, jerking her sideways.
She landed hard on her shoulder, one foreleg cracking against the ground. The impact was dull, not pain, not yet. Just exhaustion. Just doubt.
"He lied," Yuzuha said sweetly, walking closer to Lumina, bare feet leaving no print on the silk floor.
"Because no man could want a thing like you."
Lumina curled slightly inward, hands to her chest. Her spider legs—sleek, midnight black—trembled and retracted, as if trying to vanish.
Her breath shook.
Her web didn't answer her.
And in the deepest part of her mind, sothing cold began to whisper:
"She's right. Isn't she?"
Her once beautiful silk shimred, no longer white but now a dull red, stained by her blood. However, Lumina didn't understand or realise, because of the situation, she only saw the dull, dirty threat.
Like a spider, caught in her own web.
Lumina rose slowly. Her hands braced against the floor—only it wasn't the floor anymore. Beneath her palm, she felt glass. Thin, cold, and breathing.
She looked up.
And saw herself.
A mirror.
Then another.
And another.
Each one showed her from a different angle—reflections out of sync. In one, her spider legs moved too slowly. In another, her mouth didn't match her breath. In another… she was beautiful. Too beautiful. It was her past form... as the goddess of light. Pristine and human in figure.
The walls shifted. The threads folded in on themselves like hands closing over Lumina's eyes—everywhere she turned, she saw a different her. Broken. Bent. Malford. The human half small. The arachne massive. Grotesque.
"This is what he sees."
Yuzuha's voice ca from inside the glass.
"Every ti he looks at you, this is what he rembers."
One showed Asmodeus touching Lumina's cheek… and grimacing.
Another showed him turning to another woman... any other woman, with relief in his eyes.
Another: Sariel, Vinea, Asmodea… all laughing behind a curtain, whispering:
Each ti, Lumina's figure beca more grotesque and horrific, like an eldritch horror.
"He did it once because he had to." Asmodea covered her mouth and looked away.
"Poor girl… he pities her." Velvet frowned and buried herself in his arms.
"She thinks she's his favourite?" Erika laughed.
"Stop," Lumina whispered.
She stepped forward, silk dragging behind her. She lashed a thread at the nearest mirror.
It didn't break.
The image shifted. This ti, Lumina's arachne form rotted—hair falling out in clumps, chitin cracking, her red eyes dimming.
"He's pretending," Yuzuha whispered. "You've always known—haven't you?"
Lumina scread.
Eight threads fired in all directions—snapping through the air with precision. Silk wove a do around her, sharp and defensive.
But when it cleared—
The mirrors hadn't moved.
They were inside the do.
Inside her space.
Inside her.
She turned in circles, fangs bared, eyes wide. She couldn't breathe.
Her spider legs retracted tighter, huddled against her body. She was trying to make herself small.
Her thoughts spiralled out of control.
You're too large.
Too wrong.
Too monstrous.
The worst voice ca last.
He only said it to be kind.
She lowered her head.
Her silk web behind her flickered, fraying at the edges.
Yuzuha's laughter ca soft, warm, and smugly.
"So much silk… for sothing so hollow."
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