Jaenor tried to move, to break free before whatever they’d planned could manifest.
But Wrath was already striking.
The massive Sin’s fist caught him in the ribs with force that would have pulverized stone. The impact sent Jaenor flying backward, his blade dissipating, straight into Greed’s waiting grasp.
Chains materialized, not physical tal, but constructs of pure Sin energy. They wrapped around Jaenor’s limbs, his wings, and his neck. Each one represented a different Sin’s power, and together they held him immobile.
"Struggle if you want," Greed said, his calculating voice devoid of emotion.
"The chains will only tighten. They’re designed specifically to contain beings of trendous power. We’ve had years to perfect the technique."
Jaenor’s rged power surged, trying to break free. Golden-red energy blazed along the chains, trying to corrode them, dissolve them, and overco them through sheer force.
But the Sins had planned for that too. Each chain was reinforced by multiple powers, creating redundancy that his single unified force couldn’t overwhelm quickly enough.
"The ritual," Pride commanded.
"Begin now, while he’s contained."
The seven Sins took positions around the circle’s periter, evenly spaced, each one standing on a rune that flared to life as they activated it. They began chanting in a language that predated human civilization, words that hurt to hear, that suggested cosmic forces being invoked.
The air itself began to crack.
The ritual reached its crescendo.
The seven Sins chanted in perfect synchronization, their voices weaving together into harmonics that shouldn’t exist in this space.
The massive circle of runes blazed with light that hurt to perceive, not bright, but wrong, giving off an eerie glow.
Above the circle, suspended by chains of pure Sin energy, Jaenor hung limp. His body convulsed with each pulse of the ritual, his rged power being forcibly redirected, reshaped, and prepared to receive sothing that no mortal vessel should contain.
The tears in reality had grown massive now, wounds in the fabric of existence itself, bleeding darkness that wasn’t absence of light but presence of sothing older and more terrible.
And through those wounds, it was coming.
The Daemon god.
The absolute abomination.
Not a demon in the sense of the lesser creatures that plagued the mortal realm.
Not even a Sin, powerful as they were. This was sothing primordial. Sothing that had existed before the Separation, before human civilization, before the current order of reality had been established.
Its presence could be felt across the realm.
The ground began to shake, a worldwide seismic event that registered on every continent simultaneously. Mountains trembled violently, and oceans churned, sending out heavy and massive tides.
The sky itself seed to darken as if the sun was being eclipsed by sothing that existed beyond normal space.
In the Silver Spire, Mother Supre Wendelina felt it and went pale. She’d been in council with her remaining advisors, planning responses to the demon legions, when reality itself seed to lurch sideways.
"What is that?" Synnove whispered, her origin energy sensitivity screaming warnings her conscious mind couldn’t fully process.
"Sothing terrible," Wendelina said quietly.
At the Imperial Palace, Empress Beatrice II was thrown from her throne as the entire structure shook. Guards rushed to protect her, but she pushed them aside, moving to the windows to stare at a sky that had turned the color of old blood.
"Get the witch court," she commanded.
"And every oracle, seer, and prophet we have on staff. I need to know what’s happening. Now."
Princess Baelyna was already there, having run from her own quarters. She looked at her mother with genuine fear, an emotion the calculating princess rarely showed.
"Mother, the entire palace seed to be under heavy dark forces.
What is happening?"
"I know," Beatrice said grimly.
"And I think I know where it’s centered.
Barok’jnar."
In the North Trenches, demon armies that had been pressing human defenses suddenly stopped. Not retreating, just stopping, as if every demon simultaneously felt sothing that made their own malevolence seem trivial by comparison. So of the lesser demons actually fled, driven mad by proximity to a power that exceeded their ability to comprehend.
The Black Orc commanders tried to maintain order, but even they were shaken. This was sothing beyond their experience, beyond their training.
This was their god.
And it was manifesting.
In Frostvale, Rosaine stumbled as the ground shook. She caught herself against a building wall, her heart hamring with terror that had no obvious source. Just overwhelming certainty that sothing was wrong, that the world was breaking in ways that couldn’t be fixed.
"Jaenor," she whispered, though she couldn’t have said why his na ca to her lips.
"Please be safe. Please."
In the divine realm, in the large chamber hall where the Ascended gathered, everyone felt the disturbance simultaneously.
Kailthrys stood from her throne, her usual casual deanor completely abandoned. Her eyes, normally cycling through colors, locked onto deep crimson and stayed there.
"It’s happening," she said, and there was actual concern in her voice.
"The daemon god is manifesting. They’ve actually managed it."
Thalyssra appeared beside her, having traversed from her own domain instantly.
"We need to intervene. Directly. The laws about non-interference—"
"Are suspended," Kailthrys interrupted.
"This is exactly the kind of catastrophic event those laws were designed to allow exceptions for. Gather the others. We move imdiately."
"I thought she would just be like her past self, and those little humans would have been taken care of. But it seems like she played a different ga this ti."
"That boy..."
But even as she spoke, even as the other lords began manifesting in the Chamber Hall, they all felt sothing else. A barrier. Impossibly strong, woven from powers they couldn’t imdiately identify, preventing their descent into the mortal realm.
"Soone is blocking us," Nerithys said, text scrolling rapidly across her parchnt-like skin as she analyzed the impedint.
"Soone with authority equal to or greater than ours. This isn’t demon magic; this is... this is..."
"Ascended work," Kailthrys finished, her voice going cold.
"One of us is involved in this. One of us is preventing intervention."
The implications were staggering. Betrayal at the highest level. An Ascended being is actively facilitating the daemon god’s return.
The Chamber Hall did not wait for permission to erupt.
As the barrier held, mocking them, denying them, the Ascended turned on one another.
Aurelion stepped forward first, golden armor forming around him in layers of blinding light. He was war, conquest, the first blade ever lifted in defiance of chaos. His voice carried the weight of ages spent ruling by force.
"This delay is pointless," he said coldly. "The mortal realm is already compromised. One city, one forest, one world, what does it matter? We have endured losses before. We are gods."
Several of the male Ascended nodded.
"To risk ourselves," Aurelion continued, "to fracture divine law for creatures who will die in a century anyway, this is weakness masquerading as rcy."
Kailthrys turned slowly.
Her crimson gaze burned into him.
"Weakness?" she asked softly.
"You call restraint weakness because you’ve never known anything else."
Aurelion snorted.
"Power decides truth. It always has. And by that asure, n have always been superior. We were forged for dominion, not caretaking."
"While won always turn to dramatics. Why are you people reacting in such a way towards such a simple matter?"
Another voice joined him, Vaelor, god of storms and extinction.
"The daemon god returns because you allowed sentint to cloud judgnt. You nurtured won, those little witches of yours. You elevated them. You let them believe they mattered."
Across the hall, the female Ascended began to respond.
Thalyssra’s presence sharpened, her form splitting into mirrored echoes of herself: ti, foresight, and consequence.
"You mistake endurance for irrelevance," she said.
"The mortal realm is not a toy. It is a crucible. Every age, it forges sothing new, even we cannot predict."
"And that frightens you," Vaelor sneered.
"No," she replied calmly.
"It frightens you. Because creation that does not bow to brute strength exposes how shallow your power truly is."
A murmur rippled.
The n laughed.
These n had beco gods before the separation; they were born from the void, so they were still alive, undisturbed by the law of the world.
They didn’t care about Origin or aura and were just living in their shell while taking pleasure in watching the mortals struggle.
"You speak as if nurture rivals force," said Kharom, god of dominion.
"Empires are not built by patience. Order is enforced. Always has been."
Kailthrys stepped forward.
"And every empire you built collapsed," she said.
"Burned by the very excess you glorify."
The Chamber Hall trembled.
Lightning and starlight cracked between pillars as egos collided.
"You forget your place," Aurelion warned.
"We are above mortals. Above consequence. The daemon god’s return is rely a correction—chaos pruning excess."
Nerithys looked up from the frantic equations crawling across her skin.
"A correction?" she asked.
"If the daemon god completes manifestation, probability collapses. Everything ends. Including you."
Silence.
Then laughter.
"Calculations," Vaelor scoffed.
"Numbers written by fear."
Kailthrys’s voice dropped, lethal and quiet.
"This is why one of you betrayed us."
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