The monitoring room was cold, bathed in a bluish gloom, lit only by floating runes on panels of black crystal. Echoes of arcane vibrations coursed through the walls, each one pulsing with fragnts of what was happening beyond… The deepest, most cursed, most tragic cell in the entire prison lay before her.
Sepphirothy stood motionless.
Her silhouette was projected against the enchanted glass that revealed, like a window into a personal hell, the cell that should never be used… a sealed space reserved only for hopeless abominations.
And now… there he was.
Her son.
Vergil.
Kneeling at the center of the obsidian floor, his body pierced by demonic rune-bladed swords of sealing, driven in with cruel precision. Each one vibrated with incandescent runes, written in demonic tongues, containing the impossible: the power of a being who had already surpassed the limit of what a body—or a soul—could endure.
The chains, forged in the core of the abyssal shadows, were too tight. Around his arms, legs, chest, shoulders, neck. Like ravenous serpents, they pulled him down. Not to imprison—but to prevent him from existing freely.
The floor around him was cracked. Fissures like black veins radiated beneath him, as if the world itself struggled to endure the weight of that presence.
And Vergil… did not move.
Head bowed. His white, disheveled hair fell like a veil stained with dried blood and sweat, obscuring his face. His eyes were closed. But his chest rose and fell in a deep, slow, painful rhythm.
He was alive. But nothing about him felt alive.
A corpse trapped between life and death.
"When I created this prison..." Sepphirothy finally spoke, her voice low, nearly choked by her own throat. "I never imagined... that my own son would be in the most dangerous cell of them all…"
The sentence died before reaching its end. As if each word hurt too much to say.
She stepped back from the glass for a mont, gazing at the trembling reflection of herself. Her eyes were tired. An entity that had crossed eras without faltering. But now, seeing the one she had birthed... like a condemned weapon within her own creation…
It was a nightmare. A nightmare she had built herself.
"Forgive ..." she whispered, unsure if she was asking forgiveness from him, from herself, or from the cruel fate she couldn't avoid.
A presence approached from behind—firm, like an unsheathed blade.
"It's not your fault." The voice was low, restrained… but it cut like cold steel.
Sepphirothy didn't need to turn around. She knew that voice as well as her own breath.
Sapphire.
The woman entered the room without ceremony, her sharp steps echoing across the black stone walls. Her aura was restless, electric… the kind of anxiety she rarely allowed herself to show.
Sepphirothy gave a bitter, forced smile. "I don't need your comfort."
"I'm not comforting you." Sapphire replied, stopping beside her. "Truth is necessary. Even when it hurts."
Both of them stared at the vision through the arcane mirror: Vergil, kneeling, sealed, more spirit than man, more destruction than son. The tension between the two won filled the air like smoke—but there was sothing else too… silent solidarity. Shared pain.
"Are they okay?" Sepphirothy asked, a rare note of hesitation in her voice. It was barely audible, but sincere.
"Katharina had to be restrained." Sapphire replied, her tone grave. "Ada and Raphaeline still don't know. They're in deep isolation training, and we decided to keep it that way for now. Roxanne and Stella… are calm. Strangely calm."
She sighed, her eyes fixed on Vergil as if searching for a crack, any sign of consciousness, any flicker of that stubborn, impulsive… real boy.
"Viviane wants to break in," she murmured, almost with contempt. "She said she might try using spiritual arts to 'rebalance' him. That maybe, by feeding his soul with spiritual energy, the body would find stability."
Sepphirothy didn't respond. She clasped her arms tightly, as if sothing inside her was being crushed.
"Amon, Astaroth, Paimon, and Phenex want to speak with us," Sapphire continued, her tone hardening. "But honestly? I've already gone through dozens of strategies, reviewed the seals, consulted ancient incantations, and even studied the forbidden archives of Atlantis…"
She turned her face, and for the first ti in centuries, there was sothing different in her eyes. Sothing that wasn't fury. Or cold calculation. It was… fear."I have a bad feeling."
Sepphirothy glanced sideways at her. She knew Sapphire well. The woman was a force of nature — instinctive, ruthless, direct. The kind of being who could fight with a broken body and still find the strength to kill while smiling. Sapphire wasn't superstitious. She didn't allow herself to fear. She didn't feel premonitions.
And that was exactly why those words weighed more than any war report.
"You think we're going to lose him?" Sepphirothy asked, without taking her eyes off her son's reflection.
Sapphire hesitated. It was a silence that lasted two seconds, but felt like a hundred years.
"I don't know if… he's still in there," she finally replied. "What's kneeling there… might just be the husk. When Paimon told what she saw… that isn't Vergil."
They both turned their gaze back to the cell. And in the heart of that prison, Vergil's unmoving body seed to breathe in silence… like the prelude to sothing terrible. Like the pause before the eruption of a volcano that should never have existed.
"You need to see this." Paimon's voice cut through the room like a blade through raw flesh. She appeared suddenly in the doorway, her face pale, eyes wide with a rare urgency — and coming from her, that ant a lot.
"Co. Now. It's urgent," she said, already turning, walking quickly down the stone corridor lined with arcane plates pulsing with a silent alarm.
Sepphirothy and Sapphire exchanged a look for a split second, and without a word, followed her.
"What's happening?" Sepphirothy asked, already sensing a shift in the air. There was a different vibration now. Sothing alive… and wrong.
Paimon didn't answer imdiately, which was even more troubling.
"I… don't know how to explain it. It's better if you see it yourselves."
They entered the central monitoring room. It was the prison's heart — a cathedral of fused technology and magic, where dozens of arcanotech sensors mapped even the slightest energetic fluctuation in maximum-security inmates. And at the center, suspended in a rotating holographic projection, was Vergil's body.
The 3D model showed more than just his body — it revealed his full condition: physiology, vital energy, magical oscillations, spiritual integrity, neural signals, mana flow, accumulation of cursed matter… all in real ti.
Sepphirothy slowly stepped closer. Sothing was deeply wrong.
"What… is that?" Sapphire asked, already clenching her fists, her eyes locked on the most prominent point in the hologram: the brain.
There, where once had been a complex and vibrant neural energy pattern, there was now only… darkness.
A black stain. Pulsing. Organic. Growing like a living cancer.
Paimon zood in on the projection with a gesture. The black mass extended across Vergil's entire neural structure — not just wrapping around his brain, but replacing its functions, blocking all internal communication with the body. It moved with cruel slowness, but deliberately… as if it were thinking.
"When did this start?" Sepphirothy asked, never taking her eyes off the projection.
"A few hours ago," Paimon replied, tense. "But now… it's accelerating. We've already tried spiritual diagnostics, magical probes, even necrosensors. Nothing gets through. It's like… it's an entity."
"This isn't normal magic," murmured Sapphire, narrowing her eyes at the readings, as if hoping it was all a nightmare about to vanish. "This is—"
"Curse," Sepphirothy cut in abruptly, and in that instant, her entire body tensed. It was as if every cell had been ignited by an ancient and visceral rage. Her fists clenched so tightly that blood seeped between her fingers.
The air around her crackled.
"When was he cursed?" Sapphire asked, her usual coldness collapsing beneath the weight of disbelief and panic. For the first ti in centuries, she seed… human.
"That miserable worm..." Sepphirothy growled, her eyes glowing with pure fury. "...the Specter. He never wanted the Pope. When the corpse was consud, he... he cast the curse on Vergil."
She turned to Paimon, her gaze sharp as blades.
"It was stealthy. Sly. A coward's strike in a mont of chaos. And now we're paying the price."
Her rage mixed with desperation. The walls of the room began to hum faintly, reacting to Sepphirothy's rising energy instability. A subtle alarm glowed pale red in the corner of the room.
Paimon swallowed hard.
"Paimon!" Sapphire barked, rising abruptly, her eyes blazing with unshakable determination. "Sound the internal alarm. The Underworld has been compromised. The Specter cursed Vergil — and the thing inside him is waking up."
She turned to Sepphirothy, her gaze firm.
"I'll bring Uriel. If there's anyone left in the universe who can purge that curse... it's that bitch."
Without waiting for a reply, she vanished in a burst of violet light, tearing through the dinsional barrier with brutal force.
The room fell into silence for a mont.
Only the hum of the hologram and the blinking alarms bathed Sepphirothy in a sickly light. She remained still for a while, her eyes locked on the black mass pulsing in her son's brain.
"What the hell is happening…" she murmured to herself, her voice hoarse and broken.
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