Chapter 953: Hellflame Emperor (5)
He laid the Funeral Constellation again; the stars lacked their old zeal. The cracked gear taxed slower. My Loom and Refraction had lanes. The Prism had teeth.
I didn’t try to outlast him. I stacked compression—art into art until the world had to agree or choke.
God Flash as veil. First bite inside the veil. Shortest line sewn down by two anchors. Carry-through that began before it decided to exist. Exit clean buried in sheath.
On top, two nine-circles braided, ugly overhead and all.
"Bahamut — Gravity Loom" on the ankles, "Aegir — Tide Inversion" on the wrists. Feet had permission. Hands refused drama.
He answered with a new choir.
"Nine-circle — Requiem Oratorio: Black Procession."
Masks rose—ash and intent carrying paperwork. Every time my blade completed a thought, a mask stamped void and tried to pass the void into the Ember.
I could play that for five seconds and then be a document.
Soul Resonance again—copy only what helps, only for a breath. I mirrored the ’proof’ clause inside his Procession. If you void, you must keep a record. Then I met it with my own nine-circle.
"Bahamut Method: Archive of Virtue."
A library floor under my feet; every honest cut leaves one mark the Archive keeps. Masks stamped. The Archive asked for their copy. They had none. Stamps fell through.
Jack bared his teeth. "You’re the worst kind of cheat."
"You invented taxes. Don’t cry about audits."
He didn’t. He lunged. The Requiem Ember stopped reading as editor and started writing as pen. A line from his heart to mine, meant to spend him to finish the sentence—a self-written end.
Valeria’s voice in my palm: ’Don’t make his death her final kindness.’
I wouldn’t.
Grey pages down—not to erase him, to place a seam. Then:
"Nine-circle — Bahamut Method: Seam Kintsugi."
Two Grey sheets like ceramic; a hairline of Lucent Harmony traced along the seam to make it one thing. His Requiem line reached and found no place to overwrite. It went past me into basalt and died drunk on its own importance.
He blinked like a child, then ugly-laughed. "You glued paper with calm."
He hurled his right hand up and spoke a thesis that makes old men leave rooms.
"Nine-circle — Dead Sun Thesis."
A point where heat remembers god. It doesn’t explode. It forbids return to baseline. Cuts inside it are permanent.
"No," I said.
Grey would end it. I chose something else.
Resonance—copy Nirvana’s still-heat alone. No Abyss. No Requiem. Then I set it inside Lucent Harmony.
"Nine-circle — Lucent Method: Quiet Star."
No glow. A point where cuts remain honest because they do not wish to be remembered. The Dead Sun pressed; the Quiet Star refused to be a story.
Jack flinched like slapped by a child he loved. Then he smiled—thanks, hate, please, stop in one look—and threw everything left.
"Requiem Ember — Last Wake."
Grief with a budget. It came for Archive, Loom, Star, Prism, seam. It wanted to turn me into a sentence that ended with ash.
Respect for respect.
No Grey.
God Flash: Two Places.
One cut that belongs to two coordinates. Valeria loves it because it’s the only time I let her be pretty. I moved the world a hair under my foot and let the cut live in overlap. The Last Wake split and tried to close after. Archive asked for paperwork. Loom tied its ankles. Quiet Star gave it nothing to hold. Prism kept my breath clean.
The cut landed across the mantle and chest. Not a bisect. A fold. The mantle tore. The gear shattered.
Jack dropped to one knee and caught himself. High Radiant kept him from coming apart. Blood went down his chin, not dramatic, just present.
He looked up, open for once. "Please," he said. Not mercy. Meaning.
There are clean kills. Clean refusals. This was a third thing.
"Erebus," I said.
Bone rose—columns in an empty chapel. Not a prison. A brace. A cool place the Ember did not want to sit in. Erebus stepped from his shadow, skull tilted like a polite bird.
"Heal him enough to keep the parts that can learn," I said.
"Of course," he said, and wrote three dead letters. Bleeding eased to something a conversation could carry.
Jack coughed ash and red and something that wasn’t either. The Wastes took it like they take wind. "You win."
"I win this," I said. "Not you."
He nodded like a student who finally understood a page and hated the handwriting.
The Gates of Transcendence tilted near. Close. Closer than last week. Weight gathered near my heart. One step, and I could learn a new way to carry truth.
Valeria squeezed my palm. ’Not on his back.’
I stepped away. The weight cooled. Gates faded to their patient, platinum-silver certainty. I’ll earn them without turning Jack into a rung Elara wouldn’t step on.
Grey tugged my spine toward a thread that smelled like velvet and knives.
Rose.
I opened a lane through Ouroboros and didn’t ask permission. Erebus nodded without needing thanks and closed the bone like hands around a candle that shouldn’t go out yet.
I stepped into quiet.
A garden spread in terraces of dark stone and dew. Blue roses climbed trellises and spilled over paths, their petals bending light into soft wrong angles the way Rose likes—edges gentled, corners honest only when you look twice. Wind moved, but only where the flowers allowed. The world kept its voice low.
She stood at the center, back to me, hands loose at her sides. The air around her had changed—wider, steadier, a clean hinge-shift in pressure. Not show. Rank. Mid Radiant. Her Paradox didn’t tug anymore; it agreed and then chose. Blue sigils pulsed under her feet and settled like they belonged there long before tonight.
Pride hit first. Relief second. Then the tired hurt I hadn’t had time to sort.
I didn’t call her name.
I walked across the path the roses made for me and set Valeria’s weight quiet against my hip. Lucent Harmony softened the footfall I couldn’t take back. When I reached her, I put my arms around her from behind, palms flat over the line of her ribs, cheek to her shoulder. No speech. Just weight and warmth and the promise that the fight was over here, at least for this breath.
Her back rose against me once, sharp and shaking, then steadied. The blue roses around our feet opened in a hush like a crowd deciding to be kind.
Her new rank settled fully then—mid Radiant ringing true under my hands.
I closed my eyes.
The garden held its breath.