EVE POV
The church was no longer a house of God; it was a pressurized chamber of clashing gods.
While Adam knelt by the teal-haired girl and her friend—his Golden Impulse radiating a soft, restorative hum that began to knit their bruised skin back together—I focused on the filth in front of me. The "Nun" wasn't singing anymore. She was screeching, a sound like grinding metal, as she recoiled from the initial burst of my shadow.
"Regenerate all you want," I hissed, my slate-gray coat snapping in the sudden vacuum of my own power. "It just means I get to break you more than once."
I moved. I didn't run; I displaced. One moment I was by the charred entrance, the next I was in the Nun's personal space. I slammed a fist wrapped in a dense, oscillating sphere of Black Impulse into her midsection.
The impact was absolute. Her black robes shredded, and her torso caved in, a gaping hole of violet ichor and shattered ribs appearing where her stomach should have been. She was thrown back, smashing through the heavy marble altar until she hit the far wall with a crunch that echoed to the rafters.
I didn't wait. I raised both hands, and the shadows under the pews rose like obsidian tidal waves, converging on the spot where she lay. "Consume," I commanded.
The Black Impulse didn't just strike; it eroded. It tore at her atoms, trying to drag her into the Nothingness that lived in my core. For a second, the violet light dimmed, and I thought I had erased her.
But then, the wet, rhythmic throb returned.
The violet vines in the ceiling began to pulse frantically, pumping stolen life force back into the center of the crater. Before my eyes, the gaping hole in the Nun's torso filled with shimmering, translucent flesh. Her bones snapped back into place with the sound of a thousand dry twigs breaking at once.
She stood up. Her veil was gone now, ripped away by my first strike.
She wasn't human. She was a nightmare stitched together by the Rift. Her face was a pale, featureless mask, except for a thick, tattered blindfold made of what looked like human skin. Fresh, hot blood was constantly weeping from beneath the cloth, streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin in a never-ending rain. Her skin was a map of scars that opened and closed like mouths, blood seeping from every pore only to be reabsorbed as she healed.
"Is that all the Moon has to offer?" she chimed, her voice now a distorted, multi-tonal mess. "The deep is patient, little Masterpiece. The deep has survived the dark for eons. You are just a flicker."
She raised her arms, and her blood didn't fall to the floor. It rose. Hundreds of droplets of her own ichor hardened into needles of violet glass, suspended in the air. With a flick of her fingers, they screamed toward me.
I didn't dodge. I shouldn't have to. I expanded my aura, creating a "Negative Zone" three feet around me. The needles hit the barrier and simply ceased to exist, their matter being unmade before they could touch my skin.
"You're boring me," I said, though my heart was starting to race.
I lunged again, my hand slicing through the air like a blade. I lopped off her left arm at the shoulder. Before it even hit the ground, a new arm—thicker, covered in violet scales and tipped with jagged claws—erupted from the stump. I kicked her in the chest, my boots carrying enough force to level a house, and her ribcage exploded.
She healed before she even finished falling.
Every time I struck, she adapted. I used blunt force; her skin became dense and rubbery. I used cutting shadows; her body became fluid, letting the blades pass through like water. I used the vacuum; she grew additional vents in her skin to equalize the pressure.
She was a living, breathing evolution engine, fueled by the blood of the "prodigies" hanging above us.
"Adam!" I yelled over my shoulder, never taking my eyes off the bleeding Nun. "She's a siphon! She's pulling from the rafters! I can't kill her if she's using them as a battery!"
Adam didn't look up from June and Brandt. His hands were still glowing with that steady, maddeningly calm gold. "I am purging the toxins from their nervous systems, Eve. If I stop now, their hearts will fail. Hold her for thirty seconds."
"Thirty seconds? I could kill her ten times in thirty seconds!" I snapped.
The Nun laughed, a sound that was now wet and gurgling. She lunged at me, her new clawed arm swiping through the air. I caught her wrist, the Black Impulse in my palm sparking as it fought her violet energy. Up close, the smell of her was unbearable—like a deep-sea trench filled with old copper.
"You are so fast," she whispered, her blindfold soaked in fresh blood. "But you are finite. I am the tide. I am the return."
I twisted her arm until the bone snapped, then drove my knee into her jaw. Her head spun three hundred and sixty degrees, her neck a mess of shredded muscle, yet she still reached out and grabbed my throat.
Her grip was like a vice of frozen iron. I felt the violet energy trying to crawl into my skin, trying to find a way to "see" me.
"Get. Off!"
I let out a pulse of pure, unrefined Black Impulse. The resulting shockwave blew out the remaining walls of the church, sending a dome of absolute darkness expanding outward. The Nun was disintegrated—literally turned into a fine purple mist that coated the debris.
I stood there, panting, my slate-gray coat dusty and torn at the hem. My hands were shaking, not from fear, but from the sheer output of energy. "There. Regenerate from dust, you bitch."
For three seconds, there was silence.
Then, the mist began to swirl. It didn't just reform; it condensed. The violet particles pulled together, drawing more blood from the vines in the ceiling. The husks of the "Elite Seven" shriveled even further, their very marrow being sucked out to fuel the monster below.
The Nun stood before me again. She was larger now, her body a grotesque fusion of black robes, violet scales, and weeping sores. The blindfold was still there, but the blood flowing from it was thicker, darker.
"You've taught me so much, Eve," she chimed. Her voice now sounded like a distorted echo of my own. "I know your rhythm now. I know the shape of your void."
She raised a hand, and for the first time, she didn't use a vine or a needle. She used a shadow. A pitch-black, oscillating blade of energy that looked terrifyingly like my own Black Impulse.
She was adapting to my very nature.
"Adam!" I screamed, the first hint of genuine alarm creeping into my voice. "Time's up!"
"I hear you," Adam's voice drifted through the carnage, calm and steady as a mountain.
I felt it before I saw it. The air in the church stopped being a vacuum and started being a furnace again. The Golden Impulse wasn't just healing anymore; it was expanding.
I looked back. Brandt and June were conscious now, sitting up and staring at the scene with wide, terrified eyes. Adam stood up, his white shirt pristine despite the hellscape around him. He didn't look at the Nun with anger. He looked at her with the pity of a gardener looking at a weed.
"Eve," he said softly. "Step back. You're getting blood on your new boots."
I didn't argue. I blurred backward, landing in front of June and Brandt, my hand instinctively reaching out to shield them.
The Nun turned toward Adam, her bleeding blindfold tilting as she sensed the change in the room. She tried to mimic him—tried to grow golden scales, tried to find a frequency to match the sun.
But you can't mimic the sun. You can only be consumed by it.
"You speak of the deep," Adam said, walking toward her. Every step he took left a scorched footprint in the stone. "But you forget. The sun is what defines the shadow. And I am tired of the dark."
The Nun shrieked and threw everything she had—the shadows, the vines, the violet glass. Adam didn't even raise his hands. He just walked. The attacks hit his golden aura and evaporated like raindrops hitting a star.
"Adam, wait!" I called out. "The people in the rafters! If you flare, you'll kill them too!"
Adam stopped. He looked up at the cocoons, then back at the Nun. A small, cold smile touched his lips—a look that reminded me why the Elders were afraid of him.
"I'm not going to flare, Eve," he said, his eyes turning into twin wells of pure, liquid gold. "I'm going to ligate."
He raised one finger, and a single, microscopic thread of Golden Impulse shot out, connecting to the central vine in the ceiling.
"The cycle ends here," Adam commanded.
The gold didn't just travel up the vine; it reversed the flow. The stolen energy—the blood, the life, the Impulse—that the Nun was drawing from the rafters was suddenly being pushed back.
The Nun froze. Her body began to bloat, the violet scales cracking as a different, holier light began to leak from her pores. She couldn't adapt to it. It wasn't an attack she could mimic; it was a restoration she couldn't contain.
"Too... much..." she gurgled, her featureless face contorting. "The light... it's... heavy..."
"It's not heavy," Adam said, his voice a divine whisper. "It's just more than you're worth."