Smoke curled in slow spirals around Allen's body as he stood at the heart of the ruined temple, bathed in the afterglow of divine corruption. His breath came slow, steady, rolling from his chest like heat from an open furnace. The collar on the angel at his feet still glowed faintly, her golden body twitching in the filth he'd pumped into her. The others hadn't dared move yet. Ten seraphs circled him like wolves around a fire—cautious, uncertain. They hadn't expected their sisters to fall. They hadn't expected him.
The ground shifted again. The temple groaned. All around them, the floor heaved upward, lifting from the crust of the world with the sound of mountains cracking. It wasn't stone anymore. It was something living—muscle and root and molten vein, fusing temple ruin and vault womb into a single ascending monument. A spire of flesh and history.
Allen stood atop it like a king atop a crown of corpses.
