Smoke now blanketed the ceiling like a living, suffocating curtain. Runic lights flickered in panic, some bursting in unstable flashes of color. The smell of burning, blood, and corrupted magic was almost solid in the air. Inside that warehouse — part depot, part laboratory, part dungeon — reality felt suspended between logic and delirium.
We were in the center of hell.
And it was just the beginning.
Thalia was still trembling. Clinging to me, her hands gripping my shoulders like they were the last anchor between her and collapse. Her eyes red, her face smeared with soot and tears.
[STATUS: THALIA VEIL]
→ Condition: Emotional Overload
→ Mental Clarity: 12%
→ Motor Control: Compromised
→ Speech: Fragmented / Coherent but unstable
→ Sync Bond with Dante: Reactivated – 48%
"I'm sorry..." she sobbed, voice like a wet thorn. "You... shouldn't have... come..."
"Well, I've never been good at 'shouldn't'," I muttered, trying not to look as worried as I was.
