The void held its breath. The only sound was the wet, contented rumble of Gluttony's chuckle. He held the jar containing my screaming Wrath, a grotesque mockery of a toast.
"You came back just in time for a snack."
The air behind us didn't tear. It screamed.
Reality fractured with the sound of shattering glass and screeching fax machines. A portal of furious, bureaucratic green energy erupted, vomiting forth a maelstrom of paperwork and the acrid stench of burnt coffee. Lamia was spat out first, tumbling head over heels, her red dress a riot of fabric and her round glasses hanging from one ear. Behind her, thrown through by the concussion, were my friends. Dao, Niran, Preecha, Julia—they landed in a tangled heap of limbs and panic on the featureless ground, their eyes wide with the terror of unplanned astral projection.
Lamia scrambled upright, shoving her glasses onto her nose. "I found you!" she shrilled, her voice cracking with a mix of triumph and sheer terror. She pointed a shaking, ink-stained finger, not at Kephriel, but at me.
"The spiritual backlash of your emotional cascade cracked the dimensional seals on his bindings! I was able to triangulate the—"
Her words evaporated. Her gaze had slid past me, past Kephriel, and locked onto Gluttony. Onto the jars. Her face, already pale, went the color of old parchment. Her professional composure shattered.
"A Soul-Emperor..." she whispered, the title a prayer of pure dread.
The group stared. Their eyes jumped from my chained form, to Kephriel's weary grandeur, and finally to the monstrous, placid horror that wore my face. Niran's Nakwi gloves sparked to life with a feeble tchi-tchi-crackle, a pathetic noise in the face of this silence.
"Raf?" Dao's voice was small, a fragile thing in the immense dark.
"What is—"
The universe answered for me.
The arrival of six vibrant, terrified souls was a shockwave in this placid void. The nothingness around us stirred. From the emptiness, figures coalesced like heat haze given form—tall, majestic, and terrifying. Beings of smokeless fire and shifting, ancient light. Jinn. Their eyes burned with a knowledge older than gods.
And every single one of them turned their profound, fiery gaze upon me.
My despair, my loneliness—the very essence Kephriel had farmed, now refined by a century of loss—was a beacon. It was a crown they recognized. They did not kneel. They simply solidified behind me, a phalanx of primordial fire and shadow, their silent allegiance a weight that threatened to crush my soul. I had an army. The thought made me sick.
Gluttony watched it all unfold, his head tilted like a child observing interesting insects. His vacant smile never faltered. He seemed… pleasantly surprised by the new arrivals.
He set the jar of Wrath down with a soft clink that echoed infinitely. He rose, his movements languid, unconcerned. His gaze, heavy-lidded and slow, swept over our ragged group. It dismissed Niran's sparking fists, glanced over Julia's analytical fear, acknowledged my new Jinn guardians with a blink, and then… stopped.
It landed on Dao. On Preecha.
He wasn't looking at them. He was looking into them. At the hollows they'd carved out for me.
"Ooh," he breathed, a sound of genuine, deep pleasure.
"Shinies."
He didn't attack. He didn't need to. He simply… inhaled.
But he didn't draw breath. He drew essence.
A single, heart-wrenching thread of brilliant, warm gold—the last, fading echo of Dao's sacrificed hope—was ripped from her chest. Simultaneously, a wave of profound, soundless pressure—the vacuum where Preecha's silent joy once lived—was torn from him.
The effect was instantaneous and brutal.
Dao didn't scream; she broke. She collapsed to her knees, a raw, guttural sound of loss tearing from her throat, as if her very heart had been gouged out. Not a wound, but an amputation.
Preecha made no sound at all. He just folded in on himself, his hands clamping over his ears as if to block out a silence so absolute it was itself a scream. His eyes went wide and empty, seeing nothing.
The two streams of power—vibrant hope and absolute silence—swirled in a beautiful, terrible ballet before Gluttony. He opened his mouth, and they poured in.
He swallowed.
A tremor went through the void. For a single, horrifying second, Gluttony's form flickered. One moment he was a Vacant Glutton; the next, he was a being of Blazing, Terrifying Hope, and then a monument of Absolute, Devouring Silence, before settling back into his original form. But he was more. His contentment was now layered with potential, his placid smile holding the promise of infinite hunger.
He patted his stomach softly.
"Tasty,"
he murmured, his voice now carrying the faintest, most chilling echo of Dao's lost light and Preecha's stolen quiet.
His eyes, now holding a terrifying new depth, scanned us all—me and my Jinn, Kephriel, the weeping Dao, the catatonic Preecha, the stunned others.
He smiled wider.
"Now... where were we?"
I sighed shakily, then yelled.
"Lamia, send the others back!"