The cacophony of the divine clash – Mammon's void-shredded contracts shrieking against Stapler Prime's percussive barrage of administrative ordnance – was a physical pressure. Dust rained down from the flickering sky, alternating between blue lines and static voids.
Nishanth knelt beside Lilith, the blood-slick paperclip blade cold and terrifying in his mortal hand. Zara leaned against the folded-rubble bookshelf, her breath ragged but her eyes fiercely alert, her good hand maintaining pressure on the crude bandage just above Lilith's collarbone. The dark ooze from Zara's own stump had slowed to a thick seep under Lilith's improvised tourniquet point, a grim testament to shared suffering.
Lilith lay on her back, her tunic ripped open to expose her sternum. The sight was grotesque. Nestled just below the hollow of her throat, fused to bone and skin with tendrils of sickly beige light, was the origami locket. It wasn't merely resting there; it was embedded.
