Sol struck again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Each slash of his blessed iron short sword carried as much divinity as he dared expend. Each impact rang against the monstrous insect-like hammer against an unyielding anvil. Sparks scattered through the air, golden and blue, yet the creature’s chitinous armor bore little more than shallow scratches.

  It did not discourage him.

  He moved too quickly for its scythe-like limbs to catch him. Their heavy arcs carved trenches through earth and splintered trees, but Sol slipped between them in flashes of turquoise light. He chipped at the abomination the way a smith worked a stubborn ingot—patient, relentless.

  The creature’s many legs allowed it disturbing agility within a confined space. It pivoted and shifted with unnatural coordination.

  But Sol was faster.

  None of its clumsy swipes had yet touched him.

  The problem was not survival.

  The problem was time.

  If he could not kill it, exhaustion would claim him first. And if he fell, the beast would simply walk past his broken body and continue toward the village.

  Toward his people.

  Toward everything he had sworn to protect.

  He could have endured this battle indefinitely—if not for the way the creature kept glancing toward the distant settlement whenever Sol paused to recover divinity. As though reminding him what awaited.

  The blazing sun within his gem throbbed violently. He still possessed immense reserves.

  And though he had not yet mastered true flame, the pictograms etched along his blade answered his will. Heat surged through the weapon, turning its edge incandescent. The searing glow warped the air around it.

  Yet even so—

  The abomination did not hurry.

  It toyed with him.

  Its movements lacked urgency. It swatted at him lazily, as if he were a curious distraction before a greater feast. Sol remembered the corpses upon the mountain—the way it had devoured without hesitation.

  He was entertainment.

  The thought chilled him.

  The creature moved like an infant discovering its limbs, experimenting with scythe-like forearms it did not yet fully understand. It was learning.

  That realization steadied him in a strange way.

  If it was newly born, then it could still be killed.

  Sol flared his divinity in a brilliant pulse, light cascading outward in a radiant shock. For a moment, the abomination recoiled, its multifaceted eyes overwhelmed.

  Sol did not hesitate.

  He dove in.

  His blade became a streak of molten gold and blue as he hammered the same exposed section along its flank. Strike after strike landed in rapid succession, each blow fueled by desperate conviction. The barrage lasted mere seconds—

  And drained him heavily.

  Still, he pressed on.

  Tezcalotl’s blessing layered itself over the pictograms on his sword, intensifying the heat. The golden radiance of his power deepened, cloaked now in a wavering blue sheen.

  Sol orbited the creature’s massive body in a controlled arc, focusing on a single vulnerable patch. He lacked formal training; there was no elegance to his technique. He relied on speed, strength, and brute persistence. Each impact sent vibrations back through his arm. The hardened chitin rebounded with punishing force.

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  Gradually, his arm began to numb.

  From wrist—

  To elbow—

  Until it felt less like flesh and more like rubber.

  Still he swung.

  He told himself he was making progress.

  He had to be.

  But when he finally withdrew for a breath, chest heaving, despair crept in.

  The damage he had inflicted amounted to little more than a roughened patch on the five-meter monstrosity’s flank.

  Barely a blemish.

  His heart faltered.

  If not for Tezcalotl’s steady, reassuring purr within his gem, grounding his thoughts and stabilizing his breathing, panic might have overtaken him entirely.

  The longer he failed to pierce its armor, the closer the inevitable outcome loomed.

  He had chosen that flank because its head was too well protected—nestled behind wicked forelimbs that could impale him instantly. And its mouth—

  Its mouth never stopped salivating.

  The stench alone nearly made him gag. Each exhalation carried a fetid green vapor that corroded everything it touched. Trees dissolved into bubbling sludge. Stone hissed and melted into viscous pools.

  The creature occasionally spat globs of that same substance, which vaporized into a noxious cloud upon impact. Tezcalotl worked tirelessly to disperse the fumes before they consumed Sol.

  Without that assistance, he would already be dead.

  Even so, fear gnawed at him.

  The mere thought of a droplet landing on his skin sparked an unfamiliar, invasive terror. A primal revulsion that threatened to paralyze him.

  He could not afford that weakness.

  Yet the horror before him was undeniable.

  No matter how fiercely he attacked—

  No matter how brightly he burned—

  The creeping realization slithered into his mind:

  He might not be enough.

  -

  Jaime flared with golden light, his wings expanding into countless individual feathers that expelled an ever-increasing torrent of divinity. Pictograms etched into each feather amplified the energy released, propelling him forward at a ridiculous speed.

  At the same time, Mictlantecuhtli began flooding Jaime with the faith of the dead. His skeletal form, seated upon a throne of skulls in Mictlan, surged with a wicked aura of decay. A pillar of darkness spiked upward toward the roof of the underworld, where its artificial sun hung suspended.

  The darkness lanced into it, then exploded outward into a vast cloud that spread across the underworld city. Turbulent and ominous, the mass condensed and began to rain down fetid corruption upon the souls of the dead. Deformed flesh formed around them, twisting their spiritual bodies into strange abominations.

  The spirits chanted in worship of their pantheon, accepting the corruption and filtering it through their spiritual forms. They consumed the putrid rain until their time was nigh.

  Above them, the artificial sun pulverized those who had fully transformed—or those ready to move on, unwilling to endure further suffering in pursuit of a greater blessing in their next life.

  The system built upon souls absorbed the negative and returned it to zero, striving to restore a long-lost balance. Corruption was taken and refined into faith.

  Back with Jaime, black vapors began seeping from every inch of his body, making him appear like a deranged deity of corruption. His once-golden armor darkened as the aura of death saturated his form.

  Like Jimena, his inner light repelled the negative emotions associated with death. Cimikora pulsed within his core with steady divine radiance. Like Tezcalotl’s den within Sol, Jaime’s inner world inside his gem resembled a living sun—though this one bore a shadow wrapped around its radiance. Two opposing energies struggled to coexist. Perhaps that was why Cimi preferred remaining outside.

  It took almost no time for him to reach the source of the corruption.

  There, he caught sight of what appeared to be Sol in his armor—the same armor Sol had proudly shown them shortly after his ascension. Jaime recognized him instantly, even as Sol flashed around the monstrous insect he fought.

  Jaime had always suspected Sol’s ascension lacked substance. The scene below confirmed it.

  The creature had barely stepped into the rank of lesser divinity, yet Sol struggled against it as though he himself were only barely there.

  The aggressive, cold faith within Jaime gathered at the center of his palms. Pitch-black motes—shaped like skull-carved pictograms—condensed into a long spear. His wings, which had ceased their explosive release of energy, detached from his armor and reformed as the weapon’s frame, becoming a structure through which the dark energy coursed and saturated.

  Pictograms of death spread along the obsidian shaft. Shadows wafted from it like a foul odor.

  He would use a neutral force to annihilate this corruption from reality.

  Zero would obliterate all.

  Jaime released the spear without hesitation, allowing it to fall. He felt no emotion as the pitch-black weapon descended, distorting reality around it. The air parted from its path, unwilling to resist its passage.

  With Cimi’s aid, Jaime’s vision pierced through branching outcomes. The golden eyes of his helmet blazed with divine light, guiding the spear that appeared to move slowly in his perception.

  Sol seemed slow as well—until he abruptly accelerated and retreated from the creature, likely warned by his god. His face was pale from exertion.

  Jaime prepared for the possibility of interference. He seized the descending spear mid-fall, recalculating one final time. Then he forced an immense surge of divine light into it—light that was immediately swallowed by the etched pictograms. The weapon’s density doubled before it resumed its descent toward the abomination.

  The world turned monochrome as the two forces collided.

  They repelled one another—opposing yet alike, each denying the other’s existence. Only one could remain.

  Unfortunately for the monstrosity, the void consumed all, returning everything to zero.

  A grotesque screech—one that would have made mortal ears bleed—radiated outward. It smashed against the air until the atmosphere itself ruptured into sonic booms.

  And that was only the beginning of the devastation.