Jaime hovered in the sky, stunned by how quickly everything had shifted.
He watched as Sol’s short sword, buried deep in the abomination’s eye, dissolved back into light. The creature attempted to take flight—but with only one functioning wing, it faltered, spiraling unevenly through the air.
For a heartbeat, Jaime simply stared.
The same creature that had nearly taken his head twice now floundered in visible agony.
He hesitated—caught between rushing to help Sol or finishing the abomination.
Cimi’s piercing shriek shattered his indecision.
Jaime inhaled sharply and called forth every fragment of divinity he could muster. He would not waste the opportunity Sol had created.
Cimi guided the flow with ruthless precision. Mictlantecuhtli layered his own power atop Jaime’s, channeling more dead faith into him.
In Mictlan, worshippers surrendered to reincarnation. As they relinquished memory, emotion, and identity, the god of the dead harvested the abandoned concepts. He compressed them into volatile dead faith and hurled the annihilating force through the ocean of belief into Jaime.
The surge was chaotic.
Violent.
Overwhelming.
A newly forged macuahuitl formed in Jaime’s grasp, absorbing the power greedily as he crammed it full to the brink of collapse.
His divine sight flared.
He saw futures branching—saw himself blocked, dismembered, mocked. He saw hesitation. Failure.
He rejected them all.
His gaze cooled.
He moved.
Cimi shrieked. Mictlantecuhtli laughed.
Jaime roared.
His wings scattered outward, dissolving into dozens of daggers infused with dead faith. They rained down ahead of him, forming a lethal veil as he surged forward.
The grotesque creature reacted instantly, forelimbs swatting at the incoming blades while shielding its remaining eye.
Where Sol had wounded it deeply.
The cicada-mantis shrieked as several daggers pierced softened flesh, dead faith slipping past chitin and neutralizing corruption from within.
Jaime did not slow.
He dodged a flailing scythe and curved around the creature’s back, keeping to the side of its ruined eye. From this angle, he could see the truth.
Every injury writhed with living tendrils of corruption.
And though it weakened, something continued feeding it.
That realization chilled him—but did not deter him.
His macuahuitl carved into its left side.
Corruption parted before the blade as if fearful. The strike bit deep, threatening to split the abomination in half.
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Then—
Impact.
Jaime felt himself launched through the air. His body refused to respond as he tore through dozens of trees, splintering trunks before finally crashing to a halt.
For several seconds, he felt nothing.
Only numbness.
His divinity scrambled to repair shattered bones and ruptured flesh.
With Cimi and Mictlantecuhtli reinforcing him, he forced himself upright after a brief, agonizing pause. His midnight-black armor flaked away, revealing cracked golden divinity beneath.
Sensation returned in waves.
Pain followed.
He wanted to collapse. To let the forest swallow him until this nightmare ended.
But the creature still moved in the distance.
So he leaned once more upon god and spirit.
The agony in his gem nearly paralyzed him as he forged yet another macuahuitl. His divinity felt scraped hollow.
Still, he launched forward again.
The abomination’s agonized screech was strangely comforting. Proof it could suffer.
Proof it could die.
Jaime’s perception sharpened.
He saw the rhythm of its attacks now—the pattern beneath the chaos. Confidence replaced desperation.
He had not regenerated his wings, sacrificing maneuverability for speed. This approach would be direct.
The first scythe came.
He slipped beneath it.
The second followed.
He twisted narrowly past it, gaining access to the creature’s shattered face.
Corruption leaked from its wounds in thick streams, reaching toward him almost pleadingly—as if begging for mercy.
It would receive none.
The macuahuitl crashed down.
Obsidian blades shattered the remaining compound eye in a violent burst. Hemolymph and brain matter splattered across Jaime’s armor as the weapon tore deep into the skull beneath.
The cicada-mantis screamed one final time.
Then it slumped.
Jaime felt it—a premonition slicing through his mind.
Danger.
He leapt backward just as the creature’s corpse convulsed.
Its solid form ruptured and collapsed inward, dissolving into a writhing mass of concentrated corruption. The physical body liquefied, transforming into the same inky substance that had halted him earlier.
Tentacles lashed outward from the expanding mass.
They flailed violently, as though warning him not to approach.
As though something inside was not yet finished.
Jaime circled the writhing blob, forming a spear of dead faith that Mictlantecuhtli poured into him. He felt the strain immediately as the energy devoured his own divinity to multiply. Millions of tiny skulls composed the power, gnashing at anything they could seize. If not for Mictlantecuhtli restraining their vicious hunger and directing it toward the abomination, Jaime would never have dared contain such a force within himself.
When the spear grew dense enough—heavy with annihilation—he hurled it with every fragment of strength he had left. His fractured bones refused to offer more than the bare minimum required to stand, and even that was an agonizing compromise.
So close to ending the cicada-mantis abomination, Jaime could do nothing but grit his teeth and search meticulously for weakness. The corrupt mass defended its core with frantic precision, tentacles lashing outward in desperate arcs.
Every future he mapped was intercepted by a writhing tendril. The creature fought with the ferocity of something that understood it was about to die.
But its corruption had thinned.
Without chitin to deflect the blow, the exposed mass could not withstand the spear. The two-meter shaft of condensed dead faith pierced through the tender corruption. The blob convulsed violently, shuddering in futile resistance as the spear embedded deep within its core.
Jaime watched as the fetid corruption was reduced to nothing. The tangled amalgam of concepts unraveled, gnawed apart by countless skulls shaped through Mictlantecuhtli’s divinity. The annihilation was thorough. Absolute.
It should have been cathartic.
Instead, agony speared through his body, demanding his full attention. He wanted to search for Sol—but restraint won. He forced himself to remain still, ensuring every last trace of corruption was extinguished.
Only when the final remnants dissolved into emptiness did Jaime allow himself to slump. All remaining energy diverted inward, frantically repairing shattered bone and torn flesh.
If not for Cimikora and Mictlantecuhtli guiding energy to maintain his armor, Jaime would have collapsed face-first into the dirt. His body felt like liquid beneath the cracked midnight plating.
Sleep tempted him.
But sleep was dangerous.
He remained kneeling, swaying slightly, eyes fixed on the blackened crater where the corruption had writhed moments before.
So when a figure appeared in the distance, moving slowly toward him, he tensed instinctively.
Relief followed.
It was Marisol, walking with deliberate care. Behind her drifted Sol, cradled upon a soft pink cloud. Each of Marisol’s barefoot steps left tiny green sprouts pushing through the soil, nourished by the rosy mist that curled around her ankles without leaving so much as a blemish.
She approached gently, gaze flickering between Jaime and the scorched depression in the earth.
“It looks like you need some help,” Marisol said with a bright smile that tried—and nearly succeeded—to banish the lingering dread.
Her eyes lingered on the shallow, charred crater, worry softening her expression.
“I’ll return to spreading seeds after we get you healed,” she added.
Jaime did not argue.
He simply let himself fall forward onto the waiting pink cloud, surrendering—just for a moment—to rest.
