We started the day after dinner time, with a couple of sandwiches. With all our things packed, we stopped at a jewelers’ store, right before they were about to close. Takezo bought a necklace with a large crystal.

  Straight outside the shop, he pried the crystal from the necklace itself. He handed me the crystal, and threw out the rest.

  Right, for Francesca’s soul. I put the clear crystal into my pocket.

  I also bought a new phone, as I realized I had nothing to text Hutriel with. Luckily, the secret societies SIM card worked with normal phones too.

  Once more, we took an Uber to Capua.

  On the way, I texted Hutriel, ‘We will need the body in about an hour, if that’s possible. Peter O’Connor.’

  A reply arrived in a few seconds. ‘All right. We’ll bring it.’

  ‘We’ll be in the fields around Capua.’

  ‘I know.’

  Right. They had us watched. And honestly, I couldn’t even blame them. We were potentially a ton of trouble, so keeping track of us made perfect sense.

  The Uber took us to the town, we took our stuff from it, and we headed into the fields

  This time, the trip to the ravine felt a lot longer today. Not because of the baggage, but I just couldn’t bring myself to walk faster. I didn’t have anything on my mind. My body simply felt as if it was refusing to move.

  As we started getting close to the ravine, a hypersonic boom echoed from above. In a blurring descent, Hutriel flew down to us. With a single beat of his misty wings, he stopped his fall, and landed softly on the ground next to us.

  He wore the same outfit as yesterday. This time though, he carried Cassandra, dressed in a different silver dress, in his arms, and had a black coffin strapped across his back.

  “Evening,” he said, lowering Cassandra.

  She gave the muddy ground an annoyed glare before she stepped onto it. The ground solidified underneath her pumps before she touched it. “All right,” she said. “The body is in the coffin.”

  Hutriel took the coffin off, and put it on the ground. He opened the lid slightly, revealing a dressed body that looked precisely like Francesca.

  My eyes watered, mouth gaping.

  “I made it by her social media,” Cassandra said. “So she’s probably prettier than she was, but she should be recognizable.”

  “No… she looks perfect,” I confirmed.

  Hutriel closed the coffin. “Where should I take it.”

  I motioned with my head into the Ravine, just as Takezo jumped into it. We walked through while Hutriel picked up Cassandra again to fly above us on his misty wings.

  The last stretch towards the portal felt like a ten mile march.

  We stopped by the portal, shimmering in orange at the ravine’s end. Huriel landed next to us, and Cassandra jumped from his arms.

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  The ground solidified underneath her once again. She stepped to the portal. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

  “A… portal?”

  “No. This is a time rift created as a side effect of someone using way too much divine power way too irresponsibly. That someone was obviously a demon princess, and I am absolutely so fucking done with those.” She spun on her heel, glowering at Hutriel. “Don’t’ even dare giving me a corny line about the forces of righteousness facing evil or any other bullshit like that. I’ve had enough demon princess shitfuckery for the rest of this century, and I am not getting involved with this. Nope. I’m out.”

  She burst into a cloud of mist, which swiftly blew away.

  We watched the mist vanish into the wind. “Don’t worry,” Hutriel said. “She’ll come along.”

  No answer, no hint of the mist returning.

  “Eventually,” he added. “Anyways, the body is fine, and I’m not sure I can help you with anything beyond the portal.”

  Takezo frowned. “Won’t even try?”

  “No. I’m not the angel himself, but I carry the real Hutriel’s blessing. That’s connected to divinity, and divinity does not combine with portal time travelling, at all.”

  I breathed out. My body lightened. This momentary distraction helped me focus on something other than that I was about to die. “How does that work?”

  “I don’t understand the precise details,” Hutriel admitted. “But from what I know, the timeline completely ignores actions by beings without divinity. There’s nothing a demon without being divinity can do to damage or alter the timeline of existence. But the moment a being with even the tiniest spec of divinity messes with time travelling or manipulation, things can go horribly wrong.”

  Both Takezo and I froze. This had a really bad implication. “So, if the portal leads to Earth from the future, then the only way that future can be altered is by an action of someone with divinity. People like us can do absolutely nothing about it.”

  “Yeah, pretty much that.” He frowned. “What exactly is behind the portal?”

  “Earth two months from now. With a full-blown demonic invasion going on, and Tokyo completely is destroyed by effectively a nuclear war.”

  “Oh…” Hutriel spread his misty wings. “Sorry, but I have to talk to Lillith about this.” With a single beat of his wings, he boomed into the air. He vanished within a few seconds.

  Takezo and I exchanged glance.

  That was fast.

  At least they left behind the coffin with the body.

  Takezo shrugged. “Not like anyone could come with us anyways. The challenge is a two against one fight.”

  Right.

  We dropped our bags near the portal. I started pulling the anti-radiation suit on me. Drenched in blood, the suit didn’t go on well. The cuts in it also weren’t going to help either. They were like a guidance on where to hit me if someone wanted to kill me.

  Then again, it wasn’t like Kallisto needed a hint that stabbing me in the chest would be bad for me. And the helmet was intact, almost suspiciously so. Thinking back, I only ever took damage in the helmet from the front, when the visor got smashed in.

  I got dressed, taking only the steel gauntlets as my weapons. Those actually looked as barely used them. Sure, they had dried blood and dirt on them, but they didn’t have a scratch. “Ready.”

  “Then let’s go.” Takezo walked into the portal.

  I stepped to the portal, but stopped a few paces before it. My heartbeat sped up. The rest of the world fell out of focus. All I could hear was the beating of my own heart.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.

  Shadow?

  Time froze around me, and Shadow appeared. The same as ever, but somehow more threatening in the faint, orange light of the portal. “What?”

  “If you’ve got any advice how to fight Kallisto, now’s the time to tell me.”

  He stepped next to me, looking at the portal. “You’re breathing too fast. Count to four when breathing in, and then to six when breathing out.” The time unfroze with him vanishing.

  I realized I was almost hyperventilating. All right. Count to four when breathing in, and to six when breathing out. Again. And again.

  “Don’t forget to allocate the skill,” he added.

  Shit. I would have forgotten. I conjured up the skill tree, and navigated to the path of the devil specialization. Level twenty-five skill, basic soul manipulation. I put a point into it.

  My vision changed. As if from a third person, I watched shadow walking through a steel hallway, where bodies floated in tanks on both sides. “At its base, a soul is a stable cluster of energy. I can see all energy. Anything my magic touches, I can manipulate. Electricity, gravity, magnetism, heat, light, sound, life, they all can be bent with my power.”

  A steel door opened before him. A body of a man with horns lay on a steel table ahead, a succubus dressed in heavy robes standing by a side. She bowed and stepped aside.

  He stopped by the man. Into his raised palm, a soul manifested. He twisted and turned it with his mind. “So, why should souls get an exception?”

  He put the soul into the man, and the demon awoke, breathing anew.

  The vision shifted back to normal. I stood alone by the portal.

  I entered.