– CHAPTER FORTY-SIX –

  WHEEL OF SAMSARA

  The vault beneath the altar swallowed the sound of the world itself. The air in there felt old, trapped, heavy with metal, damp rock, and some chemical residue that insisted on lingering on the tongue. The storm Nioh had awakened did not come from outside, it came from there, from the place’s heart, from the Bronze Sea spinning the water until it became a funnel of fury.

  Americ-Ana felt the ground vibrating in her bones before she reached the rim. Then she bent, gathered everything into a single impulse, and jumped.

  The scales in Andras’s skin worked with her, following the motion, distributing strength and balance through her body. The leap carried her too high for a fourteen year old under normal circumstances. The rim of the Bronze Sea rushed closer with violence, and Americ-Ana landed there, steady, feeling the cold bronze under her soles, feeling the edge shudder beneath the pressure of the whirlpool.

  The view from there was worse than memory.

  The water inside the Bronze Sea did not move, it tore at the air itself. The vortex bit into the center, turning with a force that made the stomach try to climb up the throat. Each revolution of the funnel brought an electric crackle through the hairs on her arm, a taste of ozone on her teeth, a thunder that never ended, only shifted in volume.

  On the other side of the Bronze Sea, the homunculus stood upright, very near the cluster of bodies to the north.

  Nioh Nemmesis was not looking at her.

  The little humanoid creature living inside that monstrosity of feces and whitish fluid kept its arms raised, rigid, trembling, holding the small box wrapped in parchment, golden letters gleaming every time a bolt of lightning tore through the space above. Nioh’s eyes looked unfocused, empty, and his mouth babbled words that did not always become sentences. His whole body wavered between trance and consciousness, between ritual and malice.

  The memory reached Americ-Ana with the taste of rust.

  At Solomon Coliseum, when the entire crowd of THE-IMPERIUM had slipped into that state. Too many people, too many voices, too many eyes, all repeating sounds that did not seem human. Americ-Ana remembered her own chest tightening, her own body obeying from the inside without asking permission. She remembered the sensation of being dragged by an invisible current, without understanding why.

  There, now, Nioh was trapped in that same kind of trance. Only he had chosen to spin inside it.

  Americ-Ana averted her gaze toward the oxen.

  Twelve bronze statues holding up the Bronze Sea, arranged with ritual precision. Three to the south, three to the north, three to the east, three to the west. Upon each ox, a body covered in “stasis fluid”, wrapped in Spyder’s web, motionless, heavy, ready for sacrifice.

  Americ-Ana let her eyes move across the erased faces, trying not to think about what it meant to “use” someone in there.

  To the south, near her, were Abda, Adoniram, and Parys Bloodpure.

  To the east, Thor, Donnie, and Jessie.

  To the west, Seth, the original Chancellor, and Patron Uvo.

  To the north, Nome-Rocky, Grandpa, and Grandma.

  The world jolted inside Americ-Ana’s chest when she saw the last two.

  Her voice slipped out without asking permission, low, broken.

  “No... Grandpa. Grandma.”

  And the worst of it was where Nioh stood. Too close to them. Close enough that any gesture of his could become a verdict.

  Americ-Ana drew a deep breath, adjusted her feet on the rim, and decided to walk. One step at a time, circling the Bronze Sea, using the bronze’s tremor as a guide, without losing her balance, without letting the vortex pull her courage downward.

  She took the first step.

  Nioh’s voice came without him looking at her.

  “You really don’t give up, Americ-Ana.”

  Her body locked.

  Nioh turned his face slowly, his gaze still half-lost, but with a glint of consciousness behind it. The smile surfaced, small and cruel.

  “Can’t you see you’ve already lost? Everything is ready. The Glory of God is going to descend. The new KING MatNat sphere will materialize with the new seventy-two seals. I take that sphere, I bring it to my Abba, and then it’s the end of THE-IMPERIUM.”

  Americ-Ana tightened her fist around the sword made from her own bone, feeling Andras’s skin tense along her forearm.

  “No, Nioh. Not if I can help it. You’re a criminal.”

  “Help it?” He laughed, and the laugh became a cough, and the cough became a short spasm that folded his body in half. The little box almost dipped, but he held it fast. “You talk about crime, morality, rules. Right and wrong depend on the gaze. In your vision I’m the criminal. In my vision, THE-IMPERIUM is evil. And you, Americ-Ana, are just a puppet. You don’t know the truth.”

  “The only truth I need is the one I saw.” Her voice came out low, but without tremor. “I saw what you did to Trinity Bustanay. I saw what you did to the Chancellor. I saw you use people. You kidnapped my grandparents. And now you want to steal something from here to take to another monster.”

  Nioh’s face tightened. The trance inside him bristled.

  “Enough.”

  He raised an arm, and the arm was not an arm. It was a living strand of feces and whitish fluid that stretched out, flexible and fast, crossing the space with a wet snap.

  Americ-Ana felt panic surge hard.

  “Nioh… don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”

  “Regret is a luxury for those who have time.” His gaze flickered north, and his mouth twisted. “And innocent here?” He spat a short laugh. “Except for your grandparents’ naivety, everyone here is guilty. It’s just that your grandparents will pay for what you chose.”

  The feces-arm snapped through the air and seized the three bodies to the south.

  Abda. Adoniram. Parys.

  Americ-Ana lunged forward on instinct, the bronze shuddered beneath her feet, the vortex pulled at the air with greater hunger. She thrust out the sword-arm, tried to reach the webbing, tried to catch any strand, any chance, anything.

  But the bodies were already in the air.

  “NO!”

  They fell into the vortex and vanished into the water.

  It wasn’t drowning. It was disappearance. The funnel swallowed the three without giving back even sound, or bubble, or confirmation. The water changed color, darkened in places, took on a filthy sheen that looked like oil under lightning. The storm inside the vault swelled, the air turned even more electric, and the scales of Andras across Americ-Ana’s body pulsed, answering the shift.

  Nioh opened a smile that did not seem to fit inside him.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He spoke slowly, savoring it. “Jehovah, Yahweh, is taking pleasure.”

  Americ-Ana felt nausea rise, not because of the homunculus’s stench, but because of the way he said “taking pleasure.”

  Nioh looked to the east.

  Thor. Donnie. Jessie.

  “Time to continue.”

  Americ-Ana took a step. The bronze groaned. The vortex pulled. She tried to advance.

  Nioh tilted his face, still far too close to the north.

  “If you try to stop me, I throw your grandparents in first.”

  The world stopped.

  Americ-Ana stood perfectly still, her chest aching, her throat dry, the sword heavy on an arm that was already trembling. She hated her own body for obeying. The hatred mixed with fear, and the fear became a knot that seemed to pin her legs in place.

  “Nioh…” Her voice came out pleading without her wanting it to. “Please.”

  Nioh ignored her.

  The feces-arm stretched and flung the trio to the east.

  The three bodies fell, vanished, and the water answered with another change, growing thicker, more aggressive. The wind inside the vault found a clear direction, pushing everything toward the center. Lightning began to slash through the rock ceiling with fury, and the air became so charged that Americ-Ana’s hair lifted on its own beneath Andras’s skin.

  Nioh lifted his face and screamed, in a grotesque ecstasy.

  “Glory to the One Supreme God!”

  Americ-Ana ground her teeth.

  “Enough.”

  “Enough?” Nioh laughed, and this time the laugh came out clean, without coughing, as if the ritual were feeding him too. “You don’t even like those three, Americ-Ana. And still you put on a show.”

  “Not wanting to die doesn’t require friendship.” she answered, and her anger became a straight line inside her. “Stop.”

  He turned to the west and extended his arm.

  Seth. The original Chancellor. Patron Uvo.

  Americ-Ana screamed.

  “NIOH, NO!”

  The feces arm shoved the three at once. They fell. They vanished. And then the entire vault struck back in response.

  The little box lifted on its own.

  The golden letters ignited, the parchment trembled, and the object floated above the Bronze Sea, right at the center of the storm, turning slowly in the air, bathing the bronze in a glow that seemed to want to become form, to want to become thing, to want to become “presence”.

  Nioh raised his arms and his face split open into an absolute smile.

  “Yes, yes, yes. It’s coming down. The Glory of God is manifesting.”

  Americ-Ana blinked fast, felt her face wet, and only then realized it was tears. The wind dried half of them before they could fall.

  She looked north again.

  Nome-Rocky. Grandpa. Grandma.

  Three.

  The final count.

  “Enough of this game,” she said, and her voice was not a child’s. It was a blade. “You’ve gone too far.”

  Americ-Ana ran.

  The rim of the Bronze Sea shuddered beneath her feet. She skimmed the bronze with precision, feeling the vortex tug at her very shadow. Her body committed to the jump, and she spun in the air, crossing over the funnel of water, feeling the wind try to tear her in two.

  She reached Nioh.

  The impact took her down with him. Americ-Ana shoved him with all the strength Andras had poured into her muscles. The homunculus slipped, lost his balance, tried to seize the air with arms of feces, but the vortex tore the base away.

  Nioh fell.

  The water swallowed him and turned with him. The mass of feces distorted, disappearing beneath the dark foam.

  Americ-Ana lifted her gaze to the little box floating.

  The chance.

  The ritual still alive, still breathing.

  She raised the sword arm to cut, pierce, rip the object out of the air.

  Then she felt the shape beneath her feet.

  The bronze shuddered.

  An arm of feces rose from the vortex, longer than anything should be allowed to exist, and tore through the air, fast, grabbing the north.

  Nome-Rocky, Grandpa, Grandma.

  The three bodies began to slide along the webbing, dragged toward the funnel.

  “NO!”

  Americ-Ana threw herself forward.

  She crashed onto the rim of the Bronze Sea, feeling the bronze bite into Andras’s skin, and with one hand she seized the webbing around her grandparents. Her other arm, the sword arm, drove into the rim, burying the bone blade in the metal with a dry crack.

  The vortex pulled.

  Her body began to be carried.

  Her arms shook.

  The webbing stretched.

  The bronze vibrated.

  She hauled her grandparents closer, tried to drag them back, tried to fight against the current, against the ritual, against the entire world.

  One of the bodies slipped free for a second. She caught it again with her nails.

  Then the vortex spat something out.

  Nioh.

  He burst from the spinning water, half submerged, half upright, the mass of feces reorganizing under the funnel’s impact. The little humanoid thing inside him had glazed eyes, full of hatred, full of desperation, full of a sick love for his own purpose.

  “You thought I would die?” His voice came thick, heavy, almost happy. “Not until I fulfill my purpose with my Abba.”

  Americ-Ana spat, her throat burning.

  “You’re a walking mistake.”

  Nioh opened his mouth and sprayed.

  Feces and whitish fluid struck Americ-Ana’s face, getting into her eye, gluing to her lashes, burning her nose. The stench detonated inside her skull. Her vision became nothing.

  She screamed, blind, trying to wipe it away, but the vortex pulled at the air and tore her hand from her own face.

  And it was enough.

  Nioh pulled.

  The webbing around her grandparents slipped out of Americ-Ana’s fingers. Her arm tried to snatch it back from the void, but it caught only wind.

  The current carried them.

  Grandpa and Grandma vanished into the funnel.

  The sound Americ-Ana made did not seem human. It sounded like something breaking from the inside.

  She stayed there, pinned by the sword to the rim, her body being turned toward the center, the entire world turning, and the only certainty was absence.

  She tried to let go of the sword.

  Andras’s skin locked.

  Her body hardened, not from fear, but from command. From contract. From limit.

  “But what…” Americ-Ana tried to cry out, but her voice failed.

  She struck her own arm, tried to cut her own prison.

  Andras’s skin held.

  Then the voice of the demon Andras spoke inside Americ-Ana’s head.

  “If you throw yourself into the water vortex, you will fall into the ‘Wheel of Samsara’. There, I will not be able to do anything for you, you will be without my protection.”

  Americ-Ana swallowed the pain and answered out loud, her face still filthy, her eyes burning.

  “I have to go. I have to go after my grandparents.”

  Three seconds passed inside the chaos. Three seconds that felt like a century trapped in a funnel of water.

  Suddenly, the demon’s skin relaxed.

  Americ-Ana’s body obeyed itself again.

  Americ-Ana released the sword from the rim and surrendered to the vortex.

  The water took her.

  Americ-Ana spun, spun, spun, felt the bronze disappear, felt the air disappear, felt the storm collapse into a single noise crushing the world. The vault, the Temple, the ritual, everything became distance.

  Darkness swallowed everything.

  Then the world began to flicker.

  It wasn’t real light, it was presence in flashes, a cruel alternation between existing and not existing. The sound, which had become emptiness, returned in pieces, until it became a high-pitched ringing in her ear, the kind that gets stuck in the skull, like stubborn water after a dive that went too deep.

  “Americ-Ana! Are you with me? Americ-Ana, focus! Can you hear me?”

  The male voice came from far away, then it came close, then it came from the side. Americ-Ana tried to swallow and felt her throat scrape from the inside, dry, raw, burning.

  “Yes… I can hear you.”

  The sound of her own voice startled her. It came out hoarse, broken, and speaking opened a pain deep in her chest, a pain that felt old.

  A sharp smell of medicine and hospital disinfectant flooded the air. Too clean. Too chemical. Too real.

  A flash exploded in front of her and Americ-Ana narrowed her eyes by instinct. The light hurt. It hurt her eyes, it hurt her head, it hurt somewhere she couldn’t name, as if her whole body were sensitive.

  “Good. Good.” The voice sounded trained not to show alarm. “This time it was a fairly strong episode, but apparently you haven’t sustained acute brain damage. Even so, I’m going to order additional tests, just to rule out any concerns.”

  Americ-Ana’s vision began to come into focus, little by little.

  Everything was white. White wall, white ceiling, fluorescent light overhead, cold, constant, merciless. On the wall, a television was on, the image changing without sound. A program about bamboo forests.

  “Where am I?” Americ-Ana asked.

  “Okay…” the voice replied, and then there was silence.

  Ten seconds that felt like ten centuries.

  The television kept flashing images of bamboo forests. The ringing in her ear continued. The hospital smell continued. And inside Americ-Ana, something bad began to grow, a feeling that that question had been asked before, and answered before, and forgotten before.

  When her vision finally locked into place, Americ-Ana saw a man in a white coat in front of her, glasses, a tired expression, a small flashlight in his hand. A face that seemed kind, but also seemed to have run out of patience for kindness without effort.

  He set the flashlight down on a table, turned slightly in his chair, and looked at her again.

  “It looks like we’ll have to start over again.”

  “Start over?” Americ-Ana repeated, the word scraping her throat. “Start over what?”

  The man drew a slow breath. He looked at her with the calm of someone preparing another person to fall into a bottomless hole.

  “Americ-Ana, I’m Dr. Honi. I’m your doctor. We’ve met before. Don’t you remember?”

  Americ-Ana tried to pull up a memory, any memory, but her mind was empty, smooth, without a hook. She shook her head no.

  Dr. Honi didn’t seem surprised.

  “Do you know what day it is today? Do you know where you are?”

  Americ-Ana shook her head again, no.

  “Can you tell me what happened to you? Do you know why you’re here?”

  Nothing came to Americ-Ana’s memory. Only emptiness. She shook her head once more.

  Dr. Honi let the air out slowly, controlling his own body so that fatigue would not harden into irritation.

  “I need you to listen to me calmly. Can you promise you’ll stay calm?”

  Americ-Ana stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to locate her own body inside that room. Then she looked at him and nodded.

  “Americ-Ana, on August 7, 2024, around noon, you stopped at a traffic light while crossing the city on your way to work.” Dr. Honi chose his words carefully. “A bus ran through. The driver didn’t see the red light. He didn’t see you.”

  The sentence entered Americ-Ana like something that was not memory, but was impact. A truth forced into a weakened brain.

  “You were hit at high speed. You suffered severe injuries to your arms and legs. You struck your head very hard.” He paused, briefly, just long enough for the sentence to hurt. “You were in a coma for four months.”

  Americ-Ana blinked slowly. The television on the wall kept showing images of bamboo forests.

  Dr. Honi picked up a few papers from the table and held them out, letting Americ-Ana feel the weight of it through lines and numbers.

  “It hasn’t been many days since you came out of the coma.” He gathered the papers back and met her eyes again. “And, unfortunately, you were left with neurological aftereffects because of the trauma.”

  “Wait… a bus? Aftereffects?” Americ-Ana tried to draw breath, but her chest felt far too small.

  Dr. Honi nodded.

  “You also lost the ability to walk.”

  The world did not flicker this time. The world stood still.

  “I… lost it?” The word came out on a thread.

  Dr. Honi nodded again, with an unvarnished sincerity.

  “Since you woke up, you have better days and worse days. On some days you recover part of your memory. On others, you lose almost everything.” He gestured lightly toward his own head. “That happens, especially after the episodes. You’ve been having epileptic seizures since you returned from the coma, and after some of them, you’re left with amnesia and confusion.”

  “Epileptic… seizures?” Americ-Ana repeated, as if the word belonged to another language.

  Americ-Ana tried to swallow and felt a drop of saliva run down the corner of her mouth. The detail was small, humiliating, and more frightening than it had any right to be. She tried to close her mouth properly, but her face did not respond.

  Dr. Honi took a tissue, approached without haste, and wiped the saliva away with care, as if it were routine, as if it were not the end of the world.

  “You don’t need to be ashamed.” His tone softened. “You lost movement and sensation in some areas of your face. Part of it improves with time, part of it may remain.”

  Americ-Ana tried to lift her arm to touch her mouth. The arm didn’t obey. She tried again, and felt only a void where command should be, an order that never reached where it was needed.

  Dr. Honi stood, went to a corner of the room, gathered more papers, and came back.

  “We’re running exams and tests to understand the depth of the damage. We want to avoid brain surgery, because it’s invasive. So we’re watching you, evaluating, recording.”

  Dr. Honi began to show her the pages, one by one.

  They were drawings.

  Americ-Ana saw pencil lines, nervous outlines, careful details. Faces. Clothes. Names.

  “Since you woke up, in your lucid moments, you started drawing.” Dr. Honi pointed to one of them. “And you created a narrative for each drawing.”

  He showed her the first.

  A young man with green hair, an open blazer, his torso exposed. Below it, written: “Seth”.

  “You said this boy appeared and invited you to an ultra-exclusive bunker beneath the Hollywood sign.”

  Americ-Ana looked, and nothing in her recognized it. Not a spark.

  The second drawing.

  A young man in a red blazer, hair half black, half white. Below it: “Nome-Rocky”.

  “You said he is the son of the Director of an academy where students learn about demons and angels.”

  Another drawing.

  A woman with long, tangled green hair. Below: “Madam Chancellor Velyra”.

  “You said she is the aunt of the green-haired boy.”

  One more.

  Two characters, a man and a young boy, wearing clothes from another time. Below: “Abda and his son Adoniram”.

  Dr. Honi laid the drawings on the table, arranging them in an alignment that felt almost reverent, as if it were evidence, and not a daydream.

  “Americ-Ana, do you remember making these drawings? Or do you remember any of these characters?”

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  Americ-Ana stared at nothing, and shook her head. The emptiness inside her seemed to have teeth.

  Dr. Honi pulled his chair closer, shortening the distance.

  “I’m showing you this because there’s a pattern,” he said with the patience of someone repeating a map to a person who insists on getting lost. “Every time you have a seizure, afterward you draw again. And you insist that this bunker exists, that these people exist. But it doesn’t, Americ-Ana.”

  Dr. Honi placed his hand over Americ-Ana’s arm, firm, steady, anchoring her to that room.

  “After the accident, the pain, the trauma, the injury… all of that may have triggered a psychiatric condition linked to the traumatic brain injury. A psychotic disorder due to a neurological condition. In short, your brain created a world to escape what happened to you.”

  Americ-Ana stared at the ceiling. The television kept showing images of bamboo forests. She tried to find anything in herself that would say “no,” but she found only a weight sitting still in her chest.

  Dr. Honi tugged the sheet and adjusted it carefully, making her more comfortable.

  “Do you understand what I said?”

  Americ-Ana looked at him with an empty gaze and nodded slowly, more from a lack of strength to fight than from acceptance.

  Dr. Honi let out a deep sigh. His eyes carried empathy, pity, exhaustion, and a kind of tenderness that hurt more than hardness ever could.

  “I know what can help you.” He stood. “The other times, they were essential for you to come back.”

  Dr. Honi walked to the door, opened it, looked out, and gestured.

  “Please, you can come in. The seizure has passed.”

  Americ-Ana heard a sigh of relief from the hallway, and right after that, careful, dragging footsteps, the kind that enter a room afraid of breaking the silence.

  She forced her eyes toward the doorway.

  Dr. Honi held it open, making space.

  And then, in the white cutout of the corridor, two figures crossed the threshold, slow, trembling with emotion and fatigue. Americ-Ana felt her throat close before she even understood. Her lips moved on their own, and her eyes flooded.

  “Grandpa Nono… Grandma Nonna…”

  The word came out broken, but it came. And it was enough.

  The tears came all at once, in a cascade, heavy, hot, without any dignity at all. Americ-Ana tried to lift her arms toward them, desperate for an embrace that could be an anchor, but her arms did not obey. Her body was a house with its doors locked from the inside.

  Nono and Nonna came closer, one on each side of the bed. They bent over her and hugged her carefully, forming a human cocoon around her face, her chest, her fear.

  “Ana, my big granddaughter… do you recognize us?” Nonna asked, her voice thick with tears. “Do you remember that we came on the days before?”

  “We’ve been here, Ana, my little granddaughter.” Nono tried to smile, but worry warped his expression. “Can you remember?”

  Americ-Ana was crying and, even so, she babbled with firmness, as if that sentence were the only solid thing left in the world.

  “I would never forget you two, Nono and Nonna… but I don’t remember seeing you before. How did you get here?”

  Nonna drew a deep breath, ran her hand over Americ-Ana’s face, and answered slowly.

  “My big granddaughter… Mrs. Karen contacted us the day of the accident. We caught a flight and came immediately.”

  Nono added, adjusting Americ-Ana’s blanket with an automatic tenderness, the kind of tenderness of a father, of a grandfather, of someone trying to mend the irreparable with small gestures.

  “We’re staying at Mrs. Karen’s house. In your room, actually. She’s been a tremendous help, very kind to all of us.”

  Dr. Honi stepped a little closer, with the same clinical care of someone walking on glass.

  “I was explaining to Americ-Ana what happened, and that we’ve been through this before. But she forgets after the seizures. The trauma… scrambles everything.”

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard, felt her throat scrape again, and then said something that felt strange even to her, for how quickly it surfaced.

  “I’m sorry… excuse me, Nono and Nonna, but I’m bursting. I need to go to the bathroom now.”

  Nonna immediately leaned in.

  “Of course, of course, my big granddaughter. I’ll help you.”

  Dr. Honi turned toward the door and raised his voice, calling without haste, without panic.

  “Nurse, please. Can you come in and help her to the bathroom?”

  The nurse appeared, trained, practical. With the nurse’s help and Nonna’s, Americ-Ana was taken to the bathroom. The movements were slow, technical, and each gesture carried a humiliation no one named, only skirted around.

  The nurse helped her sit on the toilet. Nonna stroked her head, at the roots of her hair, as if she wanted to quiet something inside her skull.

  “We’ll wait outside to give you privacy. If you need anything, just call.”

  Americ-Ana nodded. It was the most control she could manage in that moment.

  The nurse and Nonna left. The door stayed half open.

  And that was when the world, silent, became cruel again.

  Americ-Ana heard Dr. Honi and her grandparents talking, in low voices, but not low enough to keep every word from crossing the corridor and entering her like a blade.

  “Unfortunately, with the repeated convulsive seizures, the memory loss, and the episodes of confusion, everything indicates we’ll have to make more drastic decisions regarding her brain health.”

  Americ-Ana heard Nonna’s sigh. She heard Nono hold his breath, as if someone had squeezed his chest with both hands.

  “If you’ll allow me,” Dr. Honi continued, “as soon as she comes back from the bathroom, I’m going to propose a test. If the result is satisfactory, with the proper recovery time, you’ll be able to take her home. But if it’s unsatisfactory, we’ll have to consider surgery and referral to a specialized clinic, especially if she persists with the delusions.”

  The word “delusions” hung in the air, heavy, offensive, inhuman, and yet spoken with a care that only made it worse.

  Americ-Ana blinked again and again, trying to drive the tears away, but it felt as if her body were a broken dam now.

  She called for help with a weak voice. And, a few minutes later, she was taken back to the bed.

  Dr. Honi stopped in front of her. His face held no cruelty, but it held decision.

  “Americ-Ana… I’m going to show you some names. And you’re going to tell me which ones are real and which ones are part of the story you created. All right?”

  Americ-Ana nodded, slowly.

  Then Dr. Honi took pre-cut strips of paper and placed them on the sheet, arranging the “board” in front of her. With a simple, precise gesture, he indicated: on the right, the real names; on the left, the names that belonged to the stories.

  When Americ-Ana finally managed to focus, she read them one by one, lined up on the bed:

  Seth

  Chancellor

  Uvo

  Thor

  Donnie

  Jessie

  Nome-Rocky

  Abda

  Adoniram

  Parys

  “Focus on the moment you were at the traffic light, Americ-Ana. The instant you stopped at the signal,” Dr. Honi said.

  Americ-Ana stared at the strips. Her breathing began to climb, heavy, irregular. Her head seemed to grow too large inside its own skull. She closed her eyes.

  Nonna leaned in, startled, hands rising to her chest, about to reach for her granddaughter.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Nonna,” Dr. Honi said, never losing his tone. “This is expected. It’s part of the process.”

  The flashes came.

  First, a slice of sun and warm skin. Americ-Ana on skates. Salted air, the ocean breathing close, Malibu open and bright, the breeze moving over her body with delicacy.

  Another flash.

  The traffic light. Red. The clear command to stop. Cars on either side, all still, trapped in the same pause. The whole world held by a signal.

  Another flash.

  The brutal sound of tires scraping asphalt. The scream of friction. The warning too late. She tried to turn, but the impact arrived first. A bus struck her body with dry violence and hurled her away, ripping the air from her, her bearings, the ground. Then, darkness.

  Another flash.

  The hospital bed. The white ceiling. Her throat on fire. Her chest pulling in oxygen as if relearning how to exist.

  Americ-Ana opened her eyes, panting, and the tears began without asking permission.

  “I remember… I remember,” she said, searching for her grandparents, her vision still wet.

  “Show it with the slips, my little granddaughter. With the slips,” Nono asked, bending over Americ-Ana and stroking her back.

  Americ-Ana fixed her eyes on the strips and, with effort, began to arrange them.

  On the right side, she placed:

  Uvo

  Thor

  Donnie

  Jessie

  Parys

  On the left side, she placed:

  Seth

  Chancellor

  Abda

  Adoniram

  Nome-Rocky

  Americ-Ana pointed to the real names on the right and spoke, her voice still trembling:

  “Uvo was the bus driver who hit me. He was severely injured, just like I was. Thor, Donnie, Jessie, and Parys were passengers on the bus. They were severely injured too.”

  Then Americ-Ana pointed to the left, and the sentence came out with the hesitation of someone walking on glass:

  “Seth, Chancellor, Abda, Adoniram, and Nome-Rocky are names… I mean… characters. I made all that up when I woke up from the coma.”

  Dr. Honi smiled broadly, as if he’d been holding his breath for hours and could finally let it go.

  “That’s it, Americ-Ana. Congratulations. I knew you could do it. Excellent.”

  Nonna began to clap, her hands trembling with relief.

  “My big granddaughter… I knew it, I knew it.”

  Nono kissed the top of Americ-Ana’s head. His eyes filled too.

  “My little granddaughter. We’re going to get you out of here. Everything will go back to normal.”

  Dr. Honi composed himself, returning to his professional tone:

  “Although this is not yet definitive, considering the epileptic seizure she had a short while ago, I would say, as her physician since the beginning of treatment, that the chances of functional recovery and of returning to an everyday routine are very high.”

  Her grandparents poured themselves into affection, kisses, whispered words, as if the entire room had been given back its life.

  Then Dr. Honi made a discreet gesture, calling them back to pragmatism.

  “Could you sign a few authorizations, please? We still need to complete additional tests.”

  Nonna and Nono agreed at once. The three of them moved off to a corner of the room, bent over the paperwork, examining and checking the bureaucracy.

  Then, feeling her chest finally less crushed, Americ-Ana sank back into the bed and let the air out slowly. The entire room smelled of alcohol, cotton, medicine, clean plastic. The ceiling light was too white.

  Americ-Ana turned her face, still a little soft, still a little strange, and saw the television on the wall. No sound. A documentary. A bamboo forest. Pandas.

  Real pandas, chewing bamboo calmly, stumbling over their own bodies, living the kind of life that didn’t seem to know what having problems was.

  The camera focused on a cub. Small. Awkward. It held a stalk of bamboo and made a motion that looked like dancing.

  Americ-Ana let out a short laugh, almost a sob. And at the exact instant the laugh escaped, something snapped inside her head.

  A dry snap, intimate, precise.

  Americ-Ana whispered, her voice coming out as if from an ancient place.

  “Poppa...”

  Across the room, Dr. Honi turned at once, cutting off his explanation to her grandparents.

  “What did you say, Americ-Ana?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off the TV. The panda cub was still there, clutching the bamboo, and the image seemed to pull a thread inside her.

  “Poppa...” she repeated, and this time the name came whole, inevitable. “Poppandacorn.”

  The air changed.

  A shift in density. A brutal adjustment of reality.

  Americ-Ana straightened her torso in the bed and, with an urgency that asked no permission, pulled the little name slips back to her again. Her hands were trembling, but they obeyed. And that, in itself, was already an affront to what the doctor had just said.

  She gathered every name and shoved them all to the right side. All of them.

  Then she lifted her chin, her eyes burning, her breathing finding a dangerous rhythm.

  “I didn’t invent this.” Her voice faltered and came back. “This is real.”

  Dr. Honi took a step, alarmed. Her grandparents froze.

  Americ-Ana went on, now with that feverish certainty that isn’t born of argument, it’s born of a memory driven into the mind like a nail.

  “Uvo is a Patron of THE-IMPERIUM. Thor, Donnie, and Jessie are students at the Equal One Zero Academy. Nome-Rocky and Parys are KING MatNat players. Abda and Adoniram are father and son in the KING MatNat History Museum. The Chancellor exists. Seth exists. They’re related.”

  Americ-Ana planted her hands on the bed, pushed her own body upward, and an impossible second happened.

  Americ-Ana stood up.

  On top of the bed.

  Her grandparents’ eyes went wide, panic rising fast.

  “Ana...?” Grandma Nonna whispered, her voice thin. “What are you doing?”

  Americ-Ana looked at them with a desperate tenderness.

  “I am Americ-Ana,” she said, slowly, as if signing her own name into the fabric of the world. “A scholarship student at THE-IMPERIUM and a KING MatNat player.”

  The room couldn’t bear it.

  The walls began to turn gray. They came undone. The paint lost its meaning. Matter grew fragile, crumbling into the air. The hospital white was swallowed by a liquid texture, turning, turning, turning.

  A vortex.

  Wind invaded the room and yanked silence by the throat. Lightning cracked where there was no sky. Thunder hammered the ceiling as if the ceiling were a weak door.

  Her grandparents clutched each other, screaming, trying to shield themselves from nothing.

  “Ana! What is happening?”

  “It’s all right, grandparents!” Americ-Ana shouted back, her voice wrestling the wind. “I’m going to protect you both!”

  Dr. Honi tried to speak, but his mouth was no longer the same.

  The skin of his face bubbled. His white coat lost its shape. His glasses fell and dissolved into the air, swallowed by the water that was slowly pooling. His body reorganized in a grotesque movement, as if someone were remaking a sculpture with dirty hands.

  The figure that remained was wrong, and alive in an offensive way.

  Nioh Nemmesis.

  The voice came with a mockery that made the stomach knot.

  “Everything was going fine,” Nioh said, and the wind seemed to obey his tone. “Until that idiot toy crawled back into your memories.”

  Americ-Ana felt the name cut through her chest.

  “He is not an idiot toy,” she answered, her eyes filling with fury and tears at the same time. “Poppa is mine. I’m his Mommy.”

  Nioh bared his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was happy rage.

  “I’m not going to let things end easy for you, Americ-Ana.”

  He looked to the side.

  And her grandparents didn’t have time even to breathe.

  A slime of feces burst out of him with violence, thick, sticky, alive, and wrapped Grandpa Nono and Grandma Nonna in a cruel squeeze. Feces and that whitish dampness covered their clothes, their hair, their faces. They screamed. The sound went through Americ-Ana like glass.

  “NO!” Americ-Ana roared. “LET THEM GO, NIOH!”

  Americ-Ana tried to move forward, but the entire place became storm. The air pushed. The water pulled. Everything spun. Everything came undone. The room was no longer a room. Reality was a funnel.

  Up above, a burst of light split open.

  A window.

  And inside that window, the impossible vision Americ-Ana knew better than any medical explanation.

  The vault beneath the altar.

  Solomon’s Temple.

  The Bronze Sea.

  The vortex.

  Truth revealed.

  Americ-Ana screamed upward, at the world, at Nioh, at God, at anything that could still hear.

  “NIOH! LET GO OF MY GRANDPARENTS NOW!”

  Nioh squeezed harder. Her grandparents choked, trapped in that slime that smelled of death.

  Then everything began to be pulled upward. The hospital vortex became the same vortex as the Bronze Sea, and the window turned into a portal.

  Americ-Ana forced her body to obey urgency and threw herself into it. It wasn’t running. It was crossing.

  She twisted in the air and began to swim through the wind, cutting through the invisible current, going straight for her grandparents.

  The portal above began to shrink.

  Nioh saw it and laughed.

  “If you don’t get out in time, you’ll be trapped forever in the Wheel of Samsara.”

  Americ-Ana hurled herself again and slammed into Nioh. She grabbed whatever she could grab, tore chunks of that slime away with her hands, with hatred, with pain, with desperation.

  “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I’m not leaving without my grandparents!”

  Nioh laughed louder, crazed, delighted by his own cruelty.

  “The portal is going to close. We’ll stay together here. Forever. For all eternity.”

  Americ-Ana grabbed her grandparents. Her finger found Nonna’s hand. Her other hand found Nono’s arm. She squeezed, begging with her whole body.

  “NO.” she said, crying. “You’re coming with me. You’re coming with me!”

  The vortex pulled. The portal was already an iris closing.

  It was her grandfather who spoke first, his voice trembling, not with cowardice, but with urgency. His eyes were fixed above, on the slit of light shrinking fast, sucking in the air and reality itself.

  “Ana, my little granddaughter… this hole is closing. It’s tearing you out of here.”

  Her grandmother added, with a brightness in her eyes that hurt because it was so whole. Her eyes weren’t trying to understand the impossible, they were trying to save what could still be saved.

  “We don’t understand any of this… but we understand you. If you stay, you won’t come back, you won’t get out. And you’ll be trapped here with this monster.”

  They looked at each other for a second, and in that look an entire life could fit. The kind of silent conversation no couple pretends. They had already decided.

  “This wasn’t for your life to end here,” Nonna said, simple, firm, with no spare poetry.

  “Not at all,” Nono confirmed, and the words came with the gravity of someone who has buried many things without letting the world notice.

  Americ-Ana shook her head, desperate, trying to deny with enough force to tear the universe open with her scream.

  “No! No, no, no! You can’t… not here… not with him… I won’t accept it!”

  Americ-Ana locked her fingers into theirs, trying to become an anchor, trying to become fate. The vortex tugged at her legs with blind hunger. The air in her chest turned into a struggle. The portal, up there, was no longer a portal. It was a fissure. A final breath.

  Her grandfather strained, and for an instant Americ-Ana felt the slime loosen. Feces and that milky stuff wrapping his body gave way just a little, enough to make room for her grandmother too. They managed to free their arms, only enough to do what they needed to do.

  But their eyes were the eyes of choice.

  “I love you, my little granddaughter,” her grandfather said, and there was no heroism in it, only truth.

  “I love you, my big granddaughter,” her grandmother said, with a smile that tried to be light.

  And then they let go.

  Americ-Ana felt the world tear her body away. The portal yanked at her legs, yanked at her feet, yanked at the air, yanked at her crying, yanked at everything. She flew backward, thrashing, trying to grab at nothing, trying to return, screaming without sound, because the vortex swallowed even her own voice.

  Down below, Nioh remained caught in the chaos for an instant, clinging to nothing, laughing with his entire body, the feces vibrating in its very essence, triumphant, alive, offensive.

  “I told you!” Nioh roared. “I told you you’d regret it! I told you, Americ-Ana! I told you!”

  Americ-Ana looked down one last time.

  Her grandparents were still there. Looking at her. A brightness in their eyes. A short smile. A goodbye that tried to be light, only so it wouldn’t destroy what was left.

  The portal closed.

  Darkness swallowed everything.

  The darkness did not become light.

  It became silence.

  Americ-Ana opened her eyes inside still water, heavy, with the taste of metal on her tongue, and for a second she couldn’t tell whether she was rising or sinking. The Bronze Sea no longer roared. There was no vortex. There was no wind. Only mist, dust hanging in the air, debris from the Temple floating, motionless, as if the vault were holding its breath.

  She lifted her head, dragged in air with a jolt, and water slid from her face, cold, slow.

  Then she saw.

  Bodies.

  Floating.

  Spyder’s web still wrapped each one, thick, gleaming under the dull light that filtered through the mist. That tangle held pockets of air, trapped the “stasis fluid” against the skin, gave the bodies a waxed, unreal, almost display-case look. They drifted without hurry, turning slightly, bumping into one another when Americ-Ana moved.

  “No.” The word came out small. “No… no… it can’t be.”

  Americ-Ana began to swim, pushing through water and bodies, carving a path with her shoulders, with her hands, with desperation. Her heart beat so loudly it smothered everything else. Her throat burned from having swallowed so much water on the other side of the portal.

  Americ-Ana turned one body by the shoulder. She saw the face, the eyes closed, the stigma of “stasis” on the skin.

  “Seth...”

  Another one, caught in the webbing, hair plastered to the forehead.

  “Madam Chancellor...”

  She forced the next body to turn. The “stasis fluid” gleamed.

  “Abda... Adoniram...”

  Farther on, the square face, the expression frozen.

  “Thor...”

  And then, in sequence, with the water slapping her chest and her muscles burning:

  “Jessie... Donnie... Parys... Nome-Rocky...”

  She found Patron Uvo floating on his side, the webbing still cinched around his ribs, and felt her stomach drop, as if she’d stepped into empty air.

  The list of bodies ended.

  And that made no sense.

  Americ-Ana stopped in the middle of the Bronze Sea and began to turn slowly, surrounded by bodies, mist, and bronze.

  She searched again. She searched with her eyes, with her hands, with her whole body. She swam faster, bumping, tugging, turning them over.

  “Nono?” She swallowed water and coughed. “Nonna?”

  Nothing.

  She repeated it, louder, her voice broken.

  “Grandpa? Grandma?”

  Nothing.

  Panic tried to become rage, but it hit her chest and came back as pain.

  Americ-Ana searched a third time, with no logic at all, only instinct. The world offered no answer. Only that motionless water, that ceiling lost in the mist, that dust suspended, that sensation that time had been switched off and forgotten.

  Reality entered her head in two blows.

  First: “I didn’t find them.”

  Second: “They’re not here.”

  The second one opened the ground.

  Americ-Ana screamed, and the sound died, muffled by the mist. She punched the water with all her strength. The blow raised a short wave, scattered “stasis,” shook the webs, shoved bodies that turned and bumped into one another with a soft and horrible touch.

  She spat water, gagged up a metallic taste, and sobbed without air.

  A voice came from above, cutting through the silence.

  “Americ-Ana! Are you okay? What happened?”

  Americ-Ana lifted her gaze and saw Wwwyye at the rim of the Bronze Sea, still wearing the demon Andras’s skin. The scales looked dimmer now, without the ritual’s frenzy, but still alive, breathing along with her body.

  Another voice, right beside it.

  “My God… what happened?”

  Astyam appeared too, also wearing the demon Andras’s skin, his shoulder taut, his gaze trying to measure the damage.

  Americ-Ana tried to answer and failed on the first attempt. Her tongue felt heavy. Her chest felt like weight.

  Then she spoke, and the words came out too profane, but too true to stay trapped.

  “My grandparents… they got stuck in the Wheel of Samsara.” She swallowed hard. “Nioh trapped them there.”

  Wwwyye didn’t wait for an explanation. She stepped into the water with a stride that splashed liquid bronze in every direction. The impact displaced floating bodies. She pushed through to Americ-Ana and hugged her, hard, squeezing without asking permission, trying to hold the world in place.

  “No… Americ-Ana… my God…” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”

  Astyam stepped in too. The water rose to his waist, then to his chest. He came close and set his hand on Americ-Ana’s shoulder. His hand trembled a little, but he kept it there, steady, because there was no sentence big enough.

  Americ-Ana drew in air, and the air turned into a knife.

  Then the break hit.

  “There has to be a way.” She tore herself out of the embrace, eyes wide, breath short. “I’m going to open it. I’m going to open it. I have to save them.”

  Wwwyye tried to hold her. Americ-Ana thrashed, slipped between floating bodies, shoved webs aside with her forearms, her mind spinning faster than the still water.

  “You don’t understand.” Americ-Ana’s voice rose. “I need to do something now.”

  At the rim, Americ-Ana saw the necklace left behind, the KING MatNat sphere hanging from it, wet, and she saw Andras’s skin there too, gathered, abandoned, like a shell that had retreated when she came back. A piece of hell left on the floor.

  Americ-Ana dragged herself through the water, grabbed the sphere, shoved the necklace over her head with trembling fingers. The skin answered in the same instant, climbing her body, clinging, sealing, rekindling the scales.

  Americ-Ana was crying as she spoke.

  “Demon Andras… I wish to return to the Wheel of Samsara… I wish to save my grandparents.”

  And she dove.

  The water swallowed the sound.

  Down below, the bronze floor appeared, smooth, without fissure, without portal, without passage. Nothing but ancient metal. Americ-Ana touched the bottom and despair turned to violence.

  She began to punch.

  One blow. Two. Three.

  The demon’s scales amplified the impact. The bronze trembled. A deep vibration rose through her bones and ran through the entire Bronze Sea, shaking the floating bodies above.

  Americ-Ana struck again. Harder. Without air.

  Nothing opened.

  She punched until her knuckles screamed. Until pain became something distant.

  Then hands grabbed her arms.

  Wwwyye on one side. Astyam on the other.

  They had dived in and were hauling hard, dragging Americ-Ana back up. She fought them, unhinged, trying to get back to the bottom, trying to negotiate with metal.

  When her head broke the surface, she screamed and swallowed air wrong.

  “No! No!” She shook violently. “Let me try. Let me try. I want my grandparents.”

  Wwwyye locked her in a crushing embrace, almost a blow, almost restraint.

  “Listen.” Wwwyye’s lips were trembling. “There are other ways. But not like this.”

  Americ-Ana twisted inside the embrace and drove a punch into Wwwyye’s face.

  A crack.

  Blood.

  Wwwyye staggered, her hand going straight to her nose, red spilling between her fingers. Andras’s skin reacted, trying to seal, trying to contain, but the shock had already landed.

  Astyam tried to hold Americ-Ana by the shoulders and she threw another punch.

  His nose cracked too. He let out a short groan, his hand covering his face. Blood ran fast, hot, clashing against the cold of the Bronze Sea.

  Wwwyye drew a deep breath, stemming it as best she could, and looked at Americ-Ana without anger, only with the hardness of survival.

  “You’re not going to bring them back by dying here,” Wwwyye said quietly, but each syllable carried weight. “You’ll be more useful alive than as a corpse.”

  Astyam, his nose bleeding, dragged in air with difficulty, and his voice came out broken.

  “When you crossed… the Glory of God began to manifest. The ritual failed, it wasn’t completed, so the Glory of God withdrew… and that’s when you and the bodies reappeared.” Astyam lowered his eyes for a moment. “The portal closed. Closed… maybe... forever.”

  Wwwyye turned her face toward Astyam, a hard look, censoring the words “closed” and “forever.” Astyam swallowed what he was going to say and became smaller inside his own guilt.

  Americ-Ana cried in a way that seemed to tear her throat.

  “No… no… no…”

  Then came the snap.

  It wasn’t just any sound. It was the entire vault groaning. Bronze complaining. Stones giving way by a millimeter. Water trembling in short waves. Mist shivering, as if something enormous had just awakened inside the vault.

  The three of them looked up.

  Near the ceiling, the little box wrapped in parchment floated, sovereign. The golden letters shone with an intensity that didn’t match anything else in that place. The box began to descend, slow, and with every inch the vault vibrated again, harder, fissures coughing dust from the columns, particles falling from the Temple, a tremor that warned: “This won’t hold.”

  Astyam clenched his teeth.

  “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  Wwwyye turned, taking in all the bodies floating around them.

  “We have to get all the bodies out.”

  Americ-Ana, still shaking, her eyes still shattered, spoke with an empty voice:

  “I’m not leaving.”

  Astyam went to Americ-Ana and held her by the shoulders.

  “Listen. This isn’t how you get your grandparents back. Not like this. If you stay here, you die. And your grandparents stay trapped.”

  Wwwyye stepped closer, the blood still marked on her nose, her gaze steady.

  “Be strong for them. Live for them.”

  Another snap. The little box dropped a little farther. The vibration slung water out of the Bronze Sea. The bodies floated and knocked against the bronze rim. The vault answered with fresh cracks.

  Wwwyye jerked her chin, decisive.

  “We’re taking everyone to the Jump Chronos Station. Fast.”

  Astyam nodded, swallowing fear.

  “Now.”

  The vault trembled from within, not with a boom, but with a pulse. The little box hovered above, descending slowly, sovereign, and every miserable inch of progress made the Temple answer in cracks, in dust, in a collapse that was, at the same time, an irreversible decision.

  The mist made everything feel far away. Debris hung in the air and, for a second, the sacred Solomon’s Temple seemed suspended between existing and becoming memory.

  Americ-Ana was in the Bronze Sea, water up to her waist, her body sheathed in the scales of the demon Andras. The serpent-skin tightened around her muscles, upheld the impossible, but did not silence what hurt inside. There was a hole torn open in her chest, the size of two names that were not there.

  Nono. Nonna.

  She didn’t say anything. She only breathed, short, and forced herself to look at what she could still save.

  The bodies floated, wrapped in Spyder’s web, coated in “stasis fluid,” a milky shine on the skin, eyes closed, breath absent enough to look like death and present enough to keep hope alive.

  Wwwyye slapped the rim of the Bronze Sea and the water rose in heavy waves.

  “Grab one. I’ll grab another.” She spat the words, her face hard. “Astyam, move.”

  Astyam was already moving. The demon Andras’s skin on his body gleamed wet under the vault’s cold vapor.

  Americ-Ana dove beneath a body and pulled. The webs resisted, tight, thick, and Andras’s skin answered, the scales contracting, hardening, tearing through the strands with brutal force. The first body rose with her, heavy, “stasis fluid” running off in threads.

  Nome-Rocky.

  His weight in her arms snapped something in memory. Hell, metal, wind tearing at her face, the motorcycle swallowing the road. Nome-Rocky riding and Americ-Ana clinging behind him, screaming not to be taken by the void, the whole world feeling like an endless fall.

  Americ-Ana clenched her teeth.

  “Not now,” she whispered to herself, and pushed up.

  Americ-Ana climbed the rim of the Bronze Sea and jumped over one of the bronze oxen. She landed on ground that was no longer ground, it was fissures. The vault gave another pulse. The little box dropped a little farther.

  Above, a cluster of the Temple’s golden ornaments came loose with a long groan and crashed down. It didn’t fall as broken stone, it fell as broken dignity. The sound was dry, offensive, and dust rose with the smell of something ancient that was not meant to die.

  Wwwyye came out of the Bronze Sea carrying Seth. His body was stiff with “stasis fluid,” the webbing cinched around his chest. Even so, Wwwyye carried him with steadiness.

  For a second, Wwwyye stared at Seth’s face and her mouth opened into a smile that wasn’t happiness, it was nerve.

  The motorcycle. Hell. The pillion. The wind burning. Seth riding as if he owned the plunge.

  Wwwyye ground her teeth.

  “You owe me for this, idiot,” she whispered, and ran.

  Astyam surfaced with Parys Bloodpure in his arms. Her weight made his knees give an inch, but Andras’s skin held, tied his body together from the inside and forced him upright.

  Wwwyye looked, and the sarcasm came on reflex, because it was the only way to breathe in that end of the world.

  “Who would have thought. The biggest nerd of all carrying the prom princess in his arms.”

  Astyam turned red, even in the dust-storm.

  “Not now,” he said, and his voice came out broken.

  “That’s exactly why,” Wwwyye replied, and ran faster.

  The dark corridor swallowed the three of them as they sprinted with the bodies. With each return, the Temple seemed lower, more crooked, more vulnerable. The columns vibrated, cracks grew, ancient inscriptions split in half. A symbol carved into a stone arch fell whole, not in pieces, but as a block, and the impact made the Bronze Sea shudder.

  The little box kept descending and the vault kept trembling.

  The Jump Chronos Station waited at the end of the corridor, a technical, cold glow in the heart of the dark. They shoved each body into the safety field and went back, went back, went back, repeating the cycle until everyone was safe.

  Seth, freed.

  Nome-Rocky, freed.

  Parys, freed.

  Thor, Donnie, Jessie, Abda, Adoniram, Patron Uvo, all torn from the water, one by one, with arms burning and scales grinding, each return harder, each tremor closer to collapse.

  And Americ-Ana, the whole time, with a face too empty to be courage.

  When only the Chancellor remained, her heart stumbled.

  Americ-Ana pulled the Chancellor’s body toward her. The webbing gave with a snap, the “stasis fluid” slid down the serpent armor, and Americ-Ana’s hand trembled, not from the weight, but from memory.

  Geburah. The pyramid. The voice. The “honey” that irritated and saved at the same time. The impossible way of being hard and, still, being on her side.

  And then came the cruelest snap of all, a name that wasn’t a name, it was a foothold over the abyss.

  “Poppa.”

  Wwwyye and Astyam were two steps away, already shifting the weight of another body, and they turned at the same time.

  “What?” Astyam asked.

  Americ-Ana swallowed, her eyes burning.

  “Poppandacorn.”

  The word was spoken with a hunger that wasn’t for a toy, it was for survival. It was the last piece of world that hadn’t been torn away from Americ-Ana.

  Wwwyye understood immediately. It wasn’t pity, it was recognition. She had seen Americ-Ana lose too much. And she had seen Americ-Ana stay standing, holding the impossible with both hands.

  “Go,” Wwwyye said. “He and I will cover you.”

  Astyam nodded, without arguing.

  “Fast.”

  Wwwyye and Astyam hurried together to carry the Chancellor’s body to the Jump Chronos Station. Then they ran to where the remains of the Poppandamonster had been left. The ground was already cracked, stones sliding into opening fissures, the Temple groaning without pause.

  And there, among fragments of hardened purple slime, among plates of burned material and twisted metal, there was the head.

  The monstrous head of Poppandamonster.

  Its mouth open, teeth still set in an eternal snarl, purple eyes dimming and flaring with a faulty pulse.

  Americ-Ana approached, her chest rising and falling in a broken rhythm.

  “Poppa...” she said again, and this time it was a prayer.

  Something moved in the corner.

  Antichrist.

  The little black fox was curled up there, hidden among the wreckage, eyes shining in the dark, its small body trembling with shock.

  Astyam knelt, relief exploding across his face.

  “Antichrist. Thank God,” he whispered, and lifted the animal into his arms with care.

  Antichrist sniffed the air, his muzzle tightening, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the light coming from the Bronze Sea.

  The little box.

  It was already lower, descending with cruel patience, gold glinting in the mist.

  A crash tore through the vault. A rock broke loose from the ceiling and fell far too close. The impact jolted everything, and Antichrist bolted in fright, springing out of Astyam’s arms in a single leap.

  “Antichrist!” Astyam shouted. “Wait!”

  The little fox ran in a straight line for the Bronze Sea, small, fast, obsessive, and jumped onto the rim.

  The little box was close enough to light Antichrist’s black fur with golden reflections.

  Antichrist paused for half a second. His mouth opened.

  Antichrist swallowed.

  The little box vanished whole inside him.

  Astyam froze.

  “No,” he said, dry with despair. “Antichrist swallowed the little box.”

  Wwwyye exhaled.

  “Shit.”

  Then Astyam and Wwwyye ran toward Antichrist.

  The vault answered at once. It wasn’t just trembling. It was acceleration. Cracks raced across the floor, climbing columns, ripping through walls. A section of the Temple gave way with a long, grinding crash, and a cloud of dust covered half of everything.

  Americ-Ana was no longer looking in Antichrist’s direction. She was standing before the monster’s head. Before the head of Poppandamonster.

  A previous impact had opened a fissure in Poppandamonster’s head, and inside there was purple slime, viscous, alive, corrosive. A slime that wasn’t only matter, it was a verdict.

  In there, trapped, soaked, deformed, was him.

  The true Poppandacorn.

  Too small, too melted, unrecognizable enough to make Americ-Ana’s heart fail for a full second. One eye gone dark, the horn twisted, the panda skin scored with purple burns, the body stuck to the slime that seemed to want to erase his existence.

  Americ-Ana did not cry.

  She went silent.

  And then she moved.

  Americ-Ana drove her arm, sheathed in scaled skin, into the slime and felt the demon Andras scream through her body. The scales contracted, trying to build layers, trying to insulate, trying to protect. Even so, the purple slime bit at the edges of that protection. The pain was immediate, burning, chemical, and the serpent-skin rushed to seal exposed points.

  Americ-Ana punched.

  Blow after blow, the impact tearing through the slime, carving a path, ripping out purple chunks that clung to her and tried to eat the scales.

  Wwwyye shouted from afar as she chased Antichrist along the rim of the Bronze Sea.

  “Americ-Ana, hurry! This place is going to come down!”

  Astyam ran behind her, his voice blown out by fear.

  “Everything’s going to fall!”

  Americ-Ana didn’t answer.

  She punched again. Andras’s skin failed at one point. A strip of her human skin was exposed for an instant, and the purple slime touched it.

  Her scream didn’t come out through her throat. It came out through her entire body.

  The serpent-skin rushed to cover her again, laying layer over layer, and Americ-Ana used that second of protection to reach what mattered.

  Her fingers touched what was left of Poppandacorn.

  He was cold and hot at the same time, full of faults, full of internal noise, a toy that looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb.

  And still, Poppandacorn was Poppandacorn.

  Americ-Ana pulled.

  The purple slime tried to hold on. Andras’s skin tried to keep Americ-Ana’s arm from being burned through. Her body shook, nearly gave out.

  And then Poppandacorn came free.

  A smear of purple slime came with him, stuck on, trying to keep devouring, and Americ-Ana tore it away with her hand, even as she felt the pain punch through the protection.

  Americ-Ana pressed Poppandacorn to her chest.

  “Enough,” she whispered, and the word wasn’t for the world, it was for life.

  Another rock fell.

  Not nearby. In the way.

  The corridor to the Jump Chronos Station was swallowed by a gigantic block of stone and metal, sacred carvings from Solomon’s Temple shattered in the collapse, fragments of inscription crushed into the floor. The exit became a wall.

  Astyam and Wwwyye had already gone through the portal with Antichrist. Only Americ-Ana, with what was left of Poppandacorn in her arms, was left behind.

  Americ-Ana stared at the rock sealing the path to the portal.

  Her chest rose and fell.

  “I’m not going to lose anything else,” Americ-Ana said, and this time her voice had blade.

  Americ-Ana clutched Poppandacorn to her chest and took two steps back, Andras’s skin pulsing on alert, and sprinted.

  The leap came with a serpent’s agility. Americ-Ana landed and drove her fist into the rock with the hand that was free, without hesitation, without measuring. The impact cracked the block. A second punch opened a fissure. A third shattered enough for a body to pass through.

  A path appeared.

  Americ-Ana pressed Poppandacorn tighter to her own body and ran.

  The vault was screaming. The Temple collapsed in layers. One last arch gave way, and the dust came like an avalanche. The sound was too huge to fit inside an ear.

  In the distance, Astyam and Wwwyye were at the mouth of the corridor, near the Jump Chronos Station, shouting to her, gesturing, their faces smeared, their eyes enormous.

  “Run!” Wwwyye roared.

  “Fast!” Astyam pointed, desperate.

  Americ-Ana saw the shadow above. She saw the rock falling with a terrifying slowness, descending to crush everything.

  There wasn’t time.

  Americ-Ana squeezed Poppandacorn one more time, pressed her face to him, a second no one had the right to have in that chaos.

  And then she threw.

  She hurled what was left of Poppandacorn through the portal with all the strength of her body and her desperation. The small robotic panda crossed the Jump Chronos Station and vanished to the other side, flying.

  Americ-Ana ran two more steps.

  The rock came down.

  Everything fell onto Americ-Ana.