Page 24

Krave eyed the door before them. “And if I fuck up?” he wondered quietly. “Who’s going to bleed out this time?”

“We shouldn’t expect this to be the same,” Kollaborator said, his usual billowing calm moving in fractured slices.

He suddenly glanced down at the cards in his hand.

“Uh…” His alarm shot adrenaline through Kaos.

“Whatever the facts may be this hand, we’ve got twenty-two minutes left on this countdown. ”

“Twenty-two?” Krave balked as Kaos held Jaxi closer.

“Time is misstructured here,” Kross muttered, his tone loaded with warning as he looked all around.

“Fuck me,” Krave muttered, taking two steps toward the gate. “Open what was sealed without force.”

The air changed and Kaos caught his breath when Jaxi's hands latched to his arms, nails digging as the air thinned around them.

Kaos sent his Rage through her, coating her cells with power while trapping every scrap of oxygen between his wings and sealing it around her. He forced her breath into a loop, divine heat recirculating the air between their bodies while tracking the movements of Krave’s lungs.

A micro-flicker of red lit up his nailbeds followed by a slight shimmer rolling across his shoulders, like heat mirage.The Earthly Kissing King brought his body to near combustion, controlled, but just barely.

Kross adjusted his stance as the need for more air thickened around them.

Krave’s shoulders rose slightly, spine tight, control rigid as he harnessed the air.

Kaos’s eyes flicked to the gate. Its surface trembled, then bulged. Like it recognized Krave’s power and answered with a breath of its own. A sharp line etched across its middle andKrave’s body trembled, veins catching fire from the inside, heat pushing outward.

Kaos pushed his powers carefully into the gate, searching for answers to its purpose, watching ashimmer coil at Krave’s fingertips.

The gate pulsed again. Then moaned. A segment at its center peeled back

Krave drew in a breath, shallow and scorched, his body glowing like a forge on the edge of detonation. He suddenly dropped to his knees and released the oxygen, refilling every pair of lungs he’d sucked it from.

Jaxi gasped and coughed, sagging into Kaos as Kollaborator whispered, “What the hell was that?”

Krave’s lowered head barely shook. “I pulled the air from everything. Held it in my chest until it begged. Then shaped it into a key.”

“Maybe there’s more than one lock,” Kross mused at the shut door.

A flicker pulsed in Kollaborator’s hand right on cue. Another card. Another glow.

Reality began to bend again.

****

The world distorted, every surface slick with unreality, colors running like wet paint across stone.

They all stood on the fractured ground, shadows stretching long beneath a sky that spun with no axis.

Kross stood rigid, head tilted, as if he could feel something crawling toward them out of the fabric of the air.

A flicker ran through the cards—every countdown blurring then turning to zero in the same instant.

The air dropped ten degrees, light bending sideways, the world itself seeming to pause between heartbeats.

Kaos felt it first, the sucking void of power so old and cold it felt like law, not malice, grinding its way into the open.

A presence bled into the center of their circle, silent and total. The figure was tall, faceless, a silhouette carved from fractal glass—its eyes flickering with alien light, runes spiraling just beneath the surface.

“Nominous,” Kaos whispered.

“Composite entity detected,” the being said with a voice that spoke inside bone. “Origin pathways: unauthorized. Multi-source convergence: unregistered. Nephilim-class structure: extrajudicial. Power strata exceed lawful limits. Existence unsanctioned. Termination ordered.”

Kaos felt the ground shudder beneath his feet, reality fracturing in waves that tunneled straight through him.

His senses began to dull—color leached from the world, sound flattening until all that remained was awareness of unraveling.

It started at the edges of his body, a pulling apart so absolute, he could feel himself being written right out of The Pattern.

“Kaos!” Jaxi screamed.

Kross suddenly stood between him and the judge, fire exploding from his wings.

He unleashed targeted wind, slicing at the seams of Nominous’s form, probing for weak points in his code.

He followed with fire, aiming at the forces holding the judge together while lightning danced in calculated patterns, testing for feedback, for a glitch in the law.

Kaos felt the shift—Kross extending his absorption power, reaching deep, mapping the logic of the Pattern, trying to unravel it from the inside out.

Every attack he launched adjusted, recalibrated, a seamless fusion of aggression and insight, hunting for the one flaw that would let him break through.

But Nominous absorbed the force, the fire, even the unraveling force of Kross’s will.

Kaos felt the recoil hit each time, a growing pressure building in his son’s chest. Frustration bled into desperation, and beneath it, the darkness he’d raped into his being tightened its grip, eager to turn his genius into destruction.

Kaos’s pulse hammered as he watched the change—Kross’s attacks growing sharper, wilder, brilliance slipping toward rage. Like a storm pressing in, it crawled up from the depths, threatening to consume everything that made Kross different. That made him good.

Kaos gathered every bit of his fading power and pulled Krave’s winds into his body—air rushing down his throat, expanding his chest, bracing his core. He drew Kildare’s fire till heavenly heat tightened every muscle. Rage steadied his focus and Lust grounded his will, cold and absolute.

Kaos narrowed his vision, combining his sight with Kollaborator’s precision until every thread of darkness inside Kross lit up in stark detail.

He locked on to the thickest root twisting through Kross’s spine.

Kaos hooked his power it, bracing against the ground.

The darkness fought—writhing, burning, snapping under the pressure.

Kaos yanked, inch by inch, forcing the darkness out through Kross’s back.

It tore free in a rush and the shadow slammed into Kaos’s hands, thick and electric, flooding up his arms and spreading through his chest. Muscles seized as the darkness shot through him, heavy and cold, sinking deep into bone.

Kross hit the ground hard, gasping, emptied while the monster settled inside Kaos, every nerve braced for violence, every instinct pressing toward destruction.

Kaos turned toward Nominous, power coiled in every limb, layered and volatile. With every ounce of force he borrowed and owned, he launched himself at the judge—wind lashing, fire roaring, darkness pouring out in a wave meant to obliterate.

The world buckled as power crashed against law in a flood of fury and violence and every forbidden force Kaos could wield.

Kaos hit his knees, winded and trembling, raising his gaze. Nominous stood exactly where he began. The air was still, color faded, as if nothing had touched the judge at all.

Nominous raised his hand, palm opened and leveled at Kaos. The ground shuddered beneath them, air pressed in from every side, crushing, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

The judge’s power tore at every cell, every thought, every scrap of will as Jaxi screamed, fighting to hold him.

Blinding light flashed before him followed by a figure with a drawn sword. “Atzor. Dai.”

The words were foreign but sharp as a blade, burning clear in Kaos’s mind. “Stop . Enough . ”

Nominous unleashed his power at Kaos—the wave of force hurtling from his outstretched hand.

It met the figure’s sword and vanished on impact.

For a breath, nothing moved. Kaos stared at the back of the figure standing between him and the judge.

Light bled off the sword in slow waves. Kaos took in his white cloak and the raven hair spilling down his back.

The sword remained outstretched, held like a barrier between Kaos and the judge.

The voice, now quieter but iron-edged, echoed in the space between them . “ Lo tiga b’vni ha-bekhor.”

Kaos blinked through the haze, breath ragged, focus sharpening on the man who had just commanded Nominous, ‘ Do not touch my first born son.’

A breath of recognition punched the air from Kaos’s lungs. Raviel .

The fierce ownership fell like a gavel and anchored Kaos to the ground. The archangel’s presence filled the air with a pressure equal and yet opposite to Nominous—a power forged to stand against law itself.

The world held its breath as Raviel stood unmoving, sword leveled at the judge.

Nominous regarded him with that impossible, empty gaze—no emotion, only the quiet, crushing weight of law.

Power lingered in the air, raw and unsettled.

Kaos stayed perfectly still, heart pounding, caught between the two authorities in a silent face-off.

A ripple passed through the light of the angel’s sword and a figure that resembled a skeleton of radiating bones walked toward Nominous. He stopped before him and raised one finger then pressed the center of the judge’s blank face.

Kaos watched, pulse stuttering as the surface split—seams of light spiderwebbing out into the air.

The bone-figure lifted the judge’s face off and pressed it to his own.

Light and shadow twisted, patterns shuffling behind mirrored eyes.

Nominous staggered and collapsed as if emptied of meaning.

The skeleton of light turned, knelt before Raviel, and bowed his head.

“The Refractor serves thee,” he said, voice like glass over water.

Raviel nodded once and vanished.

The bone being angled his head, presenting only his glowing profile. “Judgment has been suspended.” The smooth words fell like silk as the edge of his bone mouth tugged upward. “For now.”