Mictecacihuatl seized control, forcing Jimena’s body to dash backward just as Alvarado lunged. His wretched embrace snapped shut on empty air. White flames reacted in tandem, lashing outward and licking hungrily at the abomination’s grey flesh, attempting to cauterize and consume the corruption bleeding from it.

  Xolo growled from her left shoulder.

  Divinity pooled within his snout as the celestial moon ring dimmed, drained of its light. He drew upon every faith-laden emotion he had claimed, compressing them into a single, unstable core. Rage ignited first—ominous red—then curdled into loathing’s orange, deepened into boundless blue grief that threatened to spill free. At last, all collapsed inward, birthing a terrifying violet sphere so dense it made the air scream and the ground char beneath its presence.

  Reality trembled around it.

  Xolo released the attack gently, as if setting free a fragile butterfly.

  The moment it left his control, the sphere expanded violently. It tore through the outstretched grey arm of the abomination, erasing it completely. Rancorous souls wailed—not in pain, but relief—as they were consumed by the storm of emotion. Their lingering intentions unraveled, releasing their clawed hold on Alvarado’s shattered soul.

  Then came Jimena’s sun wheel.

  Warm, nurturing light spilled forth, washing over what Xolo had torn away. Where rage had scoured, joy soothed. She giggled as a buoyant warmth flooded her body, ecstatic pink light radiating from the right. Her Xoloitzcuintli helm refracted a kaleidoscope of emotion through its eyes, bathing the battlefield in living color.

  Mictecacihuatl guided Jimena’s body with precise grace. She weaved between impossibly fast lunges, avoiding the creature again and again. Even reduced to a single arm, it refused to relent. Salvation—real or imagined—was too close to abandon.

  “Por favor… por favor…” it begged.

  The words were pitiful. The hunger in its eyes was not.

  Mictecacihuatl spun with the next charge, slipping toward the creature’s missing side. Jimena’s heel slammed into its torso with devastating force. The blow staggered it—but did not stop it. The abomination reeled, then lurched forward once more, grasping blindly.

  Alvarado was gone.

  What remained was a mind splintered beyond repair. Though the echoes of purged souls had briefly soothed him, the hundreds he had “purified” with his golden wave had taken pieces of him in death. Martyrs all, they had hollowed him out, preparing him for the slaughter he now faced.

  The malformed husk wailed, as though understanding the thoughts passing through Mictecacihuatl’s divine gaze.

  But there was no comprehension left within it.

  Only a shell of a cruel man—empty, ruined, and waiting for judgment to finally fall.

  Mictecacihuatl settled into a grim, inexorable rhythm, the final preparations for her strike nearly complete. Beneath Jimena’s skin, the sacred tattoos began to chant—a low, throbbing melody of war. The pictograms, swollen with divinity, pulsed with living intent, their lines writhing as though they might tear free from the flesh that bound them.

  Mictecacihuatl joined the chant.

  Her voice rose as a beautiful dirge, steady and merciless. The Xoloitzcuintli helm fractured, peeling apart into drifting shards of obsidian light. Beneath it was not Jimena’s face—but the goddess’s own. For a fleeting moment, Mictecacihuatl and Jimena existed in perfect synchronization, mortal vessel and divine will aligned to deliver annihilation.

  The air darkened.

  A towering illusory image of the Lady of Death manifested behind them, her gaze utterly devoid of emotion. She exhaled slowly. A dense cloud of sacred smoke poured forth, and within it hundreds of diminutive skulls took form. They swarmed the abomination, tiny jaws clamping down as they gnawed into grey flesh. Piece by piece, they shredded it apart, devouring corruption and burning it away from the inside.

  Their shrill laughter rang through the battlefield—sharp and mocking—drowning out the creature’s miserable shrieks.

  For the first time, Alvarado saw his end.

  A flash of his final moments surfaced—bitter, ignoble, stripped of grandeur.

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  Or so he believed.

  Whispers slithered through what remained of his mind.

  His god’s voice—thin, sharp, eternally present—coiled around his fractured thoughts. Plutus called to him, urging him to stand upon the balance once more. To weigh his soul again. To surrender control, if only for a fleeting instant.

  Alvarado was no longer capable of true choice.

  What remained of his soul resembled a honeycomb rotted through with corruption, its sweetness long turned foul. Rancorous souls had stained every hollow, leaving behind residue even gold could not fully cleanse. Emotion clung where divinity failed, heavy and unresolved.

  Yet this was not why Plutus intervened.

  The god had already foreseen Alvarado’s fate, and it did not concern him. His interest lay elsewhere. Plutus had come to observe—to measure the force that now stood before him. To gather knowledge of an enemy he might one day face again.

  After all, Plutus was not a god who forgave debts.

  He simply waited.

  And when the time came, he collected what was owed.

  Mictecacihuatl felt the change immediately.

  She retreated in a blur of scorched motion, forcing distance between herself and the grotesque creature as it surged with a false second wind. The divinity spilling from it no longer flowed—it warped. Distorted ripples rolled through the air, nausea-inducing waves that left even divine senses unsteady.

  Behind Alvarado, a phantasm of Plutus manifested once more.

  The balance reappeared, semi-solid and trembling, its form barely held together by flickering motes of strained divinity. The halo above Alvarado’s head no longer shone. A sickly green glow coated it instead, exuding rot and stagnation. What had once been a radiant sun now resembled a hollow corpse that moaned with every pulse.

  Even Plutus himself appeared changed.

  An ominous aura clung to his blindfolded form, wrong in a way that scraped against the soul. Beneath the cloth, something glimmered—no longer the impartial light of balance, but an almost demonic radiance that hinted at horrors best left unmeasured.

  “Bow before the balance of god,” Plutus intoned.

  The scales descended, heavy with borrowed authority. Though incomplete, their presence alone crushed the air, instilling dread deep within Jimena’s body. Mictecacihuatl responded instantly.

  Her own phantasm surged into existence.

  “All lay down before death.”

  Her proclamation emptied the celestial wheels at once. The twin rings behind Jimena sputtered, drained of divinity, and vanished as if swallowed by the void. In their absence, the underworld answered.

  Mictecacihuatl’s apparition flickered between states—at one moment a terrifying woman without a jaw, bloodless and absolute; the next, a sensual, mature figure radiating lethal authority. The regal cloak that had followed Jimena throughout her judgment writhed with unrestrained joy, its fabric screaming silently as rancor finally found its feast.

  From the cloak, skulls poured forth in swarms, cackling as they absorbed the deathly aura flooding the underworld domain Mictecacihuatl had summoned. Smoke thickened, reality bending under the pressure.

  Two worlds collided.

  Domains born of divinity crashed against one another, their borders grinding as faith-filled intent erupted into god-guided assaults. Emotions—rage, despair, hunger, inevitability—gave each strike devastating force.

  Yet Mictecacihuatl allowed none of it to touch her chosen.

  Her will was iron. Her pride absolute. No lesser god would be permitted to disturb even the air surrounding Jimena. Death itself stood guard.

  Still, the truth weighed heavily.

  Mictecacihuatl was far from her prime.

  This body—Jimena’s body—had not yet grown enough to withstand the full breadth of her power. To draw deeper would be to shatter her vessel, to unmake the very future she guarded.

  So the goddess held.

  She maintained the crooked balance between death and greed, between judgment and theft, even as strain carved through her essence. The scales trembled. Domains groaned.

  And the outcome—still undecided—hung suspended between gods.