Jimena began to feel stifled as the euphoric haze drained away.

  With it gone, sensation returned in brutal clarity. Every tremor of her soul echoed through her as Mictecacihuatl pushed her body beyond what it was meant to endure. The clashing domains of the godly battle sent crushing waves through existence itself—pressure so immense it threatened to drown her spirit outright.

  She resisted as long as she could.

  But divine tides cared little for mortal will.

  Eventually, the waves won. Jimena and Xolo, having spent every last fragment of themselves, gave out together. Their souls slipped free, drifting into stillness within the gem—quiet, untouched, beyond pain.

  Mictecacihuatl felt the drain immediately.

  And still, she pushed.

  She drove Jimena’s body past its breaking point, scraping at the bottom of an already emptied well, clawing deeper in search of whatever divinity might still linger beneath. Pain flared with every forced draw, every stolen ounce of power tearing through muscle and bone. Yet alongside it came euphoria—overwhelming, intoxicating—as faith surged through her unchecked.

  Such sensations were never meant for mortals.

  They were indulgences best borne by gods.

  Agony wracked the body she inhabited, ever-present as she continued her clash with the abomination. Plutus had fully taken hold of the feeble mind within it, wielding Alvarado as he always had—a puppet finally stripped of even the illusion of strings.

  Jimena’s obsidian armor and tattooed skin—both forged by the combined domain of Mictlan—held firm. They restrained the ferocious fire that would have otherwise consumed her from within. It was the only thing allowing Mictecacihuatl to withstand the abomination’s relentless onslaught.

  But Plutus was patient.

  Where speed once favored Mictecacihuatl, he rebalanced it. The abomination moved just as swiftly now, its single-armed strikes carrying unnatural agility. Plutus bent the scales until every advantage flattened into neutrality, forcing the battle down to the bare limits of what their borrowed bodies could sustain.

  A battlefield stripped of divinity’s excess.

  One the abomination favored.

  Its corrupted form felt no pain—only raw, unchecked strength. Every clumsy swing of its limbs detonated the air in small, violent explosions, power spilling out with each unrefined motion.

  Jimena’s body staggered.

  In response, flames erupted.

  Prismatic fire surged outward, burning with sun-bright fury, desperate to end the battle in one final, absolute act of annihilation. It was instinctual. Protective. A last reflex born of survival.

  But Plutus was ever present.

  He shielded his doll from harm, twisting the balance once more until the flames failed to reach their mark. The scales tipped—not toward justice, nor victory—but toward control.

  Jimena and Alvarado alike were nothing more than instruments now. Tools Plutus played with, without mercy.

  Mictecacihuatl could finally see the end of the road.

  It would shatter Jimena afterward—of that there was no doubt—but it had to be done.

  The goddess called upon her divinity in full. It surged violently within Jimena, disrupting the fragile balance of her body. The celestial moon within the gem cracked, fissures of pale light spidering across its surface, while the celestial sun dimmed, its brilliance smothered beneath the weight of death’s command.

  Xolo awoke with a sharp, pained yelp.

  The spirit lunged to life upon Jimena’s left shoulder, the Xoloitzcuintli helm snapping awake with a blood-soaked snarl. Instinct overrode consequence. Death was near, and Xolo would not sleep through its approach.

  Within the gem, the world was no longer woven of vibrant yarn.

  Only char and fire remained.

  Living entities burned in endless fury, their flames consuming even themselves as fuel. The entire inner world was swallowed by a wrathful pyre, howling without sound.

  Then Jimena awoke.

  Death flooded her heart as consciousness returned—not gently, but like a blade. The numbness left behind by prolonged ecstasy peeled away, revealing pain beneath it so vast it felt infinite. Even as a passenger within her own body, she felt like agony given form.

  Mictecacihuatl had borne the worst of it herself, shouldering the bulk of the suffering to spare her chosen.

  What remained—only a fraction—was still enough to make Jimena doubt there would be anything left of her once this ended. Her body felt ruined, stretched past breaking, held together by divinity and stubborn refusal alone.

  The abomination did not relent.

  Its fetid mass now staggered with every movement, yet it continued forward regardless. Pain meant nothing to it. Its unfeeling body swung wildly, limbs crashing into earth and towering plants alike, leaving devastation in careless arcs.

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  Corruption devoured everything it touched, greed made manifest. Like a bottomless abyss, it drew in faith itself, tearing at the land as Plutus wrestled Mictecacihuatl for dominion through their clashing domains.

  Then Plutus surged.

  A final, deliberate pulse of power rippled outward.

  The husk had reached its full value. The corruption had finished consuming what remained of Alvarado—his soul erased entirely, nothing left to weigh or judge. Only the shell endured, blackened and charred by prismatic flame, animated solely by the will of the god who claimed it.

  It moved not because it lived—

  —but because Plutus commanded it to.

  Mictecacihuatl and Plutus flared with divine intent, their presences swelling as they began their final intonations. Glyphs blossomed around them, radiant and terrible, as crushing pressure descended upon the land. Beneath Mictecacihuatl, the earth cracked and withered, aging into sand as though centuries passed in a single breath.

  Tattoos long since emptied filled instantly as the goddess flooded Jimena’s body with all the divinity it could possibly endure. Mictecacihuatl charged forward for the final clash, weaving through the abomination’s awkward, violent flailing. In the struggle against Plutus, she tore loose fragments of faith and fed them back into her chosen—granting both Jimena and Xolo a final surge.

  Yet Xolo surprised her.

  The spirit seized the energy entirely, claiming it for himself.

  Xolo began condensing another sphere of pure divinity, far denser than before. Faith in the surrounding land was sucked dry, devoured by the overwhelming emotion of his last stand. Jimena’s gem cracked further beneath the strain, fractures spiderwebbing through it—but the process could no longer be stopped.

  Jimena snapped fully awake.

  Emotions surged through her, instinctively reaching for fantastical powers that had once answered her call. But there was nothing left. Everything had already been burned away. In its place lay only a vast, ominous stillness.

  She was left with no choice but to watch—trapped within the right shoulder of the Xoloitzcuintli helm—an observer to her own undoing.

  Faith was gone. Spent entirely.

  Only the gods remained, drawing from their own reserves—power vast enough to annihilate any vessel that dared contain it.

  Plutus pressed that advantage without hesitation.

  He cared nothing for the integrity of his vessel, only for forcing Mictecacihuatl to reveal more. His prolonged intonation was deliberate, hungry with expectation.

  What Jimena experienced—even diluted to a fraction—would have killed any ordinary mortal outright. Yet she endured, her expression slowly breaking as she surrendered the burden to her goddess.

  “Let phantoms roam the land.

  Let skeletons dance at midnight.

  Let dead flesh reincarnate.”

  A massive pictogram manifested behind Mictecacihuatl’s phantasm—the glyph of death fully realized, swollen with the rancor of the long dead. A gate tore open, connecting directly to Mictlan.

  From it poured spirits, skeletons, and reanimated flesh.

  The macabre dead spilled forth without order, hurling themselves into the battlefield. They flooded the abomination’s path, throwing their bodies into its advance as it lunged for Jimena.

  At that same moment, Plutus completed his own chant.

  The glyph of balance descended.

  Reality warped beneath its presence, bending to divine decree as chains of gold manifested from nothingness.

  “Todo tiene valor ante dios.

  Todo es esclavo ante el oro.”

  The chains lashed outward, ensnaring ghouls and phantoms alike—heedless of intangibility or death. They transmuted flesh and spirit into gold mid-motion, yet the dead did not stop. Their gilded bodies latched onto the abomination, piling atop it, attempting to bury it beneath sheer mass.

  And it worked.

  More corpses hurled themselves from the gate, heedless of destruction. The inhabitants of Mictlan made their purpose known. They carried their final moments with them, just as the living had not long before on this same blood-soaked ground.

  The dead drank deeply from the emotions of life.

  They surged forward in its honor, giving no quarter to those who dared trample upon their bones.

  Terrifying screams echoed as bodies smashed and crushed together—clawing, biting, tearing without pause. They offered themselves freely to the golden chains, sacrificing even their second deaths to force the abomination down.

  Dead flesh did not hesitate.

  Honor had no meaning to the grave.

  Only purpose remained.