Flames were spreading now.
Not Monk fire.Flint fire.
It licked across trees and roots with purpose — spiraling around people, dodging innocents, wrapping cursed disciples like barbed warmth. His flames didn't burn randomly. They chose targets.
A disciple screamed as cursed scripture ignited in their mouth.
Another fell to their knees, robes combusting around an old love letter hidden in their pocket.
Flint's boots crunched over ash.
His shirt was already gone. His teeth clenched. Every step dragged the embers closer to a memory only he knew.
"I don't care who you pray to," he snarled. "If you're here to erase us, you burn."
Juno called out, "You're turning the forest into a war crime!"
He grinned, eyes glowing with cracked halos of ember light. "I'm a one-man crusade."
Nearby, Spillglass was losing his mind.
A disciple had tried to purify him — whispered scripture, tried to 'unbind his soul.'
He responded by shotgunning half a cursed wine bottle, hiccuping once, and vomiting cursed energy in the shape of a choir of angry fish.
The Monk's follower collapsed screaming.Spillglass leaned against a rock and wheezed,
"Why is the sun trying to kill me?"
Junpei found him. "You good?"
"No. I think I just saw God's liver and it was disappointed."
Then it happened.
Spillglass exhaled cursed breath — wine-soaked, regret-flavored, full of every failed confession and drunken rant he ever swallowed.
His aura flared.
It twitched.
Hungover halos spun behind him, orbiting his skull like busted sacred geometry. Every ring hummed with bad choices and worse coping mechanisms.
His cursed technique snapped awake:
Hangover Halo: Drunken State of Grace.
He stood.
Slurred a half-prayer, half-insult.
And the air twisted.A disciple raised their blade.
Spillglass burped and said, "Hope you like trauma shots."
Their cursed blade shattered mid-swing — the air around it warped into a spinning halo that clanged like a broken bell.
Then he staggered forward and headbutted the guy, aura flaring on contact, and the dude flew twenty meters back into a burning tree.
Junpei blinked. "How did you—?"
"Painkiller theology, baby," Spillglass groaned. "Everything hurts less when you're this f*cked."
Back toward the altar clearing, the Monk turned his blindfolded gaze toward the disturbance.
He felt the change. The fire. The halo. The chaos.
So did Father Asher.
He smiled, slow, bitter, proud.
"They're ready."
Across the battleground, the Crimson Communion gathered — battered, bleeding, laughing. Juno was swaying. Thorne's weapon was humming with grief. Flint was radiating wildfire.
Spillglass leaned against Junpei, muttering something about "cursed tequila snakes" and "repressed Catholicism."
Then… something stirred beneath the altar.
The Monk stopped chanting.
From deep below the battlefield, a new cursed entity stirred — something ancient, locked, sealed beneath the shrine ground.
Its seal was cracking.
Father Asher's smile faded.
"Well, sh*t."