✦ The Hunter's Frustration
Kane pulverised the warped steel door of the brownstone, his customised spiritual scanner screaming an alarm. The infernal scent was thick, almost suffocating pure, cold Wrath energy had calcified the space. He burst inside, silver shotgun raised, ready to purge the target.
The apartment lay empty.
Kane stopped dead, his hard face twisting in slow, cold fury. The energy was residual, a deliberate residue. The Emissary hadn't run in panic; he had laid a precise, timed scent marker to draw the hunter off-guard.
"Clever," Kane snarled, the word a poison in his mouth. He holstered the shotgun and checked his sensor. The residual scent led a short path toward the docks, but the trail went suddenly cold. The target had plunged into an area of high spiritual distortion.
Kane slammed his fist into the wall, the brick crumbling. He was tracking an intelligent demon; this one used discipline and human psychology.
"You're not getting away from me, little flame," Kane vowed, pulling up the city's old schematics. Only one area could mask a signal this potent: the subterranean arterial network, where the flow of humanity's chaotic sin created a spiritual miasma.
He smiled, a grim, predatory flash. The hunt was on.
✦ The Static of Sin
The air in the subterranean network was a suffocating blanket of moisture, rust, and the spiritual detritus of millions of mortals living just feet above. Ethan descended through a maintenance hatch into a massive, forgotten drainage artery; the sound of rushing, fetid water echoed in the oppressive blackness.
✦ Spiritual Camouflage.
The sheer volume of ambient, chaotic sin provided perfect spiritual static. The thousands of threads of everyday corruption minor Lust, casual Greed, petty Wrath formed a psychic cloud that made the focused, controlled energy of the Emissary virtually invisible to external tracking.
Ethan moved with an unnatural grace, his gold-ringed eyes adapting to the dark. The noise was unbearable, but he forced the Gluttony aspect of his core to absorb the worst of the sensory overload. He was immersed in the darkness, the true face of the city.
He found a temporary perch beneath an access grate. He was safe from Kane, for now. He allowed himself a moment to simply exist, letting the infernal core draw a low, constant hum of power from the surrounding sin-flow.
Then, the Sin Perception malfunctioned in a catastrophic, unexpected way.
It wasn't the searing red of corruption, nor the white-hot pain of Morian's counter-magic. It was a single, devastating spike of blinding, painful white light that sheared through the chaos of the subterranean network, sharp and cold as ozone.
The purity was so intense, so aggressively absolute, that it felt like being submerged in liquid nitrogen. The sigil screamed, shrinking violently against his chest, trying to hide from the overwhelming divine presence.
Celestial. Heaven's Enforcer, coming to investigate the massive spiritual disruption he'd caused.
✦ The Broken Halo
Above him, the source of the light coalesced. The air in the service tunnel fissured, tearing open in a temporary, geometric rift—a limited Celestial Gate. Out stepped Seraphina Cross.
She wore simple, gleaming white tactical armour and carried a blade of shimmering silver light. Her presence was cold, perfect, and terrifyingly devoid of warmth. A delicate silver halo floated above her head, casting the perfect, cold judgment light. She was beautiful in the terrifying way of a storm front.
✦ Mistaken Identity.
Seraphina's eyes, the colour of frozen sky, locked directly onto the raw output of the Emissary's power signature leaking through the grate. She saw the intense, controlled Wrath. She saw the cold, systemic Order. She didn't see the struggling man beneath the mark; she only saw the pure, high-value Demon Lord that the infernal signature indicated.
"An organised threat," Seraphina's voice was a telepathic bolt, ringing with the cold authority of the Divine. "High-level infernal agent detected. Targeting for immediate purge."
She raised the silver blade, the weapon humming with cleansing power, ready to strike the moment the infernal entity emerged.
Ethan pulled himself back into the shadow of the sewer pipe, his spiritual camouflage ruined by her proximity. The purifying light was agonisingly acid on his soul. He fought to control the Wrath, fearing that a reflex strike would lead to the destruction of the human world he still desperately clung to.
He looked up through the grate, catching a final, fleeting glimpse of his celestial hunter. The face was older, harder, etched with the cold discipline of a warrior, but he knew the eyes. It was the girl he had died for. Seraphina.
She had been upgraded, purified, and weaponised by Heaven, and she was now the perfect celestial hunter.
✦ The Tragic Rivalry is Born.
The realisation was a punch to his core, overriding even the searing pain of the celestial energy. The sigil on his chest, the Ascendant Wound, flared with a mixture of agony and profound, tragic bitterness. The central conflict of his existence was now standing right above him, armed with a silver blade and the memory of his sacrifice.
He had to get out, and fast, before the angel realised her target was the same man who saved her.