The docks were a scar on the city's spiritual landscape, and now they were actively bleeding chaos.
Seraphina Cross stood at the epicentre of the flare, her white armour gleaming against the ruin. The residual energy was offensive: a complex, suffocating mix of cold Wrath, the viscous residue of uncontrolled Reality Warping, and the acrid metallic smell of human fear and spilt holy power.
Her halo pulsed, fighting to stabilise the environment. She could sense the recent, violent instability—a brief moment when the physical laws had been rewritten, only to snap back into place. This was no brute demon; this was a sophisticated weapon.
She saw the unconscious man first: Kane. He was crumpled near a shattered cooling pipe, his custom equipment ruined, his spiritual scanner utterly fried. A closer look revealed that his bones were mostly intact; the attack had been incapacitating, not fatal.
She healed the minor concussions with a single touch of her grace, the silver light closing the wounds instantly. As she did, she received a brutal non-verbal memory from his mind—a flash of vibrating air, a floor that melted to mist, and the terrifying, gold ringed eyes of his target.
The Emissary had used chaos, not fire, to win.
She scanned the perimeter. No civilian casualties. The only injured party was the bounty hunter. And the target soul, the Sloth soul that anchored this ruin, was gone. Secured.
He took the soul but left the witness and the host alive. The pattern was consistent with the Anima incident. The Infernal agent was operating with a clinical, disturbing efficiency that bypassed the chaotic nature of true demonkind. He didn't seek destruction; he sought order, even if it was Hell's cold Order.
This cold logic tore at Seraphina's celestial conviction. Heaven taught that the infernal was defined by wanton destruction. But this agent was defined by control.
Her internal battle was far more intense than the physical one she had just missed. The memory the Emissary had forced upon her during the last fight—the sacrifice—was a corrosive poison to her divine certainty.
Compromised Purity
He saved me. He traded his life for mine.
The memory was a factual truth, confirmed by the ancient, objective records of the Celestial Hierarchy. That act of selfless love was the very engine that had forged her into the weapon she was now. How could the source of her purity be her ordained target for purging?
The Lie: The Emissary is a demonic parasite that corrupted a mortal host.
The Truth: The Emissary is the remnant of the only selfless love Seraphina has ever known.
The two concepts were irreconcilable, and the fissure was beginning to spread through her divine composure. Her duty demanded the purge; her soul, forged by his sacrifice, recoiled from the execution. She felt an unwelcome, painful connection to the power she was meant to obliterate.
She closed her eyes and extended her divine perception, not to seek the heat of his Wrath, but to trace the unique spiritual residue of the newly bound Sloth soul—that immense weight of inertia and apathy that the Emissary now carried.
Her tracking ability locked onto the overwhelming spiritual inertia, the crushing weight of the Sloth sin, now layered over the complex flavours of Wrath, Gluttony, and Reality Warping.
For a single, agonising instant, the tracking went deeper than energy. She connected to the Emissary's internal state—the cold, bitter resolve, the immense pressure of the 12 souls remaining on Lucien's ledger, and the physical pain of managing the chaotic reality glitches.
She felt his burden: the terrifying price of his continued existence. He was a man drowning in power, forced to perform cosmic accounting while pursued by his own salvation.
Seraphina recoiled, her breath hitching. This wasn't the empty malice of a demon. This was the forced, terrible suffering of a condemned soul fighting for a principle—the principle of Order, however dark its source.
The connection snapped. Seraphina stood alone, the residual pain of the Emissary's struggle echoing in her own divine core. She was compromised. She could no longer hunt a demon. She was hunting the physical manifestation of a profound, cosmic injustice.
She straightened, forcing her celestial light to burn brighter, trying to burn away the doubt and the connection. Her objective remained: secure the infernal agent. But the mission was now twisted by an unbearable irony. She had to save the world, even if it meant destroying the only man who had ever truly saved her.
She looked at the unconscious Kane. "He fights smart," she murmured, a final, cold assessment. "Next time, we fight smarter."
She rose, the silver light of her halo focused and lethal. The hunt was renewed, but this time, the hunter knew her target was fundamentally broken, and that his damnation was inextricably linked to her own divine ascent.