The new safe house, a disused bomb shelter beneath a city park, was fortified not with walls, but with silence. Ethan spent two days there, attempting to map the volatile geography of his core.
It was a nightmare of competing forces: Wrath was a cold, demanding fire; Gluttony was a vast, hungry void; Reality Warping was a frantic, chaotic tremor; and the newly added Sloth was a dead, suffocating weight.
The war between the four energies was physically exhausting. He felt hot and cold simultaneously, his mind racing with tactical brilliance one moment, only to be dragged into a crushing, apathetic haze the next. Minor glitches persisted—a coin flipping endlessly in the air, a drop of water freezing mid-fall—each a chilling reminder of his instability.
He realised brute force was useless. He couldn't burn out the chaos; he had to balance it.
His solution lay in the most inert of the energies: Sloth. The Sloth soul of apathy generated pure, passive inertia. It resisted all change, all movement, and all effort. By channelling this heavy, dead energy, Ethan could force a spiritual deadlock.
He aggressively channelled his Gluttony core to absorb and integrate the Sloth inertia, using the Gluttony of Control to force the apathy to sit on the chaos.
The effect was instantaneous and profound. The chaotic oscillations of the Reality Warping power were immediately dampened, muffled by the spiritual cement of the Sloth soul. The physical glitches ceased. He had achieved a momentary equilibrium.
The cost, however, was psychological. He felt heavy, slow, and profoundly uninterested in everything. His mind was clear and sharp, but his body moved as if through water. He had exchanged chaotic volatility for profound spiritual laziness.
The new equilibrium was tested when Elias arrived. She approached the safe house alone, her reverence for his mark unchanged, even by the residual sin radiating from him. She presented the dossier for the third soul.
The target was a soul of Pride, having escaped the Fourth Circle. Like the Sloth soul, it wasn't overtly destructive, but it fueled the host's massive ego and belief in their own invincibility, leading to disastrous, high-level corporate and political corruption.
Target: Senator Elias Vance (No relation to the Pale Choir's Elias, but the coincidence was stark).
Sin: Pride (Hubris and Political Power).
Location: Active, obvious in the Financial and Capitol districts. Heavily protected by mortal means.
The mission required infiltration, subtlety, and surgical extraction. He couldn't Gatewalk into the Capitol building, and a Wrath attack would be instant self-exposure, drawing every celestial eye in the hemisphere. Seraphina was tracking his Wrath flares; Kane was tracking his physical movement.
He needed a psychological weapon.
Ethan devised his plan based entirely on the Pride soul's nature and his own refined power set.
Camouflage: Maintain the Sloth inertia as a constant, heavy blanket. It would slow him down, but it would dampen the noise from his three active powers, making him quieter for Seraphina.
Intellectual Dominance: The Pride soul resided in an intellectual, dominant host. Ethan would not attack the body; he would attack the mind. He would use the Gluttony of Control to overwhelm the host's will—consuming their sense of ego, their perception of invincibility, and their capacity for command. He would eat the host's arrogance.
Containment: The Wrath would be held in absolute reserve, used only for the surgical, final extraction of the soul. No flares. No chaos.
The Reality Warping, now successfully muffled by the Sloth inertia, was a risk he would simply have to tolerate. He had to operate as a ghost of sin, attacking the target's mind where they felt most secure.
He accepted the dossier from Elias. "I need one thing: access," he told her, his voice heavy with the Sloth inertia, but his gold eyes burning with focused intent.
Elias, mistaking the apathy for profound, cold wisdom, immediately knelt. "The Choir has secured credentials, Emissary. A staff pass for the Senator's security detail. You will be unseen, even in the light."
Ethan nodded. Two souls secured. Eleven to go. The next mission was entirely different—a hunt in the heart of mortal power, where his physical weapons were useless, and his intellect was the only blade he could wield. He had to shed the shadows of the tunnels and walk among the pride of men.