The moment Ethan unleashed the raw, cold fire of Wrath, the penthouse office became a slaughterhouse of spiritual energy.
He channelled the infernal power directly into the spiritual aura of CEO Thorne. It was not a precise attack, but a crushing hammer blow aimed at the core of the Greed soul's defence.
The Wrath roared, cold blue flames erupting from the sigil on Ethan's chest, washing over the host. The sound of the pure infernal power meeting the defensive shield of avarice was a deafening shattering. Glass exploded, the expensive wood panelling vaporised, and the very air seemed to crackle under the strain.
The Greed soul shrieked in genuine terror as its spiritual armour—its absolute, self-preservation Will to retain was violently incinerated.
Ethan ignored the pain of the backlash, forcing his will onto the now exposed soul. The cold fire raged for only a second, leaving the host a smoking, terrified husk.
Ethan slammed his hand onto Thorne's chest, channelling the Penance Chains. The Greed soul—a massive, shimmering, crystalline entity of condensed ambition was ripped free and violently sucked into the depths of his sigil.
Four down. Nine to go.
The immediate spiritual chaos was a blinding beacon. And the hunters were already there.
Seraphina's Containment
The eastern wall of the office, covered with a massive sheet of custom glass, shattered inward in a silent, controlled explosion. Seraphina Cross was framed in the opening, a descending angel of judgment, her silver armour gleaming, her halo blazing.
She saw the infernal energy, the smoking host, and the massive, triumphant surge of power as the fourth soul was secured. She attacked instantly, but her method was chillingly precise.
Her first attack was a defensive surge: a blinding, shimmering wall of pure light that slammed into the space between Ethan and the nearest exit (the stairwell). The light was a containment ward—spiritually agonising and impossible to pass without total destruction.
Ethan recoiled, the light searing his eyes and the ward singing against his demonised skin. He was trapped in the penthouse.
"Stand down, Emissary," Seraphina commanded, her voice amplified and cold. "I am here for containment. I will not destroy the host."
Ethan snarled, the Pride in his core raging at the thought of being cornered. He launched a massive, concentrated blast of Wrath at her.
Seraphina did not try to block it; she allowed the Wrath to collide with her celestial shield, turning the dark fire into a blinding flare of static energy that further confused the environment but left her unmoving. She was patient. She was waiting for her ally.
The distraction came from below.
A section of the marble floor near the window exploded upward as a metallic projectile tore through the concrete. It was Kane, utilising a ventilation shaft as a firing tube.
The projectile wasn't a silver bullet. It was a specialised, silver-laced, reinforced containment net, spring-loaded and designed for maximum spiritual disruption.
The net was coated in a thin layer of purifying solution, and the silver threads were designed to short-circuit infernal energy. Kane had learned his lesson; he was targeting the power source, not the body.
The net wrapped around Ethan instantly. The silver burned his skin, and the purifying solution screamed against the sigil. His Wrath core, already flaring from the fight, was violently short-circuited by the net. The power seized up, leaving him momentarily paralysed, screaming in raw agony.
"Got him, Angel!" Kane shouted, ascending through the hole, his face grim with satisfaction.
Seraphina moved swiftly, advancing toward the trapped demon, her hand outstretched to initiate the capture sequence.
Ethan was trapped, his mind screaming in the white hot agony of the short-circuited infernal core. The combination of the raw Wrath output and the sudden, physical suppression of the silver net was too much for his chaotic internal architecture.
The fragile Sloth dampener evaporated. The containment broke.
The Reality Warping power, no longer restrained, surged outward in a violent, final spasm.
It wasn't a deliberate attack; it was a catastrophic implosion of the physical laws localised to the penthouse floor.
The floor beneath all three of them which is a ten-foot diameter circle didn't crumble or vaporise. It suddenly gained negative structural integrity. The floor instantly crumpled inward, sucking air and light into the void, like a sheet of paper being violently folded into an impossible geometric shape.
The effect was instantaneous. Seraphina was thrown backwards by the collapsing light ward. Kane was caught in the gravitational distortion, screaming as his armour was violently twisted by the shifting geometry.
Ethan, caught in the eye of the implosion, focused his last reserves of Gluttony not on eating energy, but on consuming the gravitational distortion of the chaos, forcing the anomaly to implode inward on itself rather than outward.
The backlash was devastating. He felt a tearing sensation in his core, the violent consumption of the chaotic reality almost destroying his internal balance.
He burst free of the collapsing net, tearing a massive, erratic Gatewalk rift in the air above the collapsing floor.
He stepped through, not with precision, but with desperation. He had secured the soul, but the escape was sloppy, agonising, and costly.
He materialised miles away, falling onto a forgotten street, his body wracked by tremors. The infernal sigil was pulsing weakly, the combined power of Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, and Pride now fighting the raw, draining terror of the chaotic escape.
He was alive. He had the soul. But he had confirmed Seraphina's worst fears, and he was now spiritually and physically spent. The hunters had coordinated, and he had escaped by sheer, chaotic luck.
The true cost of the Greed soul was not the energy spent, but the shattering of his own careful internal control.