The Choir stopped singing.
The silence was instant. Absolute. Like someone had cut the world's throat and everything bled out into quiet.
I'd never realized how constant the hymn had been until it wasn't there anymore. The absence was physical. Pressing. Wrong.
"Everybody out," Elara said. Her voice was tight. "Now. It's not supposed to descend this fast. We have minutes, maybe less."
We ran.
Through the Cathedral of Hands, past the Choir standing frozen mid-song, their light-bleeding eyes tracking our movement. Out through the praying-hands archway into red twilight that had darkened to near-black.
The eclipse overhead was pulsing. Not slowly like before. Rapidly. Like a heartbeat accelerating toward cardiac arrest. Each pulse sent ripples through the red sky, distorting reality at the edges.
"There," Somi said. Her Strategic Omniscience painted probability lines through the air only she could see. "Four hundred meters, bearing northwest. Essence signature: Tier 3 entity. Classification: Divine remnant. Threat level: absolute."
I felt it too. A presence so massive my Essence Detection nearly overloaded trying to process it. Not just power. Weight. Like reality itself was bending under the strain of something that shouldn't exist walking through it.
Then I saw it.
It came from behind a massive stone hand, walking with slow, deliberate steps that cracked the bone-ground beneath its feet.
Twelve feet tall. Humanoid but wrong. Covered in tattered black armor that seemed fused to its body like burned skin. And from its back—
God.
The arms.
Hundreds of them. Thousands. Pale, reaching arms that sprouted from its shoulders and spine like grotesque wings. Each one was human-sized, perfectly formed, fingers splayed and grasping toward the eclipse above. They moved independently, writhing, reaching, forever seeking something they'd never touch.
A forest of prayers made flesh.
The Angel's face was hidden beneath a hood, but I caught glimpses of what lay within—the faint outline of features too beautiful and too broken to fully perceive. Eyes that might have been kind once. Lips that whispered hymns to an empty heaven.
And in its right hand, it carried a sword.
The blade was pure white light. Not glowing—made of light. Six feet of solidified radiance so bright it cast no shadow, just created absence where darkness should be. Reality bent around its edge, showing brief flashes of other worlds, other failures, other judgments.
The Ecliptic Sword.
The Angel stopped fifty meters away. Stood perfectly still. The thousands of arms on its back continued reaching, but the body itself was motionless.
When it spoke, the voice was layered. Thousands of tones merging into one. Choir and thunder and grief compressed into words.
"CHILD WHO STOLE THE ECLIPSE."
The sound wasn't loud. It didn't echo. But I felt it in my bones, in my essence, in the corruption marks on my skin.
"YOU HAVE TAKEN WHAT WAS NOT OFFERED. CLAIMED WHAT WAS NOT GIVEN. WORN THE LIGHT THAT DIED."
The eclipse on my forehead pulsed in response. I felt the Eclipsed Divinity attribute activate involuntarily, resonating with its source standing before me.
"I HAVE COME TO JUDGE."
"Not yet," I said. My voice was flat at seventy percent corruption. Emotionless. But the defiance was real. "I'm not ready to be judged yet."
The Angel tilted its head. The motion was too smooth, too fluid. Inhuman.
"READINESS IS NOT REQUIRED. ONLY TRUTH."
It raised the Ecliptic Sword.
And I manifested Hunger.
I moved first.
Not waiting. Not strategizing. Just reacting on pure combat instinct honed through the Flesh Cradle and the Weeping Citadel.
I crossed the distance in a burst of corruption-enhanced speed. Hunger swept up in a diagonal slash aimed at the Angel's torso. The black blade sang through the air, eager to cut, to consume, to prove its purpose against divine flesh.
The Ecliptic Sword intercepted.
The impact was soundless. No clang of metal. No clash of steel. Just pure force meeting pure light in a collision that made reality hiccup.
I was thrown back. Not pushed—thrown. My body sailed twenty feet before I caught myself, boots sliding across bone-ground, leaving twin trails in the dust.
My hands were numb. Hunger trembled in my grip, the blade actually vibrating from the impact.
The Angel hadn't moved. Hadn't even shifted its stance. Just raised its sword slightly and waited.
"AGAIN."
It wasn't mocking. Wasn't taunting. Just... observing. Testing. Measuring.
I manifested a second sword.
Truth. Second of Seven.
The silver-white blade appeared in my left hand. At seventy percent corruption, I could manifest two simultaneously now. Not all seven like at one hundred percent. But two was enough. Had to be enough.
Dual-wielding felt natural. Right. Like my body had been designed for this. Hunger in the right hand for offense. Truth in the left for revelation and defense.
I charged again.
This time I didn't go straight. I feinted left, rolled right, came up slashing with both blades in a scissor pattern that should have been impossible to block.
The Angel blocked it anyway.
The Ecliptic Sword moved once. A single sweep that intercepted both my strikes simultaneously. The white blade split into multiple angles of light, existing in several positions at once, meeting Hunger and Truth with perfect precision.
I was thrown back again. Harder this time. Hit the ground, rolled, came up already moving.
The Angel had taken one step forward. Just one. Closing the distance I'd created.
"YOU FIGHT WELL. BUT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU FACE."
"Then teach me," I said.
"VERY WELL."
The Angel moved.
Not fast. Not slow. Just inevitable.
It crossed thirty feet in what felt like a single step, the Ecliptic Sword sweeping down in an overhead strike.
I brought both swords up in a cross-block. Hunger and Truth meeting the white blade together.
The impact drove me to my knees. The bone-ground cracked beneath me. My arms screamed. The swords held, but barely.
And then I felt it.
Judgment.
The Angel wasn't just attacking. It was examining me. Through the blade contact, through the essence connection, it was reading everything. My corruption level. My sins. My guilt. My lies. My truths. Every choice I'd made. Every person I'd consumed. Every piece of humanity I'd sacrificed for power.
And it found me wanting.
"SEVENTY PERCENT CORRUPTED. THIRTY PERCENT HUMAN. YOU HAVE LOST MORE THAN YOU REALIZE."
The pressure increased. I felt my block failing.
"YOU CARRY GUILT FOR THOSE YOU CONSUMED. DARIUS. THE CREATURES OF THE FLESH CRADLE. THE MOTHER HERSELF. YET YOU DO NOT REGRET. YOU WOULD DO IT AGAIN."
The Ecliptic Sword pushed down. Inch by inch. My arms were giving out.
"THIS IS YOUR TRUTH: YOU ARE WILLING TO BECOME MONSTER TO SURVIVE. BUT YOU FEAR ADMITTING YOU ALREADY ARE ONE."
Something inside me cracked. Not physically. Spiritually. The Angel's judgment reaching into my core and touching the one thing I'd been avoiding.
The question I'd been running from since the moment I bound to the first Anchor Point.
Am I lost?
"Yes," I whispered. The admission burned. "I'm lost. I know."
The pressure vanished.
The Angel stepped back. Lowered its sword. The thousands of arms on its back stopped reaching. Went still.
"YOU SPEAK TRUTH."
It tilted its head again. Studied me with whatever passed for sight beneath that hood.
"ONE WHO KNOWS HE IS LOST MAY YET BE FOUND. ONE WHO ADMITS HIS GUILT MAY YET FIND REDEMPTION."
The Angel turned. Started walking away.
"YOU ARE NOT READY FOR JUDGMENT. NOT YET. I WILL RETURN IN EIGHTEEN HOURS. PREPARE YOURSELF. UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME. ACCEPT WHAT YOU MUST DO."
It paused. Looked back.
"AND CHILD WHO STOLE THE ECLIPSE—WHEN I RETURN, I WILL NOT HOLD BACK. YOU WILL FACE TRUE JUDGMENT. DEATH OR TRANSCENDENCE. THERE IS NO MIDDLE PATH."
The Angel walked toward the massive stone hand it had emerged from. As it passed the nearest carved prayer, it stopped. Knelt. Pressed its forehead to the ground before the stone hand.
I heard it then. The whispered prayer. Thousands of voices speaking as one.
"Forgive me. Forgive me for failing you. Forgive me for living when you died. Forgive me for judging when I too am guilty. Forgive me."
It rose. Continued walking. Disappeared behind the stone hand.
The eclipse overhead pulsed once. Twice. Then returned to its slow, steady rhythm.
The Choir began singing again.
I collapsed.
Not unconscious. Just... done. My legs gave out. My arms were numb. Both Hunger and Truth dissipated, the swords dissolving back into essence.
Lucy was beside me immediately. "Sidd! Are you hurt? Did it—"
"I'm fine," I said. Physically, that was true. The Angel hadn't actually wounded me. Just... tested me. Measured me. Found me insufficient.
Gery approached slowly, his hand on his katana hilt but not drawing. "What the hell was that? It just... left. It had you. It could have killed you."
"It wasn't here to kill," Somi stated. Her Strategic Omniscience had been analyzing the entire encounter. "Tactical assessment: that was reconnaissance. The Angel measured Sidd's capabilities, his corruption level, his mental state. It gathered data for the true confrontation."
She looked at me with those glowing tactical eyes.
"It's going to come back in eighteen hours. And it won't be testing anymore. It'll be executing."
I knew. I'd felt it. The Angel's restraint. The way it had held back. The way it could have killed me a dozen times but chose not to.
Because I wasn't ready to be judged yet. Wasn't ready to face the full weight of what I'd become.
But in eighteen hours, ready or not, judgment would descend.
Elara approached. Her eclipse-marked eyes studied the spot where the Angel had knelt and prayed.
"You impressed it," she said quietly. "In three years, I've never seen it spare someone during descent. Never seen it walk away. You must have said something it needed to hear."
"I told it the truth," I replied. "That I'm lost."
"And that's why you're still alive." She knelt beside me. "The Angel judges those who lie to themselves. Those who believe they're righteous despite their sins. Those who refuse to acknowledge their guilt. But you admitted yours. Accepted it. That's what saved you."
She stood. Extended a hand to help me up.
"You have eighteen hours to prepare. To train. To understand the power you stole. And to decide: are you going to fight the Angel to kill it? Or to save it?"
I took her hand. Let her pull me up.
"What's the difference?"
Elara's smile was sad. "Everything. The Angel doesn't want to be what it is. It's trapped. Bound by guilt and grief and the weight of all those prayers. If you kill it, you free it from existence. But if you save it—if you can somehow restore what it was—you free it from suffering."
She looked at the cathedral. At the Choir inside. At the thousands of stone hands reaching toward the eclipse.
"The question is: which mercy will you choose?"
I looked at my own hands. At the corruption veins. At the eclipse mark on my forehead that now pulsed with stolen light.
Eighteen hours.
Eighteen hours to become strong enough to face a Tier 3 entity that had just demonstrated it could kill me without effort.
Eighteen hours to decide whether I was a monster who killed gods, or something that could still save them.
Eighteen hours to answer the question I'd been running from.
Am I lost?
The Choir sang. The eclipse pulsed. And somewhere in the cathedral, the remaining Reliquaries waited.
I had work to do.