The Demon Capital

"Aghh..."

The groan escaped Lom's lips, a sound of misery. He lay on the cold stone floor of his mansion, clutching his head as if trying to keep his skull from splitting open.

"That gaze..." Lom whispered, shivering uncontrollably. "That was monstrous. I felt like the sky itself was crushing me into paste."

He curled into a fetal position, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was a Demon God, a being of immense power and cunning.

Yet, for the last few hours, he had felt like an insect placed under a magnifying glass by a cruel giant.

The cause of his agony was something Lom couldn't even comprehend fully. It was the backlash of his own greatest strength: The Law of Fate Concealment.

Lom possessed a passive SS-Grade Talent that scrubbed his existence from the tapestry of causality.

If anyone, anywhere, tried to uncover his identity or divine his location through magical means, his talent would automatically activate, blurring his name and erasing him from the seeker's memories.

Usually, this process was seamless. A gentle deflection.

But today? Today, someone hadn't just knocked on the door of his Fate; they had tried to kick it down with a battering ram.

It had started small.

Lom had been walking through the streets of the Demon Capital, minding his own business, when he felt the first prickle. A tingling sensation at the base of his neck.

'Someone is divining about me?' Lom realized with a smirk.

That was the First Backlash. It was weak. Laughably weak.

It meant someone was trying to divine his location or his identity, and Lom's talent merely had to blur a single name, It was nothing more than a static shock.

But then, the world tilted.

Lom's smirk had vanished instantly. His eyes bulged, viens bursting and turning his vision red. His body began to tremble.

He felt a Gaze.

A violet-gold Gaze that bridged time and space, diving right into the very concept of his existence.

It wanted to see his secrets. It wanted to read some of his memories. It wanted to know him.

"Ahhhhhh!" Lom screamed in the middle of the crowded demon street.

Passersby High Demons and Demigods stopped and stared as the usually composed Demon God clutched his chest, foaming at the mouth.

"My soul!" Lom howled. "It's burning!"

He tried to run toward his mansion, but his legs gave out. The backlash was stacking.

His talent was working overtime, frantically scrubbing memory from Vorr's mind to keep Sunny from seeing Lom's face. The magical friction was setting Lom's soul on fire.

He fell into the mud, humiliating himself.

Desperate, Lom reached into his robes with a shaking hand and pulled out a piece of parchment engraved with crimson runes, a Escape Scroll.

RIIIIP.

He tore the paper. Space twisted, and his body vanished from the street, reappearing instantly in the safety of his bedroom.

"What is happening..." Lom gasped, clawing at his bedsheets. "How can the backlash be this painful? Who is doing this?"

He felt his essence fading. Every second that Sunny spent inside Vorr's memories, was a torture for Lom.

Slowly, the pain began to fade. The connection severed. Lom lay there, panting, sweat pooling around him.

"It's over," he wheezed. "I survived. Whoever that was... they gave up."

He was about to curse the unknown assailant, to vow revenge, to plot their downfall.

But then, the fate decided to drop a hammer.

"Nooo---"

Lom didn't even get to finish the scream.

Another jolt assaulted him.

Sunny, back in the River of Time, had just decided to brute-force the censorship by injecting 10 Quadrillion Faith Points into his God's Eye.

The sheer weight of that energy slammed into Lom's Fate Concealment talent. It was like trying to stop a tsunami with a paper shield.

SNAP.

Lom's consciousness shattered. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed onto the bed, completely unconscious.

Lom didn't understand what had happened. From his perspective, everything was going good. But in reality, the timeline had fractured.

Previously, Lom had been awake. He had felt Vorr's death. He had contacted Kairos and Mongo to warn them.

But now?

Sunny had traveled back in time. He had used his God's eye on Vorr, before Vorr had died

Because Lom was knocked unconscious by the backlash in the past, he never sent the warning message. He never told Kairos that Vorr was dead. He never warned them to run.

Sunny had unknowingly altered the course of history for the third time.

The first time was during the Battle of Gods, where his presence was sensed by Deimos .

The second time was when the Void Mother, Lady Sansa, tried to bless him and failed.

And now, this third ripple had left a mastermind unconscious, and two spies flying blind into a death trap.

Sunny, sitting on his throne in the future, was completely oblivious to the chaos he had caused.

"I feel like I have caused something big," Sunny muttered, scratching his cheek. "But I don't know what."

He shrugged. "Well, if I don't know, then I don't know. Ignorance is bliss."

He turned his attention back to the holographic screens.

"I should focus on catching the other two rats. Mongo and Kairos."

The Eastern District Auction House.

Because Lom was unconscious, no message had been sent. The Pearl of Calamity remained silent.

Kairos and Mongo were speeding through the dimensional layers, heading straight for the Auction House.

"Let's find Vorr quickly and escape," Kairos whispered, his hands steady on the controls of the Pearl. "I have a bad feeling about this auction. We grab him, we grab maybe one artifact if it's easy, and we leave."

"Agreed," Mongo nodded, sweating profusely.

They phased through the outer walls of the Auction House. They drifted through the corridors, ignoring the guests.

"There," Kairos said, as he sensed the energy from the miniature Pearl of Calamity.

They steered the Pearl into the secured hallway and phased through the heavy door of the vault.

"Vorr?" Kairos called out softly.

But the moment they entered, their hearts stopped.

The vault wasn't empty.

Standing in a circle around the pedestals were Eleven Figures. They were clad in cosmic robe, their faces hidden by cosmic masks.

Their auras were suppressed, but the sheer weight of their existence pressed against the darkness of the Pearl like a physical force.

"Cosmos's Clones..." Mongo squeaked, his voice cracking. "Eleven of them."

And on the floor, in the center of the room, was a fresh smear of gore and blood

"That's..." Kairos stared at the stain. He recognized the energy emitting from the blood. It was Vorr's.

"Vorr is dead," Kairos realized, horror dawning on him.

Suddenly, one of the Clones, the one guarding Item Number 4, snapped his head toward the corner of the room where the Pearl was hovering.

"Who is there?" the Clone demanded.

The Clone didn't see them. But his Divine Intuition screamed that something was occupying that space.

Without hesitation, the Clone moved. He blurred, crossing the distance in a microsecond.

"Die!"

The Clone thrust his hand forward. His gloved fist, wrapped in SS-Grade mana, punched straight toward Kairos's chest.

Kairos flinched. He screamed silently, bracing for death. He saw the fist coming. He saw the impact.

SWISH.

The Clone's arm passed straight through the darkness of the Pearl. It passed through Kairos's ribcage. It passed through his heart.

Kairos stared down, his eyes wide. He saw the Clone's arm sticking out of his chest.

But there was no pain. There was no blood.

"Aghh..." Kairos groaned, waiting for the agony.

But nothing happened.

The Clone frowned. He looked at his hand. He wiggled his fingers. They were occupying the same space as Kairos's heart, but they were not touching.

"Nothing?" the Clone whispered, confused. "Was that paranoia?"

The Clone withdrew his hand. He scanned the area again with his senses. Nothing.

"Maybe the remaining spies are also here... but hiding deeper than I can reach," the Clone muttered.

He tapped his temple, as he reported this to the main body.

"Understood," Sunny's voice echoed in the Clone's mind. "Search everywhere, see where they are going"

The Clone nodded and stepped back into the shadows, his eyes still fixed suspiciously on the empty corner.

Inside the Pearl, Kairos collapsed to his knees. He touched his chest frantically, patting himself down.

"I am alive..." Kairos gasped, "Hah... I am alive!"

He looked at Mongo, who was curled up on the floor of the sphere, silently weeping from terror.

"They can't touch us," Kairos realized, a laugh bubbling up in his throat.

He looked at the bloodstain on the floor one last time. Vorr's remains.

"Vorr died because he tried to escape," Kairos deduced. "He left the safety of the Pearl."

"Let's return, Mongo," Kairos whispered, his arrogance completely gone, replaced by the primal instinct of a prey animal. "Vorr is dead. Lom is silent. We are alone."

"Now only the two of us are left. We return to the Northern District. And we do not come out until the heat dies down."

Kairos grabbed the controls. He didn't steal an artifact. He didn't try to investigate further. He turned the Pearl around and fled, phasing through the walls as fast as his trembling hands could manage.

The Throne Room.

Sunny sat on his throne, processing the report from the Clone.

"Hmm," Sunny hummed. "So they were there. Likely Kairos and Mongo."

He tapped his finger against the armrest.

"We can't do anything to them right now," Sunny admitted. "We can't touch them, and we can't sense them unless they get close enough to trigger the divine intuition."

"They are safe as long as they stay in that shell."

Sunny smiled dangerously.

"But everyone has to come out eventually"

"Keep scanning," Sunny ordered his clones. "The moment they slip up... I want their heads."

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