The bridge still trembled under Victor's weight. Max could hear him breathing — ragged, controlled — over the wet hiss of the meat-veins. Everything else was drowned out by the mist.

Then the walls screamed.

A seam tore open in the living barrier to his right, spilling steam and the reek of hot marrow. A single, perfect black cut ran down its length — and the whole slab of flesh sloughed apart. Ying stepped through the gap, Voidshadow still curling off her blade.

She didn't even look at him at first. Her eyes were locked on the corridor behind her, watching something move.

"Keep breathing," she said, almost absently.

To the left, another wall detonated inward, not sliced but wrenched. The pieces didn't fall — they flew, ripped apart in midair by a ripple of burning red light. Liz walked through, halo flickering like an open wound, every step dripping psychic static. Her gaze swept the bridge once before locking on Max, and something in her expression cracked.

A shadow moved over the deck — Alyssa, slamming down from above with enough force to crater the meat-vein flooring. Her fists were slick with gore, each punch still humming with density-charge. "Miss me?" she asked, not waiting for an answer as she pivoted to smash another vein that dared pulse toward her.

In seconds, they were at his side. Ying on one flank, Alyssa on the other, Liz's presence like a second heartbeat in his skull. Together, they formed a wedge — forcing the mist and the writhing tendrils back toward the spine of the bridge.

And there, at the centre, was Victor. Still standing in front of him. Still bleeding. Still refusing to move.

Victor glanced over his shoulder — just enough to take them all in. A huff escaped him, halfway between relief and disbelief.

"All here?"

"All here," Liz said.

For the first time since leaving the dungeon of the Cathedral, Max believed it.

Max's throat worked, but nothing came out. He looked at them — really looked — past the blood and exhaustion. Liz's eyes were sharper now, older. Alyssa still carried herself like she'd never left the fight. Ying was breathing hard but steady. And Victor… Victor hadn't moved an inch from between Max and the mist.

"You came," Max said, quiet enough that he wasn't sure they'd heard. Alyssa gave him the faintest grin, Liz's halo brightened, and Victor didn't answer — but the way his stance shifted forward said everything. His shoulders rolled once, like he was shaking glass out of his bones, then locked forward again. Even bleeding and half-bent from exhaustion, he stood like a man who'd decided that moving was worse than dying.

The bridge groaned under them, a long, low sound like something alive shifting in its sleep.

Max's boots felt glued to the marrow-slick stone. The rib arches overhead quivered, condensation sliding down them in cold drips that pattered against his shoulders. Somewhere in the mist ahead, something was moving — slow at first, like a distant current.

Then it swelled.

The sound built from a murmur to a roll, from a roll to a roar — wet, dragging, layered with the creak of straining sinew and the slap of heavy flesh against itself. A smell rode the air before the shape came: copper, rot, and something sweet beneath it, like overripe fruit left to split in the sun.

The mist tore apart.

A wall rose in front of them. Not water. Not stone. A tidal wave of flesh.

It came on in a single, heaving mass — torsos fused at the spine, arms grafted in crooked rows, heads half-buried with mouths still screaming as they vanished back under the swell. Tendrils whipped forward, each tipped with claw or bone spur, latching onto the bridge only to tear free again as the wave rolled on. Legs and arms pumped inside it like trapped swimmers, dragging the whole impossible thing forward.

And riding it — calm as a man stepping off a carriage — was Belphegor.

Not the cocooned horror Max had known in the pit. Not the shadowed monster from Prague's alleys. This was his human form, lean to the point of gaunt, the skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones. His eyes were deep-set and ringed with sleepless shadows, yet they burned with a cold, exacting focus. His hair lay in dishevelled strands, streaked with the dull sheen of neglect, and the severe downturn of his mouth gave him the look of a man permanently unimpressed with the world.

The coat was black, tailored but worn at the seams, its creases catching the dim light above the writhing tide. He looked more like a weary doctor than a Demon Lord — right up until you noticed the faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, a smile that had nothing to do with humour. It was the look of a man who knew exactly how you would break and had already decided which piece to take first.

The tide didn't just carry him — it bore him, tendrils arching to shield him from stray gore, hands and faces turning up toward him in mute reverence.

Max couldn't move. The sheer scale of it was wrong. He'd seen armies. He'd seen pits full of dead. He'd seen Lilith's hives spilling across whole cities. But this was all of that moving at once, with a single will.

Belphegor's eyes found him instantly. No searching, no delay — as if Max had been the only reason to step onto the field at all.

The smile warmed, softened, became almost intimate.

Max's throat locked. That expression was too familiar — he'd seen it inches from his face before, while the meat-thread cuffs burned his wrists, while the knife went in again, and again, and again.

The wave rolled closer, blotting out the mist, the bridge, the world.

***

The tide hit the bridge like a collapsing building. The first impact sent a shock through the bone arches overhead, cracking one in two. The rib slammed down between Chloe and Alyssa, pinning a section of the bridge under its weight. Meat-veins split under the strain, spraying hot black across the deck.

"Move!" Chloe shouted, already phasing as the next surge came.

Tendrils swept across the deck in a slick wall of motion, snapping like eels. One passed through her ghost-form, leaving behind a cold that sank into the marrow. Another coiled around Alyssa's ankle before she tore it free with a snarl.

The clones came with the next wave.

The ones they'd already put down were back, stitched together again as if their deaths had only been a rehearsal. Alyssa's bloated corpse-thing, Ying's sickle-limbed void, Victor's weeping chimera—and new horrors. A taller, sharper Dan, halo burning black instead of gold. A Tomas with no eyes and a mouth full of human teeth nailed in sideways. An old woman with Alyssa's voice but Tomas's leering grin.

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Alyssa took one look and spat blood. "Oh, that's new."

Chloe didn't answer. Tenso was already in her hand, the phasing blade's hum threading up her arm. She cut a tendril clean through, watching it curl back into the tide like a slug in salt. It reformed seconds later, a fresh limb forcing its way forward.

"They're regenerating," Chloe called over the roar. "You can't kill them slow — make it count the first time."

"Everything I throw is the first time," Alyssa shot back, slamming her fist into another's chest hard enough to cave it in.

Dan's voice cut through the chaos—muffled but sharp. "Don't get separated! Stay in sight!"

Then a tendril the size of a tree trunk punched into the deck where Chloe had been a heartbeat earlier. The impact left a crater that pulsed like a beating heart.

She blinked back into solidity beside Alyssa and grabbed her shoulder. "They're trying to split us," Chloe said, eyes tracking the nearest Tomas. "We hold together or we drown."

"Wasn't planning on drowning," Alyssa growled, hurling a severed limb back into the tide.

The air shifted—subtle, oily—and Chloe looked up. Belphegor's human face was framed in the rolling wave, half-buried in the writhing mass, eyes flat and unblinking. He wasn't glaring. He wasn't smiling. He was… deciding. Measuring her.

And in that moment, Chloe felt him in her head. Not words. Not orders. Just a quiet suggestion: Stop. Let it take you. It's easier.

Her grip on Tenso tightened until her knuckles ached. She forced a breath out through her teeth.

"Not today," she muttered. Then, louder: "Alyssa—on my left. Don't give him an inch."

The tide roared again. The bridge shook. And Chloe braced herself for the next wave.

***

The bridge had stopped looking like a bridge.

Meat-veins bulged through the bone arches overhead, knotting into grotesque pillars that swayed with every impact. The ground trembled under the endless tide — claws, hooves, hands, all pounding forward in a single nightmare rhythm. The sound was deafening, a drumbeat of wet flesh and splintering bone.

Victor had already pushed Max back toward the centre, where Dan's golden aura fanned out like the last breath of a dying sun. Alyssa planted herself just outside that glow, every punch smashing a path through the things that came too close. Ying darted in and out, voidslices flashing — each cut so clean it left the air gasping shut behind her.

"Left!" Ying's voice snapped through the chaos.

Dan pivoted, shield flaring as a thing wearing Ferron's face lunged from the mist. Its kusarigama whipped for his neck — but Alyssa was there, catching the chain in one hand and yanking hard enough to pull the clone off its feet. She slammed it down, bone cracking under the impact.

"Not him," she spat.

Max's head turned at the sound, eyes catching on the Ferron-clone just long enough for the memory to hurt. Victor shoved him back toward the middle. "Don't look. They're not them."

Chloe ghosted in from the far right, her blade sliding through a Tomas-puppet's neck like it was nothing. The head rolled, mouth still smiling as it hit the stone. She didn't even glance down. "Three more behind that one. They're getting faster."

"They're trying to herd us in," Liz said, voice low but sharp. She was already moving, red halo flaring. The air warped in front of her as she ripped two more clones apart without touching them, their limbs folding in on themselves before bursting in sprays of steaming black. "We need space."

A fresh roar split the mist, deep and guttural. Something bigger was pushing forward — its silhouette shifting with each step, sprouting extra limbs that clawed at the walls for purchase. Behind it, more Tomas faces blinked into view, each one wearing the same polite smile.

Dan's jaw tightened. "Hold formation. Circle up!"

The group moved without thinking — years of instinct snapping into place. Alyssa took point on one side, Victor on the other, Chloe slipping between them like smoke. Ying's blades marked the air in quick, vicious arcs. Liz's psychic pull dragged the mist itself into jagged funnels, forcing the closest enemies back.

Max stood in the centre, chest heaving, trying to keep his eyes on the living and not the dead wearing their faces.

The first of the bigger shapes hit the circle — a Ferron-puppet stitched to a beast's body — and Victor met it head-on, claws sparking against its fused bone plating. The impact rattled the whole line.

"Gonna need a minute here!" Victor grunted, shoving the thing back.

"You've got ten seconds!" Chloe snapped, cutting down two more Tomas-smiles before they reached the aura.

The mist pulsed, and for a heartbeat the clones hesitated — as if something in the dark was drawing their attention. Then they moved again, harder, faster.

It was the first time Max realised they weren't fighting to kill.

They were fighting to close the ring.

***

He glided atop the tide like a king surveying his feast, the swell and fall of flesh lifting him in slow, luxurious arcs. Tendrils anchored around his ankles and calves, flexing in time with his balance — not restraint, but homage.

Below, his treasures scattered and fought.

Max first. Upright. Staggering. A torn flag barely catching the wind — but still upright. The sight made something coil in Belphegor's gut, not admiration, not quite rage, but the mingled heat of both. Taken. Torn from his grasp. Ripped away like a lover in the night. His jaw tightened. He'd been broken in such exquisite ways, shaped to fit the hollow Belphegor had carved for him…

…and now the thief stood there behind a wall of claws, daring to keep him. For a heartbeat, he almost drowned them all where they stood.

Chloe next — the surgeon. How she moved through the carnage with that blade was almost art, her body slipping in and out of phase like the flicker of a film reel. Clean. Clinical. He wanted to watch her work longer, to see how far that focus could stretch before it frayed. My pretty little scalpel. She didn't know it yet, but she would carve for him someday, take apart the ones he pointed to. All while on her knees. And he'd make her thank him for the privilege.

Then Alyssa — brute force wrapped in a perfect vessel of flesh and bone. Every strike she threw was a prayer to violence. He could see the strain already in her muscles, the flush rising under the skin, the way she didn't care if the blows she landed broke herself too. My hammer. He could break her, then fix her, again and again, until the cracks made her beautiful. She had such pretty eyes.

And there was the red one — halo flickering at the edges of his sight, a warning light he had no time for now. Pretty, but not his. Not yet.

The rest? Delights. Toys. Some to be pulled apart, others to be wound tight until they squealed. All would learn their place at his feet.

His clones fought in the tide, but they carried more than fists and claws. They wore stolen voices — a father calling his daughter's name, a dead lover's laugh, a child's frightened plea. He'd crafted each for a different taste of hesitation, for the stutter before the killing blow. And he saw the effect in the flickers: a twitch of the mouth, a misstep, a heartbeat's delay. Every one was a hook sliding in deeper.

Belphegor lifted a hand.

The tide obeyed. Flesh rolled under him in a deep, shuddering wave, and between his feet, fresh shapes began to claw their way free. Slick, half-formed things with glassy eyes and working jaws, strands of tissue still snapping from their shoulders to the tide below. A second line, born hungry.

He smiled as the wave carried him forward, shadow falling over the bridge. Soon, he would take back what was his. The rest — the pretties, the toys — would learn to kneel.

***

Her blade slipped cleanly through the Tomas clone's skull. No resistance — just a cold glide, like passing through water. It should have dropped instantly, but the thing took three more steps toward her, its lips peeling back into a slack grin before it crumpled at her boots.

The bridge shivered under her feet. Not from the fighting — from underneath.

She glanced down. The floor wasn't stone anymore. It was breathing. Meat-veins pulsed in deep, slow waves, rolling them toward the edges where the mist churned like an open sea.

Her gut clenched.

This wasn't about killing them outright. The clones, the tide, the shifting ground — it was a herding pattern. Push. Isolate. Swallow them one by one into the drop below.

Another tremor hit, harder this time, and a slab of the bridge's edge gave way with a wet snap. One of Alyssa's opponents went over, vanishing into the fog before its scream even reached the bottom.

Chloe's eyes cut across the chaos — and locked on Max.

He was too far. Still upright, still fighting to stay that way, Victor planted like a wall between him and the advancing wave. The tide wasn't just pressing — it was shaping, bending the whole fight toward that gap between them.

Victor's shoulders bunched, claws flashing, but Chloe could see the fatigue in his stance — and Max, behind him, still upright but swaying like a man trying to remember which way was forward. She knew what Belphegor was doing; she'd seen predators in the wild test herds the same way. Separate the strong from the weak, and the kill was inevitable.

Belphegor was going to cut the line. Separate the protector from the protected. And if Victor went over…

She saw it—just for an instant—Max's body tumbling through the fog, swallowed before she could even scream. The image hit so hard her grip on Tenso almost slipped.

Chloe shoved her blade through another clone's spine, eyes never leaving the far side of the bridge. She didn't know how many more steps they had before the split, but she could feel it in her bones — the wave was coiling to break.

Behind her, the flesh hissed and swelled. Ahead, the mist waited.

The tide reared high, a wall of writhing limbs and slick muscle, its shadow swallowing the bridge whole.

Then it clicked. He's not trying to drown us. He's trying to pull us apart.

Somewhere above the roar of the flesh, she heard his voice — soft, giddy, intimate. His voice slid across the field like a hand at the back of her neck. "Time to see which of you sinks first."

The tide broke.

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