Before Lance could respond, chains wrapped around his figure, shuttling him into a compartment beneath Avalokiteśvara's many heads.

"You are too weak to participate directly," transmitted Frederick, "just inject your spiritual energy into my avatar. Leave the rest to me."

"Yes, Father."

The Spectral Coup warriors re-engaged, frenziedly targeting the bodhisattva's heads. Frederick, anticipating Warden Delphose's imminent arrival, adopted a defensive stratagem—his retaliatory attacks perfunctory at best.

Dante bellowed a maddened roar, his basilisk circling Frederick with an unceasing barrage of lightning. Ghoul and their purplish tentacles were conspicuously absent, instead slowly building in mass and number at Dante's flank.

...

After a final volley of viridian lightning, Dante's winged basilisk completed an entire loop around Avalokiteśvara's hulking form.

Dante and Ghoul exchanged a silent glance. Suddenly, the flying serpent collapsed on itself, binding Avalokiteśvara's myriad arms as its massive physique constricted.

Simultaneously, Ghoul's tendrils coiled about one another in a pointed spiral, spearing into the chained behemoth's breast. With a deafening creak, Frederick's armor was wrenched open, exposing his body for all to see.

**

Lance, shrouded in darkness, angled his flattened palm face up.

Come, he willed, inciting a sleek, platinum pyramid to shimmer into existence.

His lips spit into a bedeviled smile as he eyed a weakened juncture in the chained apparatus.

"Heh."

**

"Fools!" Frederick hollered, features warped in a perpetual snarl. "How does it feel to be so close yet fail to spectacularly? Ha—" his eyes widened as, preempting his reaction, a speeding arm crowned by a miniature pyramid commandeered his vision. He could only watch as its platinum point stabbed into his breast with ruthless precision.

An inhuman scream followed.

"What did you do to me!?" shrieked Frederick, the words seething with unbridled wrath.

Smack!

A whistling, dark-brown meteorite plummeted out of the clearing—its flight trailed by a bloody stream.

"Son of a whore! Bastard! I should have strangled you in your crib, you ingrate shit!" Avalokiteśvara's form unraveled, revealing Frederick's enraged countenance spraying spittle between vulgar curses.

Dante descended to the earth, dispersing his serpentine form. Ghoul soon joined him at his side, reduced to tired pants and minimal spiritual energy.

"What's wrong, brother?" taunted Dante, dramatically sniffing the air. "Is that—is that the middle stage of the Embryonic Inquisitor realm I smell?"

Feigning shock, Ghoul wondered aloud, "But I read the venerable Frederick Selenium was at the late stage ..."

Frederick's bloodshot gaze snapped to Dante. "Even crippled, I will rip you two apart. Limb. By. Limb." A sardonic grin splayed his visage. "Just like that harlot you fancied. What was her name? Lilith?"

Emotion drained from Dante's being as if he were a mere instrument puppetted by the abyss.

"You will die," he enunciated with mechanical apathy. Lightning spurt from his pores, condensing into a crackling trident hovering at his side. Dante grasped its shaft with such force veins protruded on the back of his hand. Ghoul followed wordlessly, coating their arms with grotesque, tentacle-like appendages.

Opposite them, chainlink whips extended from Frederick's palms, their girthy length further lacerating the sundered ground.

Rending the brief respite, Dante slammed his trident's pommel onto the earth with a thunderous boom, catapulting himself forward. Ghoul sprinted forth in sequence, curving slightly to form a two-pronged siege.

Undaunted, Frederick's whips wove an orbital path around him with climbing momentum. Violent rasps echoed as they hewed the alluvial forest floor with accelerating frequency.

Dante opened with a two-handed swing, the resultant clash deflecting both party's weapons. He rode the counterforce, bringing the trident above his head in a brutal follow-through. Ghoul strafed tangential to Dante, their meaty tentacles lashing at Frederick's flank. Both strikes met with high-velocity parries.

A chaotic melee unfolded, with Frederick masterfully dual-wielding his chain whips against Ghoul and Dante's thorny encirclement. Sparks wracked the air, forming a nebulous constellation—each star representing a lethal collision.

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Ghoul reeled, ducking a scything chain as he swiped at Frederick's ankle. Their stitched face blanched as they witnessed the incoming chain—not block, but—entangle their outstretched tendril.

Showcasing dextrous fluidity, Frederick knocked aside Dante's frantic stab and pulled.

RRIIP!

Frederick wrenched Ghoul's arm from their body, leaving gory sinew dangling from the empty socket. Ghoul's ensuing scream was cut short as a chain pierced their skull.

With visceral heartache, Dante looked on as his dear friend toppled over lifelessly, landing with a disquieting stillness.

Despair wreathed his consciousness, threatening to drown him in abyssal gloom.

First, Despair had stolen his lover.

Then, Despair had slaughtered his subordinate.

And now, Despair had butchered his friend.

Despair stood before him, for Despair was a man.

A man named Frederick.

Dante's mind went utterly blank, his penultimate thought conscripting every fiber of his being: kill Despair. Charging forward with reckless abandon, he felt nothing as bits and pieces of flesh were hacked off his body. He vaguely saw himself hugging Frederick with tear-stricken eyes, Lilith's soothing image overlaying his brother's panicked aspect.

"I love you," Dante heard himself whisper.

She smiled a beautiful smile, her honeyed tone gentler than the softest caress. "And I love you. Come—how I've missed you."

Dante closed his eyes. After all these years, he had finally recaptured that feeling. Her feeling.

Happiness.

BOOM!

**

Karma, seated atop a quivering tree branch, watched in awe as a viridian mushroom cloud subsumed the open air. Soon after, the billowing aftershock waged a circular path of destruction, toppling flora and vanquishing fauna with utmost impunity.

Gesturing to the smoky vista, he queried, "Magnificent, is it not?"

Laying on an adjacent branch and riddled with ghastly wounds, Lance replied, "In an apocalyptic, hair-raising way, I suppose."

Karma turned to Lance with a grin.

"You may consume your healing pills once I'm out of sight. Meet me and your father in an incense stick's time." Dropping down, he added, "There, I shall answer your long-awaited question. I hope it was all worth it, Lance Selenium."

**

A chasm spanned the formerly sequestered clearing. At its pit, Frederick—horrifically disfigured from head to toe—dug his bloodied fingers into smoldering embers, plying to drag himself to freedom.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Through dreary vision, Frederick glimpsed a green-robed figure unhurriedly approaching with measured steps. Vaguely, he noted the absence of footprints in their wake, as if the world refused to remember.

Within moments, the mysterious stranger arrived, looming over Frederick's distraught form.

For the first time, Frederick experienced something he had forever disdained.

He felt broken.

Not defeat, sadness, or rage.

Broken.

**

Karma soundlessly observed the husk of a man at his feet.

I feel nothing. To others, this man was Despair. To some, Father. To me, he is Nothing.

Exhaling softly, Karma shook his head as Frederick struggled to meet his gaze with parted lips.

Ah, the irony. In his final moments, he uses the very trick I employed against his daughter.

Rather than speech, a lone chain link shot from Frederick's throat. The ashe-grey projectile honed on Karma's throat with fatal finality.

Precluding his reaction, Frederick's attack drilled into Karma's unguarded neck.

And halted.

Sighing, Karma snatched the chain link mid-fall, marveling at its inability to breach the invisible membrane layered atop his skin. Casually tossing it aside, he strode toward the still-fleeing Frederick.

"Please don't misunderstand," spoke Karma, placing his foot on the back of Frederick's head. "I'm not trying to be cruel; my Earthly Domain prohibits my techniques' passage as much as it does yours."

The scorched bedrock muzzled Frederick's outrage, reducing his cries to hushed whimpers.

As Karma applied more and more pressure, so too did Frederick's volume increase.

Crack.

Until it ceased altogether.

**

Lance, now free of injury, negotiated the ravished terrain comprising his father's burial site. Ignoring Karma's jubilant wave, he stared at Frederick's mangled corpse in equal parts release and disbelief.

Shrugging, Karma procured a steam bum, patiently eating away the protracted silence.

"What was he like—at the end?" shakily asked Lance.

Karma cast Lance a knowing look, handing him a steam bun.

"Defiant to the end," Karma declared. "He had no final words if that's what you're wondering, though he did spit at me."

Drawing a ragged breath, Lance's eyelids closed upon sorrowful eyes. When they blinked open, naught but tranquility remained.

**

Succumbing to Karma's insistence, Lance resignedly bit into the offered steam bun. His quirked eyebrows and subsequent devouring of said steam bun earned Karma's solemn nod.

"Delicious, right?"—"Do you have any more?"

**

Karma and Lance basked in the sunset's orange hue, wrappers strewn about their surroundings. Burping, Karma inquired, "So, what's your question? Has it got anything to do with that trinket tucked away in your sleeve?"

Stymieing an instinctual wariness, Lance wordlessly passed Karma the platinum pyramid. "I ... would like to learn of its origins."

Karma palmed the arcane artifact, eagerly inspecting its unblemished exterior.

"I recognize that—that thing!" interrupted Anlîthëma via divine sense.

"Oh, how is that?" placidly replied Karma, poking at the artifact with his domain-coated fingers.

"How could I not? The damned thing got me killed by a bunch of bald fanatics! My soul only barely escaped when I realized they wanted it and threw it away," Anlîthëma muttered indignantly.

"Interesting!"

Curiosity piqued, the entirety of Karma's spiritual energy vanished as a radiant white thread jutted out of his being.

Only white? That's ... new.

Without ado, the unprecedented pure-white thread tunneled into the void.

...

And promptly scurried back out. With palpable haste, the cowardly thread burrowed into Karma's body, forcibly dismissing his technique.

"What—" A torrent of information hammered Karma's psyche. After shiveringly decrypting the message, Karma yelped, hurling the pyramid back to Lance.

Lance, catching the artifact, asked puzzledly, "What did you learn?"

Uncaring of his loss of composure, Karma answered bemusedly, "Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that—congratulations—you are the proud owner of an invaluable treasure!"

"And the bad?"

"Ah, right. You possess the object of an aeonic manhunt conducted by a pre-eminent Buddhist faction known as the Mahāyāna Order."

Donning a constipated visage, Lance squealed, "And—what is it they're searching for exactly?"

Karma ruefully scratched his head. "Oh, just a trifling Nihility fragment—one-half of the supreme Dao of Śūnyatā ..."

Lance's jaw widened to a comical degree.

"Huh?"