The entity pulled back thirty-seven minutes ago. The cathedral had not stopped shaking since.

Aiden walked through the central nave while chunks of stone fell from the ceiling. Dust coated everything.

Cracks ran along the pillars like veins, and every few steps another rift hissed open in the air before snapping shut. The building was dying. So were parts of the people inside it.

Flora sat against a broken pew, knees drawn up. Her eyes darted left and right at things no one else could see. Sweat ran down her face even though the air had grown cold.

Catherine knelt beside her, one hand on her daughter’s shoulder, the other clenched so tight the knuckles were white.

"She keeps whispering names," Catherine said without looking up. "Names of people we killed weeks ago. Then she laughs. Then she cries. Her power spiked earlier and nearly took Isolde’s arm off."

Flora’s head jerked. "They’re saying I should open the door wider, Mother. They say it feels good."

Catherine’s face tightened. She had always been the protector, the one who held the group together with sheer will. Now that will was cracking. "We’re not using her as bait."

"She’s already bait," Aiden said. His voice came out flat. He hated it, but the words were true. "The entity wants me. It’s using her to get closer."

From the side entrance, Sabrina staggered in. Her armor was half-unbuckled, hands shaking. She looked at Aiden with glassy eyes. "Give me another hit. Just a little. I can fight better after. You know I can."

"No," Aiden said.

Sabrina slammed her fist into the wall. The stone chipped. "You used to be generous. Now you’re turning into her." She jerked her chin toward the approaching footsteps.

Elizabeth entered the nave like she owned it. Her black-and-gold armor was still clean. Behind her walked two of her legion officers, faces grim. She stopped ten paces away and studied the group.

"The western wing collapsed fifteen minutes ago," Elizabeth said.

"My soldiers held the line, but they’re bleeding out faster than we can move them. I can keep them here another hour. Maybe two. After that, I pull everyone back unless we have an agreement."

Aiden met her stare. "You want me to cut pieces off my own power. Off them."

"I want you to survive," Elizabeth replied.

"I have studied the fractures. There is a sealing method. It requires removing the unstable half of your strength—the part that comes from the harem bond. The chaotic half. You keep imperial control. The fractures close. The entity loses its anchor."

Calipso stepped forward, arms crossed. "And what happens to us? We become decorations?"

"You become safe," Elizabeth said. "Which is more than you are now. Look at Flora. Look at Sabrina. Isolde’s already calculating how many of you she’d have to kill if the infection spreads. Don’t pretend otherwise, Isolde."

Isolde stood near a pillar, sharpening a blade with slow, deliberate strokes. She didn’t deny it.

Bela rubbed her temples. Her hybrid faith markings flickered between colors. "The old gods are silent. The new one is screaming. I don’t know which voice is worse anymore."

Aiden felt the split inside his chest. The imperial power sat like cold iron—stable, heavy, reliable.

The raw fire from the harem bond burned hot and wild, promising strength but eating him alive. Both halves pulled in opposite directions.

Morten’s voice suddenly echoed through the broken halls. The bastard had rigged speakers to the outer walls. His broadcast rolled over the rubble.

"Soldiers of the false emperor. The thing in the sky is divine judgment. Aiden’s heresy invited it. Those who come to me now will be spared.

Those who stay will burn with him. We already have three companies from your eastern flank. More are crossing every minute."

Aiden walked to a shattered window and looked out. Campfires burned in the distance where his lines used to be. Smaller groups moved across no-man’s-land toward Morten’s banners.

"Deserters," one of Elizabeth’s officers muttered. "Can’t blame them after that public ritual they watched."

Aiden turned back. The group watched him. Catherine’s eyes were full of pain. Sabrina’s were desperate. Flora’s kept drifting to something behind his shoulder.

He needed air. He climbed a half-collapsed stair to a balcony that still overlooked the main courtyard. The entity had left corpses everywhere. Some still twitched.

A vision hit him without warning.

He stood in two futures at once.

In the first, he opened the door completely. Power flooded him. Godhood. The cathedral vanished. The world burned, then reformed under his will.

The women were with him—changed, fused, no longer fully human. Eternal, but broken. He saw Catherine’s face as she realized her daughter was gone forever.

In the second future, he took Elizabeth’s deal. Chains of order wrapped around him. The fractures sealed. The entity screamed and faded. But the fire inside him died.

The bonds with the harem dulled to echoes. They lived, but they looked at him like a stranger wearing their lover’s face. Elizabeth stood at his side, satisfied.

Aiden dropped to one knee on the balcony, breathing hard. The stone under his hand cracked.

Footsteps behind him. Catherine. She stopped a few feet away.

"I won’t let you sacrifice Flora," she said quietly. "Not even to save everything else."

"I know," Aiden answered.

"If we keep feeding the bond, she dies anyway. Sabrina too. Maybe all of us."

"I know that too."

Catherine’s voice cracked for the first time he could remember. "Then what the hell do we do, Aiden?"

He stood up. Below, Sabrina argued with Isolde. Calipso watched Elizabeth’s officers with clear ambition in her eyes. Bela prayed to gods that weren’t answering.

Aiden felt every fracture at once—the cathedral’s, his people’s, his own.

He made the call.

"Gather everyone in the main hall," he said. "Elizabeth too. We’re not doing another ritual. No surge. We’re making a choice and we’re living with it."

Thirty minutes later they stood in the damaged hall. Torches flickered. The walls groaned.

Aiden faced them all.

"I’m not cutting the bond completely," he said. "But I’m not opening the door wider either. We’re doing this hybrid. I keep both halves and I make them work. Elizabeth gets her legions for the final push.

We use Flora’s connection to the entity as a blade, not bait. Sabrina fights through the addiction or she steps back—no middle ground. Anyone who wants out can leave now with no shame."

Silence.

Elizabeth smiled thinly. "You’re choosing the hardest path. Predictable."

Calipso exhaled. "I’m in. But if it goes wrong, I won’t die quietly for nostalgia."

Isolde tested her blade’s edge. "I never liked easy."

Bela nodded once, though her hands still shook.

Sabrina wiped sweat from her face. "I can hold. Give me something to kill."

Catherine looked at Flora. The girl’s eyes had cleared for a moment. She gave a small, tired nod.

Aiden felt the two powers grind against each other inside him. Painful. Unstable. But present.

Outside, the sky darkened again. The lull was ending. The entity was coming for him directly this time—no more probing the walls. It wanted the doorway.

Morten’s voice broadcast one last time. "Last chance, traitor."

Aiden looked at his fractured circle of people. No one was whole. No one was clean. But they were still here.

"Bar the inner gates," he ordered. "Get the wounded to the crypts. Then we fight the way we are. No more loops."

The cathedral shook harder. A new rift tore open above the altar, wider than before.

Aiden gripped the hilt of his sword. The imperial cold and the chaotic fire both answered, clashing in his blood.

This time there would be no reset.

The final wave was coming, and they would meet it with every scar they had earned.