Published at 20th of June 2026 8:47 am

Chapter 218: The Board Begins

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Chapter 218: The Board Begins

It took about thirty minutes for Min to calm down enough to think straight. When your biggest fear was ghosts, sitting inside the mouth of one was about as far from comfortable as it could get.

It didn't help that she still couldn't see Grimm in the slightest. Flying through the air wasn't exactly one of her favorite pastimes. The open world below brushing past only made the whole experience worse.

She should have leaned into the distractions, because once she settled enough, her thoughts turned dark and her shoulders slumped. Though dealing with her own worries, Teal noticed the melancholy that had settled over the larger woman. Min wore her emotions on her sleeve, so it wasn't exactly difficult to spot.

"Who's your contact?"

Almost jumping, Min stared at Teal's question.

"Huh? Ohyou wouldn't know him."

Smirking, Teal ran her fingers through Ash's hair, finding a strange amount of comfort in the simple motion.

"Does it matter?"

Min's brow furrowed, though a brief smile tugged at her lips. She could tell what Teal was doing. Talking was better than brooding.

"He's a flesh merchant. But instead of slaves, he pimps out his puppets."

Teal's fingers froze in Ash's bangs, and Triss lifted her head from Ash's chest to watch her reaction.

"Old as dirt? Has a boil on his cheek?"

"You know him?"

A grimace twisted across Teal's face, ugly enough that Min instantly knew the answer. Anyone who knew that old lecher would make that face.

"The man who owned me had me use Rank Up on that nasty fucker. Apparently the old man had a client who kept breaking his male models and wanted to make one tougher."

All of a sudden, Min found something in the distance extremely interesting. She turned away from Teal, her face growing three shades redder as she cleared her throat.

"Well, he owes me a favor. He has a whole garage full of battle puppets. I'm gonna see if the prick will let me borrow 'em."

Looking at the back of Min's head, Teal tilted her own, trying to figure out what Min was staring at. Between that and the sudden shift in her voice, the pieces started clicking together. Her eyes widened as she pointed.

"You! You big dirty whore. You're the client, aren't you?! Of course you are. Who else has a pussy that can do that?"

"Hey! You can't prove shit! Flat-butt bitch."

"Whoa now...!"

Both women burst out laughing.

Outside, Grimm's boney brows slowly tightened as he listened to the conversation. At this point, he was convinced females simply weren't meant to be understood.

"To be fair, some of those puppetswow. Is it true you can control the...size?"

"One of their best features."

Both women blushed, each battling with her own imagination. Somehow, flying through the air above the Freelands inside the mouth of a ghost had become one of the most relaxing moments either of them had experienced in a long time.

They passed the time this way, chatting about their lives, swapping stories, and laughing at each other's jokes. Min sharing information about the Time Capsule they were heading toward had become an especially exciting topic for Teal. Everyone had heard of a Time Capsule, but maybe one in a billion had actually seen one.

"I've never seen a movie before. This girl I knew used to tell me about the ones she'd watched. There was one she always talked about with these mutated teenage turtles that were ninjas. They ate this stuff called pizza. The way she described it...I'm drooling just thinking about it. I hope I get to eat it just once before I die."

Seeing the nostalgic look on Teal's face, Min felt an unexpected pang in her chest.

"There were hundreds of movies in there. Maybe one of them is that turtle movie. I'm sure the kid will help you look."

Both women looked at Ash's quiet face for a moment as the landscape rushed beneath them. To all appearances, the boy was simply sleeping. He didn't twitch or groan. He just breathed evenly, his expression calm.

"I'm sorry."

The sudden apology caught Teal off guard. Blinking, she frowned and shook her head.

"It's not your fault. Seo-jin was just upset."

"No. He was right. I should've stopped them, or at least gotten Lynn and you outta there. Instead, I failed as a leader, and Lynn paid for it."

Seeing the pain in Min's eyes and hearing the strain in her voice, Teal carefully slid away from Ash, lowering his head onto the unseen surface beneath them. She moved forward and knelt in front of Min, taking the larger woman's hands in hers and squeezing as firmly as she could.

"So big."

Min winced and immediately tried to pull her hands away, but Teal barely managed to keep hold of them.

"Your hands are big, but they're not so large that they can hold everything. Lynn's death wasn't your fault. It was Baal's. The boss will keep growing, and you will too. Someday, both of you will march straight down into Hell and rescue Lynn's child. Blaming yourself will only slow you down."

The words weren't meant to coddle. She could tell Teal spoke from the heart, her voice steady despite everything. She wasn't saying it to make Min feel better. She truly believed every word.

Giving Min's hands one last squeeze, Teal felt the larger woman gently pull away. When Big Min looked up again, a faint smile had returned to her face.

"Thanks. Just do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"When we get back to Shatterbay, take a shower. You smell like hot ass."

"You're such a bitch!"

Shoving the gorilla-sized woman, Min burst out laughing, and a second later Teal joined in.

At that point, Grimm was absolutely certain women weren't meant to be understood. At least not by him.

"Women are weird."

The sudden voice made both humans scream. Teal practically launched herself into Min's arms, and even Min jerked hard enough to bang her head against the inside of Grimm's mouth.

A second later, both women were laughing again.

They needed this. Badly.

But as time passed, the sun sank lower and painted the horizon orange. Eventually the distant lights of Shatterbay appeared against the darkening landscape. Neither woman could find the strength to smile anymore.

The laughter faded, leaving only the rush of wind and the growing weight of what waited for them at home.

----

It was cold. Everything was.

Feeling had long since numbed, but the cold remained. In the flesh. In the bones. Down to the marrow. Only the cold.

Consciousness had become fleeting, bits and pieces of reality flashing between stretches of freezing black. Jerks of searing white-hot pain became his only warmth, the only thing tethering him to the fact that he wasn't dead.

He hadn't eaten. Hadn't drunk a drop of water. His limbs were gone, his ribs broken, his organs bruised and battered. The only reason he was still alive was because the angel wanted it that way.

During those flashes of reality, it was always there. Sometimes close enough to hear every word, sometimes pacing farther away through the gloom, but always there. Always talking. Maybe it thought he was the perfect audience. Maybe it simply liked hearing its own voice. Whatever the reason, the damn thing wouldn't shut up.

His only solace was that reality never stuck around for long. The cod darkness always dragged him back down.

He'd long since abandoned any hope of being rescued. Instead, he found himself wondering how long it would take for the angel to give up, to finally let this twisted game end and finish him. Even with the angel's healing, he should have died a hundred times over.

He was beaten. The Dead Hands had been wiped out. He had no idea if Seo-jin would even survive the Freelands, let alone care enough to return for him. His boss was a demon after all, and they'd never signed a contract. For all Gregor knew, this had become nothing more than a meaningless torture session, and Seo-jin was never coming.

But every time his heart began to still, every time the angel's healing started to fade and his life force slipped lower, a face would flash through his tattered mind

Eyes just like his, but features too soft for any further comparison. Hair bright as sunlight, worn long around a smile that matched. A smile that hurt worse than any torture he was currently enduring.

In that moment, his heart would beat again. His life force would steady. And his soul would rage.

"Trus..."

The word slipped from his cracked lips, barely more than a breath in his broken state, yet it still drew the attention of the Cardinal as he paced.

Cardinal Chelk's white robes stilled, the fabric settling around him as his round face spread into a smile. He stepped over to Gregor's collapsed form, bare feet crunching softly over scattered debris.

"Coward? What could that tiny, savage brain of yours be dreaming? Is your leader a coward? Do you curse him in your time of need?"

Bending over, Chelk gently ran a hand across Gregor's bald scalp, dragging it down the side of his face before slapping his cheek with a solid thwack.

"You better pray he's not a coward. Otherwise, I will keep you alive until I have let you experience things no human could even imagine. Do you know what happens when you fill a human with light? The reactions are quite beautiful."

Patting Gregor's head, Chelk rose and returned to pacing. The light covering him never wavered. It remained constant, bathing the ruined room in a pale glow as though it were simply part of him.

"He will come."

The light flickered.

Stopping mid-step, Chelk placed his hands behind his back and turned to face Gregor.

The human sat slumped against a ruined chunk of steel. No arms. No legs. No reason at all for anyone beyond a child to fear him. Yet the moment Chelk met his eyes, something buried within them sent a chill through the angel, one his pride refused to acknowledge.

"I'm glad your faith in him is so strong. I look forward to seeing if he is worthy of it."

Before he'd even finished speaking, the human had already slipped back under. His head sagged forward, and for the first time a crack surfaced in the angel's expression.

Turning away, Chelk faced a ruined section of wall that overlooked the distance. A cool breeze drifted through the opening as he watched the sun sink toward the horizon, painting the broken landscape in fading gold.

In that moment, for reasons even the angel couldn't explain, he knew.

Seo-jin would return.

All he had to do was wait.

----

Music slammed into Yu-na's skull the second the door opened, bass rattling through the concrete beneath her heels.

The bouncer bowed as she walked in, doing his best to be as insignificant as possible. It was always the right choice when one of the Woon sisters was angry, and judging by the tight set of Yu-na's jaw, she was definitely pissed.

With a flick of her hand, a petite thing in a too-small pink dress was sent flying face-first into a table. Wood cracked on impact. The woman hit the floor hard and didn't move again until two bouncers hurried over and dragged her away.

Not a soul came remotely close to standing in her path after that. A clear lane opened straight to the one table in the club nobody dared sit at unless they were a Woon.

Yu-na's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before souring when she spotted the reason for her current mood.

Both her sisters were sitting there as if they didn't have a care in the world, as if Yu-na hadn't been tearing through Woon Tower looking for them while nobody could tell her where they'd gone. They hadn't responded to a single attempt at communication, magical or otherwise. She'd been seconds away from destroying an entire floor of Tower before deciding to check here.

Storming up to the table, she slammed both palms against it hard enough to rattle glasses and burned two holes into her sisters with her glare.

"What the hell?!"

Neither seemed to properly register her presence. Hye-jin was too busy tracing her fingers along a young woman's thigh, the woman looking increasingly unhappy with the attention. Ji-yoon, meanwhile, sat slouched in her seat, giggling uncontrollably while her mind spun from a digi-stixx.

Walking around the table, Yu-na fixed the young woman with a stare so intense she nearly passed out. Smart enough to understand the message, the woman scrambled to her feet and hurried away. Taking her seat, Yu-na leaned forward until she was nearly in her sister's face.

"I'm talking to you."

With another casual wave of her hand, a bolt of black energy shot across the room and slammed into the booth along the wall. The DJ wasn't hit, but his equipment exploded in a shower of sparks and crackling static. The music died instantly.

With that single movement, the club fell eerily silent.

"What the hell, Yunnie?! I was peaking!"

Rolling her head as if her neck had stopped working, Ji-yoon leaned forward, her arm jutting across the table and spilling drinks over the polished surface.

"Why'd you do that? Huh? Why'd you"

"Shut the fuck up, Ji-yoon!"

Yu-na snapped, throwing her hand out again. Her eyes glowed with dark light.

Responding instantly, Ji-yoon's lit up as well, but not fast enough. Before she could defend herself, her forehead slammed into the table with a sharp crack. Long, deep snores started almost immediately.

Whipping back to Hye-jin, Yu-na leaned forward until she was certain she had her sister's full attention.

"Now. What. The. Fuck?"

Leaning back as a cigarette appeared between her fingers, Hye-jin barely reacted. A male attendant hurried over and held out a lighter with a trembling hand. Lighting the cigarette, she took a slow drag before blowing the smoke directly into her sister's face.

"Feel better?"

Hye-jin motioned lazily toward Ji-yoon's sleeping body.

"Not in the slightest. Why haven't you been responding? I've been looking for you two everywhere. I almost"

"Well, you found us. Not that we were hiding. So now that we're all here, what's so important?"

Taking another long drag, Hye-jin didn't seem to care in the slightest. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted between them, a stark contrast to the tension hanging over the table. It was a complete reversal from the last conversation they'd shared.

"Bullshit. Why are you avoiding me?"

Rolling her eyes, Hye-jin took another drag, then ground the cigarette into the tabletop. She spoke as she rose to her feet.

"The better question is why you suddenly care."

She turned to walk off, but Yu-na grabbed her wrist. She was about to answer when Hye-jin suddenly spun on her, eyes flashing for a brief second as she ripped her hand free.

"Don't touch me! If you want someone to give a shit, go talk to Father. Seems you've been doing quite a lot of that lately.&uot;

Her words dripped with venom, her face twisted in anger. Spinning on her heel, Hye-jin's blonde hair whipped through the air as she stormed away. Two attendants hurried into step behind her, following her out of the club while Yu-na stood there staring after.

Sitting back down, Yu-na let her eyes drift across the crowd. She scanned face after face while sorting through what had just happened.

The moment she'd grabbed Hye-jin's wrist and her sister turned on her, a communication had slipped through.

'Mom's spot. Ten o'clock. Ears are everywhere.'

Waiting a few minutes, she left the club herself. Just before walking out of the main room, she waved a hand dismissively and kept going. Behind her, she heard Ji-yoon's enraged shouting the moment she woke up. The screams of everyone unlucky enough to still be inside quickly followed.

Looking up at the sky as the setting sun painted the clouds in streaks of orange and red, Yu-na felt a familiar sense of dread settle over her. It was something she'd carried for years, but lately she'd been unable to keep it buried. Recently it felt like a boulder resting on her chest, and right now, staring up at the darkening sky, that weight felt almost unbearable.

"Seo-jin... stay safe."

Black smoke curled around her feet and ankles as she took a step, then vanished from the spot.

A few moments passed before the club door opened again. Calmly, as though nothing had happened, Ji-yoon walked outside. She looked at the place where Yu-na had been standing, then lifted her gaze toward the reddening sky.

"Stupid bitch."

Smiling, she pulled out a phone. The screen lit her face as she tapped it and brought it to her ear. Moments later, the smile disappeared.

"Yes, Father. She bit."

Listening for a moment longer, she ended the call. Looking back up at the sky, a breeze stirred her hair, exposing a dark, pulsing mark on the side of her neck.

Calmly, she walked away, her face settling into a cold, blank stare.

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