Published at 17th of September 2026 8:16 am

Chapter 250: No Turning Back

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Chapter 250: No Turning Back

The city shook with the arrival of an angel. Buildings collapsed beneath its presence, and everywhere the Chairman looked, what little had been maintained of Shatterbay was joining the rest of the city in ruin. Only the blocks surrounding Woon Towerand the Tower itselfremained untouched.

Watching it all burn, Chairman Woon stared up at the mass filling the sky. His face remained still, but his hand slowly tightened behind his back. For several long seconds, he said nothing.

Leaning forward, Blight's shadow cocked its head, the movement carrying an almost playful curiosity.

"Still intend to wait?"

The Chairman didn't answer. His eyes remained on the city a moment longer before he finally turned from the window. Each step toward the far wall came slow and measured, and when he reached it, his hand lingered before pressing an unseen button. A second later, a hidden door slid open to reveal an empty elevator.

"Start the ritual."

The words came out low and heavy. There was no anger left in them, only the tired bitterness of a man finally accepting something he'd spent too long trying to avoid. As the elevator doors began to close, Chairman Woon lifted his eyes, their glow returning as his jaw tightened.

Left alone, Blight slowly swirled back toward the window. His shadowed hand pressed against the glass as he watched the angel in the sky, and a grin gradually split the darkness of his face.

"Do not die on me. We have so much to catch up on, little ashkin."

Like fading mist, Blight's shadow dissolved from the room. His laughter remained behind, soft at first, then rising with barely contained delight before finally disappearing with him.

----

The numbers above the elevator door slowly ticked down.

B1...B2...

Chairman Woon stood alone, hands folded behind his back as the quiet hum of machinery surrounded him. For all the destruction shaking the city above, there wasn't so much as a tremor this far beneath the Tower.

B3Ding.

The doors slid apart. Two members of Delta Team were waiting on the other side. The moment the Chairman stepped out, both bowed deeply.

"Chairman."

"Everything is ready."

He walked between them without a word. Neither seemed surprised.

His footsteps echoed through the underground corridor as he continued deeper into the facility. There was none of the luxury found above. Bare concrete walls surrounded him, broken only by reinforced doors and strips of white light running along the ceiling.

At the end stood a pair of massive steel doors. Chairman Woon approached without slowing as a white beam dropped from the ceiling and swept over him from head to toe.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then came a heavy series of metallic locks releasing from somewhere inside the walls, and the doors separated and slowly pulled apart.

Chairman Woon entered.

Most of the room was dark, dominated by a massive monitor covering nearly the entire opposite wall. A control console sat beneath it, its displays already active and waiting. On the screen were hundreds of gang members. Every survivor brought into Woon Tower had been gathered inside a massive concrete chamber. Delta Team surrounded them in a perfect ring, black suited figures standing motionless while the prisoners screamed curses while demanded answers.

Several bodies already lay on the floor. Examples for the rest to not push it too far. The others had apparently understood the message, but understanding hadn't made them any quieter.

The Chairman stopped before the monitor. He watched a man shove one of the Delta soldiers and was immediately thrown backward. Another screamed directly into a soldier's face. Several people crowded around the sealed exits, pounding fists against steel hard enough that blood already streaked the doors.

The Chairman said nothing. His gaze slowly moved across the screen, taking in face after face. These were his people. The gangs belonged to him. Some had worked beneath the Woon Corporations for years. Others had joined recently, looking for protection, DP, or simply somewhere to belong in Shatterbay.

His finger rested beside the button.

For several seconds, it didn't move.

His jaw tightened. Dark Light flashed through his eyes

Click.

Sirens immediately screamed through the chamber.

The reaction was instant. Every gangster on the screen froze as red emergency lights began flashing overhead. Immediately, Delta Team moved as one, turning away from the prisoners and heading toward the exits.

"What the fuck is happening?!"

"Hey!"

"Where are you going?!"

"OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!"

Auras exploding, the Chairman's men threatened the gang members to stay back as they disappeared through the reinforced exits. The doors slammed shut behind them, and panic spread. Hundreds of people rushed after the soldiers, bodies and auras crushing together as fists hammered against the sealed doors. Others backed away, staring around the chamber as the sirens continued screaming.

Then the floor moved.

A deep grinding sound rolled through the room. Those nearest the center looked down and saw a thin crack had appeared beneath their feet.

The floor was slowly separating.

"Get back!"

Someone screamed. People scrambled as the opening widened, revealing the shifting red glow of a massive pool of blood filling the chamber below. The same pool the Chairman had submerged himself in so many times before. Its surface shifted slowly beneath them, thick enough that it barely moved like liquid at all.

The screaming started to change.

"Back up! Don't fucking touch me!"

People shoved against each other, fighting for the shrinking strips of solid ground along the walls. Some climbed over others. Several were knocked down and trampled beneath the crowd. The few who tried to fly or hover were quickly dogpiled, dragged back down by the jealous and desperate.

Everyone went silent as the first body fell.

The man hit the pool screaming...until his scream became something else.

His body was dissolving into the blood. Skin sloughed away, followed by muscle, his arms thrashing against the thick surface as everything beneath it disappeared.

Another fell.

Then three more.

The room erupted again.

Chairman Woon watched without moving as the remaining floor disappeared.

Hundreds dropped.

The blood churned violently as bodies struck its surface. Screams filled the speakers, overlapping until individual voices became impossible to separate. Hands clawed over one another, people desperately trying to climb onto bodies that were already melting.

Adding to the color of the room, the walls began to glow. Thin lines of dark red Light crawled upward from the pool, spreading through channels carved into the concrete. They branched and twisted across the chamber walls, connecting into demonic runes that ignited one after another.

Eventually the Chairman turned away as a door beside the console opened. Beyond it, a narrow staircase wound downward.

Chairman Woon descended, and the screams grew louder with every step, but by the time he reached the bottom, no voice was left. Only echoes fading through the stone around him, mixed with the hot, overwhelming smell of iron.

Another door opened. Heat washed over his face as Chairman Woon stepped through. The pool stretched before him, its surface rolling slowly beneath the glow of thousands of demonic markings covering the walls. What remained of the bodies disappeared beneath the crimson waters one piece at a time.

The Chairman removed his jacket.

Then hisshirt.

His shoes.

His pants.

Each piece was folded and placed aside with the same care he'd shown hundreds of times before. When the last of his clothing was gone, his back shifted.

Blood erupted from beneath his shoulder blades.

Two enormous wings unfurled behind him, spreading until their tips nearly touched the walls. They weren't feathered. Thick streams of blood formed their shape, constantly moving and dripping while somehow never losing form.

Chairman Woon stepped into the pool. Warmth climbed past his ankles, and slowly rose to his waist as he entered. The wings folded around him as he continued deeper, wrapping his body inside a massive red shell.

He stopped when the pool reached his chest.

For the first time since entering the basement, the Chairman hesitated.

His face tightened.

He looked upward, past three floors of concrete and steel. Toward Woon Tower. Toward Shatterbay. Toward a world that had already taken what mattered most from him.

His eyes closed.

"It's finally time."

The blood reached his shoulders as his wings closed tighter. Chairman Woon took one final breath

"Forgive me."

And the wings folded completely around him.

----

The Maw stretched beneath a dead sky, its horizon broken by things that had no business being called landscapes. Fleshfields rolled across the distance in wet folds, movement and suffering stretching into the horizon, until beyond them rose the Boneyards, where mountains of ancient remains had been packed together by time until entire ridges were made from ribs, skulls, and spines. Farther still, ruined wastelands of endless ash cut between both, black stretches of cracked earth where even the Maw seemed to have run out of things willing to live.

Eventually, the wasteland opened into a wide, empty expanse of black stone.

Deep at its center stood a crude ring of bone.

Thousands of ribs, femurs, horns, and pieces of things too large to name had been driven into the ground and packed together into a circular barricade. Some still carried strips of dried flesh, while others had fused together beneath centuries of grime. Inside the ring sat a lake of blood so large that the four figures standing around its edge looked small by comparison.

Blight floated above one side, molten-pitch skin shifting beneath the dark smoke constantly bleeding from his horns. His pale mouth stretched wider with every word of the chant, exposing rows upon rows of stacked teeth while his tail snapped eagerly behind him. Across from him stood The Bound, living chains slithering over his body and sinking into the dirt around his feet as red electricity crawled between their links.

Mistress Grogh occupied another section of the pool, her enormous body sagging beneath its own weight as thick pink vapor rolled from her flesh. Each word came with a wet movement of her throat, her distended stomach trembling while she forced the ancient sounds from somewhere deep inside herself. Beside her, The Stagnant King stood perfectly still, green Light swelling inside his empty sockets as the chant left his skeletal mouth layered with the sound of drowning voices.

Four Warlords of the Maw.

Power bled from each of them. Dark smoke rolled from Blight while red lightning crawled from The Bound, both joining the sickly green miasma pouring from the Stagnant King and the pink corruption spilling off Mistress Grogh. The energies climbed above the pool in separate streams before twisting together, tightening around something suspended at their center.

A dark soul.

The Worm Demon Warlord screamed as the energies wrapped around its massive spectral body.

Its shape twisted violently above the lake, coils thrashing against restraints that had no physical form while its voice rolled across the empty expanse. Curses spilled from its mouth between screams, directed at each Warlord in turn, but none of them answered. Their chanting continued beneath its rage, steady and perfectly matched as the bindings tightened.

The soul sank another foot...then another. Its screams grew louder as the blood reached it.

The Worm Demon bucked hard enough to distort the air, but the four streams of demonic power only pulled tighter. Blight's mouth stretched into a delighted grin as the soul fought them, his tail whipping faster while the chant continued without so much as a missed syllable.

Slowly, the Worm Demon disappeared beneath the surface.

For one brief moment, the blood went still.

Then the entire pool erupted.

Blood boiled upward as if something enormous had begun thrashing beneath it, waves slamming against the surrounding bones hard enough to crack them. The ground shook beneath the Warlords' feet, growing stronger by the second until the entire expanse began to split.

A pulse of dark energy exploded from the pool. The bone barricade disintegrated.

Thousands of shattered pieces launched across the Maw as the wave expanded in every direction, ripping through the surrounding wasteland and lifting the ground behind it. Entire sheets of black earth peeled upward, carrying stone and bone with them as the blast traveled for miles.

At the center of it, the four Warlords didn't move.

The Bound's chains thrashed violently around him. Mistress Grogh's enormous body shook beneath the pressure, folds of flesh rippling as the wind tore past. Green fog streamed from the Stagnant King, while Blight's smoke was ripped from his horns and stretched across the ruined field.

But their chanting never broke.

Without the bones holding it in place, the blood should have flooded across the shattered ground. Instead, the entire pool remained perfectly contained, its edges holding an impossible circular shape as it began pulling away from the Maw. Millions of gallons of blood rose slowly into the air, carrying the Worm Demon's trapped soul somewhere inside it while the Warlords continued feeding their power into the mass.

Struggling at first, they began forcing it smaller. The change was almost impossible to notice, but as the blood climbed higher, its edges slowly contracted. The massive pool narrowed by feet, then yards, its surface folding inward as more and more blood was compressed into less space.

For the first time, strain began showing around the ritual.

Red lightning cracked around The Bound's chains as they dug trenches through the earth to anchored him. Mistress Grogh's chant became a wet growl as her bulk heaved with every breath. The green Light inside the Stagnant King's skull burned brighter, while the fog pouring from his jaw thickened until it melted the ground around him.

Only Blight seemed to be enjoying himself.

His wide mouth had stretched so far that the layered teeth inside seemed to cover half his head. Dark smoke poured from his horns in heavy streams, while the enormous mass of blood continued shrinking.

Smaller. Denser. The shape began to change as it shrunk, narrowing at the center while both ends curved inward. The Worm Demon's soul occasionally appeared beneath the surface, its face stretching through the blood before being dragged back inside.

What had once been a pool large enough to fill the field was now suspended high above it, compressed into a massive dark-red cocoon. Its surface pulsed with each word spoken below, demonic runes appearing beneath the blood before sinking back into it.

The Warlords pushed harder.

The cocoon contracted.

Again and again. Until suddenly, every voice stopped. Silence rolled across the destroyed field, while at the same time, a crack appeared down the center of the cocoon.

Splitting with a sound that shook the Maw itself, it ripped opened. Blood exploded outward, but instead of falling, the two halves stretched apart and unfolded into enormous wings. Thick red memranes expanded across the dead sky, their surfaces rippling as the last remnants of the ritual crawled through them.

Between those wings, Chairman Woon hung motionless above the four Warlords, naked and dripping crimson onto the broken earth below. The enormous wings extended from his back, holding him effortlessly in the air as the last traces of the Worm Demon's soul disappeared beneath his skin.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then Chairman Woon opened his eyes.

His gaze moved slowly across the demons waiting beneath him, passing over Mistress Grogh, The Bound, and the Stagnant King before finally settling on Blight.

Blight's tail snapped through the air. His mouth spread into a delighted field of teeth.

"Let it begin."

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