Chapter 59: Severance & Ascension
Zara didn’t look at Lilith or Nishanth. Her entire world had narrowed to the terrified child and the corrupted limb that was the price of her freedom. The void-scars burned with icy fire, Mammon’s whispers a seductive counterpoint to the puppet’s demand.
Give me the hand, embrace the power within it, and crush this paper abomination. Save the child AND become more.
The temptation was a physical ache, a dark gravity pulling at her soul. But beneath it, beneath the corruption’s oily promise, was a bedrock of something harder: resolve. She would not let this child pay for their war. Not like this.
"Tools," Zara repeated, her voice unnervingly calm, detached. "A clean cut. Now." Her eyes, when they finally met the puppet’s sockets, held no fear, only a terrifying emptiness.
The void flared in them, then receded, leaving cold determination. She was compartmentalizing, walling off the horror, focusing solely on the mechanics of survival. Sever the limb. Save the child. Deal with the consequences after.
Lilith, trembling, her own violation warring with the immediate need, didn’t hesitate this time. Her fingers dipped into a hidden pouch at her belt – remnants of her days as a courier navigating hazardous realms.
She flicked something small and gleaming towards Zara. It wasn’t a scalpel. It was a single, oversized, chromed paperclip, unfolded and sharpened to a razor edge along one length, the other end coiled for grip. A brutal, improvised blade born of the Bureau’s own detritus. It clattered on the lined-paper ground near Zara’s feet.
Zara bent, the movement stiff. She picked up the paperclip blade. It felt alien, cold, and lethally sharp in her good hand. She turned her corrupted arm outward, bracing the elbow against her hip, presenting the wrist just above the worst latticework of void-black veins and paperclip scars. The dark energy beneath the skin writhed, sensing its imminent excision, a nest of angry vipers.
Nishanth watched, paralyzed by pain and dread. He saw no hesitation, no last-minute plea. Just Zara, the void-vessel, preparing to pay the debt in flesh and darkness. Mammon’s puppet vibrated with anticipation, its paper form seeming to drink in the tension.
"Tick-tock, voidling," the voice slithered, tightening its grip on the child. A small bead of blood welled where the paper edge bit. The girl’s whimper turned into a thin, high-pitched sound of pure fear.
Zara took a deep, shuddering breath. Her gaze locked onto a point just above the wrist joint. The whispers crescendoed – promises of power, vengeance, an end to weakness.