Chapter 60: Surgery by Paperclip & The Weaver’s Cry
The cacophony of the divine clash – Mammon’s void-shredded contracts shrieking against Stapler Prime’s percussive barrage of administrative ordnance – was a physical pressure. Dust rained down from the flickering sky, alternating between blue lines and static voids.
Nishanth knelt beside Lilith, the blood-slick paperclip blade cold and terrifying in his mortal hand. Zara leaned against the folded-rubble bookshelf, her breath ragged but her eyes fiercely alert, her good hand maintaining pressure on the crude bandage just above Lilith’s collarbone. The dark ooze from Zara’s own stump had slowed to a thick seep under Lilith’s improvised tourniquet point, a grim testament to shared suffering.
Lilith lay on her back, her tunic ripped open to expose her sternum. The sight was grotesque. Nestled just below the hollow of her throat, fused to bone and skin with tendrils of sickly beige light, was the origami locket. It wasn’t merely resting there; it was embedded.
Intricate folds of impossibly strong, bureaucratic-grade paper formed a complex, geometric knot, pulsing rhythmically with the same dull, invasive light that seemed to leech the color from Lilith’s skin around it. Each pulse sent a visible tremor through her slight frame. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated with terror and pain, fixed on the blade in Nishanth’s hand.
"Get it out," Zara hissed, her voice strained but unwavering. "Before he remembers it’s there. Before he pulls." The implication was clear – Mammon could use this anchor, this backdoor into Lilith’s very being, at any moment. To possess her fully, to drain her life force, or simply to inflict agony as a distraction.
Nishanth swallowed, the taste of blood and dust thick in his mouth. His ribs screamed a protest with every shallow breath. He was no surgeon. He was a broken ex-god holding an unfolded paperclip. The locket pulsed again, and Lilith whimpered, a sound that cut through the battlefield noise straight to Nishanth’s core.
"Look at me, Lil," Nishanth said, forcing his voice to a low, steady calm he didn’t feel. He met her terrified gaze. "This isn’t Mammon. This is garbage. We’re taking out the trash. It’s gonna hurt. But it’s coming out." He saw a flicker of desperate trust beneath the fear. She gave the tiniest nod, squeezing her eyes shut, bracing.
He positioned the sharpened end of the paperclip against the edge of the locket, where the beige light seemed thinnest, where paper met flesh. He took a breath, ignored the tremor in his own hand, and pushed.
SCRITCH.
The sound was like tearing thick, wet cardboard. Lilith’s body arched off the ground, a silent scream tearing from her throat. The locket flared, the beige light intensifying, burning Nishanth’s eyes. The paper resisted like steel cable. He pushed harder, leveraging his weight, feeling the crude blade scrape against bone beneath the fused paper. Dark, viscous fluid, similar to what had leaked from Zara’s stump but streaked with beige light, welled around the intrusion point.
"Keep pressure!" Nishanth barked at Zara, his voice cracking. He wedged the blade deeper, probing for the locket’s core, its hinge, its weakness. He felt something give – not the locket, but a strand of the beige light fused to Lilith’s sternum. It snapped with a sound like a breaking rubber band. Lilith screamed for real this time, raw and agonized.