Even the light filtering through the canopy had changed.

No longer warm or golden, it had curdled into a pale, sickly dilution — a memory of sunlight dragged through something diseased, casting long, distorted shadows that moved a fraction of a second too late. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Ahead, the land rose in a slow, deliberate incline, the earth folding upward into a hill that felt less grown than carved out of the forest’s flesh. Trees along its slope bent subtly away from the summit, trunks twisted as if in revulsion, as though every living thing understood that whatever waited at the top did not belong among them.

And there—

stood the cottage.

Small.

Still.

Utterly untouched.

It did not decay like the scarred forest surrounding it. It did not blend. It existed in quiet, obscene defiance of time and rot — walls straight, roof unbroken, every line preserved with unnatural perfection.

No wind touched it. No leaf dared settle on its shingles. No vine dared crawl across its stones.

It stood separate, anchored, watched maybe too, as though the world itself had been ordered to leave this one place alone.

Cassiopeia did not slow.

There was no hesitation left in her now — only a razor-edged urgency sharpened by the knowledge that time itself was collapsing behind them like a lung pierced by broken ribs. She reached the door in a single fluid motion, pressing the binding bracelet against the wood without ceremony or prayer.

For one fragile heartbeat —

nothing.

Then the world tightened.

The air around the contact point constricted like a throat being squeezed.

A faint ripple spread outward, slow and reluctant, as the invisible barrier cloaking the cottage revealed itself in thin, fragile strands of blue light that traced the edges of something vast and coldly precise.

It shimmered once — not in strength, but in weary recognition — and then unraveled.

It did not get shattered this time but dismissed.

The light faded into nothing and the resistance vanished with a soft, wet sigh.

The door opened by itself.

Cassiopeia exhaled shakily, though she had not realized she had been holding her breath, and turned her head slightly toward Sienna, voice stripped down to bare necessity.

"Underground."

Sienna gave one single, curt nod.

That was enough.

They moved again.

The interior of the cottage did not greet them with dust or decay. It greeted them with stillness — a complete, suffocating preservation, as though an entire moment in time had been frozen, vacuum-sealed, and left untouched for centuries.

The air carried no scent of life, yet it was not stale. It was quiet in a way that felt enforced, as if something had deliberately murdered every echo, every trace of warmth, every memory that might have lingered.

The walls held no memory.

The floor bore no footprints, no scuffs, no sign that any living thing had ever crossed it.

And yet —

something lingered.

Not visible and mundaneness like being tangible.

But present and watching.

They crossed the space quickly, footsteps swallowed whole by the unnatural silence that pressed in from every direction like cold, wet hands. At the far end, almost hidden, a narrow entrance revealed itself — descending into a darkness that felt heavier, older, and far more aware than any shadow had the right to be.

They descended.

Each step downward deepened the pressure against their chests. The air grew colder, thicker, clotted.

Their own footfalls returned to them not as sound but as something distorted — warped, mocking, as though the stairwell itself resented being disturbed and was already planning how to punish them for it.

Cassiopeia reached the switch.

Her hand hovered for the barest fraction of a moment.

Then she pressed it.

Light exploded into existence — a harsh, merciless blaze that slammed the darkness aside in one violent motion, flooding the chamber and revealing what had been kept hidden beneath the world.

The Lesser God level Witch.

She sat at the exact center of the room, contained inside a cage that did not merely confine but suppressed.

Heavy chains bound every limb, every joint, every finger, each iron link etched with shimmering inscriptions that pulsed with quiet, merciless authority. The pressure radiating from those runes could be felt in the teeth, in the bones, in the soft tissue behind the eyes — a constant, throbbing command to remain.

The cage itself was not large, yet it felt impossibly heavy, as though its mass came not from metal but from the sheer crushing weight of its purpose.

And within it—sat something that had once been BODY.

Her body had withered into a fragile architecture of bone and parchment skin stretched so tight it looked ready to split. Every rib showed. Every tendon stood out like wires under desiccated flesh.

Her eyes were open — wide, unblinking — but empty, not with blindness but with total, absolute surrender. Whatever fire had once burned behind them had long since been extinguished, leaving only two hollow pits that reflected the harsh light like polished stones at the bottom of a dried-up well.

There was no struggle.

No resistance.

No hope left it her beautiful green and red heterochromia eyes.

Even death had abandoned her.

She simply existed — a breathing corpse, preserved in eternal, living damnation, waiting for whatever came next with the patience of something that had already forgotten how to want anything at all.

Cassiopeia exhaled slowly, the sound quiet but heavy, as though even breathing too loudly might awaken something that had been deliberately starved into silence. Her gaze remained locked on the bindings, understanding carving itself into her face like a blade dragged across bone.

Her voice dropped to a near-whisper, each word chosen with the care of someone walking across thin ice over an abyss.

"The cage... and the chains..." she began, measured, careful. "They’re Supreme Celestial artifacts. Only something like this could hold a Lesser God witch." Her eyes flicked briefly toward Sienna, wide with warning. "This is why I told you — it was supposed to be an investigation mission. We can’t just take her out without—"

Sienna walked past her.

Without hesitation or acknowledgment of the great challenge between them.

Her steps carried the same quiet, inevitable certainty she had worn since the moment she tore open the world, as though every warning, every sacred limitation, every celestial law existed only for lesser things — not for her.

She stopped directly in front of the cage.

And looked.

Her gaze settled on the withered ruin inside — the parchment skin stretched over jutting bones, the hollow sockets that had once held eyes capable of wielding divine wrath, the total, crushing absence of resistance — and her eyes gave nothing back.

No pity or disgust.

No recognition that she was staring at something that is a godly being. Only cold, clinical observation.

Her hand rose.

Fingers brushed lightly against the jade ring on her finger.

A small motion almost careless.

Then she turned her head just enough for her voice to reach Cassiopeia without granting her the courtesy of full attention.

"While you Maxtons sit around waiting for your precious ’Destined Day’ to crawl back to whatever scraps you were exiled with," she said, tone quiet, edged with restrained, ancient disdain, "we Ryujin Tiamats don’t wait."

Her fingers moved.

"We’re not that fucking pitiful we have our resources."

She rubbed the ring.

The air responded instantly.

Not with light or thunder, but with a sickening inward fold — as though reality itself had been pinched and crumpled to make room where none should exist.

Space condensed, warped, drawn into a single point until it coalesced into a small, perfectly smooth orb that pulsed with contained, impossible depth. Its surface looked calm, almost glassy, yet something inside it pressed outward with gentle, hungry insistence, like a stomach digesting something still alive.

Cassiopeia’s breath caught in her throat.

"...that’s—"

Recognition hit her like a slap.

"A storage ring." Sienna caught the orb with effortless grace.

And threw it.

The moment the orb touched the cage—

reality yielded.

There was no explosion of clashing powers and heroic struggle between divine artifacts and abyssal will, or dramatic shattering of celestial chains Cassiopeia had expected.

The chains did not snap.

They simply ceased.

Swallowed whole.

Erased from existence in a single, silent, obscene instant as the orb consumed everything within its reach. Space folded inward with wet, greedy hunger, accommodating what should never have fit. The Supreme Celestial artifacts — forged to bind a Lesser God — vanished without protest, without residue, without even the dignity of ruins.

The witch.

The cage.

The chains.

All Gone.

As though they had never existed at all.

Cassiopeia’s mouth fell open, her mind fracturing as it tried to reconcile what she had just witnessed — not destruction, not removal, but absolute, surgical displacement. Something far cleaner and infinitely more terrifying than any act of brute force.

Sienna caught the orb again as it floated back to her hand, fingers closing around it with casual certainty, as though sealing away a bound Lesser God was no more significant than pocketing a coin.

Then she turned.

"Let’s go."

And she walked.

No urgency.

Just smooth, unhurried movement, as if tearing open the dome of the world, unleashing the Unfinished Children of the Abyss, and casually stealing a prisoner held by Supreme Celestial artifacts had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience on the way to somewhere more interesting.