Dante had endured an almost comical—if it weren’t so horrifying—string of catastrophes in the past few days. He'd been hurled through bar fights like a human pinball, barely dodged enforcers with grudges older than some civilizations, received cryptic death threats in languages he didn’t even speak, and, for the grand finale, had fallen through a literal hole in reality itself.

  So when he regained consciousness, face-down in a pool of golden light that pulsed like a living thing, his first, entirely reasonable thought was:

  Oh. This is new.

  Then the pain hit.

  Not the dull throb of bruises or the sharp sting of broken ribs—no, this was worse. Existentially worse. It felt as if every cell in his body was being pinned beneath an all-seeing gaze, peeled apart layer by layer, scrutinized, weighed, and found lacking.

  With a groan that barely masked his growing panic, he forced himself upright, hands pressing against the smooth, marble-like floor. As his vision adjusted, he took in his surroundings—and immediately wished he hadn't.

  An endless cathedral stretched around him, a sanctum that defied reason. White marble gleamed beneath towering columns that spiraled up into an infinite, unknowable sky. Floating runes—vast, shifting lines of living scripture—glowed along the walls, whispering truths too vast for mortal minds to grasp. The air hummed with power, thick and suffocating, like the weight of a sentence waiting to be passed.

  And at the heart of it all, standing motionless yet exuding a presence vast enough to drown worlds, was the Celestial Legate.

  A figure draped in immaculate white robes, flawless as if carved from divine stone. A being that was not just a judge, but an executioner—an enforcer of laws far older than humanity itself. His eyes burned like twin suns, radiating the kind of authority that made lesser things tremble.

  He did not speak. He pronounced.

  “Dante Lucero.” The Legate’s voice rang through the cathedral like a hammer striking iron, like a verdict echoing through eternity. “Your contract is an affront to the divine order.”

  Dante exhaled sharply, forcing down the spike of panic clawing at his throat. "Yeah? Well, so is my bank account, but nobody’s threatening to smite that."

  The Legate did not react. Of course he didn’t. These types never had a sense of humor.

  “You bear a pact that should not exist,” the Legate continued, stepping forward. “A contract signed in violation of the natural order. The one who forged it should be dead. And yet, it persists—through you.”

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  Dante felt his stomach twist, a cold coil of dread unfurling in his gut. He had suspected—known—his contract was bad news. But this bad?

  He licked his lips, forcing himself to sound casual. “What happens if I just... cancel it?”

  It was, of course, a rhetorical question. He already knew the answer.

  The Legate’s gaze flared hotter, searing through him. “You cannot. But we can.”

  There it was. The offer.

  "Surrender yourself to our judgment," the Legate said, his voice neither cruel nor kind—simply inevitable. "And we will cleanse you. Burn the contract from your soul. Purge the corruption that binds you to the Abyss."

  Dante let out a slow, steady breath.

  That almost sounded merciful.

  But mercy, Dante had learned, was a matter of perspective. To men like the Legate, it was a scalpel, carving away what they deemed impure. A kindness, in the way a wildfire was kind to a diseased forest—burning away the sickness, the corruption, the unapproved. He could already picture it: divine fire unraveling him thread by thread, reducing his contract, his soul, him to nothing but ash and light. Not a punishment. A purification.

  And maybe, just maybe, there was a version of him that would’ve accepted it. A Dante who was tired of running, of scraping by on borrowed time and worse debts. A Dante who didn’t look at the abyss and see something worth keeping. But that wasn’t this Dante. Because for all the mistakes he’d made—and there were many—he’d never been the kind of man to let someone else decide what parts of him were worth saving.

  He clenched his jaw, pushing down the cold knot in his gut. The Legate wasn’t offering salvation. He was offering erasure. The kind that left no body, no bloodstains—just a neat, corrected space where a problem used to be. And Dante had no intention of making their job that easy.

  Except he knew what "cleansing" meant to people like this. He’d seen it before. He’d seen what happened to Pactmakers who "violated the order."

  Their contracts didn’t die.

  They did.

  The Legate’s gaze bored into him, expectant. Waiting for him to kneel. To submit. To accept salvation at the price of annihilation.

  Instead, Dante grinned.

  "Y'know, I think I’ll hold onto my heresy a little longer."

  The air shuddered.

  For the first time, the Legate frowned. A crack in the mask of divine certainty.

  "Then you leave us no choice."

  A low, resonant hum filled the cathedral, deep enough to rattle Dante’s bones. The air itself seemed to tighten, pressing against his skin like unseen hands, pinning him in place. The runes on the walls burned brighter, shifting faster, as if they were no longer mere symbols but something alive—something sharpening its teeth. This wasn’t just the prelude to a fight. It was a sentence being carried out.

  Dante forced himself to move, to breathe past the weight settling over him. His instincts screamed at him to run, to bolt for the nearest exit—even if there was no exit. But he knew better. There was no escaping judgment. No slipping through the cracks of a system designed to be inescapable. The only way out was through. And if they were going to burn him, then he'd damn well burn back.

  With a sharp exhale, he reached for the power coiled deep in his bones, the Pact-magic thrumming just beneath his skin. It answered in a slow, reluctant pulse, sluggish against the divine weight pressing down on him. This was their domain, their reality. But Dante had survived worse. He gritted his teeth, forcing the magic to rise—and felt it snarl in response, a dark current surging against the tide of holy light.

  The runes lining the cathedral walls blazed with unbearable light. The very foundations of the space thrummed with power.

  Dante’s breath hitched as reality itself twisted around him, as the weight of judgment grew crushing, inescapable.

  And then he realized—

  Judgment wasn’t coming.

  It was already here.