Nine hours and forty-three minutes.

  Lea's consciousness had narrowed to a single point—maintaining the curse, holding the web, keeping a hundred thousand people asleep.

  Her spiritual reserves were nearly depleted. Each breath felt like inhaling gss. Her Cursed Constructs had long since dissolved, unable to maintain form while she fed the ritual.

  But then, something changed.

  A new sensation began building inside her. Not the draining pull of the curse, but something flowing in... warm, heavy, beyond ancient.

  Divine power.

  It trickled into her at first, barely noticeable against the constant drain. But as the hours wore on, the trickle became a stream.

  Then a river.

  The Path of Divinity was responding to her ritual. Recognizing her achievement. Beginning the transformation from mortal Pathstrider to something... more.

  Eight hours and twelve minutes.

  The divine power accumuted, filling the hollow spaces the curse had carved out. It felt wrong, too vast for her human form, pressing against the boundaries of her flesh like water against a dam.

  Lea's body trembled with the dual forces draining and filling, emptying and overflowing, dying and ascending simultaneously.

  Seven hours and thirty-one minutes.

  The pain was indescribable. Her nerves screamed. Her bones ached. The divine power was remaking her from the inside out, but the ritual wouldn't let her lose focus, couldn't let her colpse.

  She was caught between transformation and obliteration.

  Six hours and eight minutes.

  The sky began to lighten. Dawn approached, bringing with it the end of her ordeal.

  Lea could barely see anymore. Her vision swam with colors that shouldn't exist. Her hearing picked up sounds from miles away, conversations, heartbeats, the rustle of fabric.

  The divine power was changing her perception. Expanding it beyond human limits.

  Five hours and forty-two minutes.

  The district remained silent. Peaceful. A hundred thousand souls sleeping undisturbed.

  Lea held on.

  Four hours and nineteen minutes.

  The eastern horizon glowed faintly. Sunrise was coming.

  The divine power surged, as if responding to the approaching completion. Lea gasped, feeling it burn through her spiritual channels like liquid fire.

  Three hours and fifty-seven minutes.

  Almost there. Just hold on. Just—

  Music.

  Lea's head snapped up, her enhanced senses screaming danger. Calliope music. Cheerful, discordant, but wrong in the worst way possible.

  Her eyes, blurred with pain and transformation, focused on the street below. Figures were gathering. Colorful costumes. Painted faces. Balloons and props that hurt to look at too directly.

  The Wondertainment Troupe.

  Dozens of them, emerging from alleys and shadows, forming a circle around the base of her building. Clowns and acrobats and performers, all radiating that familiar corruption of the Maker's influence.

  One of them, a tall figure in a harlequin mask, looked up directly at her and waved cheerfully, as if greeting a fellow follower.

  No. Not now. Not when I'm so close... she cursed in her mind.

  Three hours and thirty-one minutes.

  The performers began their act. Juggling, tumbling, and creating formations that formed sigils, Lea recognized from her studies. Corruption symbols. Degradation marks.

  They were starting another ritual. Right here, right now, while she was locked in pce, maintaining her own work.

  Lea tried to move, tried to defend herself, but the curse demanded her complete focus. If she broke concentration, a hundred thousand people would wake up.

  The ritual would fail. She'd lose the Fourth Step.

  Three hours and nine minutes.

  The calliope music grew louder. The performers' movements became more synchronized. Their ritual was building, yer upon yer of corruption spreading upward toward her rooftop.

  Lea felt it pressing against her curse-web, trying to unravel it, twist it, corrupt it into something else entirely.

  Two hours and forty-three minutes.

  She couldn't hold both. Couldn't maintain her ritual while defending against theirs.

  The divine power inside her surged violently, responding to the threat. But it was wild, uncontrolled, burning through her without direction.

  Two hours and seventeen minutes.

  The sun crested the horizon. Golden light spilled across Renar, touching the rooftops.

  The Wondertainment Troupe's ritual reached its peak. Their combined corruption smmed into Lea's work like a battering ram.

  Her curse-web shuddered. Threatened to colpse.

  One hour and fifty-four minutes.

  No. NO.

  Lea made a desperate decision.

  With trembling hands, she pulled out the parchment Lady Keter had given her. The Honorific Title for the Path of Divinity. She'd pnned to wait until the ritual was completed fully, but—

  One hour and forty-eight minutes.

  The corruption was tearing her web apart. She could feel threads snapping, connections breaking.

  1 minute remained.

  Lea's voice, raw from hours of silence, began to chant, too disorganized to keep track.

  "Wandering across all Mind;Master of the Deepest Abyss;Dwelling in All and Faceless..."

  The world screamed. Reality buckled around her as the Honorific Title took hold. The divine power inside her exploded outward, no longer trickling but flooding.

  "Norem...", Lea whispered the special name.

  And something answered.

  Pain beyond description tore through her. Not just physical, but spiritual, mental, existential pain as the boundaries of her being began to dissolve. Her skin cracked like porcein, bck scales pushing through the breaks. Each scale glowed with internal golden light, as if stars were trapped beneath obsidian.

  Ravings invaded her mind. Thousands of voices from across Renar all flooded into her consciousness at once.

  Two pairs of horns erupted from her skull. Not clean, but violent, tearing through flesh and bone. Goat-like, twisted, radiating wrongness.

  Lea tried to scream, but the sound that emerged was inhuman. A Horror's cry.

  The Wondertainment Troupe below scattered, their ritual forgotten in the face of what was happening above them.

  Lea's body convulsed. Her form was breaking, remaking, changing into something that shouldn't exist.

  A Horror. A creature of divine corruption given flesh, something way worse than a normal Horror...

  Her human consciousness struggled against the tide of transformation. She could feel herself slipping, drowning in the ravings and the divine power and the pain.

  This is wrong. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm becoming—

  Her curse-web, forgotten in the chaos of transformation, colpsed entirely.

  Across Restap District, a hundred thousand people began to stir in their sleep.

  The ritual was failing.

  Lea was failing; she felt the pull of something deep and ancient. The rustle of leaves and the snapping of branches, trying to drag her... somewhere.

  And the thing she was becoming might not even remember who Lea Darkwill had been.

  Golden light poured from the cracks in her skin. Bck scales spread like an infection. The horns grew longer, sharper, more monstrous.

  Below, the Wondertainment Troupe watched in horrified fascination, cpping their hands as they witnessed the ascension of what they thought was an ally.

  In the pace, Dawn felt a chill and knew with terrible certainty that something had gone catastrophically wrong.

  In the monochrome library, Auger tried to stand again, but Lady Keter's hand held him down. She was watching something unfold with calm, analytical interest at the holographic screen on the table.

  And on that rooftop, Lea Darkwill, or what had been Lea Darkwill, continued to transform, her humanity and monstrosity locked in a battle neither seemed capable of winning.

  The sun rose fully over Renar.

  The screaming continued.

  And no one knew which side would emerge victorious.

  Rhaps