"You were supposed to want this," the King hissed through Timmy's stolen teeth. Its voice fractured into seven overlapping tones—each the exact pitch of Adrian's childhood nightmares.
The rusted key in Adrian's grip grew white-hot, its three jagged teeth rotating like a lockpick made of bone.
The Rejection Sequence
Adrian's body rebelled against the Demon King's essence with apocalyptic violence:
Stage One: Bone Garden
His spine erupted through his back in a grotesque bloom of antlers, each branch:
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Tine A: Growing miniature Swiss boarding schools where children ate each other's brands
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Tine B: Sprouting oil rigs that pumped screaming faces into the sky
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Tine C: Bearing car crash wreckage like rotten fruit
Stage Two: Memory Hemorrhage
His left eye dissolved into a black fluid that:
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Pooled into the words SITE OMEGA HOLDS THE DOOR
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Then rearranged into a map of his neural pathways
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Finally revealed three red X's marking where memories had been surgically removed
Stage Three: Brand Rejection
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The VII-OMEGA brand peeled away like a scab, exposing:
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A pulsating VIII symbol no one had mentioned
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Beneath it, seven tiny hands pressing against his sternum from inside
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A whisper: "We were the first sacrifices"
The embryonic King shrieked as Adrian's bone antlers impaled it. "You were designed to crave this!"
Site Alpha: The Chessboard Massacre
The rejection sequence hurled Adrian through dimensions onto a snow-covered chessboard the size of a city block. The pieces were:
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White Side: Children in school uniforms with fresh VII brands
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Black Side: Their decayed doppelg?ngers from previous cycles
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The Players:
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Headmaster Voss (his plague doctor mask now a bishop's mitre)
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A seven-armed figure wearing Adrian's stretched face like a hood
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"We harvest the losers," Voss explained as a pawn-child's head rolled to Adrian's feet. Its dead lips moved: "Octave comes."
The stained glass window above depicted:
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Six hunters kneeling to a faceless god
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A seventh standing apart, holding a key identical to Adrian's
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An eighth shadow barely visible in the background
When the seven-armed figure turned, Adrian saw its chest—it had the original Omega's still-beating heart wired into a mechanical pump.
The Heart's Revelation
The rusted key burned Adrian's palm as it activated:
First Memory
The original Omega (a man with Kaelis' eyes but Adrian's smile) stood over the Demon King's cradle—not to destroy it, but to name it. His dying whisper: "I christen you Abyss Eater, for you shall consume all wounds."
Second Memory
Vaulk carving the heart into seven pieces—each implanted into a control group's central subject. The Swiss boarding school's piece still pulsed in Headmaster Voss' chest.
Third Memory
A message carved on the dead Omega's ribs:
THE DOOR IS THE WOUND
THE KEY IS THE SCAR
THE OCTAVE IS THE VOICE THAT REMAINS
The chessboard trembled as the surviving piece-children pointed at Adrian's VIII brand, their chant becoming a sonic weapon:
"Octave comes! Octave comes!
Seven were given but eight must return!
The king is hungry! The king must learn!"
Headmaster Voss' mitre-mask cracked open, revealing a VII-ALPHA brand identical to Kaelis'. "They told me you were the control group," he whispered as black fluid poured from his eyes. "Not the catalyst for the final harvest."