Everything happened at once, as was normal for Omega’s awareness, when she was leaving a collective memory.

A burly man rushed out from the frightened herd.

Astral was whisked up into his thick arms and pulled into the flock.

Omega feet hurt. Astral’s memory of fighting against her savior anchored itself into Omega’s collection of lived experiences.

The air was forced from their lungs. Air Astral had expelled. Air Omega hadn’t breathed in centuries.

The spelled shattered with explosive violence.

Omega hadn’t felt pain since the day she had died at the hands of the Devourer. The experience was crippling. ‘Help… me…’ Omega forced herself to her hands and knees, feeling the cold concrete bite into flesh she didn’t have anymore.

Her spectral body burned through the deep gashes to her soul. The putrid air filled with demonic essence seared her lungs with each labored pull. She closed her eyes against the pain, focusing her mind.

She was anchored to Astral, and with it, the new devastating trajectory. If Astral died here in Clearwater, everything was lost. Omega would never build herself on Astral’s legacy, and the Devourer would consume all, as he had done in every cycle prior.

Omega fought against her frustration and the beginnings of her grief. She reforged her resolve. She still had her purpose, a destiny to fulfill. Where was the child?

The first wave of lesser demons had been eradicated in the blast. Good. It bought her time.

With deep labored breaths, she pulled herself to her feet. Her ears rang and her vision blurred. No, not blurred, she realized. More than half the villagers were dead. The human remains were obscured shapes in the dying light cast from the souls of the few villagers who survived.

Omega staggered toward the survivors as sparks of the spectral essence rose over the dead bodies, beginning the first stage of transcendence. Confusion. Despair. Rage. Greif. All a mix of the final emotional memories that the refugees carried with them into the afterlife, not unlike Omega’s transcendence. Given their trauma, she doubted that the journeying souls could carry with them any more than a few precious moments lived, if that. Such is the devastation of such attacks, though not exclusive to demons. The prolonged psychological tyranny left the life cycle barren, struggling to shape new life, new ideas, new possibilities. A new future.

The Ooze swirled into life, stretching itself around the cluster of refugees both dead and alive, tentatively testing for the magic that had barred its path.

A twilight ocean of fragmented souls collected over the devastation, peacefully drifting with a gentle push and pull, like the world itself was breathing. Omega stumbled toward the brightest nebula, praying that Astral was among them and breathing. She didn’t need her conscious. It was best if she wasn’t; she was less likely to fight off Omega’s will. Once possessed, Omega could ensure Astral’s survival. However, when the child became aware, Omega would have to bury herself deep into Astral’s subconscious to avoid detection and her inevitable destruction.

The Ooze closed itself off, barring any chance of escape. It pulled itself toward its center, moving with intention, slowing only to absorb the dead into its putrid black fluid body which repaired its strength and height.

The souls orbited the interior of the Ooze’s prison, answering the invisible call with grace and dignity. The souls of the damned funneled toward the Vessel.

Omega stood over Astral’s surprise saviour. The big man had tried to shield her from the blast, failing to realize that it had struck from all directions. In his last moments, he had given his life for hers, and now his dead body, heavier than it had been in life, was crushing the child’s slight frame. Astral’s own soul flickered brilliantly from beneath her meat shield, hiding her from the Oozes’ immediate notice.

Astral whimpered from beneath her meat prison, too small to push the heavy body from her. Her energy too depleted to form the magical equation needed to remove the body through other means. Consciously or not, Astral called the souls to her, consuming the energy she needed to survive.

Once Omega freed her, she wouldn’t have long.

Omega spectral hands made firm contact with the man’s heavy body. She didn’t dwell on the sensation. With a push, the child was freed. The Ooze swelled in excited anticipation, turning itself into a tsunami of hunger and hate as it surged toward the Vessel.

Astral had no chance to defend herself when the Ooze struck her, enveloping her in its thick, hungry body.

Omega understood in that moment the farce she had endured. Another one of the Emperor’s little jokes, but this one may have been even far beyond his own hubris.

Omega didn’t want to die. It was that desire that had cast her back when she had succumbed to death at the hands of the Devour. That same desire that willed her to fight the Devourer over and over again, impelling the existence of each new cycle.

Though aware that there had been multiple iterations leading to her own end, she had never gleaned from how the cycles had started. She only had theories, lore, and the stories of the expert hunters of the demon wars to guide her.

She understood now. She understood that in death, fresh memories couldn’t form. There was no way to share this knowledge with her Vessel, to give her peace in this most terrifying of moments.

She had it backwards this whole time. Astral did not have to give herself freely to Omega.

‘I give myself freely to you,’ Omega said, acknowledging and accepting her last death. Peace washed over her as her spiritual essence broke apart, scattering across the twilight ocean, giving new life to the galaxy of souls. The souls swirled around the ooze. Guided by Omega’s last command, they burrowed through the wall of hate and poured themselves into what remained of the child.