Chapter 104 Dead Ends
The scrying mirror shattered for the third time that day.
Lucian stared at the pieces scattered across his workroom floor and resisted the urge to destroy something else. He had been attempting location spells for forty-eight hours straight with zero success. Every mirror showed the same thing: darkness. Every tracking charm pointed nowhere. Every divination method he knew failed spectacularly.
“Still nothing?” Mammon stood in the doorway, looking as exhausted as Lucian felt.
“Worse than nothing. The spells are being actively blocked.” Lucian crouched and picked up a shard of mirror, studying his fractured reflection. “Malachi did not just hide where he went. He built layers of concealment that redirect every search back on itself. It is sophisticated magic.”
“So we need a more sophisticated approach.”
“We need something entirely different. Traditional methods will not work here.” Lucian dropped the shard and stood. “What about your contacts? Any word from your network?”
“Everyone I have reached out to claims ignorance. Either they genuinely know nothing or they are too afraid of Armageddon to talk.” Mammon crossed his arms. “I offered ridiculous sums of money for information. No one took the bait. That tells me the fear is real.”
“Or the information does not exist to be sold.”
“That too.” Mammon moved into the room, carefully avoiding the broken glass. “Azrael sent scouts to every realm bordering the Vestibulum. They found no trace of portal magic, no signs of passage, nothing. It is as if Malachi and Sera simply vanished from existence.”
Lucian swept the glass into a pile with his boot. “There has to be something we are missing. A method we have not tried yet.”
“Belphegor suggested a blood tracking ritual.”
“Using whose blood? We do not have anything belonging to Malachi, and Sera is not blood-related to any of us.” Lucian shook his head. “It would not work.”
“That is what I told him. He did not take it well.”
“How is he?”
“Worse every day. He is not sleeping, barely eating, spending every waking moment either searching himself or demanding updates from the rest of us.” Mammon’s expression was grim. “If we do not find her soon, I am genuinely worried about what he might do.”
“We all want to find her.”
“Yes, but the rest of us did not fall in love with her.” Mammon met Lucian’s eyes. “And the rest of us did not watch our companion die in the same attack. Belphegor is carrying double the grief and it is destroying him.”
A commotion in the corridor drew their attention. Raised voices, footsteps, something hitting a wall. They found Cain and Beelzebub facing off outside the war room, fire crackling along Cain’s arms while Beelzebub blocked the doorway with his considerable bulk.
“Move,” Cain said, her voice dangerous.
“No. You are not starting a war because you are impatient.” Beelzebub did not budge. “We do not even know where to attack yet.”
“Then we make Armageddon come to us. We hit his supply lines, burn his territories, make enough noise that he has to respond. When he does, we follow the response back to wherever he is hiding.”
“That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard.”
“It is better than sitting here accomplishing nothing while Sera suffers.” Cain’s fire flared brighter. “Every day we waste searching is another day she is with them. Another day they could be hurting her. Another day she thinks we have abandoned her.”
“No one has abandoned her,” Lucian said, approaching carefully. “We are doing everything possible to find her.”
“Everything possible is not enough.” Cain turned her fury on him. “Forty-eight hours and we have nothing. Not a single lead. Not one piece of useful information. We are failing and you want me to be patient about it?”
“I want you to think strategically instead of emotionally.”
“My emotions are telling me to burn things until someone gives me answers. That sounds pretty strategic to me.”
“That sounds like a way to start a war we are not prepared to fight,” Beelzebub said. “Father just died. We have no unified leadership. The kingdoms are barely holding together. Attacking Armageddon now would be suicide.”
“Then maybe we deserve to die if we cannot even protect one person who mattered.” Cain’s voice cracked slightly. “Sera was there because of us. Because she was loyal to Lilith, who was here because of Father’s prophecy plans. We brought her into this and now she is paying the price while we debate strategy.”
No one had an answer to that.
Asmodeus appeared at the end of the corridor, his usual swagger noticeably absent. “My sources in the outer realms have nothing. I called in every favor, threatened everyone I could threaten, offered bribes that would bankrupt smaller kingdoms. Total dead ends across the board.”
“Fantastic,” Cain said bitterly. “So we have accomplished absolutely nothing.”
“We have eliminated possibilities. That is not nothing.”
“It is not finding Sera either.”
Azrael emerged from the war room behind Beelzebub, maps and reports in hand. He looked like he had aged years in the past two days, exhaustion evident in every line of his face.
“We need to accept that this may take longer than we hoped,” he said without preamble. “Malachi had years, possibly decades, to plan his escape route. He knew exactly how to disappear.”
“So we give up?” Belphegor’s voice came from down the corridor. He walked toward them with the kind of controlled fury that was more frightening than Cain’s fire. “We just accept that she is gone?”
“No one said anything about giving up,” Azrael said carefully. “I said this will take time.”
“Time she does not have.” Belphegor stopped in front of his eldest brother. “Do you know what Armageddon does to prisoners? What his constructs are capable of? Every hour we waste is another hour she is in that place experiencing things no one should have to endure.”
“We are aware of the stakes.”
“Are you? Because from where I stand, you seem remarkably calm about the fact that someone we care about is being tortured while we debate methodology.” Belphegor’s hands were shaking. “I lost Morpheus. I am not losing Sera too. So either find a way to locate her or get out of my way and let me try methods you are too civilized to consider.”
“What methods?” Lucian asked.
“Blood magic. Forbidden rituals. Deals with entities we normally avoid. I do not care about consequences anymore. I care about getting her back.”
“Those methods are forbidden for good reason,” Azrael said. “The costs are too high.”
“The cost of not trying is higher.” Belphegor looked at each of his brothers. “She matters to me. That should be enough reason to try everything possible. And I am not going to stand here being too cautious while she suffers somewhere we cannot reach.”
“Belphegor,” Mammon started gently.
“No. I am done with careful deliberation. I am done with strategic patience. I am finding her with or without your help.” He turned and walked away before anyone could respond.
Silence fell over the corridor.
“He is going to do something stupid,” Beelzebub said finally.
“Probably,” Azrael agreed. “But he is not wrong about us running out of options. We need a new approach.”
“What kind of approach?” Cain asked.
“I do not know yet. But sitting here waiting for conventional methods to work is clearly not succeeding.” Azrael looked at his gathered siblings. “We reconvene in the war room in one hour. Everyone brings their most unconventional ideas, regardless of how dangerous or forbidden they might be. We are past the point of playing it safe.”
They dispersed slowly, each heading in different directions to prepare. Lucian returned to his workroom and stared at the pile of broken glass that represented forty-eight hours of failed attempts.
Somewhere out there, Sera was trapped and terrified and probably convinced no one was coming for her. Every moment they failed to find her was another moment she suffered alone.
Lucian had never felt more useless in his entire existence.
He swept up the glass and started preparing for another attempt, knowing it would probably fail but unable to stop trying. Because the alternative was accepting defeat, and that was not something he was ready to do.