The divine projection crumbled into ash and starlight, leaving only the acrid smell of burned reality in its wake.
Marcus scrambled forward on his knees, ready to prostrate himself before our savior, but I caught his shoulder. "Don't."
"But Ethan, she just—"
"I know what she did." I activated [Predatory Vision], golden threads of data cascading across my sight as I analyzed our supposed rescuer.
*Target Analysis: Lyra Qing*
*Tax Owed: ∞ (INFINITE)*
*Asset Rating: ST (Severe Delisting Risk)*
*Status: Imminent Bankruptcy*
My blood ran cold. This wasn't a golden goose—this was a financial black hole disguised as salvation. Whatever debts she carried, they were so massive they'd collapsed into mathematical impossibility. The system was practically screaming warnings about "toxic assets" and "contagion risk."
Lyra stood in the center of the rubble, her white robes torn and stained with something that looked like liquid gold. Blood, I realized. Divine blood. She'd pushed herself beyond her limits to sever that dimensional tear, and now she was paying the price.
"Impressive," she said, wiping golden droplets from her lips with the back of her hand. "Though I have to admit, that was closer than I'd like."
Above her head, storm clouds began to gather—not natural weather, but something far more ominous. The air itself seemed to thicken with cosmic authority as reality bent around a single, terrible concept: judgment.
*System Alert: Heavenly Audit Bureau intervention detected*
*Violation: Mortal interference with divine affairs*
*Penalty: Immediate termination*
"Shit," Lyra muttered, looking up at the swirling vortex of dark energy. "I was hoping they wouldn't notice."
The clouds pulsed with malevolent intelligence, and I could feel something vast and bureaucratic turning its attention toward us. This wasn't the raw power of the Star-Eater—this was something worse. This was cosmic middle management, and they were pissed about the paperwork.
A voice boomed from the storm, each word stamped with the authority of universal law: "Lyra Qing, Designation: Eternal Auditor, Status: Rogue. You have violated Statute 847-B: Unauthorized Divine Intervention. Penalty: Causal Erasure."
Lightning began to build in the clouds—not the clean white of natural electricity, but something dark and red that hurt to look at. This was the kind of lightning that didn't just kill you; it erased you from ever having existed.
"Well," Lyra said with remarkable calm, "it's been a good run."
She made no move to defend herself, just stood there waiting for oblivion like she was catching a bus. Marcus was hyperventilating, muttering prayers to gods who probably couldn't hear him through the cosmic interference.
I walked over to Lyra and handed her my handkerchief.
"You're wasting premium spiritual essence," I said, nodding at the golden blood on her chin. "That stuff's worth more than most people's annual income."
She blinked, surprised by my casual tone. "You do realize I'm about to be cosmically deleted, right? Along with anyone standing too close?"
"Move away from him!" Marcus shouted, grabbing at my arm. "Ethan, that lightning will kill us all!"
The storm reached critical mass. Lightning the width of a tree trunk began its descent, reality warping around its passage. Lyra tried to push me away, but I didn't budge.
Instead, I pulled out a golden tax form—one of the special ones, written in the language of universal law itself.
"I hereby invoke Asset Restructuring Protocol Omega," I shouted over the thunder, injecting every ounce of the system's authority into my voice. "By Cosmic Revenue Code, Section 4-B: Liability follows the summoner!"
The lightning paused. Above us, the swirling vortex seemed to hesitate, the cosmic bureaucracy processing the claim. For a second, the pressure increased as the storm tried to reject my jurisdiction, searching for a loophole to fry us anyway.
"Don't try to weasel out," I snarled, pointing a trembling finger at Chen's unconscious form. "He's the one who signed the summoning contract with the Star-Eater. He's the debtor. Collect the debt!"
The storm rumbled one last time—a sound of cosmic annoyance at the paperwork involved—then the lightning bent. It sought the path of least resistance, the one dictated by law.
It slammed into Chen with the force of a falling star. His body didn't just die—it was retroactively edited out of existence, leaving only a Chen-shaped scorch mark on the hospital floor.
The storm clouds, having fulfilled their bureaucratic mandate, began to dissipate with what sounded suspiciously like cosmic grumbling.
*Asset Restructuring Complete*
*Toxic Debt Successfully Transferred*
*Lyra Qing Status: Bankruptcy Averted (Temporarily)*
Lyra stared at me with something approaching awe. "That was... how did you even know that loophole existed?"
"I didn't," I admitted, tucking the tax form back into my jacket. "But the system did. And now we need to discuss your employment contract."
"My what?"
I pulled out another form—this one a standard labor agreement, though the terms were anything but standard. "You owe me for professional services rendered. Specifically, preventing your cosmic bankruptcy. The fee is... substantial."
Her eyes narrowed as she read the contract. "Unlimited term employment? No base salary? This is practically indentured servitude."
"It's a competitive market," I said with a shrug. "Besides, you're technically insolvent. This is the best offer you're going to get."
Marcus looked between us like we were speaking in tongues. "Are you seriously negotiating a job contract right after preventing the apocalypse?"
"Business is business," I replied. "And speaking of which—"
That's when the alarms started screaming.
Not the hospital's emergency system—something deeper, more primal. The sound was coming from inside my head, transmitted directly through the system's neural interface.
*CRITICAL ALERT: Core Asset "Emma Su" experiencing hostile acquisition*
*Unknown Entity Classification: MYTHIC-TIER*
*Threat Level: CIVILIZATION-ENDING*
*Recommendation: IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION*
The world went red around the edges. Someone—something—was trying to steal my sister. My only family. My most precious asset.
"Contract accepted or not?" I snarled at Lyra, my voice taking on harmonics that made the hospital windows crack.
She signed without reading the fine print. Smart girl.
"Marcus, Lyra—with me. Now." I turned toward the hospital's main building, my system already plotting the most efficient route to the ICU. "Someone just made the mistake of their very short life."
"Wait," Marcus said, pulling out his phone. "I've been tracking the hospital's security feeds since we got here. Something's wrong with the fifteenth floor—the cameras keep glitching, showing impossible geometries."
I paused. Marcus might be a coward, but he was a useful coward. "What kind of impossible?"
"Corridors that loop back on themselves. Rooms that are bigger on the inside than the outside. And..." He swallowed hard. "The patients in the ICU aren't showing up as human anymore. The thermal imaging reads them as... data fragments."
*System Analysis: Reality Manipulation Detected*
*Entity Type: Conceptual Parasite*
*Feeding Method: Converting matter to information*
"It's not just eating reality," I realized. "It's rewriting it. Turning everything into code."
"Ethan," Lyra said, falling into step beside me as we headed for the elevator, "what's happening?"
"Hostile takeover," I replied, golden fire beginning to leak from my eyes. "Someone's trying to acquire my core assets without authorization."
The elevator doors opened with a cheerful ding, completely at odds with the cosmic horror we were about to face. As we stepped inside, I made a promise to myself and to whatever cosmic forces might be listening:
Whoever was messing with my family was about to learn the first rule of taxation.
Nobody cheats the taxman and lives to tell about it.
*System Alert: Entering Combat Zone*
*Mythic-Tier Entity Detected*
*Estimated Survival Probability: 12%*
*Good luck, Auditor*
The elevator began its ascent, carrying us toward whatever nightmare was waiting in the ICU. Through the system's enhanced senses, I could feel something ancient and hungry stirring in the floors above—something that had been waiting a very long time for this moment.
"Ethan," Marcus whispered, "I'm scared."
"Good," I replied, checking my tax forms one last time. "Fear keeps you sharp."
The elevator dinged. Floor fifteen. ICU ward.
The doors opened to reveal a corridor that shouldn't exist—walls that bent at impossible angles, shadows that moved independently of their sources, and at the far end, a light that hurt to look at directly. But this wasn't the chaotic destruction of the Star-Eater. This was surgical. Precise. The thing in here wasn't just consuming reality—it was performing surgery on it.
"Welcome to the audit from hell," I muttered, stepping into the nightmare.
Behind us, the elevator doors closed with a sound like a coffin lid slamming shut.