COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

Smoke still spiralled from Cang's wrecked engine yard when two streaks ripped the sky open—one teal, one bone-white. They hit the terrace like twin meteors, hurling dust high enough to blot the burned skyline.

"Brace!"

Willow saw it first. She hooked an elbow around a dazed captive and planted her cleaver into the floor as an airwave slammed through. Bronze rigs ripped free while demon soldiers pinwheeled into the gutters. Engines shrieked as cores tore from their sockets, piping whipping like severed veins. The man in her grip wheezed, alive.

Finn stumbled backward, pupils flaring—his cursed eye finally booted with a sharp click. A translucent shield domed over the nearest mortals just as a flung rig smashed against it and ricocheted into the canyon wall.

Chewie skidded across the stone, one palm flaring red to anchor her slide, hair whipping as dust boiled past. She shot Eathan a hard look. "Eathan—"

He didn't answer.

Amidst the chaos, Bai Hu was the first to emerge from the smoke. He straightened amid the wreckage, obsidian gaze sweeping the terraces. He had the stillness of a blade laid across a throat. No words, no adjustment, yet whatever calm he'd worn earlier was gone. Here stood an unsatisfied predator forced down from the sky.

Quine Long rose out of the crater in a beat later, teal gusts funnelling around his boots. "Well," he drawled, "that escalated aggressively."

His emerald eyes moved once—to the freed captives—then to Eathan. The engines the latter had just glassed lay in ruins between them, copper viscera still hissing.

No one spoke. Demon sentries froze mid-kneel; mortal refugees huddled behind Willow's shield ring; even the sand-glass timer hovering above the chasm seemed to hold its last grains. Bai Hu's gaze fixed on the lone figure at the yard's centre—Eathan, antlers aglow, lotus flame tapering from his spine.

Eathan met it, gold burning under his skin. The Qilin-voice rose behind his ribs, cool and inexorable, stacking judgments without heat.

"White Tiger," he heard himself say, and the sound came out doubled—quiet human, ringing divine. "It's been a while."

Bai Hu's eyes narrowed a hair. No reply. Metal qi flexed, autumn wind razoring the air. Demons recovered and ringed his fall point, eager, terrified. Willow shifted her stance to cover the nearest cluster of mortals. Finn's shield thrummed, ripples moving through its face like water under wind.

The tension drew tight—too tight—and then snapped.

A single step forward, and the ground caved under the White Tiger's weight. Almost simultaneously, Eathan's judgment locked, not a decision so much as an instinct. Half present, half drifting in golden glaze, Eathan read the advance as threat. A breath pulsed, and Cleansing Field bloomed once more.

Gold detonated outward in a perfect circle. Demon weapons vanished to slag mid-swing, curses unraveled, armor plates fell away like wet bark. The wave hit Bai Hu head-on; sanctity pressed down like a second gravity.

Stone cracked under the White Tiger's boots. Lines spiderwebbed out from his heels as the pressure drove him a breath lower. He braced. Metal qi answered with a cold flare, trying to carve a path through the field. The air between them screamed without sound.

"Yield," Eathan heard himself say—no anger, no wobble—only the weight of a law older than the ridge.

Bai Hu's jaw flexed. The terrace sank a fraction. He didn't speak. He didn't break, either.

A second ring rolled off Eathan's skin, cleaner, heavier. The Cleansing Field thickened, not to suppress but to eradicate. Demons around them went prone, foreheads thudding stone. The nearby engines went dark, whatever abyssal logic they held scalded out by the wave.

Willow tightened her grip around the mortal in her arm and exhaled once, slow. "Keep him there, Eathan," she muttered, eyes never leaving Bai Hu. "Just like that."

Finn's shield flared brighter as shockwaves licked its edge. He squinted through it at Eathan, voice faintly awed. "That's… sick."

Chewie didn't look away from Bai Hu. "Stay out of his way," she said, voice flat, to everyone and no one. "He's not entirely him right now."

Another wave of golden light slammed into Bai Hu, and this time, the tiger's knee bent to touch stone. His stance had only faltered for half a second—barely one, yet for the War Council judge it might as well have been a tumble.

A collective inhale shuddered through every throat on the ridge. Nobody—nobody—had ever seen the Pale Judgement forced to kneel.

"…Impossible," Cang said. He was sprawled against a toppled pylon, staring gape-mouthed. His gaze was glued to the gold-illuminated mortal who had just dismantled half his war machines and backhanded a Guardian in the same heartbeat.

"The Auspicious Beast should've been dead."

Finn, crouched over freed captives, risked a glance up. "Holy shit. How is Eathan out-tiger-ing the Tiger?"

"Auspicious beasts judge purity, not rank." Quine Long rejoined the group in a smooth stroll. He answered without looking away from Bai Hu. "To a Qilin echo, corruption is vermin; righteousness is untouched. Simple equation. And from the looks of it, the White Tiger has been placed on the bad guy's side this time."

Willow wiped soot off her half-shaved scalp, eyes wide. "You're telling me our intern's currently a host body for Qilin? The Auspicious Beast Qilin?"

"Temporarily," Quine Long said. "And judging by the looks of things—" he nodded to the dwindling golden qi coursing through Eathan's body "—very temporarily."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Back at the field, Bai Hu pushed to full height again, breathing once, twice, rage cooling into something more razored. The next cleansing pulse fizzled—Eathan's lotus flame was close to exhaustion.

Engines lay shattered, blood-channels dry. The mortals Willow's squad had dragged clear were breathing on their own, shock-dazed but alive. Around them demon runes smoked, reduced to harmless slag.

Cang finally gathered himself, wings flexing as he rose.

"Legion!" he roared—then hesitated when Chewie stepped into his path, eyes glowing carmine. Willow took the opening, blade levelled at the demon prince's throat before he could regain swagger. Finn lurched beside her, sacred eye blazing as he corralled fleeing demons with walls of refracted light.

Chewie planted a boot on a shattered core. "Still want to test the 'mortals are compost' hypothesis, Highness?"

"You bunch..!" Cang shot them a glare.

"I mean, you can call them, if you really want," Willow said, voice flat, "but know that the next pulse won't bother just machinery. It'll vaporise cores."

"And we have no idea what happens after pulse number three." Finn forced a grin. "Could be rainbow kittens. Could be a new sun. Want to gamble?"

Cang's pupils contracted, calculation replacing outrage. Engines gone, mortal fuel liberated, Bai Hu momentarily stalled—his flawless invasion map lay in ruins, and the hourglass showed less than ten minutes.

Chewie's smile showed small, frightening canines. "Withdraw, Cang, or stay and die with your engines. Matters little to me."

Cang blew air from his nose. His gaze flicked from the lotus-lit mortal to the wrecked yard to Bai Hu—who, astonishingly, had not yet incinerated the boy—then back to the mortal whose antlers were already shedding sparks again.

Conclusion: no winning line in sight.

"Strategic retreat," he said at last, voice like cracking ice. "If—"

"If the Tiger lets you live, we know," Finn finished. "Clock's ticking."

***

[Auspice Ignition (Lv. 1)]:

Time Remaining:

060 seconds…

042 seconds…

019 seconds…

Gold fissures raced across Eathan's vision like lightning beneath glass. Lotus fire guttered; the air cooled so fast condensation beaded on armour and his own lashes.

From the edge of his vision, he could see one stat after another slid off a cliff inside the HUD—[Agility], [Strength], [Intelligence]—bleeding back toward their mortal numbers. The bell-clear geometry of the yard—the threads and causes and neat places where everything fit—blurred. Sound went muffled, like someone had shut a door in his head.

He swayed low in the air, trembling.

Why am I doing this? The thought felt heavier now, dragging a tail fear behind it—or was it regret? He still couldn't tell.

Inside the fading light, a last whisper brushed his ear, warm as spring rain:

"I'm..."

The remnants of the voice was lost into oblivion, along with the antlers that dissolved into smoke. For a moment, the world was silent.

Then, the lotus plume above him flickered once—twice—and folded in on itself. Sound rushed back the next second, harsh and unfiltered: mortal groans, chains rattling, Finn wheezing somewhere to his left, demon armor clattering over ripped terraces. Every status pane in his HUD stutter-flashed:

[Auspice Ignition (Lv. 1)] has been terminated! Cooldown has been initiated.

Reactivation available in — 71:59:59

[Calamity Radar β] is now offline!

Automatic reactivation in — 23:59:59

His pupils blew wide as the last gold stress-lines fled his irises. Colour bled from the world. His knees unlocked, and he half-sat, half-collapsed against a cooling engine strut. Engines lay in pieces around him, obsidian cores fractured into pieces; copper harnesses hung loose where moments ago they had drunk people dry.

Eathan's heart pounded, so very loudly in his chest. Every breath steamed; limbs buzzed with that hollow, post-adrenaline vertigo—like waking after an all-night cram session and realising the exam is still coming.

Never again.

Never again, he told himself again, throat raw.

The six-minute dream had felt clean—cruelly, beautifully clean—like watching people through frosted glass. They had been mere shapes, not lives. Now empathy hit like a flood up the nose. He gagged into his sleeve, stomach lurching as the smell of blood returned like a punch.

After a whole three seconds of retrospective nausea, he managed to draw a trembling breath and forced himself upright. The platform was chaos: mortals coughing, demons stunned, ley-lines still purging crimson residue in fitful sparks. Finn was hauling a dazed child clear of rubble; Willow barked orders, scarlet streak down one temple; Chewie had a sword across Demon Prince Cang's path, holding him at bay with pure homicidal intent.

Eathan forced himself to glance sideways, begging for cavalry. "Guys…" his voice cracked. "Little help?"

Willow's head snapped his way—relief, then alarm. She started toward him. Quine Long moved as well, teal sleeve flicking—Eathan's heart leapt—then the dragon froze mid-step, eyes lifting over Eathan's shoulder. Emerald eyes flicked to him with an almost apologetic tilt as the Azure Dragon withdrew his leg.

Basalt scraped behind Eathan.

He whipped his head around and, behind him, the Tiger stood right where the end of the lotus pillar had been. Hair in disarray, robe torn but unmistakably regal. Power still radiated from him in slow, pressurized pulses, yet he wasn't attacking.

He was simply… looking. At Eathan. And the look was not rage, nor the previous frost. It was something Eathan lacked vocabulary for, even after knowing the present Taeril White for fifteen years. Something along the lines of puzzlement, but worn like armour, along with a thousand layers of unspoken stories.

If his Radar were alive it would be howling; instead a dead icon blinked red in the corner of his sight. Eathan tried to stand, calves screaming. When he looked back, Bai Hu's face had smoothed—mask fully re-latched, all questions erased.

And then, he saw it.

Leading from the White Tiger's robe, a single kneecap of pristine white silk bore a dust smear—evidence that [Auspice Ignition]'s Cleansing Field had made him bend. The sight turned Eathan's blood to ice. Memories flooded back into his head as his eyes automatically replayed the exactly scene when it happened.

His stomach did a slow, queasy turn now that the god-clarity had left and the human part of him was back in charge, complete with belated fear and a strong urge to throw up into his hands.

A whisper in his skull suggested dropping right now, forehead to stone, and pleading for mercy.

He found Quine Long's gaze, desperate question blazing. The dragon gave a microscopic shrug.

Fantastic, he thought. Even the dragon thinks I'm doomed.

Then Bai Hu moved.

One step from him, and reality bent. The ground under Eathan's boots vanished before he felt himself falling. One heartbeat he stood amid shattered engines and wounded soldiers; the next he landed—soundlessly—on lacquered plank flooring that breathed heat through his soles.

He blinked.

A narrow veranda now stretched beneath him, dark beams framing a slice of the crimson sky. Below, a small pond mirrored the moon; flat stepping-stones cut a path across the water, forming a quiet arc toward a half-open lattice screen.

There was no doorway, no wind—just a low table set for two. One was already occupied.

The White Tiger sat perfectly, adjusting a sleeve until not a thread lay out of line. His robe was restored to perfection; the earlier dust smear by the Cleansing Field now a myth Eathan's nerves must have invented.

Bai Hu rested a fingertip against a porcelain teacup. Moonlight slid along steel eyes as they lifted to meet Eathan's stare.

Terror arrived late, cold and declarative.

I am going to die, Eathan thought.

"Sit."

The single syllable rolled like temple bronze. Eathan's knees buckled before his brain even finished screaming, folding him right onto the vacant cushion opposite the Pale Judgement.