Spend King: She Left Me, So I Bought Everything
Chapter 62: The Last Stand of Broken Things

Chapter 62: The Last Stand of Broken Things

Mammon moved through the folding reality like a stain spreading across parchment. The air around him warped, paper-thin dimensions curling at his edges as he surged toward Zara and the child.

His form flickered between obsidian flesh and origami nightmare, the stolen void-energy from Zara’s severed hand pulsing through him like a second heartbeat.

Zara saw him coming.

Her body moved before her mind could process the terror. She shoved the Weaver behind her, the child’s small fingers clutching weakly at her jacket. The lattice on her stump flared, reacting to Mammon’s proximity—recognizing him. The void-energy inside her, now contained but still vast, thrummed in response.

She had no weapon. No divine power. Just a body, a will, and a debt unpaid.

"You don’t get her," Zara snarled.

Mammon’s laugh was the sound of contracts burning. "You are nothing now. A severed limb. A void with no teeth." His hand stretched, elongating into a blade of folded darkness. "I will take the Weaver, and then I will take you apart to see what made you resist me."

The blade came down.

Zara raised her left arm—the only one she had left—not to block, but to grab.

Her fingers closed around the blade.

And the world screamed.

[ ZARA’S GAMBIT: PHYSICAL INTERCEPTION | VOID-ENERGY REACTION: UNKNOWN ]

[ MAMMON’S BLADE: VOID-FORGED | COMPATIBILITY WITH ZARA’S LATTICE: ??? ]

The moment Zara’s flesh touched Mammon’s blade, two things happened:

The blade shattered. Not into shards, but into thousands of tiny, fluttering numbers—accounting figures, interest rates, the fine print of a thousand damned contracts. They dissolved like ash.

The lattice on her stump unraveled.

Not violently. Not painfully. But deliberately, like a lock disengaging.

The Weaver’s containment field dissolved, and the void-energy within Zara—her void, the power she’d carried long before Mammon’s corruption—surged outward. Not as a weapon. Not as chaos.

But as recognition.

Zara’s eyes widened.

Mammon’s did too.

"You—"

The void wasn’t his.

It had never been his.

[ REVELATION: ZARA’S VOID-ENERGY IS NOT MAMMON’S CORRUPTION | IT IS HERS | ORIGIN: UNKNOWN ]

[ MAMMON’S SHOCK: HE CANNOT CONTROL IT ]

Tabitha reached the Power Core just as the Final Fold hit 10% completion.

The core was a massive, throbbing pillar of bureaucratic energy, its surface etched with moving glyphs—tax codes, compliance statutes, the endless small print of existence. It hummed with the sound of a thousand filing cabinets slamming shut in unison.

The dragon union rallied behind her:

A minotaur with a stapler embedded in his shoulder, swinging a ripped-out desk like a club.

A phoenix mid-rebirth, trailing ash and furious spreadsheets.

A pack of sprites armed with stolen letter openers, screaming about dental plans.

Tabitha didn’t hesitate. She inhaled, drawing not just fire, but leverage.

"UNION RULE #1," she roared. "WE ALWAYS COLLECT INTEREST."

And then she breathed audit-fire directly into the Power Core’s primary intake valve.

The effect was instantaneous.

The core stuttered.

The Fold’s progression halted.

And then, with a sound like a thousand accountants gasping in horror, the core rebounded.

[ POWER CORE STATUS: CRITICAL FEEDBACK LOOP ]

[ FINAL FOLD: PAUSED AT 12% | REALITY DISTORTION STABILIZING (TEMPORARILY) ]

[ STAPLER PRIME: OH SHIT ]

The backlash from the Power Core’s disruption hit Stapler Prime like a physical blow. Its massive frame shuddered, the holographic FOLD TO A4 blueprint flickering wildly. Nishanth, still clinging to its base, felt the vibration shift—the machine was panicking.

"ERROR: POWER CORE INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. UNION INTERFERENCE DETECTED. OVERRIDE PROTOCOLS: FAILING."

Mammon, momentarily stunned by Zara’s defiance, whipped his head toward the core. His semi-corporeal form rippled with fury. "NO! That power is MINE to claim!"

He abandoned Zara, streaking toward the core—not to stop Tabitha, but to consume the destabilizing energy before it collapsed entirely.

Zara didn’t let him.

She lunged, her body moving on instinct, her remaining hand clamping around his ankle.

"You don’t get to walk away," she hissed.

And then she pulled.

[ ZARA’S MOVE: DELAY TACTIC | OBJECTIVE: BUY TIME FOR TABITHA ]

[ MAMMON’S RAGE: INCALCULABLE ]

The child—Seraphina’s niece, the Void-Weaver—staggered to her feet. Her indigo static was nearly gone, her small body pushed beyond its limits. But she saw what was happening.

She saw Zara holding Mammon back.

She saw Tabitha’s union burning the system down.

She saw Nishanth, mortal and bleeding, still fighting.

And she saw Stapler Prime, the architect of the Fold, vulnerable for the first time.

The child took a shaky step forward.

Then another.

Her hands, small and trembling, reached out—not toward Mammon, not toward the core—but toward the air itself.

"Quiet," she whispered.

And then she folded it.

[ THE WEAVER’S POWER: REALITY MANIPULATION | ACTION: LOCALIZED SPACE COLLAPSE ]

[ TARGET: STAPLER PRIME’S PRIMARY ARTICULATION JOINT ]

The effect was instantaneous.

Stapler Prime’s leg buckled, the metal crumpling like paper under an invisible hand. The god-machine toppled, its massive frame crashing into the half-flattened ground.

[ STAPLER PRIME: CRIPPLED | FINAL FOLD PROTOCOL: TERMINATED ]

[ REALITY: REBOUNDING (SLOWLY) ]

Mammon snarled, tearing free from Zara’s grip. He turned toward the Weaver, his form flickering between god and ghost. "You dare—?"

But he never finished.

Because Tabitha, hovering above the destabilized Power Core, inhaled one last time.

And then she breathed fire directly into its exposed core.

The explosion was silent.

And then it was everything.

[ POWER CORE: DESTROYED ]

[ FINAL FOLD: REVERSED ]

[ MAMMON’S FORM: UNANCHORED ]

The last thing Mammon did was scream.

And then he was gone—not dead, not banished, but erased from the ledger.

[ MAMMON: STATUS: VOIDED ]

[EPILOGUE: THE AFTERMATH]

Silence.

Then—

The sound of crumpling paper smoothing itself back out.

The sky regained its depth. The ground stabilized. The air lost its flat, muffled quality.

Somewhere, a single paperclip fell to the ground with a ping.

Nishanth collapsed, gasping.

Zara slumped against the rubble, her body trembling.

The Weaver child crawled to her side, too exhausted to speak.

And Tabitha, her scales scorched but her eyes blazing with victory, landed heavily beside them.

"Overtime," she declared, "fucking paid."

[THE SILENCE AFTER THE ERASURE]

The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was the stunned hush after a detonation, thick with settling dust, ozone, and the psychic echo of a god’s dissolution. Reality groaned as it snapped back into its full dimensions, the oppressive flatness of the Fold replaced by a jagged, broken landscape. The Bureau wasn’t just ruined; it was unmade.

Towers of folded rubble slumped like discarded drafts. Rivers of molten ink-cooled slag cut through fields of shredded memos and shattered paperclips. The air shimmered with unstable pockets where the Fold had pinched space too tightly, flickering like bad reception.

Nishanth lay on his back, staring at the sky. It wasn’t notebook paper anymore. It wasn’t even the bruised twilight from before Mammon. It was a deep, bruised purple streaked with sickly green auroras – the scar tissue of reality healing.

Every breath sent fresh agony through his ribs, a brutal reminder of his mortality. The absence of divinity wasn’t just a lack of power; it was a presence – the crushing weight of flesh, bone, and consequence. He felt... small. Breakable. Real.

Beside him, Lilith stirred with a low moan. The burn scar on her sternum, where Mammon’s origami locket had fused, was an angry red brand. Her eyes fluttered open, filled with a disorientation that quickly sharpened into raw horror as memory flooded back.

She scrambled upright, choking, hands flying to her throat, her chest, expecting paper to erupt again. Finding only scarred flesh and air, she doubled over, retching dryly, trembling with the aftershocks of violation.

[ NISHANTH: PHYSICAL PAIN (RIBS) | PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: MORTAL DISORIENTATION / EXISTENTIAL DREAD ]

[ LILITH: POST-POSSESSION TRAUMA | SURVIVOR’S GUILT | PHYSICAL SCAR (STERNUM) ]

[SCENE 2: THE WEAVER’S WHISPER & THE MOTHER’S SHADOW]

Zara sat propped against a slab of obsidian-like slag, the remnant of one of Mammon’s void constructs. The shimmering lattice on her stump was gone. In its place was... static.

Not the chaotic void-energy of before, but a contained, humming field of black-and-white distortion, like an old TV tuned to a dead channel. It didn’t hurt anymore. It hummed. It felt... integral. Hers. Mammon’s accusation echoed: "It was never mine." The truth was a void deeper than any she’d touched. What am I?

The Weaver child lay curled in her lap, utterly spent. Her indigo static had vanished, leaving her frighteningly pale and cold. Her breathing was shallow, her eyelids fluttering as if trapped in a nightmare.

Zara’s good hand rested protectively on the girl’s back, feeling the fragile bird-like beat of her heart. "Easy, kid," Zara murmured, her voice rough. "Just rest. It’s over." But she knew it wasn’t. The child had folded reality itself. That kind of power didn’t vanish. It attracted predators.

A shadow fell across them. Tall, gaunt, draped in robes the color of dried blood and ash, Seraphina stood at the edge of the debris field. Her face was impassive, carved from obsidian grief, but her eyes, burning with cold violet light, were fixed solely on the child. There was no relief, only a terrifying, possessive intensity.

"You took something from me," Seraphina stated, her voice like stones grinding together. "And you broke it."

Zara shifted, instinctively shielding the child more fully. Her static-arm crackled faintly. "We saved her life. Mammon wanted her."

"Mammon," Seraphina spat the name like poison, "was a crude instrument. He saw power to consume. I see... potential. My potential." She took a step forward, the air chilling around her. "Give her back."

[ ZARA: PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: PROTECTIVE FEROCITY / VOID-IDENTITY CRISIS | STATIC-ARM: STABLE BUT UNKNOWN ]

[ THE WEAVER: STATUS: COMATOSE / POWER DEPLETION | SERAPHINA: REVEALED MOTIVE (POSSESSION/UTILITY) ]

To be continued...