The twist did not arrive as force.
It arrived as permission revoked.
Delta felt it before the sky reacted — a sudden thinning, like breath being pulled from a room too evenly to notice panic. Causality stiffened. Probability stopped flexing for him.
Nyx noticed immediately.
"I can't… feel the margins anymore," she said, voice tight. "Something sealed them."
Delta slowed.
That alone was dangerous.
They were moving through a dead corridor now — a stretch of existence Heaven hadn't just observed or tested, but finalized. Decisions here were no longer allowed to remain undecided.
"That wasn't escalation," Delta murmured. "That was paperwork."
Above them, Heaven did not speak.
It didn't need to.
The Ninth Depth did.
Not fully.
Not directly.
Just enough.
> PARAMETER LOCK DETECTED.
RESOLUTION PATH FORCED.
Nyx's eyes widened. "They invoked you?"
Delta closed his eyes briefly.
"Yes."
The twist clicked into place.
Heaven hadn't authorized annihilation.
It had authorized resolution.
By outsourcing the conclusion to the one system that erased contradictions without caring who was right.
The Ninth Depth wasn't choosing a side.
It was being weaponized.
"You said it didn't like certainty gaps," Nyx said. "So they didn't send another Hound… they collapsed the maze."
Delta opened his eyes.
"And they chose where."
The space ahead of them opened.
Not tore.
Opened politely — a deliberate seam revealing somewhere Delta knew instantly.
Hell.
But not the Hell of towers and factions.
Not politics.
Not chaos.
The Ninth Depth's interface layer, where unresolved entities were fed to resolution.
And standing there —
Waiting —
Was Ray.
Alive.
Whole.
Unbound.
Nyx froze. "No."
Ray turned slowly, expression unreadable.
"You felt it too," Ray said softly. "They closed the margins."
Delta said nothing.
This was the twist Heaven had designed perfectly.
Ray wasn't a weapon.
She wasn't bait.
She was compatibility.
The one variable Delta had spared.
The one test he'd passed publicly.
"They didn't send me this time," Ray continued. "They removed my choice."
The armor she wore wasn't Heaven's.
It wasn't Hell's.
It was resolution-frame armor — designed to exist inside the Ninth Depth without being erased.
Nyx snarled. "They turned her into a container."
Ray nodded once. "I'm the boundary condition."
Delta felt the truth land with crushing clarity.
The Ninth Depth couldn't resolve him — unindexed, voluntarily restrained.
So it would resolve the relationship.
Conflict without violence.
Choice without escape.
"If I engage," Delta said slowly, "it completes the equation."
Ray met his gaze. "Yes."
"And if I don't?"
She inhaled.
"Then it resolves me."
Silence fell — not from tension, but inevitability.
Nyx stepped forward. "This is coercion."
"Yes," Ray agreed. "It's also elegant."
Heaven had learned.
This wasn't about guilt.
This wasn't about spectacle.
This was about forcing an ending through mercy.
Delta looked at Ray — really looked.
She wasn't afraid.
She was ready.
"They think you'll choose," Ray said quietly, "because you always do."
The Ninth Depth pressed closer now, its presence firm but patient.
> UNRESOLVED PAIRING DETECTED.
RESOLUTION REQUIRED.
Delta laughed.
Not loudly.
Not bitterly.
Just once.
"Of course," he said. "They finally figured it out."
Nyx looked up at him, panic bleeding through her control. "Delta…?"
"They don't need me to break," he said calmly. "They need me to care."
Ray nodded. "And you do."
He stepped forward — into the interface layer.
Pain lanced through him immediately, sharper than anything since the chains bound the mask. The system didn't reject him.
It accepted him.
That was worse.
"Delta," Ray said urgently, "whatever you're thinking—"
"Relax," he said softly. "I'm not choosing between you and restraint."
Nyx stared. "Then what are you doing?"
Delta smiled.
The kind of smile that frightened gods.
"I'm redefining what resolution means."
The mask flared.
Not outward.
Inward.
For the first time, Delta did not use it to end something.
He used it to contain an ending.
The Ninth Depth reacted instantly — violently — as the concept of resolution was folded back on itself.
> ERROR.
ENDING LOOP DETECTED.
Ray gasped as her armor flickered.
"What did you do?" she asked.
Delta's voice was strained now.
"I made the conclusion… conditional."
He looked directly at the presence.
"You want resolution?" he demanded. "Then resolve this."
He pulled.
And instead of collapsing into finality —
The Ninth Depth fractured.
Just a crack.
But enough.
Nyx felt it — cold, vast, terrified.
Not of Delta.
Of precedent.
Ray collapsed to one knee, free.
The interface destabilized.
Heaven screamed — silently, system-wide.
Delta staggered back, chains glowing dangerously hot.
Breathing hard.
He hadn't destroyed anything.
He'd done something far worse.
He'd taught the Ninth Depth how to wait with intent.
Ray looked up at him, shocked.
"You just delayed the end," she whispered.
Delta wiped blood — real blood — from the corner of his mouth.
"No," he said quietly.
"I postponed inevitability."
He looked upward.
"And Heaven just realized… inevitability can be negotiated."
The Hunt didn't end.
But it changed forever.