Weeks had passed since Vergil entered the forest and confronted his "Spider-little," now named Rize. Time flowed strangely in that domain, as if nature there followed its own rhythm, shaped more by blood and force than by the natural order of things. Within that dense, dark environment, Vergil trained—or rather, shaped—his creation. He refined it like a blacksmith shapes steel: with heat, strength, and purpose. Rize, increasingly, ceased to be a creature and became an entity. A being forged not only by evolution, but by the brutal desire to surpass her own creator.
But while chaos was being forged in the forest, something subtler, darker, was unfolding in another corner of the underworld.
