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The heat hit Constantine like a physical blow not the clean heat of fire, but something wet and organic, like standing inside a rotting corpse. The air tasted of copper and sulfur. His boots touched down on ground that felt disturbingly soft, almost fleshy.
The portal sealed behind him with a wet squelching sound.
"Bloody hell," Constantine muttered, surveying his surroundings.
Limbo was worse than he'd imagined. The landscape stretched in impossible directions, defying conventional geometry. Towers of black stone twisted upward, their peaks disappearing into a sky that roiled with storm clouds and screaming faces. Rivers of what might have been lava or blood possibly both carved through the terrain, flowing uphill in places, defying gravity.
But it was the inhabitants that made his skin crawl.
Things moved in the shadows between the towers. Not quite demons, not quite ghosts something in between. Twisted forms with too many limbs or no limbs at all. Eyes that glowed with malevolent intelligence. They watched him, assessing, hungry.
Constantine's hand went to his coat, fingers brushing against protective charms and weapons. The compass spell Strange had embedded thrummed against his chest, pulling him northwest if directions even meant anything in this place.
Nine minutes, thirty seconds.
He started moving, keeping to what looked like a path through the nightmare landscape. The ground squelched under his boots, occasionally sprouting things that looked disturbingly like fingers or trying to grab his ankles. He kicked them away, maintaining his pace.
A scream echoed from somewhere to his left human, female, raw with agony. Constantine's jaw clenched, but he kept walking. He couldn't save everyone here. Focus on the mission. Get Astra. Get out.
The compass pulled him toward what looked like a fortress carved from a single piece of obsidian. Belasco's stronghold, no doubt. Of course the bastard would keep his prize souls close.
Eight minutes.
Constantine reached the fortress wall and pressed his hand against it. The stone was warm, pulsing like living tissue. Disgusting, but useful organic materials were easier to breach than pure stone.
He traced a pattern in the air, whispering words of unmaking. The wall rippled, buckled, and finally tore open, creating a passage just wide enough for him to squeeze through.
Inside was a maze of corridors, all identical. Black walls, flickering torchlight that cast no actual illumination, the constant sound of distant screaming. This was designed to trap and confuse.
Good thing Constantine had never trusted straight paths.
He pulled out a piece of chalk and marked an X on the wall beside the entrance. Then he closed his eyes, letting the compass spell guide him. Not with sight, but with feeling. The pull of Astra's soul was a bright point in the darkness, like a candle flame in a cave.
He followed it.
The maze tried to confuse him corridors that looped back on themselves, doors that led to rooms he'd already passed. But Constantine kept his eyes closed, trusting the spell, trusting his instincts. Left, right, straight, down a staircase that spiraled into impossible depths.
Six minutes.
A voice echoed through the corridors, deep and resonant with power: "So. John Constantine has come to my domain. How... presumptuous."
Belasco. Had to be.
Constantine kept walking, not bothering to respond. Engaging with the demon lord would only waste time.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice a foreign sorcerer violating my realm?" The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Amused, confident. "I've been watching you since you crossed the threshold. Watching and wondering why the great Constantine would throw himself into Limbo. What prize could possibly be worth such folly?"
The corridor ahead shimmered, and suddenly Constantine was facing a massive chamber. At its center, suspended in chains of red-hot metal, was a small figure.
Astra.
Constantine's heart clenched. She looked exactly as he remembered eight years old, blonde hair, wearing the same dress she'd worn in Newcastle. But her eyes... Christ, her eyes. They were empty, hollow, reflecting torments beyond imagining.
"Astra!" He rushed forward.
"Ah." Belasco's voice dripped with satisfaction. "So that's it. The child whose damnation drove you to this reality. How touching."
Constantine ignored him, reaching for Astra. His hands passed through her form like smoke. She was here but not here a soul fragment, just as Strange had said, not fully manifested.
Four minutes.
"She's mine now," Belasco purred. "A delicious little morsel of guilt and innocence, perfectly seasoned with years of torment. I've been feasting on her essence since she arrived. Every memory, every hope, every scream all mine."
"Over my dead body." Constantine's hands blazed with golden light. He began the extraction ritual Strange had taught him complex, requiring perfect concentration. One mistake and Astra's soul could shatter completely.
"If you insist." Belasco materialized before him a figure of dark majesty, horned and terrible, wreathed in crimson flame. "Though I should warn you: you won't be the first sorcerer to die in my domain. The walls here are built from the bones of your betters."
He attacked.
Demon fire exploded toward Constantine, reality-warping heat that could unmake flesh and bone. Constantine's shield spell activated on instinct, the barrier Strange had drilled into him forming a split-second before the flames hit. The fire splashed against the shield, dispersing.
Three minutes.
Constantine didn't stop the extraction ritual. His left hand continued the intricate patterns while his right threw up defenses. Sweat poured down his face. This was insane. No one could multitask like this.
But he had to.
Belasco laughed, a sound like mountains crumbling. "Impressive. But insufficient." He gestured, and the chains holding Astra began to constrict, heating to white-hot. Her soul-form writhed in silent agony.
"Stop it!" Constantine shouted. The extraction was at sixty percent. Just a bit more.
"Why should I?" Belasco circled them like a predator. "This child is the key to breaking you, Constantine. I can feel your guilt, your self-loathing. It radiates from you like heat from a star. Breaking her breaks you. And broken sorcerers make the most delightful servants."
Two minutes.
The extraction hit seventy-five percent. Astra's form began to solidify, becoming more real. Constantine could see tears on her translucent cheeks.
"John?" Her voice was a whisper, a ghost of sound. "Is it really you?"
"It's me, sweetheart." Constantine's voice cracked. "I'm getting you out of here. Just hold on a bit longer."
"How touching." Belasco's hand shot forward, impossibly fast, wrapping around Constantine's throat. The demon lord lifted him off the ground effortlessly. "But play time is over."
Constantine choked, his concentration wavering. The extraction ritual stuttered, dropping to seventy percent. No. He couldn't lose focus now. Not when he was so close.
His right hand scrabbled in his coat, fingers closing around the vial of holy water. With the last of his strength, he pulled it free and hurled it at Belasco's face.
The vial shattered. Silver liquid splashed across the demon lord's features.
Belasco screamed a sound that shook the fortress to its foundations. He released Constantine, stumbling backward, clawing at his face. Where the holy water touched, his flesh smoked and burned, unable to regenerate.
One minute.
Constantine didn't waste the opportunity. He poured everything he had into the extraction, pulling Astra's soul free of the chains, of Limbo itself. Ninety percent. Ninety-five.
"Run!" he gasped. "Astra, run toward me!"
She did, her small form becoming more solid with each step. When she reached him, Constantine wrapped his arms around her, feeling the strange sensation of holding a soul that was only partially material.
The portal marker in his coat flared. Strange was opening the return gate.
Thirty seconds.
"You'll pay for this!" Belasco roared, his face already healing. Demon fire gathered in his hands, enough to obliterate them both. "You'll "
The portal erupted beside Constantine a swirling vortex of blue-white light, so different from Limbo's red horror. He could see Strange on the other side, hands outstretched, face tight with concentration.
"Go!" Strange's voice echoed across dimensions.
Constantine scooped Astra up and dove through the portal just as Belasco's fire consumed the space where they'd been standing.
Reality twisted. Dimensions folded. For one horrifying moment, Constantine felt like he was being pulled apart, scattered across infinite possibilities.
Then he hit solid ground, hard, rolling across the Sanctum's floor with Astra clutched to his chest.
The portal slammed shut behind them with a thunderclap. Constantine felt rather than heard Belasco's frustrated roar cut off mid-syllable.
"John?" Strange's voice seemed to come from very far away. "John, can you hear me?"
Constantine rolled onto his back, still holding Astra. His entire body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder. But he was alive. More importantly, she was free.
"Did it work?" he croaked.
Strange knelt beside them, passing mystic scanning spells over Astra's form. "Her soul is... incomplete. Fragments are still missing. But yes you extracted enough to save her essence. Given time and proper care, she can be made whole again."
Constantine looked down at the girl in his arms. She was watching him with those too-old eyes, eyes that had seen things no child should ever witness.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so bloody sorry, Astra."
She didn't respond. Maybe she couldn't. But her small hand found his, and she held on tight.
That was enough.
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