(Alt title: "Pearls, Panic, and the Vatican's Secret Pokémon Collection")
Here's a fun fact:When you bury gods under a church for long enough, eventually they get bored.And when they get bored... they twitch.
Just a little.Like an eye under a dying eyelid.Like a sneeze in the multiverse's nose.Like your ex stalking your Instagram at 3 AM.
Except this twitch?This twitch cracked the planet's astral spine. 💅
Deep below the Vatican—like really deep, I'm talking "if Dante had an elevator" deep—there's a vault.
No signs.No guards.No prayers.
Just divine sleep.
And guess what's inside?
Pearls.Big ones. Small ones. Dripping with ancient god juice™.Each one sealed by popes who forgot to mention it in Sunday School.
And today?
One of them pulsed.Then another.Then… oh boy.
⚪ Pearl #017 – Status: Unstable📍 Former identity: "Thoros, God of Implosions and Romantic Regret"🗨️ Last recorded words: "My explosion was emotionally valid."
⚪ Pearl #089 – Status: Vibrating📍 Identity: Redacted by Archangelic Order🗨️ Side effects: Spontaneous Latin in goats within 500m radius.
🗨️ Pearl #001 – Status:"Hi, yes, I'm breathing now. Panic accordingly."
Meanwhile…
👑 Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of Sass and Bad Decisions, is doing what he does best:Looking hot and pissed off.
He stares at a Vatican monitor bleeding light.Amenadiel's armor hums in angelic Morse code: "Bro, we're so screwed."
"Tell me I'm hallucinating," Amenadiel mutters."You're hallucinating," Lucifer replies."Seriously.""Nope. But thanks for trying."
On screen?Not a name. Not a face. Just three cursed letters:
D — C — T
And Lucifer's hands?Shaking.
"That's not a code," he whispers."That's a memory."
In the next room over—deeper than Hell's therapy bills—one of the pearls begins to bleed light.
It drips.Not blood.Not ichor.
Syntax.
Like language dying in reverse.
A whisper curls out of it:
"Céfiros…"
Meanwhile… across the world… in a cozy little forbidden crypt that Airbnb definitely does NOT list…
Renji Kurogane is sleeping like a sexy nuclear bomb.
On the outside: twitching, sweating, shirtless disaster.On the inside?
💭 Dream.exe has encountered a fatal error. Please scream to continue.
In his chest, the Eye spins once.The Ruby flares.One of the Fragments vibrates hard enough to summon spiritual tinnitus.
He doesn't wake up.
But something else does.
All around him, the stones start to sweat.The runes in the walls flicker like they're trying to text in Morse code.
And beneath the ground, something ancient stretches.
Not a god.
Not yet.
More like a pre-god.The thing you pray to before your god shows up.
"...Cycle detected..."
"Carrier active..."
"...Rebuilding protocol DCT: Phase One."
Lucifer watches the screen crack.
"The vault's lighting just died," a tech yells."The pearls are reacting to something."
"To what?" Amenadiel demands.
Lucifer doesn't answer.He just whispers:
"They don't remember who sealed them…""But they remember who broke them first."
Cue dark, dripping heartbeat sound.
Back in Renji's crypt, a voice inside his head groans:
"Are we awake yet?"
Another answers:
"No, he's still playing mortal. It's adorable."
"Should we tell him he's technically not human anymore?"
"Nah. Let him find out the fun way."
"You're evil."
"I know. It's in the résumé."
🌀 LAST SHOT:
The crypt goes completely still.
The dust in the air begins to curve—yes, curve—toward Renji's chest.
And beneath the Vatican…
twelve pearls begin to glow in sync.
Each one whispering one word:
"Return."