World at War

Emma Deschamps conducts intelligence operation at the Crimson Veil. Her journalist's observation skills catalogue the vampire-demon hierarchy. The Barone matriarch Vittoria captures her. Emma meets Marchetti, a comprehensible demon whose human-like manner horrifies her.

Belphegor escalates to three simultaneous attacks on a hospital, neighborhood, and school. Haatim makes the impossible tactical allocation, splitting the team three ways. At the school, he and Abigail fight through greater and lesser demons while he channels his Gift to slow her corruption surge.

Belphegor targets Haatim during combat to force Abigail into an emotional surge. Eight demons ignore Petrillo to attack Haatim, and Abigail detonates with involuntary power. The lever - love as weapon - is demonstrated explicitly.

Abigail infiltrates the Crimson Veil nightclub in Baltimore. Discovers vampire-demon alliance — the Barone family runs the operation, demons serve as staff. A vampire matriarch spots Abigail. She retreats and reports to Haatim, who proposes sending journalist Emma Deschamps for deeper intelligence.

Abigail experiences an eight-second blackout — her longest episode yet — and wakes to find her hands in a killing grip around Petrillo's throat. The corruption reveals a new psychological weapon: it rewrites her memory of the childhood ritual chamber, recasting Arthur as a predator.

Emma has been up all night compiling three weeks of engagement data and discovers Belphegor's attacks are precisely calibrated titration—a scientific experiment to find Abigail's corruption breaking point.

Guerrilla warfare against Belphegor's demon network. Haatim coordinates hit-and-run operations from shifting safe houses. Team dismantles Kensington nests. Arthur identifies Crimson Veil in Baltimore as potential hub of a vampire-demon alliance. Abigail sent for reconnaissance.

Haatim works through the night cross-referencing Arthur's prison journals with Council archives, formulating the Tether Navigation Hypothesis: the corruption is a bidirectional signal that can be traced back to its origin, Mal'akheth.

On the safe house rooftop, Abigail waits for Haatim after the church. When he joins her, they have their most honest conversation: Haatim describes the real Nida; Abigail admits the corruption is replacing pieces of her identity and she cannot always tell which thoughts are hers.