Michael and Jack’s battle in the Infinity Machine Sanctum is the decisive encounter that transforms the protagonists’ search for the Infinity Machine into a race against Michael’s apocalyptic design. At the sealed sanctum, Michael reveals that he has secretly followed Jack and Sahaqiel, eliminated the threats that should have pursued them, acquired a second Sahaqiel as his key, and begun dismantling the restraints on Adam, the first Awakened and the first hunter. Jack cannot defeat Michael directly, but he and Sahaqiel recognize the danger, coordinate with Lilith, and escape through a shrinking portal before Adam can reach them.

Approach to the Sanctum

Jack and Sahaqiel reach an immense concentration of Mana after passing through corrupted data destroyed by Jack’s Gehenna. The source appears as an almost blinding presence to Jack’s angel senses and resolves into a large sealed stone door, its smooth surface covered in intricate carvings. The door establishes the sanctum as a space separated from ordinary passage and ordinary knowledge: it is not merely another chamber of the Infinity Machine, but the threshold of a concealed power whose access has been deliberately restricted.

The apparent security of the approach collapses when Michael appears without being sensed by Jack, Sahaqiel, or Lilith. Jack turns and swings Gram, only for the blade to be caught by the fedora-wearing figure in the white suit. Michael’s face is eerily similar to Jack’s, making the confrontation both a physical ambush and an encounter with a threatening counterpart. Michael identifies himself as the Black King and taunts Jack as his father, immediately framing their conflict through a personal connection as well as through the struggle over the Infinity Machine.

Michael’s Hidden Pursuit

Michael’s arrival explains the absence of the enemies Jack and Sahaqiel expected to face. Jack realizes that no Demonspawn or Apostles came after them because Michael had been following them throughout the journey and quietly eliminating each threat before it could reach them. The revelation reverses the apparent pattern of their advance: what looked like successful progress was also a path cleared by an unseen pursuer who intended to use their movement for his own purposes.

Jack attacks, but Michael’s control over the confrontation is overwhelming. A lightning strike fails, bullets hang motionless in the air as though time itself has stopped them, and Jack’s electrified claw freezes a foot away from Michael. Sahaqiel tries to intervene, yet Michael remains able to restrain them both. His power turns the sanctum threshold into an arena in which Jack’s aggression and Sahaqiel’s angelic force cannot produce freedom; the protagonists can act only by finding a moment of cooperation and surprise.

Michael then addresses Sahaqiel as an old companion, calling her “Little bird” and asking her to open the door in deference to their shared bond. Sahaqiel rejects the man before her, saying that the leader she once followed would never have done what he has done. Michael answers that the leader she followed died when their world ended and claims that he will make the world anew and better. His language presents destruction as restoration, while Sahaqiel hears the same program as betrayal of the sacrifices that defined their former struggle.

The Second Sahaqiel and the Prisoner

Michael opens the sanctum by producing his own key. Beside him manifests a blonde woman with snow-white wings and gold eyes who shares Sahaqiel’s face. The appearance creates the central shock of the encounter: there are two Sahaqiels before Jack, an impossibility that the narration initially leaves uncertain even as it asks whether the figure is truly a copy. Michael treats the duplicate as an instrument, later wrapping her around his shoulders like a cape and boasting that he possesses two angels, his saviors.

The duplicate is not simply a visual trick. It demonstrates Michael’s reduction of angelic identity to something reproducible and usable, while the original Sahaqiel remains emotionally and morally distinct from the figure he controls. The contrast intensifies the personal stakes of the battle: Sahaqiel is forced to confront an image of herself that has been converted into a mechanism for Michael’s plan, and Jack must distinguish the bond he shares with the real Sahaqiel from the counterfeit presence standing beside their enemy.

Once the entrance opens, Michael disables the defensive enchantments behind his throne. The wall falls away to reveal a chamber filled with pulsating flesh and crystalline figures, an image in which machinery, body, and corruption have become inseparable. The chamber resembles an open wound in the world, a scar of anguish and pain from which an unnatural power seeps. Suspended above a pit by tentacles and chains is a tanned man wearing only decrepit trousers, his body marked by crystals. Sahaqiel recognizes him immediately, and Jack recognizes him through the angel’s memories: he is Adam.

Michael identifies Adam as the first Awakened and the first hunter, capable of tracking magically gifted beings anywhere across the globe. Even weakened, Adam is so dangerous that a direct confrontation would end any living being. Michael explains that Adam hunted angels rather than lesser beings, as though he regarded ordinary humans as beneath him, and claims that Jack and Sahaqiel now meet the criteria that will draw Adam’s attention. The revelation changes the stakes from a conflict with Michael into a struggle against a creature whose release could threaten every powerful being in the world.

The Attempted Release of Adam

Sahaqiel calls Michael a monster and warns that freeing Adam will kill them all and doom the world. Michael rejects the accusation. He says that he is not dooming the world but fixing it, presenting the deaths of Sahaqiel and Jack as the foundation of a newer order. His promise of salvation therefore depends on deliberate sacrifice: “the salvation of all mankind” is inseparable from using the angels as bait and releasing the hunter they fear.

The sanctum begins to shake as flesh grows around the throne room and the ancient seals on Adam’s body crack and shatter one by one. Beneath Adam, the pit emits black light. Jack perceives the light as raw magical information, data rising from the wound in the earth and pouring into the imprisoned man. The awakening is consequently portrayed not as a simple physical revival but as the reactivation of a vast store of magical knowledge. The Infinity Machine’s hidden chamber becomes a site where information itself can restore an ancient threat.

Jack and Sahaqiel find a narrow opening when Michael’s bindings hold them in place but Lilith remains able to act. Jack asks Sahaqiel whether she trusts him, and she answers that she trusts him with her heart and soul. He then orders Lilith to dispel Michael’s bindings. The exchange converts their emotional bond into immediate tactical coordination: trust is not an ornamental confession but the condition that allows them to attempt escape against an enemy who has neutralized their direct attacks.

Escape and Consequences

Jack rushes forward, lifts Sahaqiel, and moves toward the portal as Adam stirs and fixes his attention on the nearest source of Mana. The pursuit is reduced to a single, terrifying instant. Jack’s fear is physical and immediate, but he acts rather than remaining paralyzed. As Adam reaches toward him, Jack ignites all of his magical energy and propels himself and Sahaqiel into the portal just as the opening shrinks.

The escape prevents Adam from immediately killing them, but it does not constitute a victory. Michael has opened the sealed entrance, exposed Adam’s prison, disabled the sanctum’s defenses, and begun undoing the ancient restraints. Jack and Sahaqiel survive the immediate encounter only by abandoning the chamber while Michael remains behind with the two angels and the awakening hunter. The event therefore ends on a deliberately unstable reversal: the protagonists escape the room, but Michael advances toward the power he sought.

Political and Thematic Stakes

The sanctum battle echoes the political logic already associated with the New Republic. Selfia justifies a purge of three hundred and sixty-nine lives, possibly more, by claiming that opponents, rivals, and dissidents had to be removed to guarantee mankind’s survival and consolidate her power. Jack condemns the operation as chaos that has killed bystanders and innocents. Michael extends the same emergency logic to a cosmic scale: he calls the destruction of the existing world a necessary repair and treats the deaths of those who resist as acceptable foundations for a better future.

The contrast exposes a recurring conflict between protection as a stated purpose and violence as an actual method. Jack’s earlier refusal to accept mass killing, especially when it endangers Ada and his unborn child, becomes relevant to his response to Michael’s plan. Michael’s promise to save humanity requires him to expose Jack and Sahaqiel to Adam, just as political rulers invoke survival to justify purges and coercive evacuations. In the sanctum, that contradiction acquires a literal form: a supposed path to salvation opens through a chamber of flesh, chains, corrupted data, and a prisoner whose release may destroy the world.

The event also creates a sharp value shift. Jack and Sahaqiel enter seeking the source of Mana and the sealed heart of the Infinity Machine; they discover instead that Michael has engineered their approach and intends to use them as sacrificial targets. Their apparent advantage becomes entrapment, direct resistance becomes helplessness, and escape becomes the only attainable form of success. The final image of Jack carrying Sahaqiel through a closing portal preserves that incomplete victory: their trust allows survival, but Michael’s access to the sanctum and Adam’s awakening leave the larger conflict more dangerous than before.