The cage has dragged them onto the roof of the city marriage registry. Dawn light meets red cords and torn robes.

The Matchmaker God frames the prophecy as mercy while holding the city hostage with cords disappearing into homes.

They reject the god's arithmetic without sentimental unity and improvise a way to make incompatible powers contaminate each other.

Their powers clash uglily, producing a weapon outside the god's love-and-sacrifice script.

The god tries to force a sacrificial embrace. Below, Auntie Pei rallies surviving matchmakers to cut ordinary festival cords.

The citywide cutting weakens the god just enough. Qing He uses his body as leverage, not sacrifice, to create Ling's attack angle.

Ling's sword pierces the Matchmaker God's crown of paired-lock charms while Qing He holds the chest cord down from below.

The god dies without understanding. Its faces crack into ordinary porcelain and thread.

A symbolic montage in one vertical panel: matchmaker charms shatter in many places at the same dawn moment.

The god's body is gone. The roof is covered in dead red thread. Qing He and Ling stand amid the silence, injured and separate.

At street level after dawn, festival decorations hang dead. Ling and Qing part without forgiveness or romance.