The courthouse stank of blood.

  Even as we climbed the stone steps - spiraling up from the underground tribunal where I'd nearly been executed - I could already smell the charred fabric, the burned flesh, the gunpowder. It clung to the walls like rot beneath paint, buried but present.

  I followed the Regent in silence, my new cloak heavy on my back.

  Pitch bck, with silver-threaded runes stitched inside the lining - runes I couldn't read, old and harsh and purposeful. The revolver and sword on my hips were mirror images of the Inquisitors walking ahead and behind us. They looked identical - bck masks, bck cloaks, bck boots - but each vanished into the darkness in a different way.

  The Regent said something under his breath, too quiet to hear. Suddenly, the inquisitors started to move in different directions.

  One dissolved into falling ash.

  Another seemed to blink out of time itself, leaving a warping of air behind.

  The third sank into the shadows beneath his own feet, like a puddle had swallowed him whole.

  The st shimmered, body refracted into a thousand broken shards, like gss colpsing into a void.

  All gone within moments. Gone to deliver death at the Regents command.

  Only one remained - tall, still, and silent beside the Regent.

  "Give him the kit," the Regent said.

  Lucius nodded once. His voice was like smoke dragged over stone. "As you command."

  He stepped toward me and handed over a folded mask - sleek and mechanical, with the same design the other Inquisitors wore. Bck steel shaped like a face, expressionless, with a mechanical gears for the eyes and a thin line of silver that ran from the forehead down to the jaw.

  I turned it over in my hands.

  Functional. Faceless. Merciless.

  Just like they wanted me to be.

  The perks that come with the job.

  The inquisitor handed over one st item - a ring.

  Bck band. Pale pearl mounted on top.

  Same one the Regent wore when he originally recruited me.

  I knew what it was already. But I asked anyway.

  "And this?"

  "Communication. Guidance. Identification," the Regent said, his voice even, without looking back at me. "It will protect you from things most men can't even name. I'll show you the rest ter."

  I slipped the ring onto my finger. It felt cold - too cold - and then… warm. Like it pulsed.

  I didn't ask about the tracking part of the ring. He already knew I knew.

  I put the mask on st.

  It clicked into pce with a faint hiss. Held in pce with a suction force even I couldn't understand.

  The world became more visible now. The right eye could magnify, and the mask seemed to have a speech device, muffling my voice into a deep cloaked voice.

  Suddenly, I wasn't Damian Solemere anymore.

  I was an Inquisitor.

  Now it was official

  The Regent fastened his cloak and slid his own mask over his face.

  "I apologize for the ck of ceremony, but I distaste such useless things. What I believe in, is results."

  Then he turned and ascended the st few steps, pushing open the courthouse doors with a quiet strength.

  "Tonight, you shall see what results truly entail."

  Light poured in.

  So did the screams.

  The city was burning.

  The courthouse overlooked the southern direction of the Nobility District, once a garden of walled manors and marble towers. Now it was a mausoleum of smoke and fire.

  Soldiers marched in perfect lines. Noble banners burned atop cracked rooftops. Some estates were in full fme, others already leveled.

  Courtyards had been turned into execution grounds.

  Men, women, children - lined up against walls. Some begging. Some praying. Others silent.

  The rifles answered them all the same.

  Fire.

  I flinched. Not outwardly. But inside, something twisted.

  The Regent walked forward, unbothered.

  Lucius fnked him. I followed, my boots crunching over shattered stone and bloodied gss.

  We passed three bodies tied to posts. Heads limp. One still twitching.

  We passed two soldiers dragging a woman by the hair, her dress torn and bloodied. A man ran after her, screaming, before he was struck down with a baton.

  Smoke made the world grey.

  "This is what loyalty looks like, Solmere," the Regent said without turning. "This is what betrayal earns."

  "Is it loyalty," I said quietly, "or obedience?"

  The Regent didn't stop. "Does it matter?"

  He turned to the Inquisitor with us. "Lucius. Your thoughts?"

  Lucius's voice rasped through his mask. "The heretic does not breathe. The traitor does not beg. Their breath was a gift from the Emperor. He is free to recim it."

  I said nothing, my mask hiding my expression.

  The Regent looked at me.

  "You must lose your humanity, boy. Quickly. Or it will be torn from you."

  "I know," I said. But I wasn't sure I believed it. But I had to, and I had known from the beginning that I would have to eventually.

  No matter how many times I told myself that, it didn't make it easier.

  He stopped.

  "You better gather your valuables, and get my niece ready as well. You and Mary won't be in this city much longer."

  I hesitated, shocked a bit as I asked.

  "…Why?"

  The Regent turned fully to me. No hesitation. No fanfare. I could feel daggers in his eyes, but they weren't aimed at me. To who or what, I had no clue.

  His cloak fluttered in the wind.

  "War."

  ---

  I wandered.

  I don't know how far I walked. Only that the further I went, the harder it became to look.

  But I forced myself to look. If not for the fact the Regent was right, that my humanity was a liability. I did it for the sense of guilt I felt for causing it.

  I must reap what I sow. This world won't give me a second chance.

  Men thrown into carts like meat.

  Children clutching dead mothers.

  Soldiers beating old men for resisting arrest.

  I passed a girl, maybe thirteen, screaming for her father as two guards dragged him away.

  My fists curled until leather creaked over bone. The warm wet feeling of blood coating the my bck glove.

  But I didn't stop.

  I couldn't stop.

  Because I knew… if I stopped, I'd never start again.

  Then I turned a corner.

  And saw the house.

  White pilrs. Gilded gates.

  The crest of House Valenne.

  Thalia's house.

  My stomach dropped.

  Soldiers lined the walkway. A Commissar stood in the courtyard - long bck coat, red sash, ornate saber at his hip, his face carved from stone.

  He looked like he belonged in a different century.

  Thalia stumbled into view, hands raised in the air. Her dress torn in many pces.

  She was crying.

  Suddenly, she made a dash for it. She started to sprint in my direction, running for her life.

  Until she saw who she was running to.

  She stopped, eyes as wide as saucers when she saw she was running headfirst into an Inquisitor.

  Just as she stopped to process it, a gunshot rang out, piercing her leg as she colpsed.

  The Commissar, with one less bullet in his revolver, quickly bowed to me while the girl screamed beneath me.

  "I apologize my liege. I shall dispose of this vermin at once."

  I didn't move.

  I could have stopped him.

  But I didn't.

  Blood streaked down Thalia's leg from the fresh bullet wound.

  "No - no, please, I didn't know-!"

  She fell. Crawled. Dragged herself away from me. As if I were more terrifying than the man who shot her.

  "I did what you said - I handed everything over, I didn't - !"

  A soldier raised his rifle.

  The officer raised a hand. "Wait."

  "You broke protocol. You attempted escape."

  "I didn't-! I was scared, I-"

  He drew his pistol, slow and ceremonial.

  "I invoke the Emperor's command. Your only right..."

  "Please-!"

  She reached out. Toward me.

  A child's reach. A dying girl's hope.

  The officer shot her through the head.

  She colpsed, her hand still reaching forward, twitching.

  "...is a quick death."

  Then her mother ran.

  "No-NO!"

  Another shot. This one came from a rifle.

  Then silence.

  The rest of the family stood still as bags were pulled over their heads.

  I turned.

  Down an alley. Fast. Controlled.

  Until I was out of sight.

  Then I ripped the mask off and vomited into the gutter.

  My whole body shook.

  I dry-heaved, bile still in my throat. Spit on my chin. My chest heaving.

  I gripped the wall. Gasping for breath. I couldn't let anyone see me, not now.

  I had no choice. I had no choice. I had no choice.

  I punched myself in the gut, winding myself as I knelt down in pain. I started to calm down, trying to convince myself that I couldn't blow my cover.

  Not when I had come so far.

  Charlotte's words echoed in my mind, cursing me to question my actions.

  There's always a choice, Damian.

  I tried to convince myself everything was for the greater good. I needed to live, no matter the cost. Otherwise...

  Everyone would die. And I along with them.

  As I gained the energy to get up, I suddenly felt something.

  Pain.

  My eyes burned.

  A pulse. A pressure. A pull.

  Mary.

  I felt her.

  The Veil was reacting.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was very wrong.

  Something I recognized, knew instinctively.

  My eyes shrunk, and by the time the thought graced my mind, I was already in full sprint. The pain in my legs was negligible factor. Especially with pure dread being my motivator.

  Please, don't be too te-!

  Mary was losing control.

  ---

  I ran.

  I sprinted across blood-slick stone. Down alleys. Up stairs. Through smoke and screams.

  With one swipe of my hand, I knocked out the two guards at her door before they could blink.

  Didn't want witnesses.

  Didn't want anyone seeing what was about to happen.

  I kicked the door open.

  The room was glowing.

  Not with sunlight.

  But with gold.

  Golden light coiled around the bed like threads of divine silk. Hovering. Writhing. Reaching. A halo.

  At the center-

  Mary.

  Eyes closed. Breathing shallow. Her neck bleeding.

  And something above her.

  A shape.

  Pitch bck. Wings of shadow. Eyes of purest gold.

  It cradled her like a lover.

  Its mouth still at her throat.

  I raised the revolver.

  Fired.

  The bullet went straight through.

  No blood.

  Just smoke.

  The creature shrieked - but not in pain.

  In anger.

  Golden threads shed out like whips.

  I dove. Rolled. Dodged. One thread missed my face by an inch, cutting a line into the wall behind me like it was butter.

  I fired again.

  Nothing.

  The creature ughed.

  "You came for her, child." The entity stared at me for a bit, before twisting its head in a disfigured manner. Smiling grotesquely.

  "You walk between the Veil, and it walks with you, follows you. Child of the Veil." it whispered. Voice like silk soaked in madness. I felt familiar cwing at my mind, voicing seeping into my reality.

  Its shadow expanded. Filling the room. Swallowing the light.

  I drew the folding bde from my belt.

  It hissed as it snapped into pce, metal folding out like a serpent coiling to strike.

  I gripped the hilt tighter.

  The gemstone embedded in the center fred - then drank.It pierced my palm with hair-thin fangs, greedily swallowing my blood until it turned a deep, oily bck.

  The bde responded.

  A storm of miasma surged to life around it - cold, suffocating, unnatural. The very air recoiled. The light dimmed. The ground beneath my feet felt brittle, as though life itself was withdrawing in fear.

  I raised the sword, its weight heavier now. Hungrier.

  Then I spoke - not in the tongue of this world, but my own. The nguage of Earth. A word that had no transtion here. A command, not a plea.

  "Devour."

  The shadows answered.

  They surged forward at once, pulled by my voice and bde like a tide called home. A tidal wave of darkness, howling with ancient hunger, coalesced and crashed toward the entity.

  The golden threads shed up in defense - brilliant, divine, furious.

  They shattered.

  One by one.Each string breaking with a sound like splitting bone.

  And then, at st-

  The shadow swallowed it whole.

  Then it screamed.

  Not in pain.

  In fury.

  Mary began to convulse. Untouched by the miasma.

  Golden light fred.

  Her eyes opened.

  Glowing. Pure gold. No pupils. No whites.

  Just endless light.

  "Mary!" I shouted, sprinting to her. "Wake up!"

  The threads turned on me.

  I dove into her arms and pressed my forehead to hers, holding her tight as if I could will the nightmare away.

  I dove forward and wrapped my arms around her.

  Held her close. Pressed my forehead against hers.

  "Mary-!" I breathed. "Listen to me. It's not real."

  I clenched my eyes shut. "Wake up, you batshit stubborn woman."

  My eyes burned - literally.

  Crimson bled across my vision as the sigils ignited, pulsing deep within my retinas.

  I forced them open-

  -and stared straight into hers.

  Gold met red.

  The creature reeled.

  Its faceless body staggered backward, even as my shadow roared and consumed it like a starving abyss.

  It didn't fight.

  It looked at me.

  And for the first time, it looked afraid.

  Its mouth moved.

  "No… it can't be…"

  Its voice was fractured, ancient and wrong. There was an intense hatred and fear in her voice.

  "You are... their child? You hold her fme, and his shadow..."

  My skin went cold. But I didn't look away.

  The gold in Mary's eyes pulsed - livid, radiant, consuming, spilling into the room like molten light.

  The floor fractured beneath us, reality trembling like gss under a hammer.

  And then I heard it speak again.

  Shocked. Confused. Enraged.

  "You… carry their blood...! It makes no sense... How-!."

  My breath caught.

  Mary's eyes fred wider, brighter - until the world began to dissolve.

  The creature screamed.

  And I smiled.

  "You've lost, Apostle Lilith of the Twelfth Seal."

  The name nded like a prophecy.

  The Twelfth Seal - The Eyes of Verity.

  And then-

  Golden light detonated.

  And the world turned white.