The footsteps of the Hounds echoed above like falling war drums. As Thou ran up the spiraling stairs, his breath met the cold air—each exhale a cloud of mist, his mind already racing for the next move.
He reached the top.
The door to the old chapel exploded inward before he could touch it, fragments of charred wood flying across the room. From the smoke stepped a Hound of the Cathedral—towering, wrapped in plated iron marked with holy scripts that bled silver.
"Thou Vortery," the knight said, voice reverberating like steel dragged over stone. "The Exalted demands your return. Alive or shattered."
Thou didn't answer.
Instead, he drew his revolver. The cloth around it unraveled, revealing the glowing red glyphs now fully awake. Mist coiled around his feet, and his eyes turned a deeper crimson.
"I don't belong to the Exalted," he muttered, "I belong to the forgotten."
The knight charged, sword raised. The air cracked. In a flash, steel met steel—but not from Thou's hand. The Eidolon returned, summoned fully—taller now, its armor adorned with shifting runes, its aura blazing violet.
The two clashed in the ruined chapel, lightning flaring with each blow. Walls cracked. Windows shattered inward. Spirits wailed as the old stones remembered blood once spilled.
Thou fired once—then again. Each bullet carved a path not through flesh, but through memory, making the knight stagger, stunned by echoes of those he once helped burn.
"You hear them now, don't you?" Thou said quietly. "The dead you swore to protect from people like me… only to sacrifice them."
The knight roared and lunged. But this time, Thou was faster.
He reached into his coat, took out the black coin, and threw it to the ground. A tremor burst outward, and the chapel floor split open, revealing a sigil made of bone and blood, glowing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"You won't take me back," he said. "Because there is no going back."
He jumped.
---
Darkness swallowed him.
When he opened his eyes, he was kneeling in a vast underground chamber—the Chamber of the Exiled. Hundreds of spectral figures stood in silence, their eyes hollow, their forms torn by time.
Then, they spoke—not in unison, but like wind echoing through the ruins:
"One of us... yet not. One of them... yet fallen. Will you lead us?"
Thou stood, and for the first time, he felt the weight of all the blood in his veins—not as a curse, but as a key.
"Yes," he said. "Not as your king, or savior. But as your vengeance."
The spirits screamed—not in pain, but in fury awakened. The chamber pulsed with energy, and the Core far above began to crack.
---
Up in Velgrave, cracks formed along the old towers. Mist poured from the sewers. Citizens whispered of ghosts walking in the alleys. Children wept in sleep.
And the Hounds... fell back.
One by one, their blades turned to rust.
Because they knew.
The blood they buried had risen.
And from the dark, the world they feared—
—was beginning to fall.
---
THE END