Chapter 43 – The Flood Beneath the Flesh
The rain hadn't stopped since the night of the offering. It fell in sheets, thick as the veil between the living and the damned. The forest beyond the ruins moaned with unseen things, the air heavy with a copper taste that made every breath feel like swallowing rust.
Shitsubo sat near the fire, silent, his body bandaged where the curse gnawed through muscle and will alike. His eyes were hollow but alive—alive in that way that only a man who had danced with death and spat on it could be. Around him, Juro limped with his new scar running down the socket where his left eye had once been, his silence now something darker than grief.
They had made it out of Dagon's nest barely alive. The doctrine of the zealots—those mad disciples of the "Fallen Light"—was spreading faster than the rot in Shitsubo's veins. They whispered of him as the vessel of penance, the one who would burn the world clean.
