That night, sleep didn't come easy.
He lay in a bed that wasn't his, beside a woman he had no memory of, in a house built from someone else's sins.
Steam pipes clicked through the walls like a heartbeat. The ceiling fan spun slowly — old brass blades casting shadows shaped like gallows.
Since it was late all he had to do was head up into the room and not be bothered, his body seemed to do everything else on instinct.
When he finally closed his eyes, the nightmares came.
Memories Not His.
He could see himself choking someone.
Not in defense. Not in war.
A boy — maybe twelve — his hands around the child's throat. Screaming, snot, blood. The boy gasped. Elias didn't stop. He smiled. Laughed.
The intruder awoke with a loud gasp, cold sweat on his back. His fist had punched through the headboard.
"That wasn't me. That wasn't—" he tried to calm himself down.
But he felt it.
The hunger. The cruelty.
It was clear that Elias Grayes was no saint, he was a murderer, a sinner just like the man he had killed. Just remembering that made him get up from his bed and walk into the small bathroom where he doubled over and emptied his insides.
His mind raced with thoughts, "Shit, I really did kill that man didn't I? Why did I do that? What came over me!-
For a moment he wondered if perhaps the real Elias Grayes took over his body, but he shook of the thought.
"What are you, insane?" He asked himself. "People don't just come back to life, but then again I did die before. Nothing makes sense here."
He looked at himself in the mirror, the face he work was not his. He was older now looking over thirty, his face was smooth, his jawline more defined and angular. He had a small beard on his face, he hated beards. His hair was dark and wild like that of a mad man, his eyes were silver.
"That's not me. That's not me. That's not me!" He started to scream wildly which only silenced when he threw his fist at the mirror, shattering it and allowing pieces of glass to cut through his skin and sent blood dripping down his fist.
The pain stung him, he winced. Still...
"Why am I not waking up from this?" He asked himself.
The door to bathroom slowly cracked open and there stood a young woman with blonde hair and dark eyes, she looked fair and beautiful. Her eyes a mix of fear and worry.
"Love", she spoke in a soft voice. "Are you alright?"
She looked at the mirror and quickly disappeared before he could say anything. She was back with a first aid kit and soon helping him wipe off the blood, from the way she worked the bandage and applied the medications he could tell she was self taught and not good at it. But who was he to argue.
He had no right being her husband anyway.
When she finished she finally spoke again, "You know you can tell me anything, love."
"I'm not your husband, I'm actually a guy from another world. It's complicated but I just killed a man and I don't think I'm safe around people." The words played in his mind before he chose to speak them and they sounded like a joke to him.
"I'm fine." Those were the only words that came out of him in the end.
She smiled weakly and did not question him any further, he could see the look of fear she had in her eyes. She barely locked eyes with him for longer than was felt needed. In her eyes he could not find love but deep-rooted fear.
"What the fuck did you do to your wife Elias?" He asked himself.
"ALLEY WAY NOW, DON'T DAWDLE NOW. COME ON."
His eyes shot up as he spun around looking for the voice that spoke just a moment before but of course there was no one there but him and the wife of Elias.
The voice was gone but he could still feel a strange pull left behind by it. It felt too strong to ignore, like when he first killed Keldar Voss.
"I will be right back, I need some fresh air." He said and hurriedly left the room in his pajamas, he did not want the incidence to repeat himself and end up killing the wife and child.
By the time he got out of the house he was gasping for hair and pacing down the street. "I am too fucking unstable, I could have killed the family."
He stumbled into the alley at a point of trying to rationalise himself in his direction circumstance.
To his surprise, someone was waiting there. Somehow he could feel that he was being pulled to this strange man, he could also tell that he was the source of the voice earlier.
It sent chills running down his spine.
The man was dressed in a plague doctor's mask covered in pitch blackness, dressed in patchwork robes made of skin-stitched parchment. Clockwork ravens perched on his shoulders. He didn't walk — he simply clicked into view, like time itself let him pass.
"Elias Graye," the man said in a strange voice that echoed seeming not human but also human. "Or should I call you what you really are?"
The intruder mustered enough courage to speak. "…Who are you?"
The strange man responded after a bit of delay. "A Sin Broker. I collect judgment. We all have roles in this rusting machine."
The Broker raised a gloved hand and a black ledger hovered between them, written in flickering red glyphs.
"You've absorbed 42 Sin Points. Do you know what happens when you reach a hundred?" The man asked.
The intruder stayed silent.
"You change, Collector. The sins burn through your body. Twist your flesh. Turn you into something… irreversible. A demonkin. One of the fallen."
The intruder paused and observed the sin brokers for a long time before speaking. "If you are here, I believe that somehow you knot what I am?"
The broker nodded gently. "An infected soul in borrowed skin. An intruder."
The broker took a step closer.
"Veilhallow doesn't need another monster. Not yet. Keep your count low… or when the church bells toll, you'll be the one hunted."
The clockwork ravens scattered into steam.
"Or summoned."
Then the Broker vanished.
The intruder returned back silently to his room and tried to sleep, but the sleep never came
The next day at breakfast, there was silence at the table.
His wife smiled but her eyes were distant, almost like they had been rehearsed.
The silence would have stayed much longer till she walked in.
His daughter.
Or Elias' daughter.
She looked maybe sixteen. Tall. Sharp features, raven-black hair, brilliant silver eyes that immediately crossed over to him and it was clear that she regretted seeing him as her eyes rolled back in disgust.
She wore a school uniform beneath a long tan coat. And earphones — one always in, the other dangling over her other ear.
"Morning," he offered, trying to sound… human.
Well as human as a dead guy borrowing another dead guy's body could sound.
"Tch," she scoffed. "Don't shit yourself."
She walked right past him. Grabbed burnt toast from a plate and avoided eye contact.
"Lyra," the mother warned gently.
"No," Lyra snapped. "Let him pretend to be Dad, but I don't have to play along."
The intruder was struck by the tone at which she said "Dad" like another person entirely.
"Well I'm not your dad", he wanted to say but he knew well to keep shut.
The air turned cold as she left. A gear in the hallway ground loudly — like the house itself hated the silence.
"Was Elias a monster to them, too?" He asked himself as he watched mother and daughter argue softly
"I'm not him," he whispered after she left.
His wife heard.
"Then stop acting like him."
That was a good piece of advice to him but he did not quite understand who he was not mewnt to act like.