Ethan's hand, still trembling from the Gatewalk, clutched the collar of his ruined uniform. The world around him was painfully sharp, a dizzying cacophony of sound and light the abyss had systematically erased. He needed proof. Physical, undeniable proof that the last few hours were a fever dream born of oxygen deprivation.
He pressed two fingers hard against the pulsing tissue in his neck. He felt the firm ridge of muscle, the cold, slightly clammy texture of his skin. But beneath it? Nothing. No rhythmic lub-dub, no reassuring pressure of life pushing blood through veins.
The realisation was a silent scream. His life wasn't sustained by biology; it was maintained by the burning mark on his chest. He was a paradox, and it felt terrifyingly permanent. He was animated, a suit of flesh stitched together and powered by Hellfire.
He shoved the scorched remains of his uniform under his jacket and walked, putting distance between himself and the park. He found himself near a commuter rail station, a monument to the endless, anxious flow of human activity. It was loud, crowded, and utterly, immediately, wrong.
The Sin Perception was no longer a philosophical concept; it was a physical malady.
As he walked through the main hall, a wave of sickening, invisible energy blindsided him. Every single person was radiating a faint, red-tinged aura the spectral evidence of their hidden crimes, their daily betrayals, their corrosive self-interests.
It wasn't that everyone was a murderer; it was that no one was clean.
The businessman scrolling on his phone radiated a dull, oily red the echo of fraud. The young woman sipping coffee glowed with the frantic, itching red of Lust and betrayal. The old woman who smiled kindly held a deep, stagnant amber decades of bitter Wrath for a long-dead husband.
Too much. The noise was deafening, the visual input overwhelming. The ambient, constant hum of transgression was a psychic static that made his teeth ache.
He stumbled against a column, fighting the urge to vomit. The sigil on his chest flared in response to the surrounding density of sin, heating up and demanding action. The Wrath was an accelerant, a spiritual gasoline pouring over his fractured nerves. Judge them. Punish them. They are foul.
He locked onto a specific target near the ticket kiosks: a man in a grubby coat hawking cheap trinkets. The man's aura was not ambient; it was a pulsing, sickening crimson a deep visceral hue of Treachery and cruelty.
Ethan focused his spectral sight. The man wasn't just a petty hustler. The sight pushed past the red echo and delivered a full, horrific vision: a filthy basement, a chained dog, and the sickening sound of repeated, calculated abuse. It was a sin of pure, helpless victimisation.
The flood of the man's guilt, shame, and malice surged into Ethan's mind like an electrical current. It was the energy of the sin itself, and the Infernal Resonance kicked in. Ethan felt the power swell in his limbs a rush, sharp and dangerous, but also terribly intoxicating. It was energy, pure and easy, gained simply by observing the man's vile truth.
I could stop him. Right now.
The Wrath-fire on his chest screamed for justice, demanding he lash out, bind the sinner, and execute the Emissary's terrible duty. The human part of Ethan, the paramedic who tried to save everyone, was being drowned out by the infernal engine of judgment.
"Get out," he mumbled, gripping the column, his vision tunnelling to the man's red aura. "Get out of my head."
He couldn't use visible fire. Not here. Not yet. The need to break the connection and stop the inflow of contamination was absolute. He needed a localised, controlled burst of a spiritual short circuit.
Gritting his teeth, Ethan forced the building, volatile heat in his core downward, into his palms, and then out in a controlled, invisible ripple. It wasn't a flame; it was a pure pulse of spiritual distortion.
The air around him didn't ignite, but it shimmered violently. Anyone within a three-foot radius suddenly felt a spike of intense, suffocating fear the kind of sudden, profound dread that makes you check your pockets for a lost wallet.
The people nearest Ethan jerked away, confusion warring with sudden, inexplicable panic. The man with the crimson aura stumbled, looking wildly around, suddenly feeling exposed. The bubble of noise around Ethan instantly evaporated. The gap widened, giving him a precious moment of sensory silence.
The red echoes faded slightly, manageable now that he wasn't immersed in the throng. The sigil, having expelled energy, cooled slightly.
Ethan used the created vacuum. He turned, kept his head down, and walked rapidly out of the station. His legs felt shaky, but the control he'd exerted over the power minimal though it was gave him a terrifying, necessary shot of confidence.
He walked for blocks until he found a place the city had forgotten: a row of condemned brownstones near the docks. He picked the darkest one, broke a loose windowpane, and climbed inside. The air was thick with dust and the quiet smell of decay.
He stood in the gloom of the fourth floor, the city lights painting weak, grimy strips across the floor. He needed to see the Emissary.
He found a shard of glass from a broken mirror and held it up. The reflection wasn't quite his own.
Ethan Vale was still there: the tired eyes, the sharp jawline, the stubborn set of his mouth. But beneath the surface, the illusion of the paramedic had shattered. His eyes were no longer hazel; they were ringed with a faint, angry gold. His skin had an unnatural tautness, as if flesh was merely stretched over a wire frame powered by an internal combustion engine.
And on his chest, the black-red sigil pulsed like a dying heart.
"You're not Ethan Vale," he whispered to the glass.
The reflection, the Emissary of Hell, gave no reply. He only offered a faint, sardonic smile. The fire had given him back his life, but it had permanently changed the lens through which he saw the world. He was tethered here, forced to walk among the very people whose hidden crimes now served as his fuel.
He was a weapon set to detonate, and he had just successfully test-fired his core.
His first mission from Lucien hadn't even arrived, yet Ethan was already hunting, hunting for a way to live with the truth he now wore like a skin.