Erika took a deep, slow breath, trying to relax the tense muscles in his shoulders and neck, and the Marks on his arms—though the effect was zero. Quinn's words were like cold dissecting scalpels, effortlessly slicing through the fragile psychological defenses Erika had tried to wrap around himself.
"You're still a child," Quinn began. His tone was utterly flat, stating an objective, clinical fact rather than expressing pity or disdain. "But you are, ultimately, a product of the Sanctum Creed."
The words were an ice spike. They drew a clear, inescapable line, highlighting the label permanently branded onto Erika's existence: Sanctum property. This identity was his original sin, and to the man sitting across from him, it was merely a bargaining chip.
"If I wished," Quinn continued, his voice devoid of any inflection, as if discussing the weather, "I could decide your life or death right here. On this floor." He paused, his gaze seeming to pierce through the stone walls toward the distant, unseen Sanctum. "Or... I could simply sell a favor to the Creed and hand you back."
Sell a favor. The words fell lightly, yet weighed a thousand pounds. Erika's value was strictly quantifiable, and the scales were held entirely by this capricious, terrifying Sorcerer.
"I'm curious what the two of you actually did to get hunted by the Guard," Quinn changed tack, the corner of his mouth lifting with a trace of imperceptible, ironic interest. "But that has nothing to do with our talk today."
With that, Quinn stood up. He didn't move closer to apply more physical pressure. Instead, he turned his back to Erika and walked toward the massive oil painting. He raised a hand, his fingertips tracing the edge of the frame, hovering just over the melancholy outline of the woman in the painting with a feather-light, almost ghost-like touch.
"You know, Erika," Quinn spoke again. His voice was lower now, as if speaking to the canvas, or communicating through time with someone long dead. "In this meat grinder we call a world, there are only two kinds of people who meet a truly miserable end."
He turned slowly. His gaze locked onto Erika once more. The irony was gone. In its place was a cold, lucid clarity born from glimpsing some absolute, brutal truth.
"Those who think they know everything," he raised one finger, his tone chillingly even.
He paused. He raised a second finger, the corner of his mouth curling into a razor-sharp, self-deprecating mockery.
"And those who pretend they know nothing."
The words were like two heavy stones dropped into the dark, turbulent lake of Erika's mind. Which category did the lofty figures in the Sanctum belong to? What about the Grey Cloak Executor who consumed his own colleague? And Quinn himself—inscrutable, wielding god-like power yet teetering on the edge of a mental abyss—which was he?
Quinn took a deliberate step forward, closing the distance. He leaned in slightly, his gaze a tangible, crushing weight pressing down on Erika, allowing absolutely zero evasion.
"Tell me," his voice was soft, yet it carried the crushing force of a collapsing mountain. "Which kind are you?"
The question was thrown at him like a live grenade. It wasn't about the Marks. It wasn't about his escape. It was a surgical strike at the very core of his survival strategy.
Erika's mouth opened, but his throat was completely paralyzed. His mind scrambled desperately, but he couldn't form a single coherent thought, let alone an answer. He wasn't omniscient, but he couldn't feign pure ignorance either—not when he could see the silver light, not when he carried the Abyss in his arm.
Cold sweat trailed slowly down his temple.
The bedroom was terrifyingly quiet. Only the frantic, rabbit-fast thudding of his own heartbeat filled his ears, under the eternal, silent gaze of the three figures in the painting. Quinn waited. The silence was a physical torture.
"Of course," Quinn's voice suddenly broke the vacuum, cutting off Erika's mounting panic. His tone held a trace of disquieting concession. "You could always try to pretend you know nothing." He paused, his stormy grey eyes flicking over Erika, piercing flesh to see the churning terror within. "If you actually had a choice."
He spoke the last half-sentence very softly, yet it was an ice pick, flawlessly puncturing any false sense of security 'pretending' might bring. Did Erika have a choice? Not in the Sanctum. Not in the wasteland. And certainly not here, sitting before a monster who could casually erase him. The word 'if' was the most biting irony of all.
Quinn seemed to lose immediate interest in torturing him for an answer. He reached into his dark coat, deftly retrieving a cigarette. Holding it between his lips, he snapped the fingers of his other hand—fssst—a pale, unnatural spark leaped from his fingertip, igniting the paper.
He took a deep, ravenous drag. Smoke filled his lungs before slowly escaping his nostrils and slightly parted lips, coiling into thick, blue-grey strands that rose and twisted in the cold light, completely obscuring his expression.
Erika sat perfectly still, not daring to breathe too loudly. Quinn's train of thought was as unpredictable and deadly as a minefield. Was this an interrogation? A threat? Or was the Sorcerer simply talking to the ghosts in his own head, using Erika as a convenient, mute sounding board? The absolute unpredictability was what terrified Erika the most.
Quinn took a few more heavy drags, then slumped back into the high-backed chair. He no longer maintained that forward-leaning, predatory posture. He sank deeply into the leather, his head tilted back, his neck stretched in a line of agonizing fatigue. His eyes unfocused, staring blankly at the ceiling.
This posture made him seem slack, almost hollowed out. As if all the lethal sharpness had been suddenly drained from his body, leaving only a bone-deep, ancient weariness.
"You're still a child..." Quinn repeated the phrase. It was muffled and distant now, spoken through a veil of ascending smoke. It was no longer a cold statement of fact, but a long, heavy sigh laced with an emotion too complex and dark to name.
He held this paralyzed pose, silent for several excruciating seconds, conducting some silent, losing argument with the void on the ceiling.
Then, he spoke again. Very slowly. Each word seemed hauled up from a great, bloody depth:
"Whatever you do to survive in this world, kid..." Quinn's voice was stripped of all mockery, leaving only a cold, unforgiving core. "...never let them dictate the price of your compromise."
It wasn't a piece of friendly advice. It was a death knell. It pointed directly to the horrifying, cyborg-ified corpse of the Grey Cloak they had just left on the scorched earth. It was a brutal, bleeding lesson about the true cost of survival.
Erika couldn't fully comprehend the weight of it. Quinn's mind was like the shifting silver light—incomprehensible, alien, and dangerous. One moment a calculating strategist, the next a broken avenger, and now this exhausted, hollow man uttering cryptic warnings to the ceiling. Which was the real Quinn? The sheer impossibility of knowing was paralyzing.
Erika could only sit in the suffocating silence, watching the blue smoke gather and disperse before Quinn's face. He felt himself sinking deeper into the icy depths of this impenetrable, deadly game, wondering if he would ever decipher the rules before it killed him.