Kamu Reinado… or rather, Red Falcon.
With a trace of curiosity, he studied the detective before him. There were countless stories about this man—legends whispered in back alleys and smoke-filled rooms—but Red Falcon had never imagined that today would be the day he met him face to face.
Six years ago, a mysterious detective arrived in Old Dunling. To secure Barlow's support in that city, he single-handedly engineered the horrifying Red River Massacre.
Red Falcon could, at best, be counted as a marginal participant. He knew that case all too well. Back then, the lower districts were in turmoil: factions clashing, nobles colluding with gangs. Barlow's authority teetered on the brink. He had lost all ability to restrain those thugs. To reclaim dominance over the lower city, Barlow gave Lloyd his very first assignment.
Investigate the crimes linking the gangs and the aristocracy. As long as evidence existed, the army would march into the lower districts and reshuffle everything from the ground up. The nobles who sought to control the undercity would face their reckoning.
In return, Barlow promised Lloyd—the foreigner—a new life: a fully legal identity, the job of his dreams, and a future reborn.
Lloyd succeeded.
Just not in any way anyone had imagined.
He found them. He tortured them until they confessed to everything. And then he killed them all. When Barlow finally arrived, corpses were drifting across the Thames. The muddy water had turned dark red. Amid the echoes of screaming, one name after another was added to the list.
"Honestly," Lloyd sighed, "Old Dunling really is a dreadful place. You get one sunny day every few hundred years. Hard to keep your spirits up."
He had grown oddly talkative. Gazing into the blackness beyond the window, his fingers unconsciously plucked at the petals in a flower box, crushing them one by one, leaving a faint fragrance on his hand.
"True," Red Falcon replied with a smile. "The west is much better. Even if it's work, you can treat it like a bit of travel."
Red Falcon had expected Lloyd Holmes to be a cold-blooded butcher. Yet after spending some time together, that fixed impression had begun to crack. Still, he remained cautious. Disguises were something anyone could wear.
"Excuse me. I'll use the restroom."
He nodded politely to Lloyd and headed toward the rear carriage. The instant he turned away, the smile vanished from his face, replaced by an icy calm.
This mission was critical. To ensure that the weapons from Behans would not be discovered by some curious passenger, Red Falcon had boarded early to guard the cargo. He hadn't expected to encounter Lloyd here.
According to Barlow's account from his hospital bed, it was Lloyd who had abducted Eve Phoenix. No one knew how he had escaped the catacombs, but it was clear enough that this mysterious detective had dealings with demons.
The Purification Order showed no mercy to such people. Under normal procedures, a knight armed to the teeth would have knocked on Lloyd's door the day after the catacombs collapsed. But Lloyd's record in the Red River incident—combined with the absence of a high-ranking knight—had delayed his arrest.
Now this troublemaker had boarded the Radiance. Red Falcon didn't know what Lloyd was planning, but to be safe, he decided to inform Barlow.
He pushed through layers of iron doors, passed the cargo crates ahead, and reached a place no train attendant even realized existed—a newly added carriage at the very front of the train.
Behind thick steel plates stood heavily armed soldiers, carrying weapons supplied by the Mechanical Institute. They were cold, efficient killing machines.
A radio station sat at the center of the carriage, surrounded by ample supplies. It was less a railcar than a mobile command post. Soldiers guarded the rear as well, beyond which stood a forbidden door. Behind it, the weapons from Behans lay quietly dormant.
"Tell Barlow to be ready," Red Falcon said. "We have some unwelcome guests."
He took a revolver from the weapons rack and concealed it beneath his coat. Goodwill meant little unless one was armed. Against someone who could crawl out of the catacombs unseen, no amount of vigilance was excessive.
With that thought, Red Falcon turned to return to his seat—
—and then a thunderous gunshot erupted from the very back of the train.
…
A few minutes earlier.
Watching Red Falcon depart, Lloyd stared absently out the window. There was nothing to see—only a thick, featureless darkness. Bored, his gaze drifted back into the carriage, where he began to observe the other passengers.
When Lloyd first entered the detective trade, he had been a complete amateur. He remembered reading somewhere that the best way to cultivate a detective's "method of deduction" was to watch strangers—judge their professions, histories, and lives from their clothes and expressions.
At first, the exercise was difficult for Lloyd. His eyes had an unfortunate tendency to be drawn to young women on the street, which usually ended with him being chased by patrol officers…
Enough of those unpleasant memories.
His attention settled on a nearby passenger. A perfectly ordinary middle-aged man: a washed-out gray coat, a heavy suitcase in hand. Like Red Falcon, another unlucky office worker on a business trip. His head rested against the seatback, half-asleep.
Then the next. And the next.
As his gaze moved on, Lloyd realized something odd.
There were no women in the carriage. No children. Not even elderly passengers. Almost everyone looked the same—
people like Red Falcon.
Overworked, exhausted, faceless cogs of the city.
Lloyd rose to his feet, an unease creeping into his bones. This route was, to some extent, a tourist line—yet the carriage was filled only with men who looked like they were on their way to work. No women. No children. Something was deeply wrong.
His expression barely changed. For the sake of caution, he picked up his briefcase and the flower box and began to stroll casually through the train, pushing open one heavy iron door after another. Whether it was the attendants or the passengers, everyone carried an indescribable strangeness about them. Outside the windows lay an absolute, suffocating black, as though at some unknowable moment the train had already slipped into an abyss.
Then, suddenly, he saw something—or someone—and sat down in the corner of the next carriage.
"So," he said quietly, "why are you here?"
Those who are touched by darkness are always drawn to one another. Like lanterns burning in the void, they inevitably recognize their own kind. Even though the girl before him had disguised herself beyond recognition, the scent of secret blood stood out to Lloyd with painful clarity.
"Because I have a commission I want to give you."
She lifted her head. Eve's pale face was smeared with filthy coal ash, her bright eyes brimming with fear.
After escaping Phoenix Manor aboard the train, Eve had followed the address on the business card to Lloyd's home. The one who opened the door, however, was Madam Vanlud—Lloyd had already departed for Central Station. Eve had sprinted with every ounce of strength she had, barely managing to catch the Radiance at the very last moment.
"…What happened?"
The look in the girl's eyes made Lloyd instinctively more cautious.
"I saw them… those demons."
At last, Eve spoke the word demons. Under relentless pressure, she could no longer avoid facing these creations of nightmare.
"They were right beside me. They were staring at me, saying they'd found me…"
Her voice trembled. From the moment she fled Phoenix Manor, it had been a desperate flight for survival. The darkness had never felt so terrifying—ever since then, it seemed to be filled with demons watching her from the shadows.
"They found you? Some form of clairvoyance?" Lloyd said calmly. "That's just a kind of hallucination. It won't affect reality. Think of it as a nightmare you have while awake."
He was well acquainted with such things; years of inhaling nightshade smoke had made him familiar with these states. His tone was meant to reassure her.
In truth, Lloyd was also trying to find a way to send Eve away. The destination of this journey was the mysterious Holy Coffin. Ordinary people who came into contact with it would be corroded and turned into demons themselves. And someone like Eve, who carried secret blood—if she were fully corrupted, she would become something far more dangerous than an ordinary demon.
He had killed comrades before. More than once. But Eve was still so young. There was no need for her to follow him to such a godforsaken place.
"No," Eve said urgently. "It's different from a hallucination. It really could see me."
Her lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to say more, but the thing was too hard to describe. No matter how hard she searched for words, none seemed adequate.
"It was like… like… two worlds overlapping!"
She raised her voice.
"Didn't you say it yourself? That as it deepens, they can see us. I'm certain—that demon saw me!"
She poured out her words with all her strength, the darkness chasing her, trying to swallow the tiny flame she represented.
An ominous, grotesque power enveloped everything. Demons had countless ways to spread their contamination—anything capable of carrying "information" could become a medium for their corruption.
A describable beam of light.
A painting depicting demonic forms.
A book that recorded battles against them.
Or perhaps… a girl who had been noticed by a demon, terrified by it, and spoke of it aloud.
"I was… discovered…"
As if all her strength had been drained, Eve finally spoke, fear and exhaustion woven into her voice.
Then, as circuits burned out, the lights in the carriage went dark one by one. From the corners of that blackness, twisted, uncanny shadows slowly rose. For a fleeting instant, the nightmare world and reality overlapped—mad hostility seething, claws and fangs scraping against one another.
Eve yanked out the revolver called Death Knell, pointing it toward the nameless darkness. She was afraid, and she was angry—but it was too dark, so dark that she could see nothing at all.
"Ah… what a nuisance."
In the darkness, surrounded by wolves, the man spoke with weary resignation—like an overworked office drone who's just about to go home and rest, only to be dragged back for sudden overtime.
A warm hand gently patted Eve on the head, as if to comfort her. The next moment, she caught a cool, clean floral scent. Soft petals began to fall through the darkness like snow, swirling in a wild, silent dance.
Delicate petals clung to the Winchester. Amid the mingled scents of flowers and gunpowder, the flower box slammed heavily to the floor, like an offering at a funeral. More petals cascaded down as a blinding muzzle flash erupted, illuminating the surrounding darkness—and revealing the grotesque faces of the passengers within it.