Chapter 9 - Episode 9: Trembling on the edge of dawn

Without warning, without sound, without even the courtesy of a whisper— everything stopped.

The rain that had once poured like heaven's grief now hung motionless in the air, every drop suspended like tiny mirrors of tragedy, catching fragments of a broken scene in their curvature.

The lightning that had just begun to split the heavens into fury froze mid-scream, veins of silver light snarled like roots in a sky gone still.

The world, once alive with pain and sound and blood and breath, now stood locked in a silence so complete it felt as though existence itself had been exiled.

The wind halted in its passage, the leaves stopped trembling, and the land's pulse did not give rhythm.

A single leaf hung mid-air above the muddy ground, unmoving, as if the universe was holding its breath.

Macdoul's hands, stained with warmth that was slipping away, paused mid-shiver. The tendons in his arms no longer trembled, his chest no longer rose.

He could no longer hear the thunder. Only the throb of sorrow in his soul remained, somehow still alive in a world that had gone utterly still.

His scream was caught in his throat, not yet born. His tears froze on the cusp of his lashes, neither falling nor retreating.

Sarah's eyes, half-lidded, gleamed with the last embers of life— yet even her last breath was caught between two seconds, unable to escape her lips. Her hand, which had just begun to fall from his cheek, now hovered in the air like a forgotten prayer waiting to reach the earth.

Time had broken. Or mercy had intervened.

Perhaps the universe, overwhelmed by the grief between two souls, could bear no more and had sealed the moment like a photograph in the darkroom of eternity.

In that arrested silence, in that cradle of frozen rain and unshed breath, Macdoul felt a pressure inside his chest— tight, twisting, as if his heart had been crushed in a giant's fist.

A scream still longed to be born, but it had nowhere to go.

And so, he simply stared at her, at the girl who had given her last warmth to shield his own, caught in the impossible moment between death and farewell.

The world stood still— not in peace, but in mourning.

His expression shifted— not in anger, nor in grief, but in a hollow, ungraspable vacancy, like something fundamental within him had quietly come undone.

The color drained from his face until he looked less like a man and more like a remnant of one, a fading shade left behind in the wake of something irrevocable.

His eyes, once alive with fire and defiance, no longer held light or purpose; they stared blankly ahead, not at her, not at the world, but into some unseeable space beyond comprehension, where meaning had unraveled and the future ceased to matter.

He didn't speak. He didn't cry.

His body barely moved, save for the subtle rise and fall of breath that seemed mechanical, involuntary, as though even his lungs had forgotten why they labored.

His hands, still slick with blood of hers and his own, trembled not with rage but with a softness, a lostness, like a child waking in a foreign land with no memory of home.

The rain that hovered around him had become irrelevant, the thunder meaningless. All sensation had dulled.

He simply sat there. Staring. Not truly at Sarah, not truly at anything. Just… looking, because that's all he remembered how to do.

And in that stillness, a thought never fully formed began to quietly gnaw at the edges of his mind: What am I now, if she's gone? What do I carry, if not her voice, her warmth, her breath?

But no answer came. Only the weight, silence, and the unbearable stillness of a world without her.

Then— footsteps. Not loud, not rushed, but slow, deliberate, each one pressing softly into the world as though they belonged to someone who had walked this place countless times.

The sound echoed unnaturally, as though space itself bent to make it clearer, more intimate, like whispers in a cathedral where no walls remained.

A voice followed. Not harsh, not angry, but graceful— refined in the way a nobleman might mock a servant mourning a death he ordered.

Its cadence was velvet, its tone the curl of a grin behind a veil.

"Oh, don't look so pale now…" it said, lilting through the air like a melody spun from wine and poison.

"I've bestowed upon you the authority here— over this realm, your memory. Or rather…" a pause, as if for dramatic effect, "what you believe to be memory."

Macdoul didn't lift his head. His gaze was still trapped in that strange, invisible distance, like his soul had slipped just out of reach— but the voice continued, circling him, unseen, but all-consuming.

"You see," it cooed, "you didn't realize you were thinking it until now. Until you started living it. The scream, along with the rain. Her hand on your cheek. Her final breath. All of it… a symphony written by grief and conducted by guilt."

The figure stepped closer. Shadows danced at the edges of the trees, flickering even though no light remained.

The air shimmered unnaturally, like heat rising from stone in a cold world.

"Gregory," the voice whispered now, almost tender, "did you ever truly ask yourself if she was real? Or did you need her to be?"

A faint silhouette flickered into visibility— tall, cloaked in the color of forgotten things, its form constantly shifting as though it were made of memory and ash.

It wore a face, but the face was inconsistent— Sarah's, then Macdoul's, then something monstrous beneath the guise of both.

"I've seen so many men like you," it said softly, crouching near him, though it left no indent in the soil.

"Broken not by war, not by death… but by the fantasy of salvation. You clung to her like a raft on an ocean of rot. And now? That raft has splintered, and you've begun to drown in your own recollection."

It leaned closer, its eyes glinting like shards of polished bone.

"So I offer you a choice, Macdoul. Or Gregor, if I prefer. Stay here… rule this illusion, master of pain and echo. Or…"

It reached out with a hand that looked far too much like Sarah's— until the fingers bent the wrong way.

"Walk with me. Into somewhere. Our path and perhaps, the truth."

Macdoul sat where he had collapsed, his body heavy with sorrow, unmoving, not out of paralysis but because there was nowhere left to go, no path, no certainty, no world that made sense anymore.

His gaze rose, slow and hollow, to meet the soundless presence before him.

A figure approached, neither hurried nor lazy, but with the unnerving calm of something that had existed all the time in existence.

The air around them remained locked in place— the sun above caught in a timeless glow, as if someone had painted light across the heavens and left the brush suspended in midstroke.

Rain that should have fallen remained midair, glittering like beads of glass held by invisible strings, and the horizon no longer moved or breathed.

Everything had stopped, yet the figure walked forward as if untouched by the laws that governed reality.

Macdoul could not see his face.

The closer the figure came, the deeper the shadows clung to his form, swallowing every feature except one: a smile.

That grin, eerily wide and sharp, stretched across what should have been a face, yet was more a suggestion than flesh.

No eyes, no expression, no emotion— just a curl of cold mockery shaped like a mouth.

And though it did not move, Macdoul felt the weight of it as if it whispered things directly into his chest.

It was not threatening. It didn't need to be.

It was the kind of smile that belonged to something that had already won.

Then, without a moment's pause, the figure lifted his hand with slow precision, revealing long, elegant fingers that moved with deliberate care.

He flicked one— just a single tap of his index finger through the air— and in that moment, the world shattered.

Not with a scream. Not with thunder nor chaos.

It simply crumbled, as if reality had only been made of fragile glass all along.

The trees, the sunlight, the frozen raindrops— all dissolved, peeling away in every direction, fragmenting into weightless shards that vanished before they could land.

The battlefield disappeared beneath him. The sky flickered once like a dying ember, then extinguished into silence.

Even the distant echoes of memory— the cries, the blood, the sorrow— were wiped clean, as though someone had swept away the last traces of pain with a careless hand.

Now, only darkness remained.

But it was not the kind of darkness one could adjust to. It was thick, endless, and absolute.

Macdoul found himself sitting still, though the ground beneath him had transformed into something unusual.

It was not stone or soil but a glasslike expanse of water, black and still.

It stretched beyond sight in every direction, smooth as a mirror yet impossibly deep, as if he now sat upon the skin of some great slumbering thing.

There was no wind. No horizon. No sky.

The concept of "above" and "below" blurred and lost meaning.

Yet before him, at the very edge where reflection ceased to exist, stood the same figure.

His feet touched the surface with such lightness that it was unclear whether he truly stood or merely hovered.

The smile remained— the only part of him fully visible— while the rest of his body remained cloaked in a moving shadow, shifting like smoke yet never breaking.

No breath, no heartbeat, no weight. Just its presence.

That grin, sharp and bright against the void, grew wider still— not with joy, but with a kind of knowing amusement, like a god toying with the last heartbeat of a dying man.

Still, Macdoul did not move. He had no strength to stand, no direction to flee, and nowhere left within himself to hide.

There, in that impossible place where time had no dominion and memory warped like melted glass, he faced something that had always watched from the corner of his life.

And now, it had stepped fully into the lightless stage, smiling in silence.

Then, through the thick, shifting haze of the void, Macdoul saw him.

Not as a figure merely approaching, but as something that had always been there, hidden just beyond the edges of perception, waiting with infinite patience for the moment to be seen.

The shadows parted with reluctant reverence, peeling away like tattered curtains torn from a forgotten cathedral, and what emerged was no mortal man.

It stood tall among the lifeless remains of the world— bones, spines, and skulls strewn like gravel beneath his feet, countless human remnants twisted into grotesque poses of agony and submission.

He did not walk among the dead. He ruled them.

His hair flared in bright white strands, wild, unkempt, almost spectral, each lock glowing faintly with an unnatural radiance that contrasted violently with the pitch darkness around him.

It wasn't the glow of holiness— but the cold, otherworldly shimmer of something that had seen the divine, spat it out, and walked away laughing.

His face was partially concealed by those pale strands, casting deep shadows across where his eyes should be, hiding whatever lay within— whether void, flame, or something worse.

Yet it was clear enough: no light lived there. Whatever he saw, he did not see like men did.

He wore a long, high-collared overcoat, jet-black and spotless despite the filth and death around him.

The coat extended well past his knees, tailored in a formal, double-breasted design with broad, militant lapels that caught what little ambient light the void allowed.

Beneath the coat, a crisp white shirt lay tucked behind a blood-red tie, tightly knotted with precision, as if dressed not for war, but for execution.

His trousers matched the coat in tone and texture, smooth and sharp, and his polished black shoes clicked softly with each step across the scattered bones, the only sound in this hushed hellscape.

Every inch of him was designed not for vanity, but for finality. There was no softness to his silhouette, no hint of warmth or humanity.

He was composed, symmetrical, and cruel— like an obsidian sculpture carved with merciless hands.

The sharp lines of his attire, the disciplined cut of his garments, all spoke of order, but it was the kind of order born in graves and carved with iron: the order of stillness, of rot, of death unquestioned and absolute.

Around him, the dead writhed— not walking corpses, but skeletal arms and fingers clawing from beneath the invisible soil of the void, their bones reaching desperately toward him.

They moved not to drag him down but to touch him, to worship, to plead.

A thousand hands, brittle and yellowed with time, scraped against his coat, his boots, his shadow— as if he were a monument to despair, a shrine built from memory and suffering.

Yet he did not acknowledge them. They were his choir, and they screamed in silence.

The abyss behind him churned like a nightmare given form.

Black winds howled without sound, spinning patterns that looked almost sentient— chaotic symbols and mad constellations flickering in and out of existence like half-formed thoughts.

Death was not simply implied. It was the very air.

The background was a living canvas of entropy, swirling and collapsing on itself endlessly, as if the universe behind him were weeping, unable to contain his presence.

And amid that torment, he stood motionless. Composed.

A being beyond time, beyond breath, clothed in the skin of dignity but wrapped around a core of ruin.

His mere existence gnawed at the mind like a splinter buried deep into the soul. He did not shout, he did not roar— he simply was.

A god of endings.

A patron saint of rot.

A cursed sovereign cloaked in elegance, an immortal executioner dressed for a funeral that never ends.

Macdoul stared at him and felt something ancient stir inside— a tremor of dread so deep it did not reach the skin, but lived somewhere far below the bones.

It was the feeling of knowing the final page has been turned, and your name is written in the margins, marked not with ink but blood.

"Ah… so in your time, killing was merely sport, was it?" The man's voice drifted like silk through a rusted blade.

"My, my… what fortunate days you had. What luck— what blissful ignorance." His tone mimicked warmth, almost playful, but beneath it lurked something venomous, something ancient that didn't belong in mortal mouths.

Then he smiled. Not a cruel smile— no sneer or condescension.

It was the kind of smile a lifelong friend might give you after decades apart, head tilting forward, shoulders softening, the distance between them closing as if sharing a secret.

Macdoul, sprawled on the cold, mirrored surface of the water beneath him, remained still. The skeletal arms still reached, clawing toward his spine, twitching with hungry reverence.

"Apologies for barging in like this," He continued, crouching down just enough for his shadow to consume the light around Macdoul's face.

"My name— no, names are such fleeting things. Let's keep it simple, shall we? Call me Arthur, alright… Gregory?"

His hand gently patted Macdoul's head, mockingly tender, like soothing a child moments before the guillotine dropped.

The fingers lingered as the void around them pulsed and shifted, ever restless.

"I've seen everything," Arthur whispered.

"There's no need for masks here. Not with me. Not anymore, okay? I've been watching you… Watching her… And it made me wonder, you know. Why did she have to lie to you, of all people? Of all the worthless creatures she could've chosen for honesty, why hold back from you? But then again…"

He exhaled through his teeth, a breath tinged with pity.

"Giving herself up was her priority. A wise choice. One, she made sure she never had to regret."

His smile faded like the last echo of a music box winding down.

"Look me in the eyes, Gregory," he said, softly— too softly.

Then the words struck.

It wasn't a shout, but a pulse of sound that vibrated through bone and marrow.

It carved through Macdoul's eardrums like glass dragged against skin.

He winced— no, he buckled— and for a moment, color rushed back to his sight.

The haze lifted. The void folded slightly.

Something woke inside him. And his eyes finally met Arthur's.

"There it is," Arthur breathed, almost in relief. "That's the spirit."

A quiet sigh escaped his lips, followed by a smile that no longer reached his eyes.

"You remember the five men? Torn to ribbons by the Caledonia dog, you?" He chuckles.

"That was her doing. Not the girl you thought you knew. Not the quiet, guilt-ridden shadow trailing behind you. No. She was the Caledonian Candidate. Not by will— never by will. Think of it as… a cruel miracle. A stuttering in fate's broken machinery. A mistake carved into the bones of destiny."

He let out a soft laugh, head tilting ever so slightly.

"But then again, your country always had a reputation for birthing monsters in the name of survival, didn't it?"

Macdoul's jaw tightened.

His eyes sharpened with clarity, and though his body remained limp, every nerve screamed in defiance.

He bit down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood— perhaps the only pain he could still call his own.

He wanted to move, to strike, to spit, to kill— but his limbs betrayed him, leaden and bound by something unseen.

Arthur noticed. Of course he did.

"Wait… seriously? That's not it?"

Arthur groaned, dragging a hand down his face with theatrical irritation.

"Good grief. So, we keep dancing, do we? Round and round, riddles and metaphors until the world finally decides it's done watching. Fine. Keep playing dumb. But when the real moment comes— when the spark ignites and the world burns— don't you dare act surprised. You'll remember this moment. And you must."

Macdoul's voice, when it came, was calm— but cold enough to strip flesh from bone. "What are you rambling about?" he asked. "Enough."

There was weight behind the word. Enough.

It did not echo, but it settled into the air like a dead man's breath.

Arthur paused, just slightly. A small tremor slid through his posture.

"...Wait," Macdoul continued, brows furrowed.

"You… are one of the Celtic deities? I've read the records— Didn't the sons of Cermait kill you? Who was the son of Dagda. But you… You survived. You're Lugh, aren't you? The Lugh of the Long Arm. Tell me… what trick did you use to slither back?"

Arthur blinked. Then laughed. Not loudly— but enough.

A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. Just one.

He brushed it away with the back of his glove and exhaled with a smile that tried too hard to remain amused.

"Oh, Gregory," he said.

"You shouldn't be so greedy with your thoughts. Some things deserve silence. My presence here is… brief. It's just temporary. Just a breeze passing through a dying cathedral. But strangely," his smile sharpened, "I find myself expecting more from you than I ever should."

He leaned closer.

Macdoul could smell it now— his scent. Cold iron. Charred parchment. Old blood.

"Perhaps next time," Arthur whispered, "you'll be brave enough to say your trigger aloud."

He stood again, brushing off nonexistent dust from his coat. "But enough about the past," he said, stretching his arms with exaggerated casualness.

"Let's focus on the present. Feast your eyes on my newest creation."

He stepped forward. And then stopped.

"Wait," he muttered, eyes drifting upward toward nothing.

His hand scratched idly at his chin, a flicker of doubt now interrupting his stage. "Isn't this a bit too early to show? Right…"

His gaze grew distant, unfocused, like a man speaking to something that wasn't there. Or maybe someone, Macdoul, couldn't see.

The silence returned, and the skeletal arms twitched beneath the surface like they were waiting for a cue.

Macdoul's breath was ragged, each inhale dragging against the weight of pain flooding his limbs— but he stood. Slowly, steadily, like a shadow peeling itself off the earth.

Blood seeped through the fibers of his tunic, knees trembling but unbending.

Across from him, Arthur tilted his head and smiled— a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

He raised his left hand, fingers spread wide, then gently placed it over his own mouth as if to stifle something obscene, something almost giddy.

"Oh?" he whispered, muffled behind his palm. "You still stand? How quaint."

Then he chuckled.

A brittle, bone-snapping sound, then louder— until it unraveled into howls of laughter so violent that he doubled over, clutching his sides like he might tear open with joy.

"Who do you think you are, Gregory? Come now… accept it— nothing is binding you to the truth anymore. Not family, not love, not honor. You are a relic. A forgotten note in a war hymn no one sings. All that's left of you is that leash around your neck. A mutt, loyal to ghosts. Go on, then— woof for me. Come on… woof. Woof!"

He collapsed to the ground, pounding his fist into the ground like a lunatic, cackling so hard tears formed at the corners of his eyes.

It wasn't laughter— it was mockery turned violent, hatred polished to a gleam.

Macdoul's jaw clenched. A vein throbbed against his temple.

But he didn't move— not yet. Not with fury, not with shame.

He let the silence carry weight.

Then, when Arthur's laughter had thinned to a choking wheeze, Macdoul finally spoke.

"You speak of leashes like they're iron chains," he said, voice low and guttural.

"But I see them for what they are— temporary. You mistake control for connection, and fear for loyalty. Maybe I've played the dog. Maybe I followed the scent laid out for me through war, blood, and duty. But don't confuse silence with surrender. I listened. I watched. And I know now— this was never about fate or freedom. It was always about me, myself alone."

Arthur's laughter slowed. His smile faded.

"You— the righteous puppeteer— pulling broken people by their strings and calling it mercy. You wanted obedience draped in poetry. But I won't give you that. I won't bark for you. I'll wait. Because when the leash snaps, when your miracle cracks and your story bleeds— I'll be there. And you'll hear me howl— not as a pet… but as the reckoning you never believed would come."

Arthur stared up at him. Something shifted behind his eyes.

Not fear. Not a surprise. Something colder. It's calculating.

He stood again, slow and methodical, brushing the dirt from his coat with the elegance of a man preparing for a funeral.

"You called her milady," Arthur murmured, his voice slick with mockery.

"How noble. So theatrical. But we both know it wasn't just a title, do we? Even I— I, with all my contempt, could see it. You didn't just serve her. You adored her. You carried her name like a prayer, like a curse sewn into your flesh. And now look at you— grasping at ghosts. A knight without a war. An oath with no altar. A fool who still believes love is sacred."

He leaned close, eyes flashing.

"She's gone, to be precise, dead. Your precious, radiant Sinclair. Your forsaken angel of blood and smoke. And you— poor, trembling Gregory— still kneel to her memory like it's a crown. Isn't it delicious? The taste of devotion rotting on your tongue?"

Macdoul's eyes burned, but his voice stayed level, deeper than before— almost reverent.

"You speak her name like it's a blade meant to wound me. But you'll never cut as deep as she did— and she never had to try. Yes— I called her sister milady. That's because I meant it. Every time. Every vow. Every silence. You call it weakness… but it's just that you've never loved anything without needing to own it. She wasn't mine. She chose her end. And I won't defile it by playing your game. So, go ahead— mock me. Call me a relic, a knight unarmed."

Arthur's smile faltered. His hands dropped to his sides, fingers twitching.

Then, his voice shifted— slower, darker.

"Listen to me now," he said, each word sharpened like a nail through the air.

"Time moves forward, always. And the war— that one specific war— between Cearwyn and Caledonia… It's not a matter of if. It's coming, Gregory. Like a storm too big for kings to steer. You'll see it. You'll live in it. You'll watch as the banners of both houses are soaked in the blood of their own. And then— only then will your moment come."

His eyes narrowed.

"But it won't be a moment of glory. Not for you. No, you won't rise as a hero. You'll drown as the fool who mistook obedience for honor. The dog who stood still while the world was burning."

Macdoul stepped forward. One stride.

Then another. Until his breath touched Arthur's cheek.

And in a whisper that split the air like thunder, he said:

"You speak like the war is prophecy. But I've learned— not all omens tell the truth. Let them come. Cearwyn. Caledonia. All their famished kings and hollow crowns. I've stood beneath both. I've served both. And I know now— neither side wears a clean face. You think I was leashed? No. I was waiting. Watching. Listening for the lies to fall apart."

He leaned closer, voice colder.

"When the fire comes, when the sky splits and loyalty turns to ash… I will not serve. I will choose. And that… is what you never accounted for."

Arthur's chuckle came low, guttural.

Then he lifted his chin, nose above Macdoul's like a vulture gazing down at fresh carrion.

"Choose? Oh, Gregory. Still clinging to that quaint little word, like a child holding a sword made of driftwood. Do you really believe choice matters? You were bred for obedience. Trained like a hound. Conditioned to kneel at the sound of a command. And now you speak of choice as though you forged it in some secret forge of rebellion? No."

His voice turned venomous.

"I accounted for you. For every flicker of doubt in your eyes. For every moment you hesitated to strike. For every breath you wasted waiting for someone else to speak first. But now… now, I see something new. Not courage. Not clarity but interference. And if you so much as tip the scale… I'll make sure history remembers you— not as a knight. Not as a man. But as the traitor who mistook hesitation for bravery."

And then, in a blink, Arthur vanished— and reappeared behind Macdoul.

Before Macdoul could flinch, Arthur's hands closed on his shoulders, gently, mockingly, freezing him in place.

His breath spilled into Macdoul's ear like the whisper of a snake.

"Ah… but that's the nature of it, isn't it? Just a game with the board. Just the pieces moving in a dance we never chose. And yet… we keep playing. Until the end. Until the last light falters. And when that moment comes— when your body is broken and your will is ash— you will remember me."

Arthur leaned closer, his voice now little more than smoke:

"My name. My face. My voice. It will curl in the corners of your mind like poison, like smoke that won't fade. Because your consciousness, Gregory… it will return. Maybe not today. Maybe not in this life. But it will. And when it does… You will bleed with the memory of me. And though this moment is not your trigger… it is your wound. A wound that will never close."

He stepped away.

"For that, Gregory… I am truly sorry." He bowed and smiled again.

He stands upright— too upright.

His spine seems locked in place, as though carved from obsidian or wired into rigidity by some unseen force. Not a slouch, not a twitch.

Stillness, absolute and unnatural.

His hands remain behind his back, or sometimes drift outward in slow, immaculate gestures— each one so precise it feels rehearsed, like the motions of a conductor guiding a symphony that only he can hear, or a lecturer mid-ritual, his every movement imbued with ominous meaning.

He smiles— not a grin, not warmth, but a carefully measured curvature of the lips, sculpted for control.

It is the smile of someone who already knows the ending of the story. It doesn't even glance at his eyes.

Those stay dead— cold, unreadable yet predatory. Something about them suggests that calculation is more than instinct to him— it is nature.

He tilted his head, just a little— like a bird observing a twitching thing pinned to a board, or a scholar fascinated by a rare deformity. The tilt isn't playful. It's dissecting.

His feet move with a silence that feels odd— no creak of leather, no scrape of heel on stone.

He paces in a slow, perfect semicircle around Macdoul, his presence coiling tighter like a noose.

He never breaks eye contact. Not for a second.

The gaze is too steady, intentionally.

There's no blink, no human softness. Just pressure— like staring into the eye of a serpent right before the strike.

Then, something shifted in the periphery.

A scrape. A twitch. A thing— crawling.

It dragged itself across the floor with a wretched determination, its limbs bent and jittering, bones moving beneath the skin like they didn't belong there.

It might've been inching toward them. Or not.

Direction was meaningless in places like this.

He saw it, registered it, but gave it no more regard than one might a leaf blown by the wind.

His lips parted, and his voice slid out— smooth as silk, calm as poison, each syllable chosen like a blade.

"Ah... you're just in time. I wasn't sure you'd make it before the reveal, but here you are. Perfect. I wanted you to see this... to truly understand."

Suddenly, his figure began to shift— no transition, no warning— just a violent, silent distortion that rippled through the air like reality itself was being peeled away.

Arthur became something else, something not meant to wear skin.

The form before Macdoul now was unnaturally pale, almost luminous like moonlight bleeding through a corpse's flesh.

His hair curled in immaculate silver-blonde coils, glistening with a sickly sheen, but the beauty ended there.

His head was tilted skyward, mouth slightly agape in a rapture that danced between agony and bliss, as though he were caught in some ecstatic prayer— or mid-execution.

From above, a thick, black, viscous substance began to pour violently, obscenely, over his face and neck, the liquid glimmering with an oil-slick sheen, as though the shadows themselves were liquefying to defile him.

It poured without mercy, from either a clawed, unseen monstrosity just beyond perception, or perhaps from deep within him, spilling grotesquely from his tear ducts, his nostrils, his open throat like bile from a god in mourning.

Behind him, the surrounding, no, domain, warped into a searing, bloody red— so vivid it almost seemed to hum, vibrating with heat and wrath.

A broken white halo hovered over his skull, shattered like stained glass in a cathedral desecration, its jagged light casting shards across his twisted form.

It was not holiness— it was mockery. Martyrdom twisted into something obscene.

And yet, there was something angelic in his torment, a terrible serenity beneath the desecration, like a saint burned alive while smiling.

Draped across his shoulder was a blue sash— rich, royal, almost velvet in color— hung like a funeral banner.

A rosary dangled from it, swaying gently, the cross at its end slick with ink and shadow, catching just enough red light to glint with a blasphemous gleam.

It was the iconography of redemption, dragged through filth and agony, transformed into an emblem of divine cruelty.

Then he said, "You know, people rarely appreciate the art in fear. The way it lingers, festers, and somehow evolves. But you— you're different, aren't you? You'll see the truth beneath the horror."

He gestures with open arms, and what he reveals is not just a scene— it is a shrine of calculated horror, curated with the obsession of a deranged artist.

Before them lies his so-called masterpiece, a tableau so revolting it demands reverence.

A child— emaciated, his clothes threadbare and soaked in filth, skin pale like milk turned sour— kneels in the middle of it, or perhaps he never crawled at all, and that movement was only a hallucination, a ghost of what the mind wanted to believe.

His body is trembling, but not from fear— from compulsion, from some invisible command whispering beneath his skin.

Taejun, though the name barely fits the thing he has become.

His hands move with maddening rhythm, raking through the flesh of his scalp not in desperation, but with a ritualistic intensity.

He is scratching, carving long, deep grooves into his own head, five linear gashes etched from crown to brow, like tally marks scrawled by a prisoner on the bone walls of his skull.

Blood leaks in sluggish streams, matting his hair into thick, dark clumps and staining his face with a sick, glistening red sheen.

His fingers— ruined— have been stripped of their nails; some missing entirely, others split down the center, jagged and blackened.

The tips are raw, pulped, torn like wet paper scraped against stone. Bits of skin dangle loose, twitching with every motion as if trying to escape the agony they're tethered to.

He looks like he's screaming, face contorted in sheer, soundless terror— but nothing escapes his mouth.

No scream. No sob. Just a gaping silence that makes the whole display feel even more unholy, like a painting come to life but stripped of voice, of humanity, of mercy.

Then, with a breathless reverence, the figure, Arthur, speaks.

"Isn't it... exquisite? Every piece, every moment, precisely calculated. Not chaos, dear friend— but design. Don't worry. This isn't the end. No, no. This is merely... the overture."

Macdoul's voice finally broke through the oppressive atmosphere like a dying ember struggling for air, his words trembling with horror and disbelief, "What, what are you…? Who are you?"

His voice didn't echo.

It just fell flat, devoured by the air itself, as though the realm refused to give his defiance even the dignity of sound.

The figure before him— Arthur, or whatever remained of that name— did not flinch or twitch.

He only stood there in immaculate stillness, the kind of stillness that unnerves the living and belongs to nothing truly alive.

His head was tilted to the side with the slow grace of a curious predator, and the edges of his smile curled with something that wasn't quite human.

When he finally spoke, the voice that came out was velvet-smooth, but there was something fraying just beneath it, a tremor of weariness or madness.

"Don't be afraid. It's just an effect of using this too much… Overused, if I would say."

Then he lifted his left hand— not quickly, not suddenly, but with a kind of deliberate elegance, like a magician unveiling a final trick.

There was something there now, a subtle, shapeless distortion that bent light and thought alike.

Macdoul couldn't describe it, couldn't see it clearly, but the moment it appeared, he felt his stomach turn as if something ancient and wrong had entered the room, something so foul it defied form.

It wasn't a weapon, not in the traditional sense, but it was meant to hurt. He was sure of that.

Then came the sound— the sobbing. Faint, but raw, trembling from behind him, low and struggling as though the very act of breathing was being punished.

Macdoul turned his head, slow with dread, and there was Taejun, the boy, collapsed now and writhing against the sticky, red-soaked ground.

His skinny body convulsed violently as he clawed at his own throat, the tendons in his neck straining like wires about to snap.

His mouth opened, gasping in silence, as if something had stolen the very air from his lungs. Fingers— bloodied, shredded of their nails, the skin beneath torn raw and flayed— dug into his own skin with frantic insistence.

He rolled onto his side, then his back, then onto his stomach, again and again, curling in and unraveling like a worm doused in salt.

And still, not a single sound escaped him. No breath nor a scream.

Only the guttural heaving of a dying boy desperately trying to hold onto reality as it tore itself out from under him.

Still, Arthur didn't move.

His body remained rigid, almost reverent, like he was savoring the boy's agony with quiet admiration.

Without turning his head, he spoke again, that soft, unnatural voice slithering through the air like smoke from a funeral pyre.

"Oh, never be afraid of being alone, boy. Haven't you been through the darkest point of your life without anyone by your side? This… might only be a temporary illusion."

Something inside Macdoul cracked.

Maybe it was fury. Maybe it was despair. Maybe just the helplessness of being surrounded by such carefully orchestrated torment.

Either way, he dropped to one knee and slammed his open palm against the waterlogged surface, sending out a ripple— but it didn't behave like water.

It didn't splash. It didn't echo.

It rippled in slow, meaty waves, like thick blood resisting every disturbance.

The red domain warped around the impact, the light skewing, stretching like fabric beneath glass.

The colors didn't shift— red remained dominant— but now it shimmered with the oily sheen of something diseased, like blood fermenting in a sealed jar.

His voice came through, ragged with disbelief, burning with moral fury.

"How, how could you do this? Especially to a kid? You are a disgrace to your family and name. Do you even have pride in yourself? Didn't—"

But Arthur didn't even let the sentence breathe.

His interruption was cold, unbothered, and so cruel in its apathy that it felt like a knife pressed flat against Macdoul's heart.

"Haven't you ever been in a lazy phase of pounding with anyone? If indeed I am the villain, in your world, then go and save yourself."

Macdoul looked up, eyes burning, teeth gritted until his jaw ached.

The ink had begun crawling up Arthur's body in thick, grotesque layers, leaking from beneath his fingernails and eyelids, spiraling up his arms like veins of shadowed glass, pulsing with faint light.

It consumed him slowly, reverently, like a lover undressing its bride.

Even his teeth had started to blacken at the edges, his skin cracking like porcelain heated past its limit.

The shape of his body remained, but the humanity had been peeled away layer by layer.

Macdoul could barely speak now.

His throat was dry, his limbs trembling not from fear alone but from the sheer psychic weight of what stood before him. "Why you…"

He growled, though it barely escaped his lips.

And then Arthur spoke again, with the smoothness of someone reciting poetry they'd rehearsed for decades.

"Let alone humans, the sky will also change color when the time comes. You should know, no matter how dark the black clouds are, there must still be light that penetrates. I have my reason for doing this, you might understand it one day."

Then came the grin.

It wasn't just wide— it was hideous. The smile didn't stop at the boundaries of a human mouth.

It kept going, skin stretching beyond its limits, eyes widening until the whites overtook the pupils.

The corners of his mouth tore open without blood, revealing rows of teeth that weren't human— small, jagged, wet, stacked like those of a deep-sea creature that had never seen light.

His cheeks lifted so high they distorted his face entirely, bending the rest of his features into something grotesquely ecstatic, something that made the soul recoil.

Macdoul's breath caught.

For the first time in years— perhaps his whole life— he felt something like true, absolute fear.

Not of death, not of pain, but of something far worse: witnessing the divine made filthy, the sacred turned into sickness.

This wasn't just a monster. This was a belief twisted into torment.

With a breath that trembled in his chest and a weight pressing into his spine like centuries of burden, Macdoul finally opened his mouth, though the words took their time.

They came slowly, as if scraped from the deepest part of him, each syllable trembling under the strain of suppressed fury, helpless grief, and something far more fragile— regret.

His gaze lingered on the writhing boy, on the monster veiled in a man's shape, on the red-tinged world that reeked of memory and blood and choices long past, and his voice broke and quiet.

"I won't understand your intentions. Not now. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever."

He blinked, and it felt like his whole body resisted the movement.

"But I've come to learn that every wound— no matter how cruel, how bad it is— leaves behind a scar that teaches. And every lesson, whether learned in fire or silence, changes a man."

His voice cracked, the end of his sentence catching on something that wasn't quite grief and wasn't quite anger— something more tired than both.

He lowered his gaze, hands slightly trembling as he curled them into fists not to strike, but to keep himself from falling apart.

"I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I'm not here to fight anymore. Not tonight."

He swallowed, jaw clenched, as if the words left a bitter taste behind.

"All I ask now… all that I want…" he paused, looking up once more, eyes dull with the kind of sadness that years of war and heartbreak can't clean away, "is to be given the door home."

He hesitated, as if even saying the word "home" was enough to make it crack in the air, some distant warmth so far gone it felt like a memory of a dream.

"That's it. Nothing more. Not answers. Not justice. Not even peace. Just… the way back. Before this place takes anything else from me."

Silence struck the world like a final breath before death. No echo, no whisper, not even the tremble of water where Taejun writhed only moments ago.

Everything froze— soundless, breathless, void of momentum.

And then, as if obeying some divine command, the black ink that once poured down Arthur's twisted form began to recoil, slithering back into unseen seams in the air, evaporating in delicate strands like shadows burned by morning light.

His figure followed, fading into nothingness, his vanishing leaving behind a quiet that rang louder than thunder.

But that quiet was not mercy.

Behind Macdoul, the silence cracked.

A voice, delicate as porcelain yet heavy with meaning, threaded into the back of his skull like a memory trying to return: "Do you believe regret will save you?"

Macdoul turned sharply, pushing himself forward and twisting on the wet, warped ground.

His body skidded through water that didn't splash, only shimmered like glass.

He landed on his side, gasping, and scrambled to sit upright, palms steadying him in an instinctive guard stance.

His heartbeat surged, but before him stood something that made his instincts fall still.

It was Arthur, no longer soaked in darkness or smiling with sadistic glee.

No, this form was beautiful, impossibly so— draped in long, flowing robes that faded at the edges like smoke trailing off into dreams.

Every thread shimmered with quiet magic, stitched with runes that revealed themselves only in reflections: symbols that danced just outside the grasp of conscious thought.

His skin was luminous, almost translucent, and his eyes, they shifted like nebulae in slow collapse— pale galaxies spiraling inward, opening and closing like divine shutters.

Even when shut, symbols flickered across his lids, too quick to read, too meaningful to ignore.

The air around him shimmered— like heat haze above burning sand— except the distortions weren't just light.

Time itself seemed to bend.

Images flickered: melting clocks, stars blinking in and out like breathless lungs, hands reaching from behind invisible veils, and skies that blinked like eyes too old to dream anymore.

He stood not like a warrior nor a god, but like a princess, tenderly raised and never allowed to touch the dirt of the world— a thing preserved, refined, deliberately tragic.

Macdoul's breath caught.

He recoiled, startled and overwhelmed, bracing himself by planting his fists into the wet ground, now feeling more like soft flesh than stone.

His eyes narrowed, not in defiance, but awe-tainted terror.

Then Arthur tilted his head— not subtly, not curiously, but grotesquely, letting it twist with unnatural grace until his neck aligned in a straight, horizontal line.

It made no sound, yet the image lodged itself into the pit of Macdoul's stomach.

His voice followed, mournful, almost choked with a kind of disappointed empathy.

"Don't you think… you'll regret it?" he whispered, eyes unfocused as if peering into Macdoul's future. "Not saving the child?"

Macdoul's gaze dropped— not in shame, but because he could no longer bear to meet the swirling heavens within Arthur's eyes.

His voice emerged slowly and cracked.

"If this was the boy's fate… if this nightmare is what awaited him…"

He breathed in hard through his teeth, chest trembling as water clung to his clothes like burial linen.

"Then what could I possibly do in this miserable form? I have yet to build anything here. I have changed nothing. I've fought, bled, endured… and for what? To watch a child die choking on his own silence while I stood with empty hands?"

His fists clenched, and a thin thread of blood wept from one palm.

He lowered his head further, as though bowing to failure itself.

"I'm powerless," he muttered, barely above a breath, "I am nothing."

Arthur's form remained unmoved, but something shifted— his posture softened, and his smile returned.

But it wasn't cruel this time. It was warm. Even… lovely.

"Good grief," he exhaled softly, as if the universe had just given him one last reason to forgive.

His voice was no longer a threat, but a farewell. "Then the door will open behind me."

And as he said it, the world responded.

Behind Arthur, the air split like silk torn by gentle fingers.

A light bloomed there— no thunder, no crack, just a slow, impossibly bright glow.

It grew until the domain itself, once red and drowning in madness, paled in comparison.

The door, tall and shimmering, framed in arching sigils, awaited in silence. It pulsed softly, like the last heartbeat before peace.

"It will shine," Arthur continued, stepping aside, arms once more folded like a benevolent guide, "until it is impossible for you not to see it."

And somewhere behind them, forgotten in all that light, Taejun still rolled in silence on the ground— his fingers twitching, nails torn, breath ragged.

His eyes watched nothing, only blinking in uneven rhythm as if caught between sleep and madness.

And there, between Macdoul's guilt and Arthur's fading presence, the line between salvation and surrender lay drawn in the water.

Suddenly, Arthur's voice rose through the heavy quiet like a low wind across glass, calm, aged, almost reverent.

"Gregory… or whatever name you cling to now. It suits you, I think. You wear it like someone who's been running for a very long time."

He paused, as though something pained him in the saying of it, and when he spoke again, his voice was laced with a quiet weight worn down but sincere.

"Let me offer you this, one last piece of advice. The world you walk through— it isn't kind. Not to dreamers. Not to those who feel too much and carry too little armor. It will grind you down, quietly, slowly, until even your memories taste like ash. If you're weak, you won't hesitate. It will suffocate you, erase you, and worse— it'll make you thank it for doing so. I know, because I've walked that path far longer than you can imagine."

He took a slow step back into the warping air behind him, the glimmer of starlight beginning to form around his silhouette, fragile and strange like a memory that refused to fade completely.

"But you..." Arthur added softly, "You still have time to fight it. To shape something out of this ruin. You might not understand me now. Maybe you never will. But that doesn't change what I am… or what you are becoming."

There was something gentler in his smile now— not mockery, not menace, but something that almost resembled pride.

"The door is open behind me, isn't it? I made sure you'd see it. You always were terrible at spotting the obvious, Gregory."

He chuckled under his breath, the sound light but hollow, as if from a man remembering something that never truly belonged to him.

The light behind him grew, spilling across the distorted floor in gold and white.

He turned one last time, just enough for Macdoul to glimpse the flicker of something vulnerable, something nearly human in his expression.

"Goodbye, old soul," Arthur said quietly.

"Rest while you can. We'll see each other again, in one shape or another. We always do."

Macdoul stepped forward, the shimmer of the doorway gleaming ahead like a promise too distant to trust fully.

The light spilled over him, distorting his shape in slow pulses, as if the world couldn't decide whether to let him leave.

He stood still just before the threshold, staring into the brightness, shoulders tense with the weight of everything he had just endured— everything he had failed to change.

Then, with a slow breath, he turned— not fully, just enough to glance over his shoulder, his profile lit in the glow.

A crooked smile tugged at his lips, a bittersweet thing steeped in exhaustion and quiet understanding.

His eyes, though dimmed by grief, held a glimmer of something more— acceptance, perhaps. Or the ghost of hope.

"I get mine," he murmured, "You get yours. And that... is fate."

No anger. No vengeance. Just the final thread between two souls unraveling in the stillness.

And with that, his form shimmered, caught in the radiant current pouring from the gate, until he faded into the air like a word unsaid for too long.

Gone— not with grandeur, but like a memory slipping beneath the surface of a still lake.

Arthur stood in silence, his expression unreadable at first.

But slowly, subtly, his smile began to fade, dissolving not out of disappointment, but from something deeper.

Reflection. Maybe even something like mourning.

"What a guy," he whispered to no one.

"It felt as though he'd just arrived in this domain… as if all this was born the moment he stepped into it."

His eyes trailed the space where Macdoul had vanished, then fell, half-lidded, not with malice but a weary grace.

"I had hoped that would be it. The one to spark the chain I've waited centuries for."

A pause, thin and trembling.

"But perhaps his trigger lies elsewhere— buried in something more tender. Something he still dares to love."

Arthur's voice barely rose above a breath now, cradled in silence.

"And so... the stage resets."

He closed his eyes, the ripple of his surroundings folding into dreamlike distortion, as the domain began to dim, readying itself for whatever came next.

He stepped forward.

Just one stride into the unknown, and in the time it took for breath to catch in a throat, reality convulsed.

The dreamlike shimmer of the previous domain unraveled, folding in on itself like flesh melting from bone.

In its place, a city bled into existence— black, diseased, and seething with the sickness of centuries.

It was no ordinary city. It felt like a place long abandoned by gods and men alike, yet never truly empty.

The air was choked with soot and ammonia, piss baked into every crumbling stone wall and thickened by the acrid sting of industrial smoke.

The reek of old blood hung in the atmosphere like fog, clinging to the tongue, settling into the throat like phlegm that would never clear.

The sky above was a sickly iron gray, thick with unnatural clouds that never moved, as if frozen mid-twist by some forgotten curse.

The moon was shining brightly as the clouds passed by.

Gas lamps lined the streets like watchful, dying eyes— each flicker casting shadows that danced too long, moved too fast, and bent at angles no light should ever follow.

The buildings leaned inwards, hunched and sickly, their brickwork mottled with old moss and filth.

Shattered windows stared like socketless skulls, hollow and voyeuristic, each pane reflecting back not what was, but what shouldn't be— twisted outlines of passersby who weren't there, flickers of movement without form, faces pressed to the glass where none should be.

They watched.

The alleys were narrow and slick, veins of filth that oozed between the city's bones.

Cobblestones glistened with more than rain— fluids dark and unknown pooled between them, and each step echoed with a delay, as though the city itself were mocking the rhythm of life.

Beneath the grate-covered streets, something vast and breathing churned in the dark— its exhale a slow, wet suckle that steamed through the manholes and drains.

It wasn't the wind. It wasn't mechanical. It was something alive.

Far off, the Thames twisted past like a dead serpent caught in its own rotting skin.

The water, black as ink, dragged carcasses— both literal and imagined— along its surface, limbs snagged on half-submerged lampposts like forgotten sinners begging to be remembered.

Fog crawled up the riverbanks, clinging to the bones of drowned buildings.

Whispers rose with it— wet and hysterical, as if the mist were trying to confess crimes too old to punish.

And over all of it, as the midnight bells tolled with rusted lungs, a laugh cracked through the silence.

Thin, warped, and somehow wet. Like a child gargling blood through broken teeth.

It echoed off every alleyway, every drainpipe, curling around the ears like a worm made of sound.

Then came Arthur.

The transformation was not announced— it unfurled like a parasite molting into its final form.

Where once there was a strange, dream-silk elegance, now stood something far more commanding... and far more monstrous.

He wore a peaked military cap, black as pitch, its polished visor gleaming with an oily sheen that caught no light, only reflected the gaze of those who dared to look at him.

The metallic emblem etched into the front was shifting— always moving, like a serpent coiling around an idea too blasphemous to understand.

It cast a jagged shadow over his face, but what lay beneath the cap was far worse.

A long, tattered cape draped his shoulders, black on the outside like scorched parchment, the inner lining a bruised, reddish-brown like dried blood peeled from an altar.

It moved as though underwater, pulsing with its own rhythm.

The shoulders were clad in broad, militant epaulettes, stiff and formal, giving him the stature of some forgotten warlord risen from a trench that time sealed shut.

They bore no insignia— only scars.

His coat was a double-breasted trench, charcoal-black and immaculately tailored, the kind of uniform worn by executioners who also signed laws.

A glossy black belt cinched it at the waist, and delicate gold trim lined the cuffs and epaulettes, gleaming like funeral jewelry.

The coat hung heavy, yet it swayed as if eager to reveal something lurking underneath— something twitching, raw, and barely restrained.

Gloved hands hung at his sides. But these were not human hands.

The gloves were black and gleamed faintly, each fingertip tipped with sharpened claws that glinted like surgical tools pulled from flame.

They twitched now and then, spasming as if the nerves beneath the skin had forgotten they were dead.

Every motion they made suggested hunger.

His legs were encased in long black trousers that vanished into military boots polished so perfectly they looked wet, though they left no reflection— only distortion.

The hem of the trench dragged behind him like a funeral veil, frayed and weeping with threads that twitched like hair.

And his face. There was no face. It was an absence.

A void wrapped in shadows, darker than even the alleyways, deeper than death. No eyes, no nose, no cheeks. Only a mouth.

A jagged, glowing red grin split the void like a wound, vibrating with something that wasn't laughter, but the memory of it— something that had laughed too long and forgotten how to stop.

The smile was wide— reaching, nearly to where the ears should've been.

The teeth were serrated, shark-like, and endless, a spiral of edges that gave the distinct impression that he could chew through time itself if he desired.

And yet... he stood silent.

A statue of death, draped in formal elegance, a thing born from agony yet wrapped in ceremony.

He didn't move. He simply was— an embodiment of judgment that bore no law, only inevitability.

The air around him warped. Not with heat, but with dread.

Reality bent just slightly around his form.

And behind that twisted smile, people could feel it— not rage, not malice. Something worse.

Sorrow.

Like he had once tried to be something else, something better, and had long since given up.

Like this form wasn't a mask, but the grave he'd chosen to wear.

And the city— the city exhaled. As if relieved that its king had returned.

He began walking— slow, deliberate, each footfall a thunderous stamp against the cobblestones, as though the weight of his presence cracked the ground itself.

His boots struck with the sound of finality, echoing with unnatural force, each step louder than it should have been, like the city itself dared not interrupt him.

And then he spoke.

His voice was deep— booming, reverberating through the narrow alleys as if carried by unseen loudspeakers embedded in the bones of the buildings.

Each word was measured, rich with command, yet heavy with something darker— fatigue, perhaps, or regret twisted into something unrecognizable.

"Apologies, child," he began, his tone grave yet almost theatrical.

"But there are times when a man must descend into madness— not for necessity, but for the sake of enduring the silence. Entertainment becomes survival when the road stretches too far, too long, and too quiet."

He paused, a breath more felt than heard, the glowing grin unmoving.

"I have long since wandered from the path set before men. Perhaps I strayed beyond redemption— perhaps the heavens turned their gaze from me ages ago. If absolution was ever meant for the likes of me, it no longer matters."

His voice deepened further, echoing with command as though delivering a battlefield decree.

"This is the road I have chosen. It is not paved with virtue. It does not turn back. I walk it with full knowledge of its weight, and I carry the consequences alone. So, understand this— not all monsters were born. Some of us were shaped, inch by inch, by the roads we could not leave."

He took another step toward Taejun, the world seeming to dim with the motion.

His presence loomed— not merely in size, but in inevitability.

"This, boy, is not cruelty. It is a duty of mine, and it's mine alone."

He stood motionless for a long time, like a statue awaiting the slow decay of centuries.

His eyes were half-lidded beneath the brim of his cap, shadowed and still.

The jagged red grin upon his face dimmed into a faint ember, curling like the last breath of a dying flame.

His head tilted downward slightly, hiding most of his expression in the abyssal black of his void-like face, save for a faint, ghostly shimmer of one eye.

That lone, glinting eye caught the light as if it mourned something long buried.

Then, softly, almost as though he were speaking to himself, Arthur began.

"You know…" he murmured, the voice rich and deep, dragged through a thousand regrets.

"I didn't always imagine things would end like this. I never dreamed of blood... or screams... or dragging kids like you into places where even God looks away. Funny, isn't it? We love to think the monsters were born that way. But the truth is— they begin small. Helplessly with no one on their side."

He exhaled slowly. The sound was hollow, as if it passed through something cavernous and broken.

He began to pace, the soles of his boots grinding softly against the damp cobblestone.

In his hand, he held something now— an odd object, curved and coiled in his palm.

As he passed beneath a sputtering gaslight, Taejun saw it clearly: a broken hourglass, its glass fractured and darkened, encircled by a serpent devouring its own tail.

The Ouroboros pulsed with an otherworldly glow, its fractured sands floating weightless inside.

The light it emitted cast a haunted crimson across their surroundings, as though it remembered every sin ever committed in its name.

Arthur's gloved hand traced the serpent's cracked spine, his clawed fingertip dragging along his own palm— not deep enough to break skin, but enough to feel something.

A reminder or perhaps a ritual.

Then his voice returned, bitter and strangely wistful.

"I once wanted to be a doctor. Isn't that rich?"

He laughed softly, dry, aged, like dust falling from a forgotten piano.

"Heal people. Saving lives. Stitch together the broken and send them back into the world, whole. It was… a noble fantasy."

The laugh turned darker, edged with pain.

"But life has its sense of humor. Cruel, barbed, and precise. Maybe… It started with my father. A drunk, mean as rusted nails. Used to beat my mother until her memory folded in on itself. Until she forgot her own name— except for mine."

His voice trembled briefly, then leveled, colder.

"I was ten when I tried to kill him. I broke a chair from the kitchen and landed it on his spine. He just laughed. Called me spirited. Like he was proud. It… was a strange feeling I felt back then."

A pause. The silence was sharp and brittle.

"After that," he whispered, "I learned how to vanish. How to rot without decay. You get real good at pretending when you're not there. I became a corpse that breathes."

His steps drew him closer to Taejun, each stride echoing like a death sentence.

The glow from his jagged grin cast unsettling shadows across the boy's face.

Arthur crouched slowly, his massive frame folding like a shadow around a flame.

The red light traced the contours of his void-like face— empty, unknowable— save for that malicious mouth.

One black glove lifted toward his mouth as though to whisper… or to stifle a laugh.

"But I kept going," he said, his voice soft, like a secret.

"I thought maybe— just maybe— if I worked hard enough, bled hard enough, someone would finally see me. I got into the Hollowbell Conservatory of Medicine. The hours were long, with the halls were silent. The cadavers didn't scream."

He chuckled again, but it was hollow now— just a sound to fill the silence.

"And then they found the bodies."

He stood suddenly, towering again. The smile remained, though it felt thinner now, stretched.

"They couldn't prove it. They cowards never do. But it was enough for me. I got expelled, exiled, and worst, forgotten. Not as a student. Not as son. Not even as a man. Just... a ghost who hadn't learned how to die."

He reached out and placed both hands on Taejun's head, cradling it as though it were something sacred.

His hands trembled— not with weakness, but with the restraint of a man who had tried for too long to feel something clean.

"I tried to leave," he muttered, voice cracking.

"Gun in the mouth. Rope on the ceiling beam. Even pills— enough to drown the sun. But something always pulled me back. Every. Goddamn. Time."

His voice surged, deepening, laced with fury and grief and some monstrous thing born between the two.

The very shadows around him thickened like smoke.

He turned away, storming toward a building's ruined wall.

There— a cracked mirror, long forgotten, leaning like a broken promise.

He stared into it, into the thing staring back.

His reflection— a distorted silhouette, a glowing maw framed in darkness, eyes flickering with guilt and glee. As if the mirror showed not who he was, but everything he had become.

"I'd hear her voice— my mother. Or maybe it was just that one stupid flicker of hope. Or maybe— maybe the part of me that was truly damned wanted to stay. To rot. Maybe to sing."

He raised his fist and smashed it into the mirror.

Shards of glass exploded outward, embedding in his gloves.

Blood welled in crimson pearls across his fingers and dropped to the stones with a slow, deliberate rhythm.

"There's something inside me now," he said, voice steady again.

"It isn't a demon. No. It's abnormally… Kinder. At the same time, crueler. It whispers… not orders but melodies. It tells me to keep going. But not for salvation. No, not even for justice. But for the music of it."

He turned once more to Taejun, now serene, now smiling with something too complex for words. Something like peace or madness.

"And you, boy… you're the next verse in my song."

He knelt close, brushing a strand of hair from Taejun's face with careful reverence, like a lover or a priest preparing a soul for its final confession.

"I don't kill to silence the pain anymore," he said.

His voice was a lullaby of knives.

"I kill to sing it."

Then, slowly, he raised the hourglass.

The red glow intensified, washing the alley in pulsing light, like a heartbeat that had never belonged to anything alive.

His grin widened— not with joy, but with purpose.

"So don't take this personally. You're not a victim here. You're not a mistake."

His voice dropped to a whisper. "You're part of the masterpiece. My masterpiece."

Taejun lay trembling upon the cold, filth-streaked ground, his limbs curled into themselves like a wounded animal trying to vanish inside its own skin.

His body spasmed occasionally— ghostly echoes of the death he'd already endured, a residue of agony that refused to let him forget.

It wasn't just pain coursing through his nerves— it was memory, trauma stitched into every twitching muscle fiber, every ragged breath, every silent, pleading blink.

His tears had dried, but the terror remained, embedded behind his eyes like splinters of glass.

He no longer understood what time was or if it moved forward at all.

The only constant was him.

Arthur stood nearby, swaying like a deranged maestro conducting a symphony only he could hear, his movements elegant and erratic all at once.

His sweat-slicked face gleamed beneath the sputtering lights overhead, skin sheened with blood, madness glowing behind his pupils like dying stars.

In one hand, he cradled the hourglass— his sacred relic, his totem of control— with the reverence of a priest lifting a chalice.

And then, he spoke. "You know…"

Arthur began, his voice lilting, coaxing, nearly intimate, as though confiding a truth he believed the world too stupid to understand, "people always think pain's a punishment. A consequence or maybe a curse, handed down from the divine for sins they're too cowardly to admit out loud. But it's not."

He grinned, his teeth uneven and stained.

"Pain... is a language. The last honest one we have. No pretense, no masks. Just nerves and screaming along with the truth."

He chuckled— no, giggled— a sharp, high-pitched sound that started small and then swelled with an unnatural rhythm, rising in pitch until it cracked and curdled into a full-bodied howl.

His whole torso rocked with the laughter, ribs vibrating like wind-struck chimes.

Sweat sprayed from his chin.

He threw his head back and slammed a hand against the air— Clang— and though it struck nothing, the sound that rang out was cold and metallic, like iron being hammered in some invisible forge.

"BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA—!" he bellowed, voice spiraling into absurd mimicry, mockery of every word Taejun or anyone else had ever tried to say.

He began pacing again, wild and theatrical, the hourglass swinging in his hand like a baton as he jabbed it toward invisible violins.

"I was gonna start with your kneecaps, y'know? That's where the music sings. A little pop, a little twist— then maybe pull the tendons taut like strings. Twang-twang! Just imagine the song I could make from your screaming. I'm practically a goddamn violinist."

But then, he stopped.

His body froze mid-step, spine straightening, head cocking upward with a jolt, as if some terrible, silent revelation had passed through him.

His pupils dilated to full black, swallowing any remaining human light from his gaze.

Slowly, almost ritualistically, Arthur lifted his arm, joints stiff and deliberate, as if pulled not by muscle but by some unseen mechanism winding him up from within.

His fingers— unnaturally straightened and pressed together— took the shape of a blade, narrow and sharp, an imitation of the instrument he'd used to carve the world around him.

His breath slowed, his eyes half-lidded in reverence, like a priest lifting a sacrificial dagger to the heavens.

Then, with sudden, jarring violence, he thrust the hand forward— not toward Taejun, not toward flesh or foe— but into the empty air before him, a gesture not of assault but of communion, as though challenging the silence itself, demanding that some godless force beyond the veil bear witness to what he had become.

But the moment the strike completed, something shifted— a wrongness, immediate and immense.

There was no resistance, no enemy to strike, and yet a sound filled the room: a wet, hideous crunch, like wood snapping beneath a boot— but layered with the soft, meaty rip of flesh giving way.

His body trembled as his arm followed through, momentum unchecked, and in that single, gruesome instant, the illusion broke.

His own fingers, stiffened to mimic a spear, had plunged not into phantom air, but into himself.

A fine line split down his forearm first, so narrow it could've been mistaken for a crease in skin.

But it spread with hideous grace, like a zipper of red yawning open, and a moment later, his hand severed itself clean from the wrist.

There was no scream— at least not right away.

For the first few seconds, Arthur simply stared in mute disbelief, watching his own blood erupt in slow-motion arcs, fountaining upward from the wound like some perverse celebration.

It gushed in rhythmic pulses, hot and arterial, spurting thick ribbons that painted his chest, his face, the shattered floor.

The blood wasn't crimson— it was a deeper red, almost black in places, flecked with foamy strands of fat and torn tissue, and it steamed faintly in the cold air like breath from a dying animal.

His dismembered hand, still clenched in that foolish, bladed posture, flopped to the ground with a wet slap, bounced once, and landed palm-up, twitching obscenely as if it hadn't realized it was no longer part of him.

Fingers flexed in a final mockery of life, then curled inward in a claw-like spasm before going still, the nerves exhausted, the message from the brain finally severed.

Arthur took one step back, blood pouring down his side in warm sheets, his breath stuttering in short gasps that couldn't find rhythm.

He stared at the stump, the exposed bone jutting like a cracked tusk amidst torn sinew and flayed muscle, veins writhing around it like worms dying in sunlight.

The raw end pulsed, spraying another sickening burst across the wall.

Bits of tendon dangled loosely from the open wrist, some of them coiled like shredded ribbon, others still stretching, as though unwilling to accept they'd been detached from their purpose.

He didn't scream right away because his mind hadn't caught up— there was a hesitation, a pause in the machinery of comprehension, as though his brain refused to believe what it was seeing.

But when the understanding arrived, it came not like a jolt, but a collapse, a psychological implosion that sent him staggering backward with a soundless gape before the pain detonated in his nerves.

Then he screamed— but not fully, not freely.

It wasn't a shout torn from the lungs, but a fractured, strangled sound, half-swallowed at the moment it tried to escape.

His jaw clenched violently mid-scream, teeth grinding together in sheer reflex, as if to trap the noise before it reached the world.

The result was grotesque: a cracked, broken rasp that rasped past the blood in his throat, the sound of a man imploding, not exploding, folding inward under agony so complete it refused to be shared aloud.

His body trembled under the weight of it.

The scream had no voice, only vibration, a choked seismic jolt inside him.

He fell to his knees, the impact dulled by the gushing tide beneath him, blood pooling thick and wide in a morbid halo.

It spread rapidly across the floor, licking at the scattered debris like liquid fire, alive and hunting, each pulse of his ruined arm sending new arcs of crimson splashing in irregular, frantic fans.

It didn't drip— it burst.

The stump at his wrist, ragged and shredded, pumped in sickening rhythm, spraying heat and color with a perverse vitality that mocked his helplessness.

Torn veins flailed like snapped cables, twitching.

The exposed bone, jagged and raw, glinted faintly under the flickering lights, its white marred by clinging red and yellow.

His shoulders began to convulse, not from cold but from the violent tension of barely contained panic.

He rocked forward instinctively, hands scrambling to press against the wound as if sheer pressure could reverse time.

But it only made it worse.

The moment he touched it, he felt the full reality— skin no longer whole, flesh flayed wide, nerve endings shrieking in electric chaos.

The pain was not sharp— it was consuming.

Not a stab but a possession.

It spread from the wound into his chest, up his throat, behind his eyes, wrapping his entire being in a suffocating, screaming blanket of agony.

The air grew thick, not just from the heat of the blood but from the smell, the stench of it.

That metallic sting of copper, heavy, coated the back of his throat and crawled up his nose, but worse than that was the other scent, subtler but infinitely more terrible— the unmistakable smell of meat.

Fresh, living, human meat, torn open and steaming.

It didn't smell like blood from a nosebleed or a scraped knee.

It smelled like death's kitchen, like something that had been prepared rather than wounded, as if Arthur had carved himself not as a man in pain but as a butcher's offering.

That smell would cling to the walls, to Taejun's memory, to Arthur's soul if it still had form.

His breathing turned to sobs, but still, he didn't allow the scream to escape.

His jaw remained locked tight, as if he feared that giving sound to the suffering might birth something worse— might open a door he couldn't shut again.

Tears welled in his eyes but didn't fall.

They boiled in place, refused by a face too frozen, too clenched.

He looked at the stump, then at his own detached hand on the floor, twitching faintly like a beetle struggling on its back, fingers curled in a mockery of life.

He whispered something, but not to Taejun. It was to himself.

To the blood. To the hand. Or maybe to something neither of them could see.

And still the blood came. Still, it pulsed, warm and relentless, a tide with no end.

His eyes rolled back, then forward again, fluttering with a flickering madness.

He swayed, caught somewhere between seizure and reverence, and began to laugh.

A choked, desperate thing.

Not amusement, but disbelief— laughter as a last resort, a convulsion of the soul when words and thought fail.

He whispered to no one. "Was this... supposed to happen?"

His blood answered. It spilled freely, greedily, unrepentantly.

Across his boots. His knees. His hourglass.

And in that moment, Arthur was no longer a man.

He was a symbol of collapse, a god of decay who had misjudged his own divinity, now left to bleed in a room too silent, too still, with nothing left to offer the void except his own slow unraveling.

"Look at me," he whispered, and his voice trembled— not from fear, but from something deeper, more grotesque.

"Look what I've become. Isn't it… Beautiful?"

And then, reality screamed.

He stood with his left arm outstretched, the hourglass cradled horizontally in his palm like some fragile relic salvaged from the ruins of time, as if daring the world to look, to witness, to understand the sacred madness blooming behind his eyes.

His fingers gripped it tightly, too tightly— knuckles blanched and trembling, streaked with blood and grime, trembling not from weakness but from the unbearable anticipation that clung to his muscles like a parasite.

The sand inside the glass teetered delicately, as though caught in breathless suspension between two eternities, never quite falling, never quite still.

His left hand was raised perfectly level, shoulders locked with manic tension, his body quivering with theatrical reverence, a deranged conductor preparing to summon a final, violent symphony from the void itself.

His posture wasn't merely dramatic— it was sacramental, like an offering to gods long since dead, or perhaps a challenge hurled into the heavens by a creature too far gone to fear retaliation.

And then it came.

A sound— sudden, shrill, razor-sharp— ripped through the stale air with the swiftness of divine punishment.

Not a scream, not a shout, but something purer, a shrieking whistle that carried with it a cold, calculated malice.

It sliced across the moment like a scalpel across skin, a single note of fatal precision, the auditory equivalent of a guillotine's fall.

And before comprehension could catch up, before Arthur could so much as flinch or curse or drop his precious instrument, the arrow arrived. It struck him.

The shaft tore clean through his outstretched arm just beneath the hourglass with such unholy force that it sounded less like impact and more like a tree branch splitting during a storm, a sickening crack of bone being torn asunder, a wet snap as ligaments and tendons gave way to the intrusion.

The hourglass exploded from his hands in a blossom of shattering crystal and spiraling sand, the delicate glass unable to endure the violence that had claimed its bearer.

It scattered in all directions like time hemorrhaging into space, tiny fragments catching the flickering light as they spiraled toward the floor and crashed with a hiss that seemed to mock the silence that came before.

Arthur didn't cry out— not at first.

For a few impossible seconds, he simply stood there, eyes wide and jaw slack, blinking with the stunned vacancy of a man watching his soul unravel.

He stared at his mangled limb as if trying to understand the shape of it— how it could be so disturbing, so red, so disassembled.

Blood pulsed from the wound in thick, arterial jets, splattering the hourglass shards and the stone floor beneath him in a chaotic spray, forming patterns that looked almost intentional, almost ritualistic, as if some unseen force had decided to write scripture in his agony.

The pain hadn't even arrived yet, not fully— it hovered on the edge of sensation, teasing the nerves, dragging its claws through his mind like a beast announcing its entry.

Then the nerves caught up.

The pain roared to life with such intensity that his legs buckled beneath him instantly, and he collapsed in a violent heap, dragging smears of his own blood with him.

A strangled, guttural gasp tore its way from his throat, somewhere between a scream and a sob, but it came out warped, hollow, like the noise of a man drowning in his own suffering.

The bones within were shattered and exposed, protruding like white, jagged teeth from a red, glistening maw.

The skin around the wound had already begun to lose its warmth, already turning pale and sickly at the edges, twitching involuntarily, as though trying to pull away from itself.

His breath came in short, frantic bursts, his chest heaving like a furnace collapsing under its own heat.

His pupils, once wide with mania, now shrank and darted around like trapped insects, eyes brimming with a confusion that was quickly souring into horror.

He tried to speak, but only a dry hiss escaped— his lips cracked, his tongue thick, too swollen with terror to form words.

The scent in the air was unbearable: the searing copper of blood, the rancid sting of ruptured flesh, and the hot, meaty reek of something profoundly human torn too far open to be repaired.

It was the smell of life escaping, and he could taste it now— on the back of his tongue, in his sinuses, flooding his lungs until breathing felt like swallowing death itself.

Then, his mangled hand gave way, the torn flesh finally failing to hold.

The rest of his hand, barely attached by a flap of skin and slivers of sinew, broke free from the stump and fell to the floor with a sound that should never be heard: a wet slap followed by a gentle roll, the fingers curling slightly as if still trying to grasp something— anything.

His eyes followed it down, horrified, and something in him broke.

His expression, twisted with pain, went hollow.

The mania drained away.

The laughter that had once bubbled behind his teeth was gone now, replaced with a silence more terrifying than his screams.

And through it all, the shattered hourglass lay beside the severed hand, its sands bleeding out slowly, rhythmically, almost mockingly— counting down a time that no longer mattered.

"…oh," he murmured, quietly, like a man who'd just dropped a wineglass at a funeral.

Then the pain arrived.

It hit like a flood— a tsunami of nerve endings igniting all at once— and his scream erupted like a volcanic rupture.

It was not a human cry. It was the kind of sound one might imagine spilling from the throat of something pre-human, a creature older than language.

He dropped to his knees, howling as he clutched the stump with his remaining arm, blood spurting between his fingers, pooling beneath him in sick, arterial rhythm.

His shoulders convulsed. His spine curled. His mouth foamed.

But his mind— his mind was spiraling further than even the pain could reach.

This pain… This is not mine. This does not belong to me. I did not allow this.

"Who?!" he screamed, the words gurgling up from a throat thick with agony. "Who did that?! Who's here?!"

There was no answer.

Only silence, and the twitch of the fluorescent lights above, flickering like dying insects trapped in glass.

Taejun didn't move. His lungs barely drew air.

But his eyes, wide, fragile, still-human eyes, locked on Arthur, and within them stirred something that had not been there before.

Not courage. But something dangerously close to hope.

Arthur staggered to his feet, blood trailing from his arm like a leaking faucet.

His face was pale now, but twisted— not with fear, but with hatred.

Hatred so total it could burn the sky.

"You think this stops me?!" he shrieked, voice rising into hysteria.

"You think pain is my enemy?! I was born in it! I breathe it! I am the echo in God's ears! I am—!"

He froze. The hourglass.

In his wild gesticulations, he had dropped it.

His eyes scanned the floor with panic growing in every blink.

And then, he found it— shattered, ruined, its sand scattered like dead stars across the concrete.

And in that moment, Arthur broke.

Not with a scream. Not with an outburst.

But with a silence so pure, so absolute, it seemed to smother the very air around him.

It wasn't the silence of peace— no, this was the silence of something holy being defiled, the silence of a mind rupturing under the weight of too much knowing.

His features slackened all at once, as if the very muscles had forgotten how to hold his face together.

His eyes, once boiling with psychotic joy, now stared empty and wide, not with fear, but with a grief so deep it hollowed out everything behind them.

He looked down at the shattered hourglass, its fractured remains glittering across the blood-washed floor, and it was as though he were gazing at the torn corpse of a lover, a child, or a god.

The broken glass shimmered like the crushed bones of meaning itself. His arms dropped limp at his sides.

His breath stuttered in shallow gasps.

His knees locked. His soul, if there was anything left of it, unraveled stitch by stitch.

He moved like a puppet with cut strings— slowly straightening, each vertebra trembling beneath the effort.

He did not look at Taejun.

He did not look at his stump of an arm, nor the thick trail of blood smeared behind him like a failed escape.

No, his gaze never left the ground, never shifted from that ruin— the hourglass, his relic, his tether— now just debris.

Then came the breath. A dry, rasping suck of air, like wind being pulled through a dying throat.

He leaned back against the wall, slid downward in a daze, leaving a long, smearing streak of crimson along the cracked plaster.

His legs folded uselessly beneath him.

The sound of his breath— wet, ragged, too close to death— became the only thing that remained alive in the room.

And then the world... responded.

It began subtly at first— a faint vibration, like the nervous tremor of a beast preparing to lunge.

The floor beneath Arthur's slumped frame whispered with motion.

Fine, spidery cracks began crawling outward from beneath his feet like veins, or fractures in glass, as though the entire foundation of this place were suddenly too fragile to contain reality.

The walls groaned, deep and low, the sound of strained bones just before a break.

The ceiling flexed with tension, and from some unseen abyss above, a moaning wind leaked through.

Then came the real sound— a shuddering boom, not from one place but from everywhere at once, like the heartbeat of the collapsing universe.

Nails tore themselves from wood. Pipes convulsed in the walls.

The fluorescent lights blinked erratically, spitting sparks as they died.

Dust flooded the air like cremated ash. And one by one, the ceiling began to cave in.

The first slab fell without warning, a slab of concrete the size of a door slamming into the center of the room and bursting on impact, sending jagged stone skittering in every direction.

More followed— massive hunks of the ceiling raining down with deafening cracks, each impact like a god's fist smashing through a coffin lid.

The ground shook with seismic violence, the tremors so deep they rattled the teeth.

Taejun, still frozen near the center, did not run. He did not scream. He simply... faded.

Not like a soul ascending. Not like light being swallowed.

He faded like memory, like the smudging of chalk beneath an unseen eraser.

His limbs dissolved into air. His skin blurred like wet paint.

One moment he was there, the next, he wasn't.

And then a final, massive slab plunged down toward the exact spot where his body had once knelt, crashing into the earth with such force it seemed to tilt the entire building, but it met only the dust of absence.

Taejun was gone.

Arthur lifted his head just barely, red smearing across his lips from where he'd bitten his tongue.

His eyes tracked upward, dazed, unfocused, just in time to watch the final catastrophic breach.

The ceiling split open with a moan like a soul being torn in two, and through it came a storm of ruin— beams, pipes, wires, stone— everything the building had once hidden in its bones, now vomiting downward in final collapse.

A slab larger than a truck plummeted straight for him.

He didn't scream. He only blinked once.

Then came the impact— final. Arthur vanished beneath it, not crushed but erased.

And still the world wasn't done.

The walls folded inward as though inhaling themselves.

Doors bent and shrieked. Windows exploded in reverse, glass flying not outward but inward, sucked toward some terrible center.

The building convulsed like a dying creature, every joist and girder snapping under the pressure of a cosmic, invisible hand closing around it.

Floors above fell through in great sheets, stacking upon each other with bone-rattling percussion. The very concept of "up" and "down" bent, twisted, snapped.

And then, as if gravity itself grew sentient and angry, everything was pulled downward— light, blood, air, fire— all of it spiraling into a single, shrieking void that yawned open like a mouth at the center of the ruin.

There was no bottom. No shape. Just hunger. The kind of hunger only oblivion understands.

Everything fell.

The room, the structure, the broken hourglass, the twisted remains of Arthur— all of it collapsed in on itself, sucked into a singularity of darkness so vast it swallowed sound and thought along with it.

The last thing to go was the light, bending inward like the last gasp of a dying star.

And then... There was nothing.

Not silence. Not darkness. Not even memory.

Only the cold echo of something that had once been called "real" now torn from existence entirely.