The cathedral doors loomed behind Noir like the jaws of a trap he'd barely escaped.
He didn't look back.
His boots hit the stone steps with sharp, angry rhythm—thud, thud, thud—each step a declaration.
"I don't need them. I don't need him. I don't need anyone."
The night air bit at his face, cold and clean after the oppressive incense of the cathedral. He inhaled deeply, trying to wash away the humiliation that clung to him like smoke.
"Pathetic."
The word echoed in his skull. Yuusha's voice, calm and clinical, dissecting him like a specimen under glass.
"Shut up," Noir muttered to the empty street. "Just... shut up."
He pulled the crimson fabric from his pocket, running his thumb over the faded emblem. His anchor. His purpose. The only thing that mattered.
"I'llfind him myself. I always have."
Behind him, the cathedral stood silent against the night sky, its stained glass windows glowing faintly with candlelight. Peaceful. Untouchable.
Noir turned away and started walking.
He made it exactly seven steps.
The ground trembled.
Not violently—not an earthquake—but a subtle, wrong vibration that hummed up through the soles of his boots and into his bones.
Noir stopped.
The air changed.
It was subtle at first. A pressure building against his skin, like standing too close to a fire. Then came the smell—sulfur and rotting fruit and something else, something that made his hindbrain scream predator.
"No."
He spun around.
The cathedral's windows shattered.
Not one at a time, but all at once—an explosion of colored glass erupting outward in a glittering spray. Screams erupted from inside, high and panicked, overlapping in a cacophony of terror.
And then the shadows came.
They poured through the broken windows like liquid smoke, thick and writhing, coalescing into shapes that had too many limbs, too many joints, bodies that bent in ways that shouldn't exist.
Rippers.
Dozens of them.
"No—no, not here—" someone inside shrieked.
Noir's breath caught.
The doors burst open and people flooded out—seers in dark combat robes, civilians who'd been seeking shelter, children clutching their parents' hands. Their faces were masks of pure terror.
And behind them, the rippers followed.
One lunged at a fleeing woman. She didn't even have time to scream before its claws—click-click-click—sank into her back and dragged her down.
"RUN!" someone roared.
Chaos.
Pure, mindless chaos.
Noir stood frozen at the bottom of the steps, his heart hammering against his ribs. His legs screamed at him to move, to run, to get away—
But he couldn't.
Because he recognized the feeling in the air.
That pressure. That heat.
It was the same thing he'd felt in the grove. The same thing that had surrounded him when the thugs died.
It's me.
The thought hit him like a fist to the gut.
They're here because of me.
"NOIR!"
Soo Ah's voice cut through the screams.
She burst through the cathedral doors, axe already in hand, her expression sharp and focused. She vaulted over a fleeing civilian, landed in a crouch, and swung her weapon in a brutal arc that cleaved a ripper clean in half.
It dissolved into black mist with a shriek that made Noir's teeth ache.
"What are you still doing here?!" she shouted at him. "Get inside!"
"I—"
Another ripper lunged from the shadows.
Noir's body moved on instinct. He threw himself sideways, hitting the ground hard as claws whistled past his head. He scrambled backward, chest heaving, and the ripper turned toward him with a sound like grinding bone.
Its face was a mass of gnashing teeth arranged in a spiral. No eyes. Just teeth and hunger.
It took a step toward him.
Then another.
"It's ignoring everyone else", Noir realized with cold horror. "It's coming for me."
"Noir, MOVE!"
Soo Ah's axe embedded itself in the creature's skull with a wet crunch. It spasmed, shrieked, and collapsed.
She yanked the weapon free and grabbed Noir by the collar, hauling him to his feet.
"Inside," she snapped. "Now."
"They're—" Noir's voice cracked. "They're following me. I can feel it. They're—"
"I know!" Soo Ah's eyes were wide, not with fear but with grim understanding. "That's why you need to get inside, away from civilians. Move!"
She shoved him toward the cathedral doors.
Noir stumbled forward, his mind reeling. Around him, seers fought desperately against the tide of rippers. Steel met shadow. Screams mixed with inhuman shrieks. Blood—red and black—splattered across white stone.
A few figures in simple white robes—non-combatants—scrambled to usher civilians to safety, their faces pale with terror. They had no weapons, no spiritual techniques. They could only guide people away from the carnage.
A child stood in the middle of it all, crying, frozen in place.
A ripper crouched on the steps above her, its body coiled like a spring, ready to pounce.
Noir didn't think.
He ran.
His legs burned. His lungs screamed. But he threw himself between the child and the ripper just as it lunged—
—and something hit him like a freight train.
Pain exploded across his chest. He flew backward, crashing into a stone pillar hard enough to crack it. Stars burst behind his eyes. His vision swam.
When it cleared, the ripper was on top of him.
Its mouth—too wide, too many teeth—opened directly above his face.
Noir felt that same terrible pulling sensation from the forest. The invisible hook sinking into his chest, trying to drag something vital out of him.
My soul.
It's trying to eat my soul.
He tried to scream, but no sound came out. His body wouldn't move. His vision darkened at the edges.
Not like this. Not now. Not when I still haven't—
A hand pierced through the ripper's skull from behind.
Just a hand.
Fingers extended like blades.
The ripper convulsed once, then went completely still. Its body began dissolving from the point of contact, unraveling into black mist that dissipated into the night air.
The hand withdrew, clean and unstained.
Noir gasped, air flooding back into his lungs. He blinked through tears of pain and looked up.
Yuusha Yurikabe stood over him.
The head priest's white robes were pristine. Not a speck of blood. Not a wrinkle out of place.
His right hand hung loosely at his side, fingers still extended in that blade-like position. Faint wisps of spiritual energy—like heat shimmer—danced around his fingertips before fading.
He didn't look at Noir.
His gaze swept across the battlefield with cold, clinical assessment.
Then he moved.
Noir had thought Soo Ah was fast.
Yuusha was something else entirely.
He flowed across the courtyard like water, like wind, like something that existed outside the normal rules of movement. His hands moved in precise, elegant gestures—each motion deliberate, controlled, almost artistic.
A ripper lunged at him from the left.
Yuusha's fingers swept through the air in a horizontal arc.
The ripper split cleanly in two, both halves dissolving before they hit the ground.
Another attacked from behind.
Without turning, Yuusha extended two fingers backward in a stabbing motion.
The ripper's advance stopped mid-lunge. It trembled, then collapsed into shadow.
Three more surrounded him.
Yuusha's hands moved in a complex pattern—flowing, graceful, like he was conducting an invisible orchestra or painting on an unseen canvas.
Each gesture left trails of faint spiritual energy in the air.
Each movement ended a life.