Pain still throbbed faintly in Reynold's chest, a dull echo of the unnatural wound that had somehow healed enough to let him move.
He forced himself forward, each step careful, soft. The floor beneath his feet was slick with dust and dried blood, the scent miasma and heavy in his nose.
A shuffle made him freeze mid-step. He barely dared to breathe, straining to hear. Footsteps? No… not footsteps, but a subtle dragging, like something being pulled along the stone.
Shadows shifted near the sides of the ruins. Moonlight glittered across a figure lying among the scattered wreckage, limbs twisted unnaturally.
Reynold's chest tightened. He didn't know the body. Didn't recognize the face, pale under the moonlight, framed by hair that was white as frost yet somehow tinged with soft gold. A single, glaring wound across her side, identical to the one he had felt in himself.
The sight stopped his breathing.
The figure twitched, slowly, pain laced in the movements. She gasped for air, coughed, ragged, then shoved herself upright. Blood smeared her clothes, dark against pale fabric.
Reynolds took a careful step back, pressing himself against the cracked wall.
She looked around, wide-eyed, taking in the cathedral, the corpses scattered like broken, beaten rag dolls, the shattered stained glass glowing in the icy light.
"You…" He tried to speak, throat dry. His voice sounded alien, even to him. "Are you, "
She flinched, startled by the sound, eyes narrowing.
"I… I don't know," she said, voice trembling, "Who are you?"
He couldn't call himself Reynolds anymore, not here, not in this body. The name of the silver-haired man he had glimpsed in his reflection, the one that belonged to the young man whose corpse he'd inhabited…
"Leon Hunter," He said carefully, voice low. Each word was hesitant, as though he didn't know what to say in his new body.
Her eyes flicked to him, confusion mingled with hints of fear.
"Leon Hunter?" she repeated, reciting the name. "I… I'm… Valeta van Algard." She replied awkwardly, using the little fragments of memory in her current body to piece together the alias she once went by.
The words sounded strange on her tongue, awkward in a sense, like she was adopting someone else's skin. But she stuck to it, clinging to the shattered fragment of an identity the corpse gave her in this dull place.
Reynolds studied her cautiously, keeping a distance.
Every step he had taken before had been measured; now, with her movement, he realized how little he understood of the rules and natural laws here. Every step was clearly swifter than back in his old world.
Could she be hostile? Or was she just a poor bloke who suffered the same fate as he? Or was she a comrade? He wasn't sure; all he could think of was to be cautious and watch, analyse every little movement she made.
The silence stretched on.
Each of them circling around the other with unspoken questions, their minds racing, memories fractured, yet both were instinctively keeping secrets, a certain distance to remain safe.
Valeta's eyes darted around, pupils dilating as she checked the environment.
Her gaze shifted toward the massive doors leading out, the moonlight spilling in.
Her steps were tentative, bloodied boots scrapping against the crumbles of broken stone on the floor.
Valeta glanced at him again, voice low, cautious. "Mr. Hunter, do you… know anything? Anything at all about this place?"
Leon shook his head. "Just fragments. Loose pieces of memories that don't make sense. I believe that gunshot wound had broken some of our memories."
He exhaled slowly, forcing calm. "We… should move. Stay alert. There's no telling what's waiting beyond those doors. Can we both agree we are comrades… At least for now."
She nodded, fingers clenching into a rolled-up fist as she looked around the cathedral once again, her eyes scanning the corpses on the floor.
The reek of smell repulsed her, but all she knew was that this was survival, not the calm and predictable office work she was once used to.
Looking to her left, on one of the many corpses that lay on the floor, something caught her eye; a pair of shining objects along the body's belt.
Golden glinting in the moonlight, she walked over, her leather boots making small clacks on the floor which echoed in the silence of the room.
Valeta kneeled next to the corpse, its eyes wide open like he was caught in a moment of shock when he was killed. She brushed a hand over his eyes, closing them. Under her breath, she muttered, "May ye return to her in the skies, rest at ease…"
Leon stared from the spot he stood, still unmoving as he observed.
After a moment of silence, Valeta reached down to the dead man's belt and retrieved a set of revolvers, two to be exact.
Casting one to Leon, she said in a clear tone, taking the lead, "Take one, you never know what's lurking out there, or if what had killed us prior remained to keep guard."
Together, they approached the entrance.
Leon's hand twitched instinctively toward the hilt of an unfamiliar weapon at his side, and Valeta's grip on her gun tightened.
The cathedral doors loomed larger with each step, the moonlight seeping through the gaps between the large double doors, revealing the outside in rays of cold light.
Leon paused before the door, his hand slowly reaching to the rough wooden surface. Valeta followed, and with a simultaneous deep breath, they exhaled, water vapor rising from the moisture of their mouths.
The pushed. The door parted, it creaked, loud and eerie.
Beyond the doors, the mist was thick, curling around ruined stone pillars and the skeletal remains of what might have been a courtyard. No, it was a cemetery, the pillars were gravestones.
Crows croaked, and the sounds of the birds flapping their wings sounded; the trees shivered and rustled as the dried branches cracked under the night's soft breeze.
Valeta stepped beside him, scanning with sharp, red-tinged eyes. "Do you think there's anyone else… Alive?" she asked quietly, voice barely above the hiss of the wind.
Leon replied with silence, his focus merely on the creepy trees and the area he was in.
She nodded in recognition, pulling herself up straighter, weapon ready.
The two of them moved together but apart, careful to keep a distance that allowed for reaction, each silently noting the other's movements and reactions.
Neither trusted fully, in a world that seemed designed to kill or break the mind, another living presence was a fragile life.
The graveyard opened into a wider expanse, jagged ruins of buildings rising in broken silhouettes against the pale red moon. Mist swirled around their ankles, drifting in threads across the stone.
Leon paused, twitched, noticing the unnatural stillness. He crouched down and hid behind a tall gravestone, the cross at the very top hiding the final bits of his spiking hat.
Valeta mirrored his pause, crouching down beneath another, glancing at him. "Do you feel it?" she asked, her voice trembling, holding in her inner fear.
Something shifted in the graveyard, something inhuman… The crows that sat above the blackened tree branches continued to croak.
Agck—
Agck—