Hell's Kitchen, West Side — Rooftop of a Commercial Building
Joren stood at the edge of the rooftop, eyes fixed on St. Agatha Christie's Hospital across the street.
The hospital's exterior wall had become a grotesque canvas—drenched in fresh blood, still glistening under the flickering glow of emergency lights.
At its center loomed a twisted caduceus: serpents coiled around a staff, both splattered with gore that hadn't yet congealed.
A madman was crafting his art with someone else's life.
Joren didn't linger on the mural for long.
His gaze drifted to the darkest corner of the rooftop—the shadow pooled beneath the fire hydrant tower. A void so deep not even moonlight dared touch it.
Yare! Yare!
Found it.
The darkness shifted.
From within it emerged a slender figure, silent as smoke.
He wore a sleek black bodysuit and a featureless white mask—smooth, blank, utterly devoid of expression. Like a ghost slipped through the veil into the waking world.
The man tilted his head, studying Joren with unnerving calm.
"I thought…" His voice rasped, thick with pleasure. "The Red Devil would come first."
He stepped forward—graceful, deliberate, like a model gliding down a runway.
"How did a child find me?"
One point eighty-five meters tall. Slender frame. Long limbs. His suit clung to him like a second skin, woven from some high-elasticity composite fiber—built for acrobatics, speed, violence.
His heart rate sat fifteen percent above baseline.
Not from fear.
From exhilaration.
Joren's silence hung in the air—and the man mistook it for something else entirely. Shock? Fear? Or perhaps… admiration?
"Hah…" The man chuckled, low and warm. "You look surprised."
He rubbed a gloved hand along his cheekbone, almost affectionate.
"Those fools in the press call me 'Van Gogh.' As if they understand anything about art." He gave an exaggerated, theatrical bow. "But you—you may call me Muse."
Oh, for heaven's sake… What an incurable narcissist.
"Behold my latest work." Muse swept his arm toward the blood-smeared hospital wall, now bathed in pulsing red and blue police lights. "A corrupted caduceus. A gift to those quacks in white coats who pretend to heal but only delay death. Isn't it deliciously ironic?"
He sighed, almost wistful. "Of course, it's not finished. True art demands patience. Time to breathe. To ripen."
His eyes glazed over, lost in reverie.
"My first piece—that was perfection. I called it 'The Broken-Winged Angel.'"
A soft, morbid smile curled beneath his mask. "I used every bone from a ballerina. Spent three months cleaning, polishing, reassembling… until I captured the exact moment her wings shattered as she fell from grace."
"The texture of bone," he murmured, voice hushed with reverence, "that milky luster… Blood is crude. Fleeting. It rots. But bone? Bone is eternal."
He turned back to Joren, eyes gleaming with smug pride.
"I keep a warehouse in Manhattan. My true museum. Every specimen is vacuum-sealed, catalogued by year, gender, bone density…" He spread his arms wide, as if unveiling a grand gallery. "My personal pigment library. Ready whenever inspiration strikes."
This madman treated his brutal crimes like a curated gallery—each atrocity a masterpiece to be admired.
Joren's eyes turned glacial.
The Muse seemed to relish Joren's focus.
To him, that intensity wasn't suspicion—it was recognition. A silent communion between kindred spirits.
"You must be wondering," the Muse said, voice smooth as poisoned silk, "why that devil in Hell's Kitchen—the monster who hears heartbeats—can't find me?"
He strode to the rooftop's edge and spread his arms wide, as if embracing the city's sin-soaked skyline.
"Because I am silence."
He snapped his fingers.
An invisible domain bloomed outward from his body.
The wind died mid-howl. Distant sirens cut off like severed threads. The city's ceaseless clamor vanished in an instant.
Only one sound remained in Joren's ears: the steady, thunderous thud of his own heart.
"'Sensory Vortex,'" the Muse declared, his voice cutting through the absolute quiet with eerie clarity. "My ability. Within ten meters, it devours everything that can be sensed—sound, scent, heat, electromagnetic waves… all perception collapses into nothingness."
"To that red demon, I am a ghost. An absolute void."
He retracted the domain. Noise rushed back like a tidal wave—engines, voices, the groan of steel—but the silence lingered in Joren's bones.
The Muse turned, peering down at him with the condescending grace of a maestro addressing a promising but unrefined apprentice.
"And yet… you found me."
A slow, knowing smile curled beneath his mask.
"That means you're not like the rest. You didn't track me with crude senses. You were drawn here by my art itself."
He was certain of it.
This boy—this lone soul—was the only one in the world who could truly see him.
His equal. His mirror. His soulmate.
"Come," the Muse urged, voice softening with anticipation. "Tell me your thoughts. What do you think of my work?"
He leaned forward, breath held. He craved not flattery—but reverence. The highest praise for his twisted vision, spoken by the only mind worthy of understanding it.
"To be honest," he added gently, "I admire honest souls."
Wind tugged at the hem of Joren's coat. He lowered his hat brim, silent for three long seconds.
Then, beneath the Muse's expectant gaze, he lifted his head.
Three words fell like a guillotine.
"It's garbage."
The wind stilled.
"…What?"
Behind the blank mask, the Muse's eyes—once alight with feverish excitement—now burned with stunned disbelief. Had he misheard?
"What… did you say?" His voice cracked, dry as ash.
"I said," Joren repeated, cold and clear, "it's garbage. From composition to materials to theme—utter trash."
"Building monuments from stolen lives and broken bones proves nothing. It only shows the builder was too weak to create anything real… and too afraid to stand alone."
Crack.
Not glass—but something far more fragile: the cathedral of delusion the Muse had spent years erecting in his own mind.
"You're lying!" The Muse shrieked, voice twisting into something feral—a cat with its tail crushed underfoot.
All pretense of elegance shattered. The artist's poise evaporated, replaced by raw, spitting fury.
"How dare you! How dare you speak to me like that!"
"What do you know? You're just another blind, mediocre worm!"
He paced the rooftop like a caged beast, hands clenched, shoulders trembling.
"I gave you a gift! I offered you intimacy! I showed you my greatest secret—my truth!"
"And you"—his voice dropped to a venomous whisper—"spat on it with the filthiest, most vulgar words imaginable."
His whole body shook—not from fear, but from the white-hot rage of a god whose worshipper had spat in his temple.
"Fine…" He stopped dead. Calm
returned—but colder now. Deadlier.
"If you can't appreciate art…"
A slow, chilling smile spread beneath the mask.
"…then become art yourself."
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