Malachi's shriek echoed off the damp stone. It was a thin, useless sound in the oppressive silence of the dungeon's lower levels. Arthur paid the terrified Inquisitor no attention. The man was a broken tool, no longer relevant.
The laughter drew him.
It was not a sound of joy. It was the noise of a mind that had shattered and been put back together in the wrong shape, full of jagged edges and strange, sharp points. It came from deeper down, from a place the torches had forgotten.
He ignored the path leading up, toward the frantic shouts that were just beginning to filter down from the world above. He turned away from the light. He descended.
The air changed with every step. The simple cold of the stone became a bone-deep chill, thick with the smells of rust, stale water, and something acrid, like old chemicals. The sound of his own footsteps was a lonely rhythm in the dark. Malachi's screams faded behind him, replaced by the inviting, broken giggle from below.
The corridor ended. It did not open into another cell block, but into a single, wider space before a final door. This one was not iron. It was a gate of thick, blackened bars, set directly into the rock. There was no lock, only a complex series of gears and levers on the outside, all rusted into a single, immovable mass. It had not been opened in a lifetime.
Behind the bars, a figure sat.
It was a tangle of white hair and a beard that fell to its waist, stained and matted. Its clothes were rotted rags that barely clung to a skeletal frame. The figure was hunched over, rocking back and forth, the source of the mad laughter.
Arthur stopped. The laughter ceased.
The head lifted. From within the nest of hair, two eyes shone with a feverish, impossibly bright light. They were not the eyes of a broken prisoner. They were the eyes of a fanatic staring into his own personal sun.
The old man saw Arthur standing there. He saw the empty doorway he had walked through. He saw the fallen manacles. He did not look surprised. He did not look afraid. A wide, toothless grin split his face, and a new laugh erupted, this one a booming, triumphant roar.
"Hah! Hahaha! YES! Another one!" the old man bellowed, his voice a rusty crackle. He scrambled to the bars, his long fingernails scraping against the metal. "Another one slipped the collar! Hahahaha! How did you do it, boy? Did you un-write their pathetic binding runes? Did you tell their 'holy' metal to simply stop being?"
Arthur remained silent. The `Gaze of Truth` was active. He looked at the madman.
There was no white glow of faith. There was no murky red of ambition or gray of fear. There was no blackness of the void. The old man's aura was a chaotic, brilliant, searing blue-white fire. It was not an energy he received from a god or a demon. It was a fire he generated himself, a frantic, desperate blaze fueled by one thing: the raw, obsessive pursuit of knowledge.
This one doesn't pray, Su Ling's thought was a ripple of pure curiosity. He dissects. A rare specimen.
"You don't need to tell me," the old man cackled, gripping the bars. He shook them, a futile gesture that only sent flakes of rust to the floor. "I know that look. You've seen it, haven't you? The great, festering lie that holds this whole rotten world together."
He didn't wait for an answer. He had been holding this conversation with the walls for fifty years.
"They call it a world! It's a farm! A feeding trough!" he spat, flecks of saliva hitting the bars. "And their so-called God? The biggest parasite of all! Sucking up the belief, the hope, the fear… every scrap of spiritual energy from every living soul!"
He pressed his face against the bars, his manic eyes boring into Arthur.
"And the light! The holy light! You know what that is, boy? It's his waste! The second-hand energy he digests and excretes back down to his cattle to keep them fat and happy and docile! We are drinking his filth and calling it a blessing!"
The man let go of the bars and began to pace the tiny cell like a caged wolf.
"Angels? Puppets! Clockwork soldiers wound with stolen faith, programmed with 'order' and 'obedience.' They don't have wills; they have instruction sets!"
He whirled around again. "And the demons? Hah! The demons are just the first batch of prisoners! The first ones to see the bars of the cage and try to break them. They failed. They got cast down into the cellar and branded 'evil' for wanting to be free!"
His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
"But there is another way. Not up. Not down. Sideways." He tapped his temple. "Alchemy. The Great Work. Not begging for power. Not making deals for it. Understanding the machine itself. Understanding the source code. To bypass the parasite and tap the raw energy of creation directly! That is Truth!"
A cool amusement flowed through Su Ling's consciousness. The man's grand revelation was a child's drawing of the cosmos. He saw the puppet strings but had no concept of the puppeteer. He mistook the cage for the universe.
For a mortal, to have clawed his way even to this shallow perception… he is not entirely worthless.
The old alchemist, whose name the world had forgotten but was once Theron, the Grand Master, lurched forward again. He reached a bony arm through the bars and seized Arthur's tunic. His grip was surprisingly strong. His burning eyes stared not at Arthur's face, but at his right hand. The ashen, gray hand that hung limply at his side.
"That… that power…" Theron breathed, his voice trembling with awe. "I felt it when the lock on my dinner slot crumbled to dust a week ago. I felt it when your shackles fell. It's not their recycled light. It's not the Abyss's petulant rage. It's… an absolute. The power to un-make. To deconstruct. The solvent for God's glue!"
He looked up, his eyes pleading, commanding. "Boy! You are the key! The living crowbar! You don't just see the lie; you can erase it! Join me! I have the knowledge. You have the power. Together… we can tear down this fake heaven, brick by rotting brick!"
Just as Theron's words reached their fanatical peak, a sound slammed through the dungeon.
BOOM.
It was not a sound. It was a pressure. A physical weight that made the air thick and hard to breathe. The torches lining the distant corridor flickered wildly, their flames bending low as if in a gale.
A muffled clangor of alarm bells began to ring from high above.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed from the top of the stairs. They were synchronized, inhumanly precise. The sound of an army, not a posse.
Arthur turned his head. His `Gaze of Truth` focused on the entrance to the lower levels.
A figure appeared, silhouetted against the torchlight. Cardinal Valerius. He was flanked by his Inquisitorial guards, their black armor seeming to swallow the light around them. The Cardinal's sharp, hawkish face was a mask of cold fury.
He held a lantern.
It was not a normal lantern. Forged of gold and Sacred Silver, it held no flame. At its heart was a swirling sphere of pure, compressed white light. It was not a beacon. It was an anchor. It radiated a power that did not illuminate the darkness but nailed reality into place, silencing all chaotic energies. The low-level hum of Su Ling's own power, which she constantly used to analyze her surroundings, was forcefully muted.
Valerius looked down the corridor, his gaze cutting through the gloom. It passed over the empty, disintegrated lock. It passed over the terrified, babbling wreck of Malachi huddled on the floor. It settled on Arthur and the crazed prisoner behind the bars.
"The rats are cornered," the Cardinal's voice was not loud, but it filled the space, vibrating in the stone, in Arthur's bones. He began his descent, the lantern held before him like a weapon. The light it cast felt like a physical chain.
"Heretics," Valerius declared, his voice devoid of all mercy. "Your journey ends in this darkness."