At that moment, Officer Baidel—a man who had shown almost no emotional fluctuation since the start—jerked his head down, staring in horror at the Detective's corpse clutched in his hand.
The body, which should have been a lifeless husk of meat and bone, hung like a ragdoll. Its eyes remained fixed, and its mouth did not move, yet an impossibly eerie voice continued to emanate from it, dripping with mockery.
"Following that train of thought, it's quite obvious why you took the victim's clothes. Because that dress was a gift from you, wasn't it? Perhaps the only gift you ever gave her since the wedding. She used to boast about it to her few friends, and she only wore it when she went to see you."
The "corpse" gave a hollow, chilling laugh.
"It was you who invited her to that alley, wasn't it, Lord Executive? A busy man of the Cloth, finally inviting his wife on a date after years of marriage. Who would have thought... that a woman so envied and respected... was actually a common, lustful trull—"
CRUNCH!
Baidel's boot slammed down with tectonic force, obliterating the head of the corpse.
The hardest bone in the human body disintegrated instantly. Shards of skull, grey matter, and flecks of gore erupted in a violent spray, tattooing the walls with a wet, rhythmic patter.
And yet, something was wrong.
A strike powerful enough to shatter the floorboards hadn't even stirred the dust in the room. There was no vibration. No structural damage.
Baidel's hand flew to the back of his neck. There, his fingers brushed against a strand of spider silk so fine it was virtually undetectable.
"So... why kill those other women in the Lower District first?"
Sherlock's voice continued to resonate from every corner of the flat, vibrating out of the very gore plastered against the walls.
"Unwilling to kill your own wife at first, so you vented your rage on other 'unclean' women? And why the obsession with quartering the organs? Ah... don't tell me your wife was unfaithful with four different men? You're quite the egalitarian, aren't you? Wanting to divide her equally among everyone she favored?"
The voice was low, yet it possessed a piercing, crystalline quality. Every taunt, every chuckle, felt like a needle to the eardrum.
Baidel stood with his head bowed. Though he remained silent, the veins in his thick neck bulged and throbbed, the blood within appearing ready to burst through the skin in a geyser of literal, physical fury.
He reached back and snapped the silken thread at his nape.
In an instant, the world blurred. The room dissolved and reformed like ink swirling in water.
The corpse vanished. The blood evaporated. Everything returned to the exact state it had been when he first entered the room.
He hadn't moved an inch.
Sherlock was still sitting in his sagging red leather sofa, legs crossed, fingers steepled over his knees.
Beside him stood Catherine, her posture rigid and alert. The Old Priest sat on the other sofa, his massive, nightmare-inducing spider crouching at his feet.
"See? I told you the killer would deliver himself to our door," Sherlock said, spreading his hands as if he didn't feel the suffocating, lethal pressure thickening the air.
The trap had sprung. The killer had stripped himself bare under the harsh light of his own actions. The truth was out.
Granted, many questions remained. When had Baidel discovered the infidelity? Had the beautiful Karin entertained her four lovers at different times, or all at once? If it was the latter, how large was the bed? What was the frequency of their trysts? And whose child was currently growing in that preserved womb?
Ultimately, none of that mattered. Some cases don't require every detail; they only require a target.
As for how Sherlock knew it was Baidel—it was simple. The man had been too eager.
Every time Sherlock recounted his deductions at the crime scene, Baidel had interjected with questions at the most critical junctures. This was entirely out of character for an Executive Officer. The Empire knew these men as "judgment machines"—they wanted targets, not reasons. As a devout member of the Clergy and a grieving husband, Baidel should have been consumed by a singular, frantic desire to find the culprit and drag them to the Blood Prison.
Instead, he had been obsessing over the forensic details of the "how."
It was like a student asking for the answers to a multiple-choice test, but then demanding the person they were cheating from write out the full proof for every question. If you're just looking for the result, the proof is a nuisance.
Unless, of course, you're checking to see how much the other person actually knows.
Naturally, these were just the hunches of a Detective—arrogant, irresponsible, and intuitive. But Sherlock knew he was right, with the same certainty he felt when stuffing a man into a suitcase.
And so, the killer had arrived on schedule. Under the influence of Abyssal power, he had obediently revealed his identity beneath the gaze of the Holy Light.
The case was perfectly closed.
Well... almost.
The massive spider at the Priest's feet began a series of high-pitched, piercing hisses. Catherine's expression turned grim as the air in the room became viscous, heavy with the scent of ozone and rot.
Beside Baidel, a pitch-black rift tore open in the air without a sound.
It was a Void Rift—a direct vein to the Abyss.
With a low, guttural roar, several massive, jagged fangs began to emerge from the darkness.