Chapter 4: The Silent Town
The train hissed steam as it came to a halt, its iron frame slick with mist. Azrael stepped off onto the platform, a black coat over his shoulders and a travel pack slung loosely at his side. He was alone.
The station was small. Empty.
The sign overhead, once gilded, now rusted, read:
> WEST GARLAN – POP. 1,274
Though even that number was a lie.
Azrael could feel it—there was no one here.
No stationmaster to greet arrivals. No footsteps. No voices. Just the low wind brushing through hanging lanterns that flickered and sputtered against the fog.
He glanced down the main road.
Shutters were closed. Doors barred. Some hung ajar, swaying ever so slightly.
He began walking, his steps measured and soft.
---
The town of West Garlan had once been a port hub, known for its salt-harvesting and chapel bells that chimed every hour. Now it was silent. The smell of the sea lingered—but underneath it was something rotten. Decay. Old blood.
Azrael stopped in front of the town chapel.
Its steeple was cracked, and the door wide open. No crows. No insects. Nothing.
Only silence.
"Just like Hollowbrook," he murmured.
He stepped inside.
Dust coated the pews. The altar was untouched, but the holy symbol once mounted above it—a sun pierced by twin arrows—had been shattered. Burn marks lined the walls, and beneath the altar, strange runes had been carved deep into the stone floor.
Teeth. Coiled around a single eye.
Azrael knelt beside them.
"The Fanged Rite."
This wasn't just a massacre. It was a ritual site.
His fingers brushed one of the carvings. He could feel the residue—sacrificial magic, old and powerful. But more than that, he felt something deeper buried beneath it all.
Necrotic energy. Ancient. Familiar.
A whisper stirred in his mind—not from his surroundings, but from within his soul.
"You've been here before…"
His eyes narrowed.
Not in this life.
But in the life before. When he had been Elliot. Before the awakening. Before he became Azrael, Walker of the Reaper's Path.
He stood up, gaze cold. The runes below the altar were part of a larger sigil. A summoning gate—but incomplete. Interrupted.
Something had gone wrong.
Or someone had stopped it.
---
The sound of a bell rang.
Not from above, but from deep below.
A single, dull toll.
Azrael turned slowly.
The trapdoor at the back of the chapel—once hidden under a rug—had been left open.
He descended.
---
Beneath the chapel was a crypt, its air thick with rot. Stone coffins lined the walls, lids cracked, bones spilled. The earth trembled faintly with each step he took.
In the center stood a figure.
It wore priest's robes stained black with dried blood. A jawbone pendant hung around its neck. Its eyes were hollow—literally hollow, gouged out and filled with salt. Yet it turned toward him as if it could see.
"Welcome, Reaper," it rasped, voice like dry leaves.
Azrael said nothing.
"You wear mortal flesh again. Have you come to seal the gate once more?"
Azrael's eyes narrowed. "I did not come to speak with the dead."
The corpse chuckled, a low, eerie sound. "Then strike, child of silence."
Without moving, Azrael raised his hand.
The air around him darkened. Cold gathered.
> Invocation: Silence of the Veil.
The priest's voice faltered. "No… not that—!"
The world twisted for a moment, and then there was no sound.
None.
The corpse reached toward him, but it moved too slowly. A black pulse emanated from Azrael's ring—the ring he had taken from the cellar in Prizland—and the priest's body froze, then crumbled into ash.
No fire. No scream. Just oblivion.
Azrael stepped forward and opened a stone drawer beneath the altar.
Inside was a scroll, wrapped in red sinew.
He took it carefully, scanning the faded symbols etched into its surface.
"Third Depth… Eastern Seal… Choir of the Fanged Saint..."
Before he could finish reading, the air behind him shifted.
A voice—familiar, ancient, and bitter—echoed through the dark:
"You should not have returned, Azrael."
He turned slowly.
A figure emerged from the shadows.
Clad in crimson robes, its head hidden behind a silver mask carved with three eyes and fangs, it held a black staff tipped with bone. Its presence distorted the very room.
"Last time, we killed your soul. This time… we devour it."
Azrael's voice was cold as frost.
"Try."
---
What followed could not be seen.
Only felt.
The candlelight above flickered wildly.
And the town above—silent, empty West Garlan—shook.
---
When dawn rose, the fog lifted.
Azrael emerged from the chapel's broken door, his coat now torn slightly at the sleeve. His expression, as ever, was blank.
In his hand, he held the scroll. His other hand still glowed faintly with Death's Silence, slowly fading.
Behind him, the chapel collapsed in on itself.
There would be no second ritual.
---
Back on the train, Azrael sat alone once more.
He opened his black notebook.
> Day 4
West Garlan confirmed as corrupted site.
Fanged Rite active. Third Depth agents present.
Encountered masked Overseer. Strength level: Cardinal Tier.
Result: Erased.
Scroll retrieved.
Further investigation required into Choir of the Fanged Saint.
He closed the book.
The train rolled forward, deeper into the South.
But the shadows moved with him.
And far above, in places where gods whispered to madmen, someone — something — took notice of the name "Azrael" once again.
---
Azrael sat unmoving in the train car, his pale hand resting on the worn edge of the scroll, its red sinew bindings still warm with residual power. The sun had begun to rise, casting pale rays through the fogged glass. Yet the world outside remained gray, colorless. As if something had been taken from it.
He stared at his reflection faintly visible in the window.
Not quite human.
Not quite divine.
Just… caught in-between.
That's what the masked Overseer had seen. That's what they all sensed — something was wrong with him. Azrael was not merely a practitioner of the Reaper's Path. He was the echo of it.
A death given form.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, he could still hear the voice of the priest below the chapel. Not the words, but the tone. Reverence… and fear.
"You wear mortal flesh again. Have you come to seal the gate once more?"
He hadn't spoken the truth.
The gate beneath West Garlan had never fully opened. The Fanged Rite had only begun the summoning. And yet, that priest had recognized Azrael—not as an initiate, but as a returning force.
He had sealed such gates before.
In his first life.
Before he died.
Before the Reaper called him.
---
The train screeched to a halt. Not at a station. Just… in the middle of nowhere.
Azrael opened his eyes.
The fog was thicker now. A wall of gray pressing against the windows. And through it, he could see figures.
Not people.
Not animals.
Something else.
They stood motionless in the mist, heads bowed, arms slack at their sides. Dozens. Maybe more. He couldn't make out faces—just silhouettes.
And yet…
Each one had a small red mark glowing faintly on their chests.
> A fang.
Azrael stood, adjusting his coat. He placed the scroll back into its case and stepped off the train.
The conductor said nothing. The passengers didn't move. No one reacted.
As if the world itself paused to let him go.
---
He stepped onto the damp earth, fog coiling around his boots like living smoke.
The figures didn't move.
But they were watching.
Somewhere nearby, a bell tolled once.
Dong.
Then silence.
Then again.
Dong.
He understood.
It was a summoning.
They hadn't come for the town. They had come for him.
---
He moved forward.
The air grew heavier. Each step felt like it echoed in a dream. A dream not his own, but borrowed. Ancient.
He passed the first figure. A woman in a torn veil, her eyes sewn shut. She didn't move.
He passed another. A child, holding a broken doll.
Then another. And another.
None of them breathed. None of them blinked.
Azrael reached the center of the fog.
There, on a stone platform that hadn't been there before, stood a statue.
Massive. Half-buried. Its face was featureless. Its arms outstretched. And in its mouth—rows of fangs, carved into granite.
It was singing, without voice.
And in that voiceless hymn, Azrael heard it.
"The Choir has noticed you."
"You walk the Reaper's Path, but you do not belong to Death alone."
"You are trespassing."
He stepped forward.
"I walk where I please."
The wind rose. The fog screamed.
The Choir was not a single entity.
It was a consciousness, a congregation of dead gods and unborn demons—singing in unison, their tones weaved through death and dream.
The statue's mouth cracked, and a pale light emerged.
"Then hear our hymn."
---
Azrael raised his hand.
The scroll he'd taken unfurled in the air, and the rune at its center burned white.
> Invocation: Grave Seal — Forbidden Order
A sigil bloomed beneath his feet. A circle formed from countless names — most scratched out, others too terrible to speak.
The fog shrieked.
The figures turned.
One by one, they began to march toward him, not running, not lunging—marching, like soldiers to a sacred execution.
Azrael waited until they stepped within the circle.
Then whispered:
"Rest."
The circle pulsed outward in silence—no flash, no sound. Just absence.
The figures disintegrated.
Peacefully.
As if they had merely been waiting for someone to set them free.
The statue cracked.
The light in its mouth dimmed.
And the song stopped.
Azrael stood alone again.
The fog retreated like a wounded beast.
In its wake, only the faintest whisper remained, echoing across the dying grass.
"Azrael…"
"You will not walk unnoticed much longer…"
---
Back on the train, the conductor returned to his seat as if nothing had happened.
The engine roared back to life.
Azrael sat down once more.
And behind him, in the darkened car, a small child now sat quietly where no one had been before.
A girl. Pale. Hair the color of snow. Eyes hollow and red.
She turned toward him slowly and spoke in a voice that was not hers:
"The next seal lies in Thornegrave."
"There, even the dead are afraid to rest."
Azrael didn't reply.
The girl blinked—and when she did, she was gone.
Just a seat. Empty. Dusty.
He opened his notebook.
> Day 4 – Continued
Entity contact: Collective Consciousness – "Choir of the Fanged Saint."
West Garlan incident fully resolved.
Scroll activated to seal summoned remnants.
Coordinates received: Thornegrave.
High probability of deeper cult presence.
Reaper's Path recognition by external forces confirmed.
He closed the book.
Leaning back into the seat, he let the rhythm of the train take him. A new chapter was beginning.
But his face remained expressionless.
Because Azrael knew…
The deeper he walked into the dark, the more the past would follow.
And one day, it would speak his name again
Not as Azrael.
But as the boy who was abandoned.
Elliot.