They say the Graces of Heaven are found in silence.
But there's no grace here.
Just absence. Of birdsong. Of warmth. Of God.
Every tree towers like it's watching. Hunting.
Every shadow feels hungrier than the last.
Still, Henrietta marches forward—focused, unreadable.
I tell myself I'm ready. That I'm made for this.
Then something breaks through the trees.
It erupts from the treeline in a flicker I almost miss—like a film reel ripped mid-frame, the world catching up a heartbeat too late.
One moment it's hidden in shadow.
Next, it's teeth.
The space between those two moments is thinner than breath. Thinner than thought.
I don't think.
I don't blink.
I move.
My body knows something I haven't caught up to yet: that it's aiming for Henrietta—and that I'm faster.
Faster than fear. Faster than the thing.
My kick catches it mid-air—a blur of limbs and bone colliding with the heel of my boot.
It slams against a tree. Bark cracks. Flesh should've followed—but the cracks in its body close first.
It twitches. Wrong.
Wrong in ways the mind tries not to name.
Not a beast. Not anymore.
A deer's skull split wide by lupine jaws.
Ribcage branching like roots.
Limbs crawling across themselves, too many to count.
Its form doesn't hold shape so much as beg forgiveness for losing it.
Bones skitter back into place like mice returning to the nest.
Skin—if it still counts as skin—ripples as the seams vanish beneath it.
It doesn't rise.
It reassembles.
I raise my hand.
My sleeve unfurls a silver nail-sword—its hilt brushing my palm like an old, familiar sin.
My Unholy Nail.
An experimental, sacrilegious false Dogma.
I don't aim to wound.
I aim to define.
This isn't a weapon. It's a sentence.
Once struck, the flesh no longer belongs to itself—or to nature. Or to God.
The wound becomes law.
No healing. No mercy. No return.
With a flick of my wrist, I hurl it.
The nail strikes.
Burrows into the creature's body like a reversed sacrament.
It sizzles in corrupted muscle.
The thing screams.
But something worse happens.
From the wound, scripture blooms across its hide.
Latin verses spiral like thorns. Holy at first glance—then warped.
Dominus pascit me, et in aeternum esuriam.
The Lord is my shepherd…and I shall hunger forever.
The creature spasms. But it doesn't die like things die.
It is forgotten by the world.
Flesh doesn't mend.
Bones don't return.
The air recoils.
No flame. No thunderclap.
Just a quiet wrongness.
Like watching a mirror breathe.
By the time Henrietta draws her gun, it's over.
She lowers it without a word. Then—
"…Efficient."
Not praise.
Not really.
But it lands anyway—like a hand on the shoulder I've been waiting for.
I grin.
"See? And the Vatican wants me to execute some magic thief who got booted out of Berlin. I could be hunting something more high profile like a demonic beast or a mágos who isn't kicking it in the American woodlands making…whatever that thing is."
I yank the Unholy Nail from its chest with a sickening tug.
Henrietta turns and keeps walking.
"This is only the beginning. The town isn't far."
She's right.
This is the beginning.
The beginning of earning what I've been denied for too long.
I follow and I don't look back. I don't need to.
The forest saw what I did.
✥ ✥ ✥
The town's breath tastes like iron miracles, every wheeze packed with rot.
The buildings spill like dreams God refused to keep.
Henrietta stops. Opens the duffle.
Then pulls out a thurible.
Its golden skin gnaws the edges of the night.
"I don't think any amount of prayer's gonna save this place."
"I'm not praying. I'm tracking."
She doesn't lift the lid.
She parts the air—like stained glass cracking under a prayer.
Inside is incense of crystallized hymns, perfuming the void in blushes of scarlet sanctuary.
The silence strains to sing, but chokes.
Henrietta whispers in a language older than scripture.
The echoes taste the air with tongues of ember.
The incense ignites.
It's an act that welds the holy to the profane.
Is this what it means to be a magician of the Church?
She seals the thurible again, crimson clouds unfurling from its openings.
They bend—unnaturally, in the absence of wind—toward one direction.
She grips the chain and begins to walk.
I shadow her.
"Mágoi exploit the unnatural," she says. "They defile the laws of man and God. They create profane miracles by twisting abnormalities into power. To do so, they need life energy—refined into magical energy for their experiments. Velladine tapped the earth's numina. That energy's trickling into his workshop. The incense follows it."
"So we follow the smoke, find the mágos, and kill him. Got it."
Henrietta's eyes don't move.
But her voice cuts like frost.
"Do you even know how to kill a mágos, Noelia?"
What kind of question is that?
"Yeah. I stab them with one of my Unholy Nails. Easy."
She stops.
The silence holds its breath.
She turns.
Her eyes pierce the winter like needles—sharp enough to sew my mouth shut.
"A mágos isn't just a human. They bend space. Life. Even understanding itself. Some heal faster than wounds form. Poison means nothing. Bones rebind. Cuts vanish. Even your false Dogma isn't a guarantee.
"Killing a mágos is like trying to trap a shadow. You can't rely on strength or speed. You have to know them. Understand them. Knowledge is your best weapon against their mageía."
Her lecture stings like needles, sewing my mouth shut with threads of heat and silence.
She talks like I'm some kid who failed a test she didn't study for.
Like she's disappointed.
Like I'm supposed to know better.
I hate that she gets to sound like that.
"I'm not an idiot! You don't get to talk down to me just becau—"
A voice scrapes across the air.
A voice slick with red-rot molts the air with a splintering laughter.
"Anger! I can taste the copper peeling from your thoughts—bitter as the moon's teeth! Intruders. Intruders! My Magic Seal whispered of you…"
My eyes scan wildly.
The voice is everywhere.
Nowhere.
I don't speak.
If I do, the voice might unravel my breath and reveal my racing heart.
Henrietta draws a Beretta.
The gun rests in her hand as if greeting an old friend.
"The Church. Here. In my testing grounds. Violation? No. A test! I will perfect my mageía. The Noble Society will savor my truth! Götterdämmerung Castle will house my flaking soul once more. They'll love me again. And you—you want to cleanse my precious, spoiled moonlight. I won't allow it!"
The town stirs.
Shrieks arrive before their source.
Buildings cough up creatures of rotted flesh—sins unthreaded from blistering shadows.
Things that mock the human form emerge.
Their teeth ooze scarlet.
Their bones are too long, too sharp.
Blood-white moonlight cries at the taste of their bloated flesh and skin sobs around every motion.
Henrietta's disappointment still chews at me.
A fire stirs in my gut.
I want to freeze.
But the inferno won't let me.
My sleeves unleash my Unholy Nails.
Each one a sentence waiting for flesh.
Henrietta doesn't waste time.
She holsters her incense and draws her second gun.
"Kill them."
Good. I need something to tear open.