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The gunshot was thunder in a tomb.
The creature's head jerked — not from impact, but as if startled by an unexpected note in a symphony it had been conducting for centuries. Its mask-face collapsed into an angle my mind refused to process, and for an instant the blur dissolved entirely, showing me a silhouette so complex, so wrong, that every nerve screamed to tear my own eyes out.
I blinked.
It was gone.
The church walls sagged back into shape, though their shadows clung too long to the air. The floor's absence sealed, leaving only the blood and the coin in my hand. Smoke curled in the far aisle where someone — something — had fired.
I tried to lift my head to see, but my body was shutting down in waves. My blood felt colder than the stone beneath me.
The name — its real name — still squirmed at the back of my tongue. I could taste it, metallic and endless. My lips parted. I thought I could force it out, give the world the truth, let them all see…
"…I… spoke…"
The rest came out like shattering glass — a sound not meant for ears, a syllable the air itself resisted. And in the same moment, the shadow in the smoke moved toward me.
I didn't hear the second shot.
I didn't hear my own body fall.
All I heard — as the black poured in and the world shrank to a pinpoint — was its voice, coiling around my last thought:
> "…you are remembered…"
Then there was nothing.
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