Bullets raced across the long, shadow-choked corridor—howling like a funeral bell—before piercing the demon's body. But this was not the end. The spinning slug was stained with Lloyd's own blood, and that blood was like a violent oil, detonating from within the fiend.
Blazing white fire burst out of its twisted form, as though possessed of its own will. Pure flames tore at the creature's foul flesh, charring it to blackened cinders. Even the smallest ember hungrily ignited every drop of blood, swelling into a ravenous inferno.
At the far end of the darkness, Lloyd's voice was a quiet murmur. He raised his shotgun, each squeeze of the trigger erupting into a burst of blinding fire.
"Secret Blood activation: three percent. Stable range confirmed. Mental integrity intact. Argent-Binding Bolt… still functioning."
Cold light flickered within his eyes as he spoke words no ordinary human could comprehend. Step by steady step, he fired and advanced.
Like a grand firework bursting at its peak, the demon wailed beneath its cocoon of blinding white spiritfire—an unquenchable holy blaze sworn to burn every trace of corruption into nothingness.
"Eve! Get back!"
Lloyd's roar echoed against the narrow walls. With every ounce of strength left in her battered body, Eve dragged herself aside. But the demon crashed against the walls like a maddened beast and charged toward Lloyd. Unlike the chamber where Eve had been cornered, this was a straight passage—collision was inevitable.
Yet Lloyd seemed utterly unshaken.
The creature—a grotesque shape wreathed in white flames—collided with the pitch-black silhouette of the hunter. In that single instant of impact, a flash of white split through the darkness. Lloyd dropped into a sliding dash beneath the beast, raising his staff-sword high. Its bloodstained edge blazed like a fragment of the sun itself as it tore open the demon's soft abdomen.
Holy fire erupted without restraint, devouring the monster in a storm of searing brilliance.
Lloyd pushed himself back to his feet. It had been years since he last fought a demon—his body suddenly felt older, heavier. Without sparing the burning creature a glance, he listened as its body collapsed into a pool of blood and ash, until the flames reduced it completely into dust.
"Can you still move?"
He looked toward the wounded girl, genuinely surprised she was still alive. Most who encountered a demon for the first time met the only outcome such terror allowed: death. But Eve was different—she had not been shattered by fear. Instead, she found the will to strike back.
"I… think something's broken."
Her voice trembled as she forced herself upright. With death no longer breathing down her neck, the terror returned like a stabbing cold—sharp enough to reach her soul.
Surviving catastrophe… was far more complicated than embracing death.
"What exactly was that thing?"
Lloyd steadied her, guiding them both deeper into the consuming darkness. She didn't say it outright, but he knew what she meant.
"Forbidden technology of the old era," he replied. "You've seen them—demons run faster than leopards, stronger than any beast. Some even possess intelligence equal to humans… and that's without mentioning their stubborn refusal to die, or the maddening curse they inflict upon the mind."
Sometimes, Lloyd felt irony pressing against his throat—compared to humans, demons were closer to perfection.
"In the early days, we fought them by drowning the world in corpses. A brutal age. Humanity sacrificed the unimaginable just to see dawn again… and this technology is what came of that price."
The Order's hands were as bloody as the demons'. His mentor once told him: Certain sins keep others alive. Those who commit them do not deserve forgiveness—but their cruelty might buy another's sunrise.
Twisted logic… yet Lloyd agreed. He never missed Florence, not truly—but sometimes, he still remembered his eccentric old teacher.
Both of them were losing too much blood. Lloyd could endure; the Order's training had carved him into something no longer entirely human. But Eve… her face was pale, breath shallow. She looked like she might collapse any second.
"…Water. I hear running water…"
Her voice was faint—barely a whisper.
"I know. We're close to the drainage channel. Stay awake, Eve. I don't think you want to drown after surviving a demon."
He patted her cheeks firmly—she was fading fast.
A rusty spiral staircase descended into deeper dark, the air thick with metallic tang and rot… the stench of decaying waste.
They were in the slums. A "drainage channel," people called it—though "filth-choked sewer" was more accurate. Household garbage and factory runoff flowed onward into the Thames. The river had once been a dead one, choked by humanity's neglect; only citywide reforms had slowly begun to restore its clarity.
But down here… no one cared for rules or rivers. The thought of leaping into a cesspool of human waste made Lloyd gag.
The distant shrieks of demons cried through the dark—sometimes near, sometimes far. Countless fiends were swarming the upper crypt, clashing against the soldiers' barricades while the few that wandered here were merely lost strays.
Danger prowled every shadow.
"Almost there," Lloyd whispered. "We'll drift down to the Thames, wash ashore somewhere no one expects. After that… you'll still be a princess of Phoenix. And I'll still be a detective. No one will know we were ever here tonight."
He swung his blade, severing a rusted chain. A sealed gate groaned open—vomiting out the stench of stagnant sludge and turbulent water.
But instead of a narrow flooding pipe, a small dock appeared before them. A wooden skiff bobbed atop murky currents below.
"A blessing in disguise!"
Lloyd's voice brightened.
The undercity was squalid yet wealthy—filth and fortune entwined. Smuggling riches out was harder than hoarding them. He had expected a cramped tunnel where they'd suffocate within minutes… but clearly, Sabo had been far more considerate.
Over the years, he had expanded this crypt into an underground river route—narrow, but large enough for a craft to slip away unseen. One could ferry treasure out to the great Thames itself…
…and once upon that endless current, who could ever predict where they would resurface?
"Time to slip away," Lloyd murmured.
He gently lifted Eve onto the boat. Standing on the wharf, he reached into his coat and drew out a small ledger. He wrapped it tightly with layers of his own clothing before placing it beside her.
"What… is that?"
The girl clutched at her damp garment. The blood she'd lost, and the clammy sea air, made her shiver uncontrollably.
"A bill of accounts belonging to Sabo," Lloyd explained, voice low. "Found it in that room behind the stained glass."
"We didn't gather nearly enough clues tonight… but this changes everything. Every overseer keeps a record like this. When the number of subordinates grows, chaos follows without proper accounting. And a ledger like this can reveal far more than its owner ever intends."
He stepped back to shore and grabbed an oar. At last—this wretched night felt like it was drawing to an end. Despite his bleeding wounds, the detective's spirits were almost unnaturally high.
But then… something shifted in the damp darkness.
A ripple of air—sharp and cold—skated through the space between them, like a razor dragging across invisible strings tied to their hearts. Those strings pulled taut… and then snapped.
Eve's pupils shrank. She had seen something—something horrifying—lurking just beyond Lloyd's shoulder. Her lips parted as she tried to warn him, but her exhausted body refused to obey.
In a single heartbeat, every sensation sharpened.
The rush of the tide.
The faint brush of wind lifting the tiny hairs on their skin.
And—most chilling of all—the clear thud of a third heartbeat beside them.
In the reflection of the girl's widening eyes, Lloyd saw himself… and the shadow behind him.
He made his decision in a fraction of a second. He could have spun and counter-attacked.
Instead—he kicked the boat away.
A blade of steel tore into his chest.
The girl screamed. She clawed at the boat's edge, desperate to go back for him—but the vessel drifted farther and farther into the darkness until she vanished entirely from view.
"So this too was merely fortune? Detective Lloyd Holmes?"
The voice behind him dripped with mockery. Lloyd let out a wry laugh, clutching the sword buried in his chest. That strike should have pierced his heart—but his last-second kick had thrown off the assassin's aim, sparing him from instant death.
"Hardly," he rasped. "A man should rely on vigilance… not the whims of Lady Luck."
"Is that so?"
The intruder's words were followed by the slow withdrawal of the blade. No blood spilled—not a single drop. As if the body named Lloyd had long since bled itself dry.