The mud tasted like copper and rot.
I was face down in a paddy field, the water tepid and stinking of cordite. Above me, the jungle canopy was being shredded by green tracers. Thwip-crack. Thwip-crack.
I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I knew the rhythm of the Curse better than my own heartbeat. A mortar shell whistled—not the incoming scream, but the flat, heavy thud of a short round.
Boom.
A tree to my left vaporised, showering me in splinters. If I had been standing, I'd be pink mist.
"Move, kid! Move!" a sergeant screamed, grabbing my webbing.
I scrambled up, boots sucking in the muck. We ran toward the LZ, the air heavy with humidity and death. My danger sense was a screaming siren, painting a path through the chaos. Duck left. A sniper round snapped past my ear. Jump right. A tripwire snapped harmlessly behind me.
Then I heard it. The rhythmic, angelic thwup-thwup-thwup of rotor blades beating the heavy air into submission.
The Huey banked over the tree line, door gunner lighting up the jungle. As the skids touched the mud, the pilot keyed the external speakers.
Dun-dun-dun-dun…
The driving, electric organ riff of The Spencer Davis Group blasted over the roar of the war.
"Well, my temperature's rising… and my feet are on the floor…"
I grabbed the skid, hauling myself up as the music swelled. I collapsed onto the metal floor, gasping, watching the jungle recede below us. We were clear. We were safe.
I laughed, a hysterical, breathless sound. I was alive. The music was loud. The bass was vibrating through the metal floor, shaking my teeth.
Then, the Curse winked.
A streak of white smoke erupted from the tree line. The door gunner screamed.
CRUMP.
The tail rotor sheared off. The world dissolved into fire, spinning metal, and the scream of a dying engine. I closed my eyes, feeling the familiar, cold embrace of the end. Here we go again, I thought, waiting to see what hell I would incarnate into next.
But the music didn't stop.
"Gimme some lovin'… gimme some lovin'…"
The helicopter slammed into the earth, but the explosion didn't fade. It got louder. Harder. The bass wasn't vibrating the floor anymore. It was vibrating my ribs.
Dun-dun-dun-dun…
I gasped, sitting bolt upright in the dark, clutching my chest.
The fire vanished. The smell of cordite was replaced by the scent of old wood and velvet. But the music was still blasting directly into my parietal lobe with the fidelity of a stadium concert system.
"And so I'm glad we made it… I'm so glad we made it…"
'Turn it down!' I wheezed, grabbing my head as the spectral Steve Winwood belted out the chorus in my brain. 'Ronan! The volume!'
The music faded instantly, replaced by Ronan's voice, which sounded far too chipper for the crack of dawn.
'Good morning, Murphy! Appropriate track, don't you think? Energy levels are spiking!'
'I thought I was back in the paddy,' I groaned, swinging my legs out of bed. My heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, trying to keep pace with the music and the sheer volume of energy flooding my system. I'd forgotten what a rush dying was. It's been too long I tell you.'
'We'll that's not morbid at all,' Ronan added.
'Sorry, you know I'm just joking. What are we working with here? I feel like I'm being jump-started with a car battery while strapped to a rocket right now.' It wasn't pain, exactly, but a deep, resonant thrumming behind my sternum, like I'd swallowed a subwoofer playing a bass note that never ended. The floorboards creaked under my weight as I stood up. I felt heavier. Denser.
'We maxed it out,' Ronan corrected. 'The Night Shift was a total success. Three clones meditating in sync with the Original Body. We generated a quadruple intake stream for eight straight hours.'
He paused, doing the mental calculus.
'Murphy, we gathered roughly two weeks' worth of ambient mana in a single night. The Core isn't just stable; it's pressurised. We're pushing the upper boundary of Light Blue. If we keep this pace up, we'll hit the Solid rank in a day or two, not months.'
I closed my eyes and looked inward. The blue flame in my chest wasn't flickering anymore. It was roaring, a condensed sphere of power that felt thick and viscous. It was intoxicating.
I stood up, grimacing as my shirt peeled away from my back. The downside of high-intensity spiritual cultivation was apparently high-intensity sweating. I felt gross. Sticky, oily, and smelling faintly of ozone and the lingering phantom scent of the sewers.
I walked toward the bathroom, but stopped. With this much power on tap, the old ways felt… inefficient.
I focused on the surface of my skin. With the new density of my Core, the connection to the Inventory felt sharper, more responsive. It wasn't a blunt instrument anymore; it was a scalpel.
'Clean,' I commanded.
I felt a gentle, static-like tingle wash over my body. The sweat, the oil, the grime of the sewers and the sleep—it all vanished instantly, sucked into the void. My skin was dry and smooth. I quickly threw my clothes into the inventory, and seconds later, my clothes were sparkling like a sunrise over Lake Tahoe.
'Okay,' I admitted, flexing my fingers. 'That will never get old.'
'Hygiene's a virtue,' Ronan agreed. 'Now, let's get moving, we've got a market to break.'
'Time to see if the Guild pays out,' I said, unlocking the door and shoving the dresser aside. 'Or if they just arrest us for crashing the economy.'
The Adventurer's Guild Hall was a riot of noise, a chaotic symphony of shouting voices, clinking tankards, and the heavy thud of boots on timber. The air smelled of stale ale, unwashed leather, and wet dog. It was perfect. It was the kind of chaos where a ghost could disappear.
I kept my head down, weaving through the crowd of armoured giants and robed mages. Nobody looked at me. I was just another Wood-Rank nobody in a grey cloak, clutching a wet burlap sack.
'The Moustache,' Murphy noted. 'He might be the safer choice. He looks bureaucratic, processes data, not people.'
I joined the queue for the clerk with the magnificent, waxed moustache. He was currently berating a massive Orc for filling out a form in crayon.
"It says 'Name', not 'Draw a picture of your axe'!" the clerk shouted, stamping a rejection on the parchment. "Next!"
I stepped up to the high wooden counter. The clerk didn't look up. He dipped his quill in ink, his expression one of infinite, soul-crushing boredom.
"Name and Rank," he droned.
"Jack O'Neill. Wood Rank."
He sighed, a long, rattling sound. "Wood Rank dues are payable in copper or trade goods. If you have rat tails, put them in the bucket to your left. If you have goblin ears, the bucket to the right."
"No tails," I said.
I lifted the small sack and dropped it onto the ledger.
THUD.
The sound was poetic, perfect, like when a slab of meat hits a butcher's block.
The clerk paused. He looked at the sack, then slowly up at me. One eyebrow twitched.
"We don't buy laundry, boy."
"It's not laundry," I said.
I reached for the bottom of the sack and upended it.
Five perfectly spherical, translucent spheres rolled across the wooden counter. They glowed with a soft, pulsating green light, clicking against each other like glass marbles.
The noise in the immediate vicinity died. The adventurer behind me stopped chewing his bread. The clerk froze, his quill hovering inches above the paper.
He stared at the spheres. He reached out a trembling finger and poked one. It was solid. Cool to the touch.
"Slime Cores," he whispered. He looked up, his boredom evaporating, replaced by a sharp, suspicious gleam. "These are… pristine."
"Yup," I said, leaning against the counter and trying to look bored. "Five of 'em."
"Impossible," the clerk muttered, picking one up and holding it to the light. "Slime acid dissolves the core the moment the membrane ruptures. Even Silver-Rank parties bring us pitted, half-melted slag. These are… they are perfect. You would have to be a purple core to be able to harvest these fast enough…"
He narrowed his eyes at me. "How?"
My Danger Sense gave a little ping. Not a threat to my life, but a threat to my cover. The spotlight was on me.
'The cover story, Murphy,' Ronan coached smoothly in my head. 'Keep it simple. Arrogance masks the lie.'
I shrugged. "Family trade secret."
The clerk didn't blink. "This is a Guild, son. We need to verify the method to ensure the goods aren't stolen. Did you use cryo-magic? Time-stasis?"
"Salts and Bicarb," I lied, repeating Ronan's script. "Alchemical preservation salts. My grandfather's recipe. You dust the slime right before the kill stroke. Neutralises the acid reaction instantly."
The clerk stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. He was weighing the lie. I thought it sounded plausible — surely alchemy was full of weird powders—but it was also unverifiable.
'He's biting,' Ronan noted. 'He doesn't care about the truth. He cares about the profit.'
"Salts," the clerk repeated slowly.
"And Bicarb", I added.
"Yeah…" He looked back at the pile of glowing cores. Pristine cores were rare. They were used for high-end enchanting because they offered perfect, fluid mana flow. The Guild could sell these to the Artificers at a massive markup.
Greed won.
"Very well," the clerk said, reaching for his scales. "The Guild doesn't pay for the recipe, only the result. Standard rate for a damaged Slime Core is five silvers. For pristine… the book rate is two Gold Crowns per unit."
He weighed them. He counted them. He scribbled furiously in his ledger.
"Ten Gold Crowns," he announced, his voice loud enough to turn heads.
He opened a heavy drawer and counted out the coins—heavy, shining gold pieces stamped with the Emperor's profile. He slid the stack across the counter.
"And," he added, reaching for his stamp. He slammed it down on my intake form with a violent THUMP. "That puts you well over the threshold for merit points. Rank Upgrade: Iron pending review. Keep bringing us hauls like this, and you won't be Wood Rank for long."
I scooped the gold into my pouch, feeling the gazes of a dozen hungry mercenaries burning into my back.
'Janitors, huh?' I thought of Ronan as I turned to leave. 'I think we just got promoted to executive sanitation engineers.'
'Walk fast, Murphy,' Ronan advised. 'Wealth has a smell, and the wolves are sniffing.'
The weight of Ten Gold Crowns on my hip was a sensation I hadn't felt in a dozen lifetimes. It wasn't just currency; it was gravity. It pulled my shoulders back, straightened my spine, and made the city of Lastlight look less like a prison and more like a catalogue.
'First stop,' I projected, stepping out into the bustling street. 'We lose the rags. We lose the scrap metal. We get real steel.'
'Irondeep Armaments?' Ronan suggested. 'The dwarf had an eye for quality, even if he sold us junk.'
'Irondeep,' I agreed. 'Let's see how he treats a paying customer.'
We walked back to Forge Street. The heat hit us first, smelling of coal dust and quenching oil. When we pushed open the heavy door of Irondeep Armaments, the same stout dwarf was behind the counter, polishing a helmet.
He looked up, eyeing my grey cloak. "Back for more scrap, lad? I've got a bucket of bent nails out back if you—"
I cut him off by dropping the heavy purse onto the counter. It landed with the distinct, heavy thud of gold on wood.
The dwarf stopped polishing. He looked at the purse, then up at me, his bushy eyebrows climbing toward his hairline.
"I'm done with scrap," I said, leaning on the counter. "I want the good stuff. And I'm paying list price."
A slow, greedy grin spread through the dwarf's beard. "Well then. Welcome to the showroom, sir. What's your poison?"
'Blades first,' Ronan commanded. 'Check the left wall.'
I walked over to the rack of high-end steel. These weren't the notched, rusted bars I'd been swinging. These were works of art.
'Those,' I said, my eyes landing on a pair of short swords. They were wicked things—leaf-shaped blades with a dark, matte finish and leather-wrapped hilts.
I picked one up. It was light, lethal, and perfectly balanced for a chaotic, close-quarters scramble.
'Short swords,' Ronan mused, his tone judging. 'Limited reach. Zero percussive force against plate armour. They're assassins' tools, Murphy.'
'Exactly,' I thought back, slashing the air. 'I'm not trying to fence with these guys, Ronan. I'm trying to shank them while they're looking at you.'
I turned to the larger weapons. 'Your turn. Pick a dance partner.'
My hand drifted toward a massive greatsword, but Ronan stopped me. 'No. Too slow. The clone relies on fluidity. There. The hand-and-a-half sword. The Bastard blade.'
I pulled it from the rack. It was a magnificent piece of steel—long enough to keep an enemy at bay, heavy enough to cleave through bone, but light enough to wield with one hand if necessary. The crossguard was simple steel, unadorned but sturdy.
'A soldier's weapon,' Ronan said with satisfaction. 'Offers leverage. Reach. Control. Take it.'
"I'll take the pair of short swords and the bastard blade," I told the dwarf. "And scabbards for all three."
"Excellent choices," the dwarf rumbled. "Now, for the shell. I have a suit of dwarven chainmail in the back that would turn a drake's tooth. Heavy, but—"
'Chainmail,' Ronan agreed instantly. 'We need protection. If the clone takes a hit, we lose the investment. We need layers.'
'No,' I said aloud, cutting off both the dwarf and the Paladin.
'Murphy?'
'Think about the mechanics, Ronan,' I argued, moving toward the leather racks. 'The clone is a mana construct. It doesn't have hit points. It has a structural integrity threshold. If a goblin stabs it with a rusted shiv, it pops. If an ogre hits it with a club, it pops. It's binary. Alive or dead.'
I ran my hand over a suit of hardened, blackened leather armour. It was reinforced with steel studs but still flexible.
'Chainmail slows us down,' I continued. 'It drains stamina. If I get hit, I'm dead anyway. The only defence that matters for an Echo is not getting hit. I need speed, not steel.'
Ronan was silent for a moment, running the tactical simulation. 'You're prioritising evasion over mitigation. It's high risk. Without plate, a single grazing arrow dispels the construct.'
'We are high risk,' I countered. 'Speed kills. Armour just prolongs the inevitable.'
I turned to the dwarf. "Lightened leather. Hardened. Studded."
The dwarf shrugged. "Suit yourself. Speed is life, I suppose."
As the dwarf went to fetch the leathers, I felt a sullen pressure in the back of my mind. Ronan was sulking. He hated feeling exposed.
'Fine,' I sighed internally. 'We compromise.'
I walked over to a display of shields. 'If you can't tank the hit with your chest, block it with your arm. Pick one.'
The sullen pressure evaporated instantly. Ronan's attention snapped to the wall.
'That one,' he commanded. 'The Heater Shield. Reinforced oak, steel rim. Offers excellent coverage for a swordsman without the clumsiness of a tower shield.'
I pulled it down. It was painted a matte grey, simple and unadorned, but it felt solid enough to stop a troll's fist.
'Happy?' I asked.
'It works,' Ronan allowed. 'A shield is the wall between order and chaos. With this, I can hold a line.'
"Add the shield to the pile," I told the dwarf as he returned.
We walked out of the shop lighter in gold but heavier in steel. I felt like a new man. Or at least, a significantly more dangerous one.
'One last stop,' I said, heading toward the Alchemist's Quarter.
'Potions?' Ronan asked hopefully. 'Healing draughts? Mana restoratives?'
'Better,' I said.
Ten minutes later, we were standing at the counter of a cramped shop that smelled of sulphur and bad decisions. I pointed at the shelves behind the greying shopkeep.
"I want six thunder-stones," I told him. "Three bags of iron caltrops. Two flasks of that Alchemist's Fire oil—the sticky kind. And... do you sell bags of flour?"
'Flour?' Ronan asked, baffled. 'Are we baking?'
'It's poor man's blinding dust,' I explained. 'Throw a handful in a guy's face, he can't see. Throw it near a torch, and woosh, instant fireball.'
The shopkeeper piled the items on the counter. Funny enough, he did actually have some flour. I was about to pay when my eyes landed on a dusty display on the back wall. Hanging there were two painted wooden masks—grotesque, snarling demon faces with curved tusks and exaggerated, angry eyes.
"And those," I said, pointing. "Both of them."
'Masks?' Ronan scoffed. 'We aren't bandits, Murphy. A knight doesn't hide his face.'
'A knight doesn't have a magic twin,' I countered mentally. 'Think about it. If someone sees our clones together—two people with the exact same face, moving in perfect sync—they won't think "twins." They'll think "Clone Magic."'
I picked up one of the masks, running my thumb over the painted red wood. It was an Oni style, fierce and terrifying.
'And if the Guild—or worse, the city guard—gets a look at our faces while we're doing something "unorthodox" with the Art? We're burned. We need a layer of separation. When our clones are together, we are the Devils. When we are alone in the street, we are just Murphy.'
Ronan was silent for a moment. The logic was sound, even if it tasted bitter to his noble sensibilities.
'Anonymity is a shield,' he conceded finally. 'Fine. But they're hideous.'
'They're scary,' I corrected. 'And scary keeps people away.'
I paid the alchemist and loaded the "Dirty Tricks" kit and the masks into my pouch.
'This is a coward's kit,' Ronan grumbled as we walked back onto the street. 'Caltrops? Throwing dust? Masks? Ronan Sunstrider didn't fight with pocket sand and disguises.'
'Ronan Sunstrider got killed,' I reminded him gently. 'Murphy survives. We don't fight fair, Ronan. We fight to win. And if "winning" means greasing the floor so the bad guy falls down and breaks his neck while staring at a demon face? Then I'm buying all the grease in the city.'
I patted the pouch.
'Besides,' I added, 'wait until you see what I can do with the smoke bombs.'
The next three days were a blur of damp stone, green slime, and the smell of ozone. We stopped being scavengers and became a machine.
The cycle was brutal but effective. The Day Shift: Ronan and I would create clones for a four-hour burn. We wore the blackened leather and the white-and-red Oni masks, moving through the tunnels like nightmares. We didn't speak. We didn't need to. We had a rhythm.
Ronan would take point, his heater shield raised, the bastard blade resting easily on his shoulder. He was the anvil. I was the hammer.
We cleared the upper tunnels in a day. By the second day, we pushed past the warning signs into the Old Aqueducts. Other adventurers—mostly Wood and Iron ranks who huddled in groups of four for safety—started giving us a wide berth. They didn't see two guys farming slimes; they saw two identical, demon-masked figures moving in perfect, silent synchronisation, dismantling monsters with terrifying efficiency.
They called us "The Devils." I liked it. It kept people away.
By the third afternoon, we were cocky. 'One more room,' the Ronan-Clone signalled, pointing his sword down a dark, vaulted corridor that smelled of stagnant water and ancient dust. 'The map says this leads to a central cistern. High spawn density.'
'Let's clear it and cash out,' I agreed, checking the internal timer. 'We have forty minutes of fuel left.'
We moved into the darkness, the confidence of the "Echo Engine" making us careless. We thought we were the apex predators down here.
We were wrong.
The transition was instant.
One moment, the tunnel was filled with the usual ambient noise of the under-city—the chittering of rats, the distant rush of water, the wet squelch of slime.
Then, we stepped through the archway into the cistern, and the world went mute.
It wasn't just quiet; it was a vacuum. The air felt heavy, pressing against my eardrums. My Danger Sense didn't spike—it didn't give me the sharp zap of an incoming arrow or the thrum of a trap. Instead, it went completely, terrifyingly cold. It felt like the temperature in the room had dropped to absolute zero. I didn't really care since I was only a clone after all. What's the worst that could happen.
'Hold,' Ronan's voice cracked, sharp with sudden alarm.
We froze.
The cistern was massive, a cathedral of engineering from an age when they built sewers like temples. In the centre of the room, surrounded by a moat of black, still water, was a raised stone platform.
Standing on that platform was a single figure.
He wore pristine, white robes that seemed to repel the grime of the sewer. He held a simple lantern, but the flame inside wasn't fire; it was a cold, golden light that cast no shadows. He stood with his back to us, looking down into the black water.
'Fuck, an Inquisitor,' Ronan projected, the thought hitting me like a physical blow. 'High-Grade. Look at the lantern. That is a Soul-Cage.'
My stomach dropped. The Inquisition. The secret police of the Faith. The people who burned heretics and "Unbound" the impure.
'We leave,' I thought instantly. 'Now. Before he turns around.'
'Agreed,' Ronan replied. 'Slowly. Do not trigger a predatory response.'
We took a single step back.
The figure turned.
He didn't spin or snap to attention. He moved with a fluid, terrifying grace, as if friction didn't apply to him. He looked at us across the dark water.
He was beautiful. That was the worst part. He didn't look like an executioner; he looked like an angel who had just received terrible news. His eyes were red-rimmed, brimming with unshed tears.
He raised the lantern. The golden light washed over us.
The light didn't illuminate our bodies; it felt like it was shining through our skin.
The Inquisitor—Pontiff Mortimer Valentine—tilted his head. He looked at the Ronan-Clone first. His expression was one of mild curiosity, like a man finding an interesting coin in the mud.
"What, are you?" he whispered, his voice carrying across the water without echoing.
Then, his gaze slid to me.
The moment his eyes locked onto the Murphy-Clone, his expression shattered. The curiosity vanished, replaced by a look of profound, agonising pity. He took a step forward, his hand reaching out as if he wanted to comfort a dying child.
Tears were rolling down his cheeks, "Oh," he breathed. "Oh, you poor, twisted thing."
'What is he talking about?' I panicked.
'Dispel!' Ronan ordered, his mental voice shouting. 'Murphy, get out now!'
The Ronan-Clone dissolved instantly. POP. The water splashed to the floor, the mana rushing back to our bodies in the Inn.
I tried to follow suit. I reached for the mental switch to cut the power.
"No," the Inquisitor whispered.
He didn't shout. He didn't cast a fireball. He just made a gentle, shushing motion with his free hand.
Twang.
Golden threads of light erupted from the stone floor around my feet. They didn't grab me violently; they wrapped around my ankles and wrists with a gentle, numbing pressure. I tried to move. I couldn't. I tried to dispel. I couldn't. The golden light was insulating my connection to the Original Body, jamming the signal.
The Inquisitor walked across the water. He didn't use a bridge; the surface tension just held him up. He stopped inches from me. I stared at him through the eye-slits of my Oni mask, my heart hammering against ribs that weren't real.
He looked at the demon mask. He didn't see the wood or the paint. He saw what was underneath.
"I see you," he murmured, tears finally spilling over his cheeks. "I see what you are. You aren't a demon, little one. You are a wound."
He reached out and traced the line of the mask's tusk.
"Pure Ego," he diagnosed, his voice trembling with sorrow. "A consciousness built entirely of scar tissue. You are fear-given form. You are the desperate, clawing need to survive, calcified into a soul."
He looked me in the eye, and for a second, I felt naked. He didn't see Murphy the Adventurer. He saw the thousands of deaths. He saw the boy in the womb, terrified to be born.
"The Ego is the source of all pain," Vane said softly. "It is the wall that separates us from the light. And you… You are nothing but a wall."
He leaned in, his voice a seductive hum.
"Don't you want to rest? Don't you want to stop running? I can unbind you. I can take the fear away. I can let you dissolve into the Great Silence, where you will never be alone again."
The golden light intensified. It felt… warm. It felt like sleep. For a horrifying second, a part of me—the part that was tired of running for a thousand years—wanted to say yes.
I snapped back. I glared at the weeping saint through my mask.
"I like my walls," I gritted out, my voice rough. "They keep the creeps out."
Vane sighed. It was the sound of a parent resigning themselves to a difficult surgery.
"I know," he said tenderly. "It is the nature of the ego to protect itself."
Vane didn't strike. He didn't summon fire or lightning. He simply closed his hand into a loose fist.
The golden threads wrapped around my ankles and wrists didn't tighten like ropes; they constricted like a python.
Crk.
I felt the blackened leather of my armour buckle. The clone's structural integrity—the mana holding the water in the shape of a man—began to groan under the pressure.
'He's crushing me,' I realised, panic flaring hot and bright. Vane wanted me to feel this. He wanted me to feel the "Unbinding."
"Shhh," Vane whispered, stepping closer as the pressure mounted. "Do not struggle against the cure. The tension you feel? That is your Ego resisting the inevitable. Let go."
He reached out and placed a hand on the forehead of my Oni mask.
"Let go," he commanded.
He squeezed his fist tight.
The pressure went from unbearable to absolute in a millisecond.
There was no blood. There was no crunch of bone. There was simply a failure of physics. The mana shell couldn't withstand the crushing force of the Inquisitor's will.
BOOM.
The Murphy-Clone didn't die; it detonated. The pressurised steam and water that made up its mass exploded outward with the force of a ruptured hydrant.
I sat up on the bed with a violent, gasping scream, clutching my chest.
"Murphy!" Ronan's voice—my voice—rang out in the room.
I scrambled backwards, hitting the headboard, hyperventilating. The sensation of being crushed, of being squeezed into nothingness, lingered on my skin like a phantom bruise.
"I'm here," I wheezed, checking my hands. They were shaking.
'Focus, what happened?' Ronan ordered sharply.
I grabbed the water jug from the bedside table and downed it in one go, trying to wash the taste of golden light out of my mouth.
'That wasn't a fight,' I whispered, my voice trembling. 'That was an execution. He didn't even use a spell, Ronan. He just… squeezed.'
'We underestimated the threat level. That was not a mage. That was a force of nature.'
'He saw me,' I said, the memory of those weeping eyes burning into my brain. 'He saw exactly who I was.'
'He saw a clone wearing a mask,' Ronan corrected. 'Now we have to hope that is all he saw.'
Pontiff Mortimer Valentine stood in the centre of the cistern, drenched.
The explosion of the clone had soaked him from head to toe. His pristine white robes clung to his frame, heavy with sewer water. Droplets ran down his face, mixing with the tears that were already there.
He didn't wipe them away. He didn't look angry. He looked… confused.
He looked down at his hand—the hand that had crushed the "Demon." It wasn't covered in black ichor or blood. It was just wet.
He raised his hand to his face and sniffed.
"River water," he whispered. "And… Aether."
He looked at the floor. Lying in the puddle of muddy water was the white-and-red Oni mask, spinning slowly on its rim. It was empty. There was nobody. No corpse. Just water and the fading, hollow hum of dissipated magic.
Vane slowly knelt in the filth. He picked up the mask.
"Not a demon," he realised, his voice hollow. "A construct. A copy."
He closed his eyes, expanding his senses. He replayed the sensation of the crush. He felt the specific texture of the soul he had touched. It hadn't been a living being; it had been a fabrication. An Echo.
"A Soul Echo," Vane murmured. "Someone has rediscovered the Art of Duplication."
He stood up, the water dripping from his robes. The sadness in his eyes darkened into a profound, terrifying worry.
He didn't see a weapon to be used. He saw a plague.
He remembered the mind he had touched inside the shell—that screaming, desperate knot of scar tissue. It was a consciousness made entirely of Ego. It was the selfish refusal to let go, the violent need to survive at the cost of all else, distilled into a pure form.
And it could replicate.
"If this spreads…" Vane whispered to the darkness, horror dawning on his beatific face. "If this affliction is contagious… if a soul like that can print copies of itself…"
He saw a nightmare vision: A world not of Unity and Silence, but of infinite, screaming Egos. A world where the Self didn't dissolve, but multiplied. It was the cancer he had spent his life trying to cut out of humanity, now weaponised and walking on two legs.
"He is a carrier," Vane decided, his voice trembling with resolve. "He is Patient Zero. And he is loose in my city."
Shadows detached themselves from the walls of the cistern. Four Silencers—elite assassins of the Inquisition with sewn-shut mouths—materialised around him, awaiting orders.
Vane crushed the wooden Oni mask in his hand, splintering it into dust. He needed to find the source. He needed to find the caster. And the only way to track a ghost was by the footprint it left behind.
"Seal the gates," Vane ordered, his voice soft and absolute. "Lock down the Guild. Scan every soul in Lastlight. Bring me anyone with the ability to duplicate themselves. We must find this creature… and we must Unbind him before he infects us all."