Under the flickering stained glass, sins become soldiers and confessions turn into chains.
The Siege Begins
The corrupted cathedral loomed over them like a monolith of guilt, its stained glass pulsing like veins filled with molten remorse. From its fractured spires, echoed chants that blurred into mechanical static — part prayer, part data-stream.
Asher Blackwood, Rosa Veyna, and Lucien Graves stood at the gates. Behind them, Nocturne choked on its own secrets — and ahead, the Church of Confession pulsed like a living organism.
With each step onto the cathedral's threshold, the ground beneath them rippled like liquid mercury. Their reflections twisted beneath their feet, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes grinning back at them with wrong eyes.
Then the doors burst open.
From within the cathedral poured cultists, no longer merely masked — but fused. Their masks had melted into flesh, merging with bone, distorting features into grotesque smiles and elongated expressions of ecstasy and agony.
Their chants weren't words anymore. They were commands, coded pulses in the psychic atmosphere, and each syllable bent the air.
Lucien's coat flared as he drew his sidearm, sleek and silver.
"Never thought I'd raid a church again," he said with a devil-may-care grin, pulling the trigger."But here we are."
The first three cultists dropped as their masks exploded like shrapnel in reverse — imploding into their skulls.
Rosa leapt forward, chain wrapped around her wrist — stolen from a rusted confession booth earlier in the Carnival. With a howl, she spun it wide and brought it crashing through a line of cultists. Their forms shattered like porcelain, pieces twitching even after hitting the ground.
"I'm making up for every Sunday I skipped!" she snarled, looping the chain around another masked zealot's throat and yanking hard.
Asher moved methodically, eyes glowing faintly with Noir's interface. His weapon — enhanced with the AI's cognition-filter tech — pulsed with a blue-white light.
A cultist surged at him, mid-transformation. Asher didn't hesitate.
Boom.A single shot pierced its mutating skull. The body seized, spasmed — then dissolved into smoke.
"No mercy," he muttered under his breath. "They're too far gone."
The trio pushed forward, deeper into the heart of the cathedral. The real battle hadn't even begun.
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Hall of Stained Glass Trials
They burst through the sanctuary doors — and stopped.
The cathedral's vast nave had been transformed into something unholy. Rows of pews had vanished. In their place, the walls stretched up with enormous stained glass murals — each panel alive.
Each window displayed looping, animated visions of sins — not generic ones, but personal.
Asher saw himself standing in a burning building, unable to move. Flames licking up walls. A hand reaching out from a collapsing floor. His own.
Rosa stared at a depiction of her younger self — a betrayal played out in twisted mosaic. A bloodied alley. Someone she'd left behind. Someone who never walked again.
Lucien… looked up and found nothing.
His stained glass window was blank. No animation. No reflection. Just empty obsidian.
"This place isn't sacred," Asher growled. "It's a weapon."
The light from the windows suddenly condensed — like it heard him. The glass shattered outward, shards swirling into the air, spinning like razors.
Then, the pieces reassembled.
From the floor rose Glass Sentinels — hulking knight-like figures, bodies made from broken guilt. Their joints creaked like crying voices. Their heads were made of jagged mask-fragments, constantly shifting into faces mid-scream.
"Here we go," Rosa muttered, wrapping her chain tighter.
The battle erupted in chaos.
Rosa fought low and brutal — wrapping the chain around a sentinel's arm and using it to pivot onto its shoulders. She brought it down hard, cracking its core with her knee, then yanked its helmet free — revealing nothing inside but light and whispering shadows.
Lucien backed against a pillar and took careful aim. His bullets were surgical — firing at the faint glow inside each sentinel's chest.
Crack.Shatter.Each shot took out a central shard, dropping another monster.
Asher switched to close-range, channeling Noir's energy into the barrel of his revolver. Each shot wasn't just physical — it carried rejection. He hit a sentinel dead center, and its entire form convulsed before vaporizing into flickers of fading memory.
But then — a new presence entered the room.
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Asher's Inner Confrontation
From the rafters above drifted a floating mirror-mask — unlike the others. Smooth. Reflective. And it spoke.
"Detective Asher Blackwood," it intoned in his own voice."Guilt: immeasurable. Sin: denial. Confess… or be unmade."
Asher took a step back involuntarily. A pulse hit his mind.
Suddenly — visions.Not memories. Condemnations.
He saw the woman again — clearer now. Crying. Reaching for him as fire rose behind her. His younger self turned away, unable to watch.
You let her die.
Another flash. The masked version of himself — laughing, smoking a cigarette, standing over a grave.
You pretend to forget. But you choose to.
"Asher," Noir's voice buzzed in his neural link, sharp and precise."Emotional override detected. Suggest full rejection of external stimuli."
His knees buckled.
But he forced himself upright.
"I confess…" he growled."I refuse to confess to you."
And he raised his revolver, aiming point-blank.
BLAM.
The mirror-mask exploded in a splash of liquid memory, the fragments absorbed into the air.
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The Cathedral Crumbles
The defeat of the Sentinels seemed to awaken something deeper.
The cathedral groaned — a terrible, metallic creaking, like the bones of the building were dislocating.
The stained glass began to melt, dripping down like multicolored wax. The walls warped, pulsing like lungs.
Mother Reflection's voice echoed from everywhere — and nowhere.
"You deny truth... You deny salvation...So you shall drown in your own lies."
The trio sprinted up the grand staircase that spiraled toward the altar — the only thing still intact.
They reached the summit — a wide chamber where pews had turned into jagged platforms, and the altar was suspended by chains of glass. The air rippled like heat-haze, and their reflections… were gone.
The door ahead burst open.
And beyond it — was nothing.
The sky had torn open. A cosmic wound bled down light and shadow.
Floating at its center was Mother Reflection.
Her form was a vortex of hundreds of swirling faces — some sobbing, others laughing, all trapped in a spiral of confession and denial. Her hands were elongated mirrors, catching flickers of the trio's faces and stretching them into screams.
She extended her arm.The cathedral flipped. Gravity twisted.
Up became down. The walls inverted. The sky was now the floor.
Rosa screamed as she grabbed a column. Lucien floated mid-air, trying to stabilize. Asher slammed against the ceiling — no, the floor — before planting his boots with a grunt.
He raised his revolver — one last bullet left in the chamber.
His eyes locked on Mother Reflection, and the swirling storm of identity behind her.
"Time to shut you up… permanently."
[End Of Chapter 79]
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Preview: Chapter 80 — "Mother Reflection's Last Sermon"The final confrontation begins. Asher and the team must face Mother Reflection's true form in a battle where memory, identity, and guilt twist into weapons. The fate of Nocturne — and the truth of Asher's past — is about to be unveiled.