John rode hard.
For three days, he tracked Jack through ash-streaked woods, across storm-bent plains, and over hills where
even birds dared not sing. The boy's presence lingered in every shattered branch and dead-eyed hare. The
earth recoiled behind his passage. Creatures of the Veil, stirred from their slumber, kept wide berth. They
felt what walked now.
At night, John saw fires in the distance—sometimes blue, sometimes black, never warm.
Each morning, the trail grew colder.
And then, just as hope began to fade, he'd see it: blood in the grass, a torn piece of clown silk snagged in
bramble, the lingering trace of Will pushed hard against the world.
On the second night, Jack's laughter echoed through the hills like a wound refusing to close.
John did not rest.
By the third dawn, his horse was near collapse. His voice was hoarse from binding chants. The silver thread
around his wrist had burned halfway through the skin.
Then, at the edge of a wide ravine, he found Jack.
The boy—or what remained of him—stood on a black stone altar half-swallowed by roots. It jutted from the
earth like a buried memory. A forgotten chapel lay broken nearby, walls crumbled to ribs, roof swallowed by
ivy. The air hummed with ancient silence.
Jack's eyes had sunken. His body trembled with every breath. Whatever strength he had gained was
unraveling—too much essence spent, too many souls consumed. He swayed like a marionette with fraying
strings.
John dismounted.
He did not draw a weapon.
"It's over," he said, voice cracked but steady.
Jack turned slowly.
His clown paint was cracked. His smile was not.
"You've followed me far."
"I had to."
"Will you mourn me, hunter?"
John shook his head. "I'll remember you."
A flicker of something passed through Jack's face. Pain? Gratitude? Memory? It was gone too quickly.
Then he lunged.
The ground split beneath his feet. Shadow lashed out in tendrils. Eluna appeared behind him, screaming—
not in rage, but in agony. She reached for Jack, trying to pull him back even as the leech within him writhed
and bared teeth.
John stood firm, casting salt and burning the final glyphs into the air. The old words came fast now, spilling
from him like blood.
"By essence bound, by name unspoken, By Will intact, by Light unbroken— I seal thee. I seal thee. I seal
thee."
The box had taken months to create—its wood soaked in holy oils, carved from trees older than the
Templars themselves, inlaid with metals drawn from starfall and veinstone. Runes ran along its edges like
weeping eyes.
Jack struck him once.
It was like being hit by a storm. John collapsed, ribs broken. But even as his vision darkened, he whispered
the final syllable.
The runes flared.
The box screamed.
So did Jack.
Eluna reached for him one last time, but the leech reared up between them, clawing at her light. In a final
surge of defiance, Jack turned on the creature inside himself and dragged it into the box with him.
The air bent. The world cracked.
And then—
Silence.
The box thudded shut.
John crawled to it. Bloody, trembling, but alive. He wrapped it in veilsilk, bound it in iron cord, and
whispered a prayer to no one.
He buried it deep beneath the broken chapel.
Covered it with stones.
And left a single sigil carved in the altar above:
SILENCE HOLDS THE LAUGHTER.
Years passed.
And then one day, French boots pressed into forgotten mud. Greedy hands pulled at buried roots. A rusted
sigil cracked beneath careless tools.
And the box opened.