The air thick with iron rot as my vision returns in fragments.
I open my eyes to find myself suspended inside a translucent, floating barrier. Beyond it, a cavernous room filled with occult tools stretches out, its walls pulsing like a heartbeat.
This is the mage's inner sanctum.
The walls weep—not blood, but something thicker, like melted wax trying to imitate it. The ceiling yawns high above, bone-white, stitched with twitching sigils that flicker glow like infected stars. Below me, a complex magic diagram is carved directly into the stone floor.
The air hums against my molars, vibrating with a flavorless static that tastes like the afterimage of a scream.
Then I see it.
It shambles forward with the elegance of a puppeteer trying to dance with corpses. The mage—or what's left of him—has no single form. He is a congregation of flesh, fused in a shape that refuses to settle. Faces ripple across his surface, whispering without mouths—faces I can only assume belong to the town's residents.
The mage's voice is not a voice. It is the sound of skin unpeeling and teeth grinding stone, yet somehow I understand him.
"So, one of the vermin who wishes to unravel my chrysalis of progress is now trapped within my inner workshop."
His words itch in my ears like cold maggots crawling across a drum.
"You should not exist. You should not persist. And yet here you are. Wearing that exquisite heresy like bridal silk. Sin-girl, sin-girl, sin-girl, I know a cambion when I see one."
He twitches forward. One of the faces stares directly at me—a child's face. Still crying.
"Your flesh sings in violations the Castle has yet to achieve. Do you know what you are? A key. A perfect key. You will redeem me."
I want to scream, but the sound stalls behind my teeth.
The mage watches me—all his faces do. Their gazes smear over me like a thousand wrong versions of attention. I look at him, at the pitiful horror of what remains, and something sharp flickers beneath the fear.
He is what I could become.
The thought builds—not just the image of his desperate, stitched-together body, but the deeper truth: his purpose. He is a creature defined by what he was denied. Every spell, every mutation, a howl for recognition. And he calls it progress.
I see myself in the folds of his putrid form. The way he clings to power as if it can substitute for love. The way he steals flesh the same way I tried to earn affection: by erasing the self that wasn't wanted.
I thought if I became flawless, I'd be loved.
Henrietta's words press against my mind like soft snowfall.
"Because love isn't earned, Noelia. It's given. And if you wait until you think you deserve it… you'll die waiting."
I shake my head, but the words stay. They stain the walls of my memory in a color I don't know the name of—warm, but unfamiliar. Like honey mixed with ash.
"I'm not your key," I whisper. "I'm not your redemption. I'm not your sin. I'm—" The word catches. Heavy. Shameful. Fragile. "I'm human."
My fingers grip the Unholy Nails, hugging my palms with renewed vigor. Their power reflects me—not a curse, but a truth made sharp. A piece of my story I once ignored.
I press the tips of the nail-swords to the barrier and it groans—not in protest, but in recognition.
Power floods from the nail-swords—slow, intimate, corruptive. The magic diagram below me begins to dissolve as the translucent dome peels open like old fruit splitting in the sun.
Then it shatters.
The mage hisses. His body ripples and warps in fresh agitation.
"You will not take from me what I have earned!"
I land on the stone floor. My heart beats steady as I point a nail-sword at him, daring him to make the first move.
He charges. I don't flinch.
He screams. I don't hear it.
The final battle begins not with a shout, but with a single breath. Mine.
He rushes me—a tide of limbs and faces. His body shifts mid-charge, appendages unraveling into spears of bone and hardened flesh—but they don't reach me.
I move.
Not forward, not through, but between.
My body is still flesh, but time slips past my skin as if I no longer owe it obedience.
His spear limbs crash into the wall behind where I was, carving a screaming gash through stone.
I reach him before his next thought finishes forming.
My nail-sword drives into the bulk of him, and the effect is immediate. Twisted scripture ripples from the point of contact like a disease written in light. Latin burns across his flesh, holy words soured into blasphemy.
He howls—not in pain, but in betrayal. Like his own soul has turned against him.
"No," he sputters, retreating across the stones.
"No, you don't understand. This is my sanctum. My proof. They will see me if I use you. They will take me back!"
He swings a limb half-formed from bone and grasping arms. I take the hit full-on, feel ribs fracture, skin tear like wet parchment. The pain is sharp but brief. My body knits itself back together before I land, bones clicking back with a satisfaction almost arrogant.
I don't slow down.
My next strike carves through a throat that doesn't belong to him. A woman's voice shrieks for mercy. I pause just long enough to see the truth: it's not hers. It never was. Just another voice he stole and warped to sing his blasphemy.
"You're not powerful," I say, driving the second nail-sword into what might be his chest. "You're just loud."
More scripture bleeds out from the wound, curling up his body like veins.
The mage crumples.
Not dead. Just unraveling. His mass falls apart into quivering strands of fat and flesh, limbs melting back into identities that no longer recognize him. Many faces try to separate, only to melt away in the process.
He slumps forward, a ruin of will and want.
I stand over him. My chest rises and falls—not from exhaustion, but from the weight of what didn't happen.
I didn't lose myself. I didn't become him.
"I never needed to be redeemed," I whisper to myself, "and I refuse to destroy myself chasing a lie."
His final breath bubbles out as a whimper. Not for mercy. Not for forgiveness. Just for attention.
Then, silence.
His workshop is quiet, as if the walls are holding their breath. I retrieve my nail-swords, slick and warm in my hands.
A rush of footsteps breaks the stillness. I turn.
Henrietta arrives, Howdah pistol raised.
Her gaze sweeps across the ruined room, stopping on the remnants of what the mage used to be. She lowers her weapon when she sees me standing tall, breathing steady.
"You did it," she mutters, holstering the gun.
The mage's remains continue to dissolve—a mound of defeated ambition and borrowed flesh. One of the faces that tried to pull free—now unmoving, but intact—glows with a symbol of a mythical creature.
Henrietta walks past me without a word, inspecting the face before picking it up and placing it in her duffle bag.
"Good job. Velladine's Grimoire is still intact. The Church hierophants will want this. And the rest of the site. A cleanup crew will be here after we report success. They'll sweep the town, salvage what's useful, then destroy the rest."
Her eyes land on mine.
"And if you're lucky, they'll take this mission as proof that you can be trusted."
I should feel victorious. I should feel something. But all I feel is raw—hollowed out enough to make space for something else.
"You were right," I say.
Henrietta watches me closely.
"Love isn't something I can earn by destroying myself."
She crosses the space between us and reaches out. Her gloved hand brushes a lock of blood-streaked hair from my cheek. Her expression stays stern, but her touch is soft.
"You never needed to earn it, Noelia," she says. "You just needed to learn to accept your own humanity."
She reaches into her bag and draws something out.
It's my rosary.
She presses it into my palm. I curl my fingers around it—not in prayer, but in quiet acknowledgment. It doesn't bite, not like before. It doesn't weigh more or less than it should. It just sits there, warm. Familiar but new, as if it shed an old skin.
We say nothing else.
The two of us walk out of the sanctum, footsteps echoing through the hollow church of the mage's shame. We climb the stairs out of the church cellar. Every step up feels lighter than the last.
When we reach the surface, dawn is waiting.
The sun breaks gently through clouds. Its warmth grazes my face—sweet and breathless, like a sigh painted in honey.
I close my eyes and let it touch me, golden silence spilling across my skin.
For the first time in a long while, I feel human.