“What happened?”
Bishop Frey caught the nearest cleric in the garden of the Violet Goldenflower Church. The man’s face was pale, his eyes darting toward the courtyard gate.
“It’s Captain John,” the cleric said quickly. “He looks like he’s been scared out of his mind.”
Frey and Red Falcon moved at once.
They rounded the reflecting pool and found the captain barreling toward the church doors, shouting as if the words could outrun whatever he’d seen.
“Blood—blood everywhere! And rats! Dead rats, piles of them!”
Red Falcon intercepted him before he could collapse. One big hand clamped down on John’s shoulder; the other lifted his chin, forcing his eyes up.
A faint current of Judicator power threaded the air. The captain’s breathing steadied. The wildness in his gaze ebbed.
“John,” Bishop Frey said, guiding him gently, “come sit in my office. Tell us what happened.”
John stumbled along like a man walking out of a nightmare.
“Yesterday… no, this morning… no—yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, and then this morning…”
In the office, with a cup of water trembling in his hands, Captain John finally managed to explain it in broken fragments.
“You’re saying your first mate’s house…” Red Falcon kept his voice level. “…was full of blood, and dead rats?”
“Yes. Yes!” John nodded hard, like the movement could nail reality in place. “Fresh blood. A lot of it—way more than one person could bleed. But I couldn’t find him. And… and…”
His voice dropped to a whisper. His face pinched with fear.
“Someone used the blood. Upstairs. In the bedroom. They painted patterns all over the walls. I don’t know what it was. I—”
Bishop Frey met Red Falcon’s eyes. This wasn’t a mundane crime. This was the kind of thing that left a stain.
“John.” Frey leaned forward. “Can you describe the patterns?”
John’s lips worked. He nodded too fast.
“Let me think. Let me think. It was… it was… the circles, the circles…”
Without warning, the captain’s mind seemed to skid sideways. His head jerked in small, frantic motions. He began to mutter words that weren’t words, syllables that scraped at the ear.
Frey didn’t hesitate. He pulled a small gold vial from his desk drawer, uncorked it, and held it under John’s nose.
Slowly, the tremor eased. The babble softened into exhausted breaths.
Red Falcon helped him into the adjoining room and laid him on the cot. Within minutes, John fell into a heavy, unnatural sleep.
When Frey closed the door again, the office felt too quiet.
“What do you think?” the bishop asked.
Red Falcon’s expression didn’t change, but his jaw tightened.
“No matter how you look at it, those blood-drawn sigils are something ordinary people aren’t meant to see.”
Frey nodded. “Then we do this properly.”
“Since it’s a supernatural case,” Red Falcon said with a shrug, “the Earth Ring takes it.”
His tone turned almost friendly—too friendly.
“Also… we should bring Ethan in. Cases like this are good for a Pre-Awakened’s growth, don’t you think, old friend?”
Bishop Frey snorted, the sound halfway between a laugh and a warning. He knew exactly what Red Falcon was trying to do.
“Fine,” Frey said. “I’ll have someone fetch him.”
The door flew open before he could take a step.
Cleric Ralph hurried in, breathless and sweating. He’d heard Captain John had come in panicking. He’d learned it involved the first mate. And he’d remembered what Ethan had told him that morning.
“Bishop—something’s wrong.” Ralph swallowed. “Ethan left at dawn. He went with the first mate. Said they were heading to the docks.”
For a beat, no one moved.
Bishop Frey and Red Falcon exchanged a single look—the kind people share when they don’t need to speak the thought.
Behind them, a soft sound came from the adjoining room.
Captain John had woken. He’d heard enough.
The captain’s face drained of color. If the first mate’s house had been like that… and Ethan had gone with him…
They made the decision fast.
Ralph would gather the church’s clerics. Captain John would rally the Jellyfish crew and anyone from the shipping office willing to help. They would search the dock district for Ethan and the first mate.
Red Falcon would take an Earth Ring squad to the first mate’s house, seal the scene, and keep those patterns from reaching anyone else’s eyes.
Summer sunlight hammered the street as Red Falcon arrived at the house with a four-man team.
“Locke, Hyman,” he said, pointing. “You two hold the door. No one in. No one out.”
He and the other three moved to enter.
But before he crossed the threshold, Red Falcon murmured a short invocation under his breath.
Pale-gold Judicator energy gathered around the team like a thin, warm veil.
Only then did they step inside.
The living room was spotless. The kitchen, too. Not even a cup left out.
It should have been reassuring.
Instead, Red Falcon narrowed his eyes.
This wasn’t cleanliness. It was emptiness—like someone had siphoned the life out of the place, leaving the furniture as flat and unreal as sketches on paper.
He climbed the stairs first.
Halfway up, he hit an invisible boundary.
The stench of blood slammed into them.
Another step, and the world changed—walls, floor, and banister drenched as if the house itself had been washed in gore.
A wash of golden warmth flared around Red Falcon and his team, like sunlight thrown up as a shield.
They waded through sticky footprints into the bedroom.
Blood on the bed. Blood on the floor. Blood streaked across the wardrobe.
Even Red Falcon, seasoned in scenes that made civilians vomit, drew a sharp breath.
They looked at the walls.
The white plaster had been covered in blood-drawn patterns—rings nested inside rings, every curve threaded with crooked lines that didn’t belong to any sane geometry. Layer upon layer. Interlocking. Consuming the room until there was nowhere left for the eye to rest.
Red Falcon knew that design.
It had once carved itself into his memory and refused to leave.
“A demon,” he whispered. “It’s a demon.”
He snapped back to his team, voice suddenly hard.
“Locke—alert the whole unit. Now. Hyman—clear this street. Evacuate everyone. Move!”
A cold dread climbed his spine.
So Bishop Frey’s dream hadn’t been a warning.
It had been a countdown.
—
In a narrow alley by the docks, Ethan’s heart thudded in his throat.
He’d used Prying Eye on the first mate and gotten nothing. No read. No feedback. As if the man in front of him wasn’t… readable.
The first mate turned around anyway, like he’d felt the gaze on his skin.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was sharp and thin—something a human throat shouldn’t be able to make.
Ethan flinched despite himself.
As if a switch had been flipped, the first mate’s tone softened back into something almost normal.
“What’s wrong, Ethan?” he said, urging him forward. “Come on. Walk.”
The next instant, the man’s face twisted. He screamed like someone drowning.
“Run! Get away—get out of here! Now! Go!”
The words broke halfway through. The voice snapped back into that needle-thin hiss.
“No—no. We’re almost there. Damn it!”
Ethan took one step back.
Two.
He was almost out of the alley.
The first mate’s left shoulder swelled under his shirt like something was trying to hatch.
Egg-sized bulges rose, writhing.
The fabric tore.
What burst through wasn’t flesh.
It was heads—gray rat heads, one after another, jamming out of his shoulder in a sickening cluster.
Dozens of them.
All of them screaming.
The first mate lunged.
Ethan had already drawn Flint.
Three shots cracked through the alley, Mithril rounds spitting fire like snakes from the barrel.