The night peeled open like a wound behind me.
I didn't look back when I stepped out of the sanctum. Not at the girl still kneeling. Not at the lingering heat in the stone. Her silence trailed behind me like a leash, taut and invisible, reminding me she would still be there when I returned—not because she had to be, but because there was nowhere else left for her to go. That was how it should be. How it had to be. The temple walls sighed as I moved through them, not from wind, but from memory—air thick with possession and aftermath.
The city waited like it always did, wearing its darkness loose and indifferent. The streetlamps flickered without commitment, half-ashamed of their own light. Power lines buzzed overhead like static gossip. I walked without urgency. Not because there wasn't urgency—but because letting it steep gave me leverage. Pressure always cooked better slow. The veil brushed against me again. Not a barrier. A recognition. It didn't just know me—it remembered me. Remembered the weight of my fingers when they pried through its edge. Remembered how my presence tasted. Remembered that I hadn't bled last time.
And now, it remembered grudge.
Episode didn't break the veil. He was too elegant for that. Half-vampires often are—always playing at poise to hide the fracture lines underneath. He lingered in thresholds. Circled. Measured. Not out of patience, but out of spite. That was the nature of in-betweens. They wanted to be recognized. They wanted to mean something. Even if that something was a scar.
I felt him before I saw him.
Platform. Train station. An old one. One of those liminal places where the city forgets what century it belongs to. No crowds. Just absence and fluorescent hum. He stood at the center like a punctuation mark—straight-backed, armed, waiting. The same long coat. The same cross slung across his back like a failed metaphor. Same expression, too. That holy crusader stare boys practice in cracked mirrors when they're thirteen and full of purpose.
"You again," he said, like a prayer that hadn't worked the first time.
I stepped out from the stairwell, coat drifting around my ankles like a verdict. My eyes caught on his. Not because I needed to. But because he wanted me to.
"Me still," I said. Calm. Unflinching. Like the question had been rhetorical and I'd just corrected his grammar.
He said nothing. But his posture tightened. Slightly. Just enough for the muscle in his neck to betray him. I'd seen it before—in animals before they bolt. Or bite.
"I've seen what she is," he murmured eventually. Not a threat. Not a line. A confession. Ugly in its vulnerability.
"No," I said. "You saw what she could be. That's not the same as seeing her."
He didn't flinch. But his jaw ticked once. A child correcting his own daydream.
"She's a god wearing a child's face."
"And you're a weapon with no war."
That one hit. I watched it land behind his eyes—somewhere old. Somewhere scarred. But he swallowed it, like half-breeds always do. That myth of duality giving them just enough pride to survive, but never enough to be proud.
"I'm not like her," he said.
"No. You're worse. Because she stopped pretending to be human a long time ago."
He blinked. Not slowly. Not fast. Just enough for me to know he didn't like that truth crawling down his throat.
"You think being half makes you purer?" I stepped closer now, letting my voice settle into something low. "It just means you weren't wanted by either side and decided that was everyone else's fault."
His fingers twitched. Barely. But I saw it. And I smiled.
He didn't lunge. He stepped forward. Measured. Controlled. Like a man walking into a fire he still thinks he can extinguish with morality.
"She'll kill again," he said.
"Probably."
"And you'll let her."
"Wrong again."
His brow furrowed—small, brittle.
"I'll do it with her," I said.
That broke the surface. A twitch in his jaw. A fracture in his stance.
"You're worse than she is," he said, and this time it wasn't doctrine. It was belief. Honest. Raw. And therefore, useful.
"Maybe." I let the grin ghost my mouth. "But you're not going to stop me. And you're not going to touch her."
I was already moving before he spoke. Not fast. Not rushed. Just gone. One heartbeat I was in front of him. The next, behind. A whisper without lips:
"I gave Dramaturgy mercy. I gave Guillotine Cutter a limp."
He spun. Predictable. I was already elsewhere. Shadow and silence. A second veil, curled around his spine.
"You don't get that luxury."
He drew the cross. Silver. Blessed. Made for monsters like her. Not for things like me.
The moment it cleared the leather strap, I was already reaching. The blade swung.
I caught it.
Blue fire screamed down my arm. Holy magic and sacrilege fighting in my nerves. My flesh bubbled. My wrist twisted. My nerves sang.
He smiled.
"It burns the curse out," he said. "You don't get to heal from me."
He thought he was the exception. The righteous thorn in the flesh of corruption.
I let the Grimoire bloom.
It didn't glow. It didn't roar. It whispered. A hum behind my eyes, steady as breath. My mystic eyes of charm opened—blue, not red. Not golden. Not seductive. Just absolute.
"Kneel."
He didn't mean to obey. But the body always folds before the soul does. His knees buckled. The cross dropped—no, dipped. Like his arm suddenly remembered gravity.
Then came the veil. My Veil—not hers. Mine. Tokyo Ghoul born. Memory-wrapped, aura-stained, grief-threaded. It wrapped around him like water around stone. Soft. Smothering. Real.
He staggered. I walked.
My fingers pulsed—reinforced now. Magecraft embedded in bone. Not strength. Not speed. Just the certainty that whatever I touched wouldn't stay whole.
I drove him to one knee. Leaned in. Close. Closer than comfort.
"You don't belong to either world," I whispered, my hand tightening around the back of his neck. "But you'll serve in mine."
And I meant it.
I didn't come here to kill him.
Not yet.
Because he had something I needed.
A piece of her.
One of the afinal pieces.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't start with the fingers.
That would've been too quick. Too honest. No, pain only meant something if it unraveled a man—pulled his certainties out by the root, rewired his instincts into something brittle and begging. So I began with the silence. The long, deliberate stretch of it. Just me and Episode in that half-rotted service corridor beneath the station, surrounded by mold-stained tiles and the sound of our own breathing, too low and ugly to echo. He was already slumped, one leg shattered, ribs cracked like a cathedral gutted from within. The Grimoire's pressure still lingered over his bones like a second skin—heavy, chemical, divine.
I crouched beside him slowly, my knees clicking against the concrete as if to remind the world I still had the strength to lower myself. He coughed. Not blood—yet—but something wet and rattling, like old belief scraping the walls of his throat. His wrists were bound in Grimoire-forged cuffs, looped around an iron support beam that had stopped holding anything a long time ago. I didn't speak. Just watched him breathe for a while. Watched the way he tensed—not with fear, not with rage, but with that same useless pride that made men stand up in front of firing squads. Half-vampires always thought martyrdom looked better on them.
"You're not afraid of me," I murmured at last. Not a question. Just an observation. He bared his teeth in a ruined smile, cracked at the edges.
"I'm not afraid of anything anymore."
I raised an eyebrow. "So dramatic." My hand reached for his left arm—slowly, methodically, giving him time to think about it. Then I braced his wrist and snapped the thumb backward with a casual flick.
The sound was quiet.
His scream wasn't.
"Fear comes in stages," I said, conversationally. "First disbelief. Then resistance. Then the part where you tell yourself you're enduring this for some higher cause. But eventually, pain just becomes a question that won't stop asking."
He spat at me. It landed on the floor, thin and red.
"You're worse than her."
"You already said that," I replied, and twisted his index finger sideways, slow enough that I could feel the bones protesting before they gave.
His whole body jerked. The chains rattled once, then stilled. A ragged breath escaped him, less from pain than from the effort of not letting it sound like a sob.
"Where's the leg?"
He didn't answer.
So I gave him silence again. Let it stretch. Let it breathe in the space between us until it thickened. Then I reached for the next finger.
"This one won't scream," I promised. "It'll just snap."
And it did.
Episode didn't scream this time. But his head dropped forward, chin slick with sweat, mouth trembling with restraint. It was pride now. Just pride. Pride that said, If I don't speak, I still win. Pride that said, If I die before I break, then I'm still a weapon, not a man.
"Do you really think this is about her?" I asked. "You're not protecting anything. You're delaying inevitability. She'll get the leg back. I'll get the leg back. The only question is how many pieces of you I'll need to walk over first."
He looked up at me, eyes bloodshot and shaking.
"You think you own her," he rasped.
"No," I said simply. "I think she finally belongs."
Then I reached into my coat and pulled out the Bell of Murmur.
It didn't look like much. Just a small, tarnished object that rang without sound. But its hum threaded between the ribs. Not pain. Not exactly. But memory. Buried things. Ugly things. I rang it once, slow and low. His whole body convulsed—not from agony, but from whatever nightmare had just surfaced behind his eyes. Something old. Something private.
He screamed then.
I watched, curious.
"Shimogamo Shrine," he choked out. "Behind the left altar. Underground. It's sealed in salt."
My hand hovered near the bell again. "Trap?"
He shook his head violently, eyes wide. "No. No. I buried it. Like a grave. Like mine."
Honest. Maybe. Or maybe he just didn't want to hear that sound again.
I leaned close. Close enough for my breath to stir his lashes. "You should've run farther."
And then I stood.
But I didn't leave yet.
Because the Grimoire wasn't done with him.
And neither was I
---------------------
I didn't move immediately.
Not because I was unsure.
Because I wanted him to feel it—that shift in the air when a man knows the only thing keeping him alive is someone else's attention. The moment when he realizes he's not being spared out of mercy, but strategy. That his suffering hasn't peaked, only paused. The corridor still stank of sweat, mildew, and scorched fabric. Episode sagged against the support beam like a broken crucifix, his arms stretched and bound in poses older than prayer, his breath hitching in uneven thirds. Not quite sobbing. Not quite breathing. Just existing in the ruins of what used to be certainty.
I turned, slow enough that the motion made sound. Leather, boot, breath. All of it amplified by the Grimoire's weight—by the Veil's stretch and recoil. It clung to me now, a second skin of presence and pressure, tightening its threads like a hunting net.
I didn't ask if he was lying.
I didn't need to.
Because he believed it. The grave. The shrine. The salt and silver.
He believed it when he said it—and that was enough.
I walked. Left him there in the dark, chained and shaking and less than he was. Not out of pity. Not out of haste. But because I'd be back. And I wanted him to sit in the emptiness a little longer. Let the absence of pain remind him that pain was still a choice I hadn't made yet.
Shimogamo Shrine wasn't far. Twenty minutes if I walked like a human. Two minutes if I moved like something else. The city was quiet now—too quiet for excuses, too honest for noise. My boots whispered over concrete like the memory of footsteps. The Bell of Murmur rested in my coat again, humming faintly against my ribs. A promise. A warning. A key.
The shrine rose ahead of me like an accusation someone forgot to finish. Wood warped by time, stones dark with moss. The left altar sat crooked, as if it had never really wanted to hold anything holy. I knelt there—not reverent, just calculating—and pressed my palm against the earth.
Reinforcement magecraft rippled through my fingers. The Celestial Grimoire opened its eyes behind my eyes, and the ground answered. There. A box. Buried shallow. Wrapped in divine spite. Salt lines. Silver wires. Old prayers that didn't know who they were praying to anymore.
I didn't break the seal.
I erased it.
Dead End Dissonance pulsed once, silently, and the binding that was meant to keep monsters out flickered like a skipped beat in a heart that had seen too much.
I lifted the box.
Heavy.
Warm.
Still breathing, in a way that made no biological sense.
When I opened it, the smell hit first—blood, age, power. The leg was pale, long, smooth as if untouched by time, the nails still clean. A queen's limb. A weapon that remembered where it used to stand. I stared at it for a long moment. Not admiring.
Cataloguing.
Because when I returned it to her, she would be closer.
Not whole. Not yet.
Just closer.
I closed the lid. Didn't lock it. Just carried it under one arm like a forgotten relic too sacred to abandon.
I didn't rush back to the corridor.
But I didn't slow either.
Episode was waiting.
Of course he was.
Still breathing. Still chained. Still pretending he hadn't broken already.
When I stepped into the room, he looked up—not with fear. With hope.
He thought telling me the truth had bought him something.
It had.
A faster end…
I crouched beside him again, set the box just out of reach.
His eyes flicked to it, then to me.
"You found it," he rasped.
"I did."
"I kept my word."
"You did."
He swallowed, slow and thick. "Then… then I don't need to die."
I pulled the broken shaft of his silver cross from my coat. The one he'd swung with all that holy rage, all that inherited grief. It still reeked of sanctimony.
"You don't get to become someone else's problem," I said quietly.
His mouth opened. A sound started.
And I drove the jagged metal through his throat.
Not rage.
Not revenge.
Just inevitability.
Blue fire bloomed around the wound. Divine backlash. Purity eating itself. His body twitched once—twice—and then began to smolder from the inside out.
He didn't scream.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because the flame cauterized the sound before it left his lungs.
When he slumped, I didn't catch him.
I just watched as his body cracked, folded, and became something less.
Ash.
Memory.
Regret, maybe.
The cuffs still hung empty, one half-melted from the backlash. The support beam sagged in the heat. His coat still smoked like a sermon that had forgotten its ending.
I left him there.
Not because he mattered.
But because his absence did.
--------------------------------------------
The corridor emptied behind me like a lung exhaling its last breath. Gray light had begun to bleed into the city, soft and dishonest. The kind of dawn that didn't announce salvation—just the end of something darker. Not cleansing. Just exhausted.
The street outside yawned open in silence, asphalt smeared with the tired sheen of old rain and older blood. I didn't rush. My steps didn't echo. The world was still holding its breath, waiting to see what kind of thing I had become now that Episode no longer existed.
I didn't feel guilt. I didn't feel triumph. I felt alignment. Like the weight I'd been carrying had found its proper distribution—spine straightened, center of gravity corrected. There was no catharsis in the way his flesh burned. Just accuracy. No theater. Just precedent.
She would feel it when I stepped through the threshold.
The temple wasn't asleep. It wasn't quiet. It was listening.
By the time I returned to the sanctum, the stone floor had cooled, but the room still reeked of us—of salt and silence and the scent of surrender that clung to skin longer than blood ever did.
She didn't rise when I entered.
She didn't look at me.
Not immediately.
She was still kneeling—just as I'd left her. My shirt still half-hanging off her shoulder, her legs folded beneath her, hands in her lap like a statue of some forgotten penitent god. Her hair had dried in uneven curls, stiff with sweat and silence. She looked wrecked in that poetic, irreversible way that only came after you stopped trying to clean the pieces up.
And I watched her.
Just for a moment.
Not to admire.
To confirm.
Her breathing shifted the second she registered my presence. Shallow. Unsteady. But not panicked.
Expectant.
Her spine didn't straighten. Her chin didn't lift. But her body leaned—just slightly—toward the sound of me.
I crossed the floor without a word.
And when I stopped behind her, I didn't speak right away.
I just reached down.
My hand came to rest at the crown of her head—firm, claiming. A single gesture with centuries carved into it. Her breath caught. Not because she feared the touch.
Because she needed it.
Needed the confirmation that she hadn't imagined the night before. That she hadn't hallucinated the breaking, the silence, the burn of his name in her mouth like prayer gone wrong.
She leaned into the pressure of my palm like a dying star chasing gravity. Her shoulders fell.
In relief.
I slid my hand down.
Fingers threading through her hair with deliberate slowness, down the nape of her neck, past the bruises I'd left, the bite marks still vivid. And when I crouched—close behind her, breath against the shell of her ear—I didn't ask if she missed me.
I didn't need to.
Because she hadn't moved.
Not from the spot I left her in.
Not even to pretend she hadn't been waiting.
"I have it," I murmured, voice low, cutting the silence like a scalpel through silk.
She blinked once. Then again. Her lips parted.
But no words came.
Because she knew what I meant.
Her leg.
The last piece.
Not her heart.
That was still elsewhere. Guarded. Hidden.
But her body—what was left of it—was almost whole now.
Almost.
Not quite.
I rose again, letting my fingers slide free from her head like severing a leash she didn't know she'd grown to love. She didn't follow.
But she wanted to.
The pull in her muscles said so.
"You'll crawl for it," I said flatly. Not cruel. Just true.
Her fingers twitched in her lap.
I could've demanded it now. Could've watched her drag herself across the stone with that perfect, undignified ache.
But I didn't.
Because the longer I waited, the more she would need it.
Not the limb.
Me.
----------------------------------
Eventually.
Her palms flattened against the stone.
And slowly, with all the grace of a fallen cathedral collapsing into prayer, she moved.
Knees scraping, back bowed. The sound of flesh on stone was quiet, but obscene in its intimacy. She reached the box. Stilled.
But didn't touch it.
She waited.
Breathing hard. Head down.
Not just in deference.
In obedience.
And I… I said nothing.
Because I didn't need to.
This wasn't her restoration.
This was her ritual.
And it was almost complete.
-----------------
She waited with her hands pressed to the stone, knees bent in that quiet mockery of reverence. And I let her. Let the moment stretch until time softened around us like wax too close to a flame. Her breathing was louder now. Not ragged. Not desperate. Just… unsteady. Like the body hadn't caught up with the soul.
When I finally moved, it wasn't to touch her. It was to step past her. Slowly. Deliberately. I walked a slow circle around her kneeling form, a silent orbit that turned her into the sun she'd long stopped pretending to burn like. I didn't speak. I didn't look directly at her. I just walked. Boots whispering against the stone like the sound of something patient learning to become cruel.
She didn't move.
Not to follow.
Not to flinch.
She simply waited for gravity to make the decision for her.
And then—when the circuit was complete—I stopped behind her again.
"You remember the first time I saw you like this," I said, voice quiet. Not soft. Never soft. "Half a creature, begging under a station. Limbs gone. Pride shattered. But even then, you had sharpness in your gaze."
I let the silence curl between us before continuing.
"Now look at you. Whole. Nearly. And yet… not a trace of that bite left."
She didn't answer.
Because she knew that if she tried, I'd only remind her what her voice had become.
Decoration.
"You think it's the leg that completes you," I said. "But it's not. It's the way you crawl for it. That's what makes you real now."
She flinched.
Small. Controlled.
But I saw it.
I stepped forward, toes brushing the curve of her knee. Not contact. Just threat.
Then I crouched—again behind her. My hand came down on the small of her back. Gentle. Flat. Possessive.
"You've rebuilt your body," I whispered, "but you didn't build it for yourself. You built it for me. To kneel better. To break prettier."
Her breath caught. Shoulders rising—not in rebellion. In acknowledgment.
I leaned forward until my chest touched her back, slow, deliberate. My mouth near her ear.
"You're not healing. You're adapting."
She turned her head slightly. Not enough to look at me. Just enough to bare her neck. Instinct. A vampire's way of conceding.
And I took it for what it was.
My teeth grazed her throat—not biting. Just… reminding. Of what I'd done. What I could do. What she'd beg me to do again, even if she didn't know it yet.
"You're mine," I murmured, lips brushing skin.
She nodded. Small. Quick. The way a girl nods when she's afraid the answer might change if she's too slow.
"Say it."
Her voice was dust. "I'm yours."
I smiled against her neck. "Louder."
She trembled. "I'm yours."
"Again."
And this time?
She didn't hesitate.
"I'm yours."
Good.
The temple felt smaller now. The air thicker. I stood and walked to the box again, crouching beside it. She followed me with her head, eyes low but attentive. Like prey learning how to watch without being seen.
I opened it.
The limb inside was pale and perfect. Not just flesh. Not just bone. A symbol. A weight. The part of her she'd once walked away from. The part I made her crawl back toward.
Her eyes flicked to it and then back to the floor. Still kneeling. Still obedient.
"You'll take it now," I said.
She moved forward slowly. Not like prey anymore. But like an offering. Her fingers brushed the edge of the box. A tremble went through her, then stilled.
And she reached inside.
The moment her hand touched the leg, something shifted in her.
Her spine arched slightly. Her eyes fluttered shut. The air around her changed—buzzed. The Grimoire's resonance echoed in my bones, humming with old names and forbidden tides. I could feel it crawling beneath my skin, reacting to hers.
This wasn't a limb.
It was a trigger.
A tether to something older.
Worse.
Her fingers dug into the flesh of the leg—not with hunger, but with reverence. It wasn't attachment. It was assimilation. The same way my mark had melted into her body. The same way obedience had replaced instinct. This leg didn't complete her.
It rewrote her.
And she knew it.
Her breath caught as it merged—not visibly, not surgically, but fundamentally. Her bones adjusted. Her nerves recalibrated. Her stance shifted by a single inch—and the weight of her presence changed. She was no longer incomplete.
But she wasn't restored.
She was mine.
Utterly.
Irrevocably.
I moved behind her again, slower this time, the air between us thick with static and sweat and that smell that always followed rebirths too close to death. I didn't touch her right away. I just watched.
And then I spoke.
"Stand."
She rose.
Smooth.
Flawless.
Terrifying.
I circled her again, slower this time. Like inspecting a sculpture I'd carved out of ruin and arrogance. Her body moved differently now. Not stronger. Not faster.
Just… more accurate.
Like it finally understood what it was built for.
When I stopped in front of her, she didn't look away.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
She just waited.
I reached for her jaw. Tilted her face up.
Her eyes were wide and glassy. But not wet. She didn't need to cry anymore. She'd already given everything grief had to offer.
Now it was time to give something else.
"Take off the shirt," I said.
She obeyed.
No hesitation.
No shame.
And when the fabric slid from her shoulders, pooling silently on the ground like the last pretense of dignity, I watched her body react. A faint tremble. A twitch. But no resistance.
I stepped closer.
And let my hand rest on her hip.
The room bent around us. The air twisted. The veil rippled—not in warning.
In acknowledgment.
And what followed?
Wasn't soft.
Wasn't loving.
It was a ritual.
The second act of a ruin sanctified by silence.
She gasped.
And moaned.
She pressed against me like the temple might collapse if we stopped.
And I let her.
Because it wasn't about pleasure. (Yeah right)
It was about proof.
That she knew her place.
And wanted to stay there.
Even in the dark.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her body leaned into mine, not with passivity, but with the kind of surrender that still trembled around the edges. The last quake rolled through her spine like a memory she hadn't finished feeling yet. I kept my hand on her hip—not for stability, not for tenderness, but to remind her that it was still mine. That she was still mine. That what we had done wasn't a lapse, or a fever, or a mistake.
It was declaration.
Her breath stuttered, soft and uneven. Not from exhaustion. From unraveling. That exquisite ruin that came only after the body had stopped pretending it belonged to itself. Her head came to rest against my collarbone, her cheek cool against skin still flushed with aftermath. She wasn't hiding.
But she wasn't ready to be seen either.
Not fully.
There was something reverent in her silence. Something dangerous in the stillness. Not absence. Not numbness. A kind of stunned clarity—like she was standing at the center of a cathedral she'd helped burn down.
I didn't speak right away.
I let the moment sink in.
Let her find herself in the dust and wreckage of what she'd given.
Then, my fingers moved—slowly, deliberately—up her waist. I felt the twitch beneath them. Not flinching. Just… memory. Her body remembering what it used to mean to brace against consequence.
"You felt it," I said.
Not a question.
She nodded, once. Barely. But the movement pressed her cheek closer to the hollow of my throat.
"…Yes," she said.
Her voice was hoarse. Small. But still hers.
She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to. We both knew it wasn't about the leg. Or the ritual. Or the Veil.
It was about the line.
The one we had stepped over without flinching. The one she now stood behind, barefoot and willingly lost.
She wasn't asking for meaning anymore.
She was asking for permission to belong.
I tilted her chin up—not gently, but not cruelly either. Just enough to claim the axis of her attention. Her golden eyes met mine, wide and lucid and disturbingly calm. Not blank. Not hollow.
Surrendered.
But aware.
Like a prisoner who knew the shape of her cell, and had stopped asking for the key.
"Good," I said.
Then kissed her.
Like sealing a vault. Like ratifying something ancient and irreversible.
When I drew back, her lips parted slightly. Her hands had wandered to my sides—loose, instinctive, unsure. She didn't even seem to know they'd moved. She was still suspended in the moment between instruction and execution, watching me with that strange blend of obedience and need that had nothing to do with fear anymore.
It was worship now.
I smiled—thin. Quiet.
The kind of smile you give a once-proud god who finally knew where to kneel.
"Dress," I said. "We're leaving soon."
She blinked once. Then nodded.
Slow.
Composed.
And utterly, irrevocably mine.
Not because she had to be.
But because she no longer knew how not to be.