Once, this manor had been a place of prosperity.
Now it lay in ruin.
The once-living lawns had been baptized by fire, their vibrant green erased, leaving only the ashes of the dead scattered across the ground. When the raging wind swept through, it lifted the gray dust into the air like the remnants of a forgotten funeral.
In the end, everything was tinged with the dull gray of death.
A sorrowful stillness clung to the land.
The two figures—monstrous in their own ways—stood far apart, staring at one another across the devastated estate. Their expressions were cold… or perhaps burning with rage.
"Archdeacon Lawrence," the phantom asked once more, his voice hollow with accusation,
"where exactly did you go that night?"
He was a survivor of the Night of Descent—a survivor who should never have existed.
The feeling was like a bone-deep winter.
Like walking across a frozen lake and seeing a familiar face beneath the ice.
You know that man died long ago. Yet one day, as you tread across the frozen surface, you look down and see that stubborn face staring back at you once again.
Dead… and yet still there.
Still hammering at the ice, desperate to break through and drag you down with him.
Some things pursue a man relentlessly.
Sometimes it is memory.
Sometimes it is duty.
And sometimes… it is a soul burning with vengeance.
"On the Night of Descent… what exactly did all of you do?"
The faint voice sounded again.
The burning iron rider stepped forward, trampling over the charred grass.
Behind him, roaring flames blazed like a raging sun strapped to his back.
The voice began to blur and overlap, as though countless people were speaking at once—
all of them questioning him.
All of them the dead demon hunters.
Very few people knew the full truth of the Night of Descent incident. The disaster that swept through the entire domain of the Seven Hills had been too terrifying. Even the sacred Pope himself had died in the chaos, his end shrouded in mystery.
In Lloyd's memories, Medanzo had been one of those who knew the truth.
When the Messiah-class containment relic broke free, Medanzo had been stationed outside Saint Naro Cathedral. He was the first to enter the cathedral after the breach.
But now he was dead.
What little remained of his will lingered like a wandering ghost, drifting through the Interstice.
Lloyd himself knew only fragments of the story. The rest remained hidden from him.
Suddenly he recalled a conversation from many years ago.
Back then, as a guardian stationed at Saint Naro Cathedral, Lloyd's duty had been painfully dull. After all, very few demons were foolish enough to assault that sacred place. And even if any did, they would likely be cut down long before setting foot upon those holy steps, thanks to the immense armed guard protecting the cathedral.
Those days had been unbearably boring.
But boredom, Lloyd now realized, was a blessing.
No demons.
No battles.
Aside from the secret blood flowing through his veins, Lloyd had simply been an ordinary guard.
Everything had been peaceful.
Wonderfully ordinary.
Back then, Lloyd had once asked Medanzo what he planned to do after retirement. Medanzo had been the finest among their branch—there was even a chance he might succeed Archdeacon Lawrence himself and become the next archdeacon. Perhaps he might even end up wearing those crimson robes.
But Medanzo had only shrugged.
That life held no appeal for him.
Instead, he had asked Lloyd the same question.
Lloyd had answered that he wanted to become a bard of sorts—to wander the world, observe its countless faces, and gather stories along the way.
"That does sound like you," Medanzo had said at the time.
"But I'm not fond of wandering everywhere. I might open an office with her."
A detective agency.
That had been his dream.
And yet now, Lloyd had become the detective—
while Medanzo was forever dead.
No one could have imagined that things would end like this.
Just as Lloyd himself could never have imagined that he would become… what he was now.
"You…" Archdeacon Lawrence murmured slowly.
"You don't seem to be him."
Clearly, he had not been listening to Lloyd at all. His thoughts remained tangled in that strange sense of familiarity Lloyd stirred within him.
Then he smiled.
A pale white flame burned in his clouded eyes.
He had lived far too long—so long that even his own memories had begun to feel foreign to him. Some instinct told him that he should remember Lloyd, yet the man hid beneath that divine armor, and Lawrence could not confirm his identity.
But what did it matter?
Even someone as exalted as the Pope could die.
In the end, it was men like him who survived the longest.
No one was truly worth remembering.
To be forgotten was the same as dying—
just like the ancient cities once built upon the desert sands, erased so completely that no one even knew they had existed.
Meaningless.
"Enough talk, child," Lawrence said calmly, tilting his head upward.
"This was never about anything more than competing interests."
The brilliant beam of a searchlight fell upon him.
Without anyone noticing, the Purging Mechanism had already surrounded the entire estate. In the night sky, aerial cavalry hovered in formation, ready for battle. One by one, small points of light appeared in the darkness—thermite rifles being primed.
From somewhere in the distance came the faint tremor of railway tracks.
Something massive, forged of steel, was rushing toward this place.
"When you get down to it," Lawrence continued with a faint smile,
"things like hatred are merely the angry words of children. Real adults don't shout. They simply do what they want."
It was clear that tonight's operation had already failed.
He had not captured Eve in time. Worse still, this unexpected demon hunter had appeared and intercepted him.
"In truth, you're the fortunate one," Lawrence said.
"You survived."
"If I were you, I'd disappear. Find some place the Church could never reach. Forget about secret blood, forget about demons, forget all of it… and just live quietly for a while."
He paused, his voice turning faint.
"I've always longed for that kind of peaceful life… but after living so long, I've never once managed to obtain it."
"Do you really think I'd make that choice?" Lloyd asked quietly.
Silence lingered between them.
Then Archdeacon Lawrence chuckled.
"Yes… of course you wouldn't."
"It's the same reason I once abandoned a peaceful life myself. Back then I was about your age—perhaps a little older. But the fire in my chest hadn't gone out yet. You know… all that talk about hating evil, standing up for your brothers, taking a blade for them…"
He laughed softly.
"Young men always do unexpected things when their blood runs hot."
"People make different choices at different ages. But in the end, they are choices we made ourselves. There's no reason to regret them."
Lawrence's gaze turned cold as winter ice.
Once, he had been young too.
Once, there had been a fire burning in his chest.
But now he was old.
The fire had long since died.
All that remained was a weary adult—
a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his own ends.
"If you truly are a witch hunter, then I should have taught you this long ago—hide your thoughts. A weapon must have no mind of its own."
"I've heard that line so many times I'm sick of it."
"And yet, after hearing it so often… you did learn something from it, didn't you?"
The old man's wrinkles twisted together as he spoke, looking every bit like a true teacher delivering a long-delayed lesson.
At first, Lloyd could not understand what Bishop Lawrence meant. But then, as the reason that had been devoured by fury slowly returned, a memory surfaced in the back of his mind. Almost instinctively, he tightened his grip around the hilt of his sword.
"Those inferior secret-blood serums… you were involved in them too, weren't you?"
Lawrence's mysterious disappearance on the Night of the Holy Descent. If that had been when he took the Book of Revelation, and afterward began developing the inferior secret blood, then everything suddenly made sense.
Yet another thought struck Lloyd just as quickly. If that speculation were true, then how had Lawrence known for certain that a Messiah-class containment would break loose? Lloyd did not know the exact security measures surrounding the Book of Revelation, but there had been only one moment when Saint Narro Cathedral had fallen entirely into chaos—only that night could Lawrence have acted.
Unless…
Unless he had orchestrated everything with his own hands.
Just like tonight.
Endless turmoil on the surface—yet his true purpose hidden behind the shadows.
On the surface, it was revenge against the nobility.
In truth, it was the abduction of Eve.
Then on the Night of the Holy Descent—panic unleashed, while in secret the Book of Revelation was stolen…
All at once, the fury of vengeance vanished from Lloyd's chest.
He looked at Bishop Lawrence, who stood smiling calmly at the far end, and it felt as though a vast shadow had fallen over him—stretching from the Seven Hills six years ago all the way to the present ruins of Old Dunling. Something had been fermenting in the dark all this time.
The aftermath of the Night of the Holy Descent had never truly ended.
Lloyd stared at Lawrence in shock, his thoughts spiraling into chaos.
"My child," Lawrence burst into laughter, "we are all people chased by the carriage of fate."
"Some escape the wheels that crush all things… while others are ground beneath them into dust."
After the laughter faded, he slowly raised the broken nail-sword in his hand and looked at Lloyd with quiet disappointment.
"You thought you had escaped it too, didn't you?"
His words ended.
The wind rose.
Blazing flames thickened until they seemed almost solid, surging within those aged eyes. Lawrence stood there with an authority that required no anger, as an unseen gale seized the hem of his crimson robe.
In that instant, Lloyd saw nothing but a streak of rushing scarlet.
Thunder ripped through the air as the broken blade shot forward, its edge pointed straight at him.
"You truly are still a child."
The sigh came softly.
Lloyd swung his greatsword, trying to cleave the lightning from the sky—but the rushing strike suddenly tilted ever so slightly from its path. Just a tiny deviation, yet enough for it to slide past the edge of Lloyd's blade with effortless ease, continuing onward behind him.
"Hide your thoughts. Before the weapon truly falls, never let anyone know your target. Consider this… a lesson long overdue."
The voice still echoed beside Lloyd's ear as a nameless terror settled upon him.
All he could see was the broken blade's gleam cutting through ash and smoke, crossing the ruins and the sea of fire.
Its target had never been Lloyd.
The thermite rifles opened fire in unison.
Countless gunshots merged into a single roaring chorus, like the deep murmur of some ancient giant.
Burning thermite rounds tore hundreds of flaming trails through the air. In that suspended moment they looked like crimson lines frozen in place—threads weaving a blazing net that sealed off every path before Bishop Lawrence.
And then, in that very instant, a heart-quaking force stirred.
An ancient door creaked open under the dominion of will itself. Dust and the scent of decay spilled forth, as the aged beast stepped out from its cage once more.
The lightning strike collided headlong with the burning net.
Its speed never slowed—if anything, it became even swifter.
Just as he had evaded Lloyd's sword, Lawrence's figure swayed ever so slightly, slipping past one thermite round after another.
As though…
As though he had known the trajectory of every single shot from the very beginning.
Lloyd froze where he stood.
A fragment of memory rose from the depths of his mind—an old story about Bishop Lawrence. Once, a venerable elder had addressed him by a name.
Sandalphon.
Of course.
He was the High Bishop of the Witch Hunters' Order. Once, he had borne the name of that angel.
Whether Lloyd's blade or the blazing trajectories of the thermite rounds—
All of it had already been foreseen.
Eve could only watch the approaching radiance.
Neither the thermite shells nor the soldiers standing before her could stop him. Like a falling star, Bishop Lawrence descended upon her the next instant, carried by a cutting gale.