The rain hammered relentlessly against the windows, as though countless unseen hands were drumming upon the hearts of those within.
The fireplace had long since been lit. Though spring had already arrived, the endless rainy season of Old Dunling had dragged the city back into the bitter embrace of winter.
Anthony had never grown accustomed to this unnatural weather. Compared with it, Florence felt nothing less than paradise.
His brow remained tightly furrowed as he studied the telegram from Florence. There were only a handful of lines, yet every word had come from the mysterious new Pontiff, whose will crossed mountains and seas to deliver fresh commands.
He read the message again and again, fearful that he had overlooked some hidden meaning. Only after mechanically repeating the process countless times did he sink back into his chair and let out a weary sigh.
"So... even a man long dead can still cast such an immense shadow."
He could not understand it.
Cardinal Lloyd de' Medici had been dead for years. His inheritance had been divided, his influence devoured piece by piece by greedy hands, until nothing should have remained.
And yet now, that name had returned.
It returned carrying the stench of death.
Their original objective had been simple: reclaim the Book of Revelation. To accomplish that, Anthony had secretly dispatched numerous Demon Hunters into Old Dunling, infiltrating every level of its institutions according to each hunter's unique talents.
Now the entire operation had been thrown into chaos.
A new player had quietly stepped onto the chessboard.
An opponent no one had foreseen.
"The Scabbard Treaty..."
Anthony rolled the unfamiliar title over in his thoughts.
Though he had not served long as the new Archbishop, he had immersed himself in the archives of the Order of Demon Hunters. He had personally examined countless classified operations buried beneath decades of secrecy.
Yet among all those forbidden records...
...he had never encountered a single mention of a project bearing that name.
In fact, even the new Pontiff knew nothing of it.
It was as though someone had deliberately erased the project from history, allowing it to sleep in oblivion until, after all these years, a few charred remnants surfaced from some forgotten corner.
There were no official records.
Only several half-burned pages.
Ordinarily, that would have meant little. Countless documents had been reduced to ashes during the Night of Divine Descent. Entire archives had vanished forever beneath the flames.
But this project was different.
Its executor had been Lloyd de' Medici.
Once, Lloyd had ruled over all of Florence. Every strand of authority had rested in his hands, and innumerable secret operations had unfolded beneath his command.
Yet according to the surviving dates upon those ruined pages...
...he had already retired from public life.
He had withdrawn from every affair of the Gospel Church.
And still...
His name appeared upon those scorched fragments.
Even in seclusion, the old man had continued weaving some hidden design.
Every soul who knew the truth had died during the Night of Divine Descent.
Including Lloyd himself.
An icy chill suddenly seized Anthony's spine.
It felt as though he had unknowingly glimpsed something ancient... something monstrous.
And whatever lurked beyond the darkness...
...had looked back.
He drew a slow breath.
The sensation resembled corruption itself.
A razor-thin cold pierced directly into his consciousness, flooding through his veins like venom until every inch of his body seemed on the verge of death.
Was the Night of Divine Descent truly caused by nothing more than Lawrence's betrayal?
For the first time, Anthony sensed the grotesque flaw hidden within that explanation.
The Church had accepted that conclusion because it had been the most reasonable one.
But reason was beginning to crack.
A new clue had appeared.
Hairline fractures spread silently across everything they had once believed.
Perhaps Lawrence had never acted alone.
Perhaps another force had worked from the shadows, turning that catastrophe into something far greater.
Everything else...
The rebellion.
The slaughter.
The chaos.
All of it had merely been camouflage.
A disguise so flawless that only after all these years had someone finally caught a fleeting glimpse beneath its surface.
Anthony possessed no evidence.
None whatsoever.
Yet every instinct within him screamed the same conclusion.
The thing called intuition whispered relentlessly in his ear.
Perhaps...
The true beginning of the Night of Divine Descent had always been this forgotten project—
The Scabbard Treaty.
Some unknown power had sought to erase its very existence.
So everyone connected to it had perished that night.
Even Lloyd de' Medici himself.
A sudden knock shattered the oppressive silence, scattering the suffocating chill like smoke.
Anthony remained motionless until the knocking came again and again.
Only then did he finally answer.
"Come in."
The door opened.
Samuel stepped inside.
"What is it?"
Anthony's expression had already returned to its habitual composure.
Cold.
Measured.
As though nothing had happened.
"It's about Lloyd Holmes," Samuel replied.
The name immediately stirred thoughts of yet another hidden conspiracy.
Anthony had once dismissed the coincidence.
Now he no longer could.
Lloyd Holmes was clearly far more than he had appeared.
A survivor of the Night of Divine Descent.
The bearer of the False Holy Grail.
There was no longer any doubt in Anthony's mind.
The man had to be connected to the Scabbard Treaty.
"We still haven't found him?"
His voice remained perfectly calm.
"No."
Samuel continued his report.
Truthfully, everyone should have felt a growing sense of urgency.
Yet Old Dunling's endless rains seemed to slow the passage of time itself.
Plans had stalled.
Operations had to be rebuilt from the beginning.
"Our hidden piece... Moriarty... has successfully influenced Lloyd's roommate."
Samuel hesitated.
"...Everything has gone almost too smoothly."
"Moriarty is dangerously unpredictable."
"And that strange Gift of his only makes him worse."
Disgust flickered across Samuel's face.
Though both belonged to the Order of Demon Hunters, Samuel had never trusted the man.
If circumstances allowed...
He would gladly kill Moriarty himself.
That terrifying Gift.
Most active Demon Hunters had once been selected from the ranks of the Holy Knights.
Only a rare few were promoted solely because of extraordinary talent.
James Moriarty was one of those exceptions.
An uncontrollable chess piece.
Sometimes he produced miraculous victories.
Far more often he pushed everything toward catastrophe.
Yet no one could deny his brilliance.
It was precisely because of that talent that he had been chosen as the Order's hidden operative and sent into Old Dunling ahead of everyone else.
Using his eerie Authority, he had even managed to infiltrate Black Mountain Hospital itself.
"Even Moriarty usually needs time before he can influence someone's mind."
Samuel frowned.
"But Sig..."
"There's something wrong with him."
"He seems to have suffered corruption before."
"He was... far too easy to manipulate."
Too easy.
Suspiciously easy.
Samuel finally voiced the concern that had been gnawing at him.
Simply put...
Sig's mental resistance was abnormally weak.
Far weaker than any ordinary person should possess.
"Perhaps you're right."
Anthony answered calmly.
"Perhaps he truly was exposed to corruption before."
"After all... he's Lloyd's roommate."
"Whether he wished it or not, he was bound to become entangled with things that belonged to monsters."
Given Lloyd's circumstances, the man himself was an enormous source of contamination.
Not because he deliberately spread it—
—but because darkness possessed its own gravity.
It drew others toward disaster.
Anthony understood that all too well.
So did every individual whose veins carried Secret Blood.
It was less a blessing than a curse.
"...Perhaps."
Samuel's certainty faltered.
The sharp confidence that usually defined him had dulled.
"I just can't shake this feeling."
"I'm... uneasy."
He turned toward the rain-streaked window.
Beyond the glass, the endless curtain of rain swallowed the city beneath a veil of bone-deep cold.
He had spent his entire life in Florence.
This was perhaps the first time he had ever set foot in another kingdom.
Old Dunling was nothing like home.
More advanced.
More magnificent.
Yet infinitely colder.
Its suffocating atmosphere seemed capable of crushing every soul that lived within it.
Had he arrived merely as a traveler, perhaps he could have admired the city.
But he was no traveler.
He was a Demon Hunter.
He had crossed the sea to kill.
No matter who the target might be...
Blood was blood.
At first, Samuel had carried the pride shared by all Demon Hunters.
After tasting supernatural power, few people could resist the temptation it offered.
Samuel had been no different.
Yet after spending so many days in Old Dunling...
There had been no glorious battles.
No flashing blades.
Only endless negotiations.
Schemes within schemes.
Only then did he realize how terrifying true warfare could be.
The enemy had not even drawn a weapon...
And still...
He felt fear.
"Anxiety born of a foreign land."
Anthony spoke quietly.
"You must learn to endure it, Samuel."
This was Old Dunling.
The homeland of the Cleansing Bureau.
From the very moment Anthony had stepped into this city, they had all been walking a tightrope suspended over an abyss.
If the Cleansing Bureau chose to begin a war...
Not a single Demon Hunter among them would leave Old Dunling alive.
"Courage."
"Strength."
"Skill."
"And cunning."
Anthony recited the creed of the Bolognese sword masters.
A doctrine that governed far more than swordsmanship.
It defined the swordsman himself.
"Do you endure it as well, Father?"
Samuel asked quietly.
Even someone like Anthony...
Could he feel fear?
Anthony offered no answer.
The icy shadow cast by the Night of Divine Descent still lingered inside his thoughts.
An unseen conspiracy stretched across every person...
Every city...
Every nation.
Only after a long silence did he exhale softly and begin to pray.
"I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means harm you."
He quoted the words of the Gospel.
Only in that fleeting moment did the cold-hearted man truly resemble a priest.
"We all endure."
"It is God's trial."
Anthony spoke words that even he scarcely believed.
"Wait for His Holiness's command."
"He will dispel doubt."
"He will banish fear."
"He will lead us once more into His warmth."
It was a lie.
Far more than the uncertainty before them...
Anthony feared only one thing.
The forgotten project known as The Scabbard Treaty.
The Night of Divine Descent resembled an endless web.
Layer after layer peeled away...
Until, at last, the loathsome creature hidden at its center slowly revealed its face.
"We wait."
"That is all we can do."
Anthony pressed hard against his aching temple.
Exhaustion weighed heavily upon him.
He waited.
Waited for orders from Florence.
Until the new Pontiff spoke...
None of them would move.
"So..."
"What truly happened on the Night of Divine Descent?"
The words escaped in a whisper too quiet for Samuel to hear.
Whether it had been Lawrence...
Or Lloyd...
Every person who survived that night had played a different role within the tragedy.
And so each remembered a different truth.
Only by gathering every shattered story...
Could anyone hope to reconstruct what had really happened.
What...
Had truly occurred that night?
His body sliced through the dense air like the edge of a blade.
The rushing wind screamed around him, howling like a thousand ravenous beasts pursuing their prey.
It was an endless fall.
Lloyd spread his arms wide, drifting downward like a withered leaf surrendering itself to the abyss.
As he descended, the spiral stone stairways encircling the darkness resembled countless unblinking eyes, watching in silent indifference as he plunged toward death.
The descent lasted so impossibly long that eventually he could no longer tell whether he was still falling.
It felt as though he had become suspended within an eternity of darkness—
A world where no light had ever existed.
Until, at last...
The silence was broken by a low, agonized groan.
"So... I was right."
Lloyd struck solid ground with crushing force.
Pain exploded through every bone in his body.
Yet he did not die.
Nor was he reduced to shattered flesh.
Only unbearable agony remained.
And as the pain spread...
He began to laugh.
Struggling to his feet, he looked around.
Darkness.
Mist-like darkness stretched endlessly in every direction, swallowing his sight.
So...
This was the bottom of the abyss.
The deepest chamber of his own memories.
He looked upward.
The floating stone stairways had vanished.
There was no light.
Nothing.
If some forgotten memory truly lay hidden...
Then it could only exist here.
A land abandoned even by light itself.
Then he looked ahead.
And saw it.
Towering walls rose from the darkness like colossal gravestones.
One after another they stood in mournful silence, resembling ancient statues forever weeping over forgotten sorrow.
Something about them felt strangely familiar.
As Lloyd drew closer, their true form gradually emerged.
They were not monuments.
Nor statues.
They were three immense stone gates.
Upon the first gate spread intricate carvings and magnificent reliefs.
Angels descending from Heaven battled demons wreathed in consuming fire.
Every angel bore the same expression—
Profound compassion.
As though each one mourned the dead scattered across that eternal battlefield.
The craftsmanship was astonishingly lifelike.
The angels and demons seemed less like sculptures than living beings imprisoned forever within the stone.
Then memory returned.
Lloyd had seen these gates before.
In Saint Naro Cathedral.
This...
Was the entrance leading into the Sanctuary of Stasis.
The Gate of Heaven.
Without warning, the massive doors trembled violently.
Dust and fragments of stone cascaded into the darkness.
A slender crack slowly split across the immovable surface.
It was as though the gate had waited countless ages for someone strong enough to push it open.
Brilliant light poured through the opening.
Lloyd stared at the only light within the endless darkness.
Without hesitation, he strode forward.
Placing both hands upon the ancient stone, he summoned every ounce of strength and pushed.
It was an almost laughable sight.
A mere mortal attempting to move something so immeasurable.
Something that should never yield.
Yet...
A sharp cracking echoed through the abyss.
The memories petrified by time finally began to fracture.
The dust that had sealed them for ages drifted away piece by piece.
Lloyd could hear it.
The distant hymn reverberating through the darkness.
As the radiance intensified...
The sacred chorus rose ever higher.
Its melody swelled.
Its holy fire blazed brighter and brighter.
Lloyd reached out his hand.
Only a single step separated him...
...from the forgotten past.