Lloyd looked genuinely caught off guard. His hands hovered awkwardly for a moment before settling obediently upon his knees, like a child waiting to be scolded.
"So... you're worried about Sig, aren't you?" he asked cautiously.
This wasn't a conversation born on impulse. Madam Vanrud had likely been contemplating retirement for a long time. The rainy season had merely given her the final push she needed to make up her mind.
What an infuriating season it was. Endless rain lashed the world without mercy, washing away all restlessness while trapping everyone inside their homes.
As Lloyd quietly retraced the years they'd spent together, he realized something that surprised even himself. Beneath the old woman's dreadful temper was someone unexpectedly decent—a foul-mouthed nanny, perhaps, whose extraordinary life occasionally rewarded those around her with astonishing surprises.
Madam Vanrud gave a slow, troubled nod.
"Sig isn't like you. You..." She paused before continuing. "You'll survive no matter what. And you won't lose your way."
A grin spread across Lloyd's face. He had never imagined she held him in such high regard.
"Are you actually pleased with yourself?" she scoffed. "I only meant... you're probably a decent person."
She hesitated over the words, as though even she couldn't decide whether they were true.
"Probably."
Good and evil had never been things that could be measured so neatly.
"At the very least," she said at last, studying the smug expression on his face, "your mind is strong enough that no one can sway you."
She let the silence linger before adding in her usual blunt fashion,
"You kill people. You burn things down. But you never drag your mess back into this house... and you're always willing to help me wash the dishes."
For once, Lloyd found himself utterly speechless.
It suddenly dawned on him that pleasing this old woman was astonishingly easy.
"But Sig is different," she continued softly. "He's... a complicated child."
Her gaze drifted somewhere far away.
"He came here long before you did. Back then..." She gestured toward the dining table. "...he wasn't even as tall as that."
The worries she'd buried for years finally spilled out.
"My husband and I never had children. After he died... this house was empty. Just me."
She smiled faintly, though loneliness lingered beneath it.
"It was unbearably quiet."
"Then one day I found Sig wandering the streets. He was looking for work—any work at all—as long as someone would feed him and give him a place to sleep."
"That's illegal!" Lloyd blurted. "Child labor!"
"I know."
She rolled her eyes.
"But someone would've taken him in regardless. Those black-hearted factories. The gangs."
Her expression darkened.
"...Or somewhere even worse."
Old Dunling had always been a city of contradictions.
It forged the most magnificent crowns in the world, powered by technologies beyond imagination, yet only a few streets away stood neighborhoods forgotten by civilization itself. It could create breathtaking wonders, while above it hung an eternal sky of ash where sunlight had long since ceased to exist.
"So you let him stay here?"
"I figured I might as well keep a little stray animal," she answered matter-of-factly. "Made the house feel less empty. Besides, he didn't eat much."
"Why not adopt a dog instead?"
She shrugged.
"Didn't happen to find one."
Lloyd fell silent.
For the first time, he truly understood her.
She had lost the man she loved most. In many ways, she had lost everything.
Human beings were never built to carry grief forever. That was why they learned to forget... or perhaps more accurately, to bury themselves inside something else.
Just as Lloyd had thrown every ounce of himself into hunting demons after the Night of Divine Descent.
Perhaps she'd poured all of that loneliness into raising Sig instead.
The kid really had been lucky.
"I'm worried," Madam Vanrud confessed quietly. "I don't know what kind of man he'll become."
"You know he started using hallucinogens before."
"He keeps everything locked inside. Never tells anyone what he's feels."
Her voice grew increasingly fragile.
"I'm afraid he'll become someone else."
"Someone none of us wants to see."
She sighed before continuing.
"I've thought about taking him with me to the countryside."
"But I'm old. I'll probably die before long."
"Sig's still young."
"Old Dunling belongs to young people like him."
"So how could I drag him away from all of that... just because I don't want to be alone?"
"That would be selfish."
Somewhere during the conversation, the fierce old woman had vanished.
In her place sat nothing more than an elderly woman endlessly fussing over someone she loved.
Only then did Lloyd realize this might have been the first truly honest conversation they'd ever shared.
Looking back, they'd always appeared close, yet there had always been an invisible distance neither of them had ever crossed.
"You think of Sig as your own son?" Lloyd asked.
"I watched him grow up with my own eyes."
She smiled faintly.
"Blood doesn't matter."
"If you've cared for a little animal for over ten years, wouldn't you grow attached?"
Even in a moment like this, she still couldn't resist taking a jab at him.
Lloyd chuckled.
"Then what am I?"
"You?"
She looked him up and down with unmistakable disdain.
"My stepson?" he guessed.
"No."
"You're just the nuisance who wandered into my house one day and refused to leave."
"Ouch. That's harsh."
"When did you become so delicate?"
The two continued bickering exactly as they always had.
Fortunately, all the expired military explosives had already been cleared out of the house. Otherwise, the old woman might have reached for a gun by now.
For some reason, Lloyd suddenly felt strangely dazed.
Perhaps happiness was nothing more than a matter of comparison.
Curled comfortably upon the sofa while rain hammered endlessly against the windows outside, he found himself seized by an odd sense of gratitude.
His life truly was absurdly fractured.
Not long ago, he had been consumed by murderous hatred, preparing to fight the New Order to the bitter end.
Now he sat inside a warm home, discussing old age with a grumpy grandmother.
The contrast was so immense that even the fury he'd carried through the front door had quietly unraveled.
"No one's life runs alongside another forever," Madam Vanrud murmured.
"One day you'll leave this house."
"Sig will."
"So will I."
She let out a weary sigh.
Just then, hoofbeats echoed outside.
They came fast, then stopped neatly before the front door.
Someone had arrived.
"Still..." she said while rising to her feet, "...you're useful in your own way, Lloyd."
"That boy's a good kid."
"As for you..."
She shot him a sideways glance.
"You're a complete menace."
Before Lloyd could ask what she meant, she disappeared into the kitchen, carefully packed something fragrant into a satchel, then took her coat from the rack.
It seemed whoever had arrived outside had come to pick her up.
Lloyd already knew who it must be.
"So... you still wish you'd had a daughter?"
Madam Vanrud snorted.
"I still have some sense of morality."
"Celia's young enough to be my granddaughter."
Then she was gone.
Silence settled over 121A Cork Street.
Sig was nowhere to be seen.
The little house suddenly felt far larger than it truly was.
Lloyd remained in the living room for a while before rising and heading back to his room.
Small talk was over.
He reached beneath the bed and dragged out a heavy storage case.
Inside lay neatly organized weapons and ammunition, several Holy Silver folding knives manufactured by the Purging Bureau, along with spare blades.
Most of the holy silver weapons he'd carried had been destroyed during his brutal battle against Lawrence.
They weren't merely effective against demons.
They were equally lethal against demon hunters.
Given the current situation, a confrontation with the New Order seemed increasingly inevitable.
He intended to be ready.
A shotgun rested beside carefully arranged rows of ammunition—flechette rounds, Dragon's Breath shells, slugs, each sorted with meticulous precision.
Beside them sat a sealed metal container filled with a silvery liquid.
Mercury.
He'd conveniently helped himself to it during the incident at the Eternal Pump.
Over the years, the Purging Bureau had developed an astonishing variety of anti-demonic weaponry.
As they liked to say, viewed from another angle, demons were simply terrifyingly powerful organisms made of flesh and blood.
Monstrous though they were, biology still imposed certain limitations upon them.
Poisons couldn't kill a demon, but they could weaken one.
Electricity could numb even impossibly powerful muscles.
Human understanding of life itself had become the foundation upon which countless bizarre anti-demon weapons had been born.
If they could restrain demons...
They would work even better against demon hunters.
Then there was the final item.
Hidden at the very bottom of the case were several more airtight canisters.
Unlike the shimmering mercury, these contained nothing but absolute blackness.
Lloyd picked one up.
The liquid inside seemed to swallow every trace of light.
Several years earlier, the Purging Bureau had discovered this volatile substance somewhere in the northern territories.
After years of secret research, they had refined vast quantities of crude black oil into this impossibly dark liquid.
Its official designation was Pitch Antimony.
A revolutionary new energy source.
Even the tiniest amount could unleash more heat than several times its own mass in crude oil.
The production process remained one of the Bureau's greatest secrets.
Merlin was the only man who truly understood it.
Yet Lloyd had never doubted the truth.
This wasn't the product of modern science.
It was alchemy.
Not the forgotten alchemy of ancient ages, but something that had somehow become industrialized.
Mass-produced.
He could smell it.
That strange instinct of his whispered the same warning it always had.
There was something profoundly ominous hidden inside the black liquid.
And whenever Lloyd's instincts labeled something ominous...
It was never good news.
This had been the very power source used by the fully armed Sword Dancer.
Without such incredible energy density, that ancient suit of Old Century armor would have required an impossibly massive reactor.
Only after relentless questioning had Merlin finally explained its origins—and even handed Lloyd several samples.
At the time, Lloyd had found it difficult to believe.
This was an energy source capable of reshaping the entire world.
Why would Merlin simply give it away?
Only much later, after speaking with the New Order, did Lloyd finally understand.
Perhaps it was simply the madness shared by every alchemist.
After realizing Lloyd could infiltrate the Temple of Stasis through the Black Angel and enter that bizarre spectral state, Merlin's attitude toward him had changed completely.
Lloyd might uncover forgotten knowledge.
Forbidden knowledge.
For an alchemist, there was no temptation greater than that.
If anyone within the Purging Bureau desperately wanted Lloyd to stay alive...
It was Merlin.
That was why he'd entrusted him with the Pitch Antimony.
The old fox had known from the beginning what the New Order sought.
He'd also known Lloyd might one day clash with them.
No one knew how events would unfold.
There was every possibility that even the Purging Bureau could eventually become Lloyd's enemy.
These canisters weren't gifts.
They were insurance.
There wasn't much.
But if every container detonated simultaneously...
Half a city block would vanish.
Using them that way, however, would be a terrible waste.
One truth was impossible to deny.
Lawrence had been a bastard.
But he had also been an exceptional Prelate.
Everything he'd taught Lloyd had ultimately become the very skill that allowed Lloyd to kill him.
As for the demon hunters of the New Order...
Lloyd had no idea what kind of training they had received.
Still, caution had never killed anyone.
He carefully separated the raw materials from the rest of his arsenal.
The shotgun's construction simply wasn't strong enough.
Mercury munitions were manageable.
Pitch Antimony?
The barrel would explode the instant he pulled the trigger—and Lloyd would likely die with it.
He would need another solution.
The great Mr. Holmes was not the sort of man who collapsed.
At worst...
He merely lay down for a moment, quietly considering the most devastating way to strike back.
He swept every book from the desk onto the floor, barely clearing enough workspace before painstakingly arranging the assortment of devices that could quite literally blow the entire house into the sky.
As he worked, something caught the corner of his eye.
A necklace.
Hanging from it was an unusually large crest.
Lloyd reached over and picked it up.
Two spiral-crossed blades formed an elegant round shield.
The crest of House Stuart.
Arthur had handed it to him after the Day of Divine Birth.
Apparently it was a small gift from Celia.
Arthur hadn't explained anything.
He'd simply shoved it into Lloyd's hand.
The old man had always looked annoyed whenever Lloyd appeared.
Sometimes Lloyd suspected that if the Purging Bureau were ever ordered to hunt him down, Arthur would be grinning from ear to ear.
Turning the pendant idly between his fingers, Lloyd lowered his head and fastened it around his neck.
It was a gift from a young lady.
That alone made it worth wearing.
A thought suddenly crossed his mind.
He walked over and drew the curtains shut, sealing the room away from prying eyes.
The rain had cloaked everything outside in mist.
Still, there was no guarantee someone with exceptionally sharp vision wasn't watching from somewhere beyond.
Lloyd understood what Shrike had meant.
The Purging Bureau knew perfectly well they couldn't monitor him forever.
Sooner or later, the city's greatest detective would discover them.
Far better to tell him in advance than let misunderstandings erupt into bloodshed.
At least that way...
If Lloyd ever had to strike back...
He wouldn't aim to kill.
"So..."
He picked up a charred fragment of wood.
"...what exactly is all this?"
It was all that remained of Winchester.
Its surface had been burned black, yet beneath his fingertips he could still feel the faint carved grooves.
The relic carried the echoes of the little poem that 047 had sung again and again.
One of the few things that strange companion had left behind.
After a quiet moment of remembrance, Lloyd carefully set the broken piece aside.
For a weapon...
It had met a worthy end.
It hadn't been abandoned beneath layers of dust.
Nor discarded because it had become obsolete.
It had fought until the very last moment of its existence.
He finished organizing the rest of his weapons and stacked them neatly beside the bed.
This time he didn't hide them underneath.
He merely threw a blanket over them.
Close enough that a single roll across the mattress would place a weapon directly into his hand.
Taking a slow breath, Lloyd lay back upon the bed and stared at the ceiling.
It was almost completely covered in posters.
Years of neglect had layered paper upon paper until they formed a thick collage overhead.
Sticky notes covered the remaining spaces.
He liked waking each morning knowing exactly what needed to be done.
After studying them carefully, he realized several matters still remained unresolved.
The Memory Palace.
Apart from the single gate he had already opened, every other door remained sealed shut.
He still had no idea how to unlock them.
The New Order had yet to make its move.
Both sides remained locked in a tense standoff with the Purging Bureau.
The balance was fragile.
War might erupt with the slightest provocation.
Until then...
Everyone was desperately restraining themselves.
Lloyd closed his eyes.
He felt himself sinking.
Falling deeper and deeper into a vast whirlpool that had begun to turn long before the Night of Divine Descent...
Perhaps even many years before that.
Countless invisible hands reached from behind unseen curtains, quietly moving every piece upon the board.
No one knew what game they were truly playing.
No one knew what end they sought.