After days of relentless downpour, the rain had finally begun to ease. It no longer crashed against the earth in fury, but drifted down like a translucent veil, threads of silver whispering across the streets and sending endless ripples across the pools that covered the cobblestones.
By nightfall, Old Dunling became something dreamlike—a city half-submerged beneath rain and darkness. Steam rising from beneath the streets was shattered by the falling drops before it could ever gather into mist. A biting chill clung to every traveler, lingering like a restless ghost that refused to be exorcised.
The streets were deserted. No sane soul would choose to wander outside in weather like this. The silence was so complete that the faint echo of horseshoes striking stone carried through the darkness, a quiet reminder that the mounted constables still kept their lonely patrols.
Tiny embers glimmered within the blackness.
Then Red Falcon stepped out of the shadows, flicking the half-smoked cigarette between his fingers into the rainwater at his feet, where it hissed once before vanishing beneath the rippling surface.
He wasn't much of a smoker. But on a cursed night like this, tobacco felt like the only thing capable of warming a man's bones, even if most of that warmth existed only inside his own head.
His colleagues often said Red Falcon possessed nerves of steel. No matter how horrific the circumstances, he never seemed frightened. Sometimes he would even crack jokes while standing over heaps of torn flesh and scattered entrails.
The truth was considerably less heroic.
He was terrified.
Talking nonsense was simply how he stopped himself from wetting his trousers.
His eyes swept across the rain-soaked city. Curtains of water swallowed every building and alley until it felt as though he alone remained alive in the entire world.
Perfect weather for another damned murder.
If there were any mercy left in this city, he wouldn't be out working in the middle of the night.
He let out a weary sigh. The warm breath escaped his lips, only to dissolve into the freezing wind moments later, as though something unseen had quietly murdered it.
A black umbrella shielded him from the rain. His coat was black. His gloves were black. Beneath the coat rested a service pistol, while a folding knife hung at his waist.
He looked less like a detective than Death itself, arriving for another night's labor.
As he stepped through the shallow water, more figures emerged silently from the darkness behind him, each one dressed in the same funeral black, like reapers answering an invisible summons.
A carriage waited not far away.
The advance team had already secured the building. Displaying forged police credentials, they calmly informed the awakened tenants that this was merely a routine security inspection.
Everyone knew it was anything but routine.
Hidden within the unseen corners of the street, men crouched beneath the darkness with thermite rifles already ignited. The incandescent weapons burned hot enough that the relentless damp did little to diminish their deadly glow.
"You know," another voice broke the silence, "sometimes I have this strange feeling."
Robin stepped out beneath the rain.
A devout believer, he wore a silver cross suspended against the black fabric of his coat.
He worshipped the formless god preached by the Gospel Church, though after generations of adaptation within Inlvig, that faith had long since become almost unrecognizable from its origins.
Still, Robin had never confused faith with duty.
Belief was belief.
Work was work.
"What kind of feeling?" Red Falcon asked, grateful for the conversation. On nights like this, hearing another human voice helped convince him he hadn't been abandoned by the world beyond the rain.
"Old Dunling," Robin said slowly, gazing into the endless curtain of water, "is a city of industry beneath the sun. Gears roar. Factories breathe. Wealth is forged here, miracles are built here, and the entire world follows in its footsteps. People exhaust their lives feeding those machines..."
His voice softened.
"But after sunset..."
"...it becomes another world entirely."
"A world that was never meant for mortals."
"In every forgotten alley, grotesque things lurk in the darkness—things that would drag humanity back into the age before civilization. And we..." He looked toward the rain-filled streets. "...we're the ones carrying the fire."
"We're the fools who fight them."
"Hmm..." Red Falcon chuckled. "That reminds me of those novels."
"Novels?"
Robin glanced sideways.
Red Falcon hardly looked like the sort of man who voluntarily picked up literature.
"Not the old classics," Red Falcon quickly clarified. "The newer ones. I don't really know what people call them. They're just... entertaining stories. Not exactly respected by the literary crowd."
"...Knight novels?" Robin ventured after a moment.
The genre had only appeared within the last few years.
Stories of noble families consumed by love and betrayal. Tales of explorers crossing unknown seas in search of forgotten continents. They carried none of the solemn philosophies critics admired, nor any lofty prose destined for textbooks.
They simply told stories because stories deserved to be told.
The older generation dismissed them as cheap entertainment.
Young people adored them.
Compared with the suffocating seriousness of traditional literature, these tales felt wonderfully alive.
Robin couldn't help smiling inwardly.
Of course Red Falcon would read something like that.
"That's exactly how those stories go," Red Falcon said excitedly. "The city's crawling with villains who only come out after dark. So the hero trains his swordsmanship day after day, and when night falls, he puts on a mask and goes out delivering justice."
He nudged Robin with his elbow.
"Doesn't sound a little familiar?"
"We're just fighting monsters instead of criminals."
"The girls absolutely love those stories," he continued, grinning. "A mysterious hero who saves people every night but never reveals his identity? They think that's the coolest thing imaginable."
The smile on his face made it seem as though he himself were that masked hero.
"You really like them, don't you?"
"Of course."
Youth still radiated from Red Falcon.
Robin simply couldn't understand it.
Though they wore the same uniform, there was nearly a generation between them. Red Falcon was about Lloyd's age, while Robin had already entered his thirties. Had fate not chained him to the Purification Bureau, he would probably have married and started a family by now.
After a brief silence, Robin sighed exactly like the old men who constantly complained that they no longer understood the younger generation.
"Speaking of which..." he said quietly, "...Joey looked furious tonight."
"I've never seen him like that."
"It's because of those damned hallucinations," Red Falcon answered. "He saw that child again."
Robin fell silent.
He knew exactly which incident Red Falcon meant.
"So..." he murmured. "He still hasn't escaped it."
"No."
Red Falcon's expression darkened.
"Where do you think his obsession with cleanliness came from?"
"He's killed men. Women. Old people. Young people. Monsters that weren't even human."
"But that time..."
"...he killed children."
"A lot of them."
Red Falcon understood him.
Psychological burdens weren't something a man simply talked himself out of.
"That wasn't his fault," Robin said after a pause. "It happened on the battlefield. Besides, Gawain was the one who made the decision."
"That's exactly why killing is so difficult."
Rain drummed steadily against Red Falcon's umbrella.
"You have to crush every instinct inside yourself until murdering your own kind feels normal."
Very few people knew the whole story.
Before being stationed in Old Dunling, Joey had served alongside Sir Gawain on campaigns across the frontier, hunting the fiends that haunted the kingdom's borders.
Those lands stood where law ended and the sword began.
Places where blood and death were ordinary companions.
Then came that operation.
Joey killed innocents.
An entire group of children.
"I still remember Gawain's face," Red Falcon said quietly. "The bastard looked completely calm."
"...The worst part is..."
"...he was right."
"According to Bureau regulations, he did everything exactly as he was supposed to."
"But it still made my skin crawl."
Red Falcon could still remember Joey repeating Gawain's words afterward.
"We just killed their parents."
"That family worshipped demons."
"We don't know what powers those children possess. We don't know what weapons they've been given."
"Right now they hate us."
"Perhaps the next second one of those children will become a fiend and slaughter my men."
"Their lives are my responsibility."
So Gawain killed them.
Every last one.
That was war.
Cold.
Merciless.
And, by every military measure, perfectly correct.
If there had been any fault at all...
...it was that Gawain obeyed the rules so absolutely that he no longer seemed human.
To fight demons, humanity was forever sacrificing pieces of itself.
Mercy.
Compassion.
Weakness.
Perhaps...
everyone was colder than they wished to admit.
As long as they refused to acknowledge it, they could still pretend to be ordinary people.
Joey's torment began that very day.
Every member of the Purification Bureau carried scars upon the soul. They had all killed. They had all sinned. Even while convincing themselves it was for a brighter tomorrow, innocent lives had still been taken by their hands.
Even Red Falcon, carefree as he was, occasionally found himself borrowing one of Robin's prayers and muttering it beneath his breath.
But only that one mission convinced Joey that his sins could never be forgiven.
Afterward he requested a transfer back to Old Dunling.
The nightmares followed him home.
Hallucinogens became the only thing capable of quieting his mind.
His condition deteriorated steadily, and whenever blood stained his hands, those memories returned as vividly as the day they were born.
"You know," Red Falcon said with unusual sincerity, "seeing a psychologist regularly is actually important."
Robin blinked.
"I thought you were about to say something profound."
"Profound?" Red Falcon laughed. "Life's already trying to kill us every single day."
"Why make it even harder?"
Robin smiled despite himself.
"Is that your version of wisdom?"
"No."
Red Falcon shrugged.
"I'm just shameless."
"People like me usually live longer."
There wasn't a trace of solemnity in his voice.
Not because he lacked ambition.
Growing up in the Lower District had simply taught him to find happiness in surviving another day.
"Enough chatting."
A new voice cut through the rain.
Another figure emerged from the darkness.
Night Owl.
It was rare to see him joining field operations.
Only one third-generation Divine Armor was currently fit for deployment, and that prototype had been completely destroyed during testing by Lloyd's Black Angel. Until the replacement was completed, the test pilot had nothing to pilot, leaving Night Owl temporarily reassigned to frontline duty.
"Everyone's in position," he said.
"It's time."
Robin hesitated.
"Is this really the right call?"
"That doctor is one of us."
"We don't have any evidence."
"We have Joey," Red Falcon replied.
"And in Old Dunling, suspicion has kept more people alive than certainty ever has."
"If there's even the slightest sign of corruption, we investigate."
"No exceptions."
"Arthur's daughter is still locked inside Black Mountain Hospital, isn't she?"
Red Falcon knew better than most how unbearable that place was.
Nearly two weeks had passed.
The little girl still hadn't been released.
"But that's exactly why..." Robin murmured.
"...we're just as suspicious of our own people."
Night Owl understood the concern.
It simply wasn't his concern tonight.
Within the Bureau, every senior knight answered to a different Knight Commander. Joey and Night Owl had once served directly beneath Lancelot.
Months ago, however, Lancelot had vanished without warning.
Rumors claimed that, like Galahad before him, he had suffered corruption from a first-generation Divine Armor and was undergoing emergency treatment.
People occasionally reported glimpsing Galahad around the Eternal Pump.
Lancelot, however...
...might as well have become a ghost.
Even his own subordinates had never actually met him.
Red Falcon stretched one hand into the rain and rubbed the freezing water across his face, forcing himself awake.
He'd learned one lesson long ago.
The more secrets you knew...
...the sooner you died.
"Our own people..." Robin sighed.
"Hard to imagine."
Fighting demons meant distrusting more than demons.
The Bureau believed Joey's suspicions regarding Dr. James Moriarty.
It also suspected Joey himself.
He had once abused hallucinogens.
He had spent time inside Black Mountain Hospital.
Within the Bureau, that alone was enough to stain a man's record forever.
If Moriarty proved innocent, Joey would face psychological evaluations and neurological examinations. There were already those who believed lingering corruption had damaged his mind.
None of that boded well.
"You've read the doctor's file?" Red Falcon asked.
Robin nodded.
He had reviewed it inside the carriage on the journey here.
Though both served the Purification Bureau, Black Mountain Hospital and the frontline knights rarely interacted. Like the Eternal Pump, they belonged to entirely different worlds.
"James Moriarty."
"Twenty-seven years old."
"Unmarried."
"Native of Old Dunling."
"Graduated from the Royal Medical Academy."
"Recruited into Black Mountain Hospital immediately afterward."
"Completed a year of probation before becoming a full member."
The file was immaculate.
Almost impossibly so.
Every year of his life had been meticulously documented.
With nothing but those few sheets of paper, one could almost reconstruct the entirety of his existence.
And yet...
Joey suspected him.
Red Falcon still remembered that night.
Joey had been suffering through an episode so violent it resembled full demonic corruption.
When his mind finally stabilized, he raised the Bureau's highly sensitive Geiger Counter and, despite barely remaining conscious, reached a single conclusion.
James Moriarty.
Joey couldn't prove it.
He wasn't even certain.
But he trusted his instincts.
The doctor was connected to the demons.
That strange mutual-aid society...
The endless hallucinations that had begun after meeting Moriarty...
Everything felt like an invisible web stretching silently through the darkness.
You could brush against its threads.
You could feel the unbearable pressure tightening around you.
But no matter how hard you looked...
...you could never see the spider waiting at its center.