As he stepped out of the room, Zachary turned back one last time to the closed door. He looked at it for a few seconds, his lips curling into a vague smile before he shook his head with a soft chuckle. But just as he turned toward the stairs, he paused, his gaze shifting toward the far end of the hallway.
To a normal person, there appeared to be nothing there. Yet, Cinder Eyes told him otherwise; someone was paying very close attention to him. With another chuckle, he addressed the seemingly empty corner.
"You're not going to greet me, Cass?"
Zachary waited, but no answer came back from the shadows. With a scoff, he continued, "I don't really know what's going on in that pretty head of yours, but don't worry too much. I don't have any ill feelings for you... Just act as you always have."
Receiving no reply, he headed for the stairs, leaving the blind seer alone with her thoughts. Zachary could easily imagine her internal state. Cassie was painfully aware that he knew that she had done something against him. She had apologized, and Zachary truly bore her no malice, but for someone like her, his continued goodwill was likely the heaviest punishment of all.
It was clear she regretted her actions, and his refusal to be angry only reinforced her guilt.
'That's for her to work through. I've done my part,' Zachary thought with a calm smile.
As he reached the landing, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Coming out of what used to be his old quarters, Caster was watching him, a complicated, unreadable expression on his handsome face.
Zachary chuckled at the string of "coincidental" meetings. Resting his elbow on the handrail, he addressed the Legacy scion. "Don't give me those looks, man. I'm not going to steal Nephis away from you. You can have her all to yourself."
Caster flinched at the sudden, blunt nonsense. Zachary laughed. To be honest, aside from Caster's prescribed role in the narrative, he bore no real hostility toward the scion. Their interactions had been nothing if not cordial during his stay in the Settlement.
It took a few seconds for Caster to regain his composure. He frowned, but a beat later, he let out a weary sigh.
"I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that, even after all this time, you have retained that sense of humor..." Zachary noticed the scion's guard lower slightly as he continued in a more relaxed voice. "Either way, I suppose it's good to see that you're well. I just hope you understand that I cannot get comfortable around you. You know the sentiment people here have regarding your... history."
Zachary scoffed at the diplomatic excuse before resuming his descent. "Yes, yes. You don't have to explain yourself to me, man."
A few minutes later, he reached the dining area. Just as the novel had arranged, Effie and Kai were there, locked in a heated discussion. The huntress was munching relaxedly on dried meat from a leather pouch.
Sliding into an empty seat, Zachary reached out and snatched a piece of meat without asking. "What are you two discussing so excitedly this early in the morning?" he asked, taking a savory bite.
"Early? It's almost midday," Effie shot back, quickly yanking the pouch out of his reach. She pointed a half-eaten strip of jerky toward the nervous idol. "And I was trying to figure out what Kai was supposed to be doing here."
"Oh, that." Zachary tried to reach for the pouch again, but Effie was faster. Realizing he wasn't getting a second helping, he plopped back into his chair. "Nothing much, really. I just enjoy his presence."
Effie looked at him with an amused glow in her eyes, while Kai looked absolutely baffled by the simple honesty of the statement.
"You do?" Despite knowing the truth, the archer felt compelled to ask.
"Well, of course. It's been a long time since I've talked with someone who isn't trying to kill me or plotting something sinister," Zachary said with a chuckle. "I know I might have said some things that landed wrong, but please believe me—there was no ill intent. It was just prankless harm."
Kai listened for a few seconds before a wide, brilliant smile broke across his lips.
"Oh, don't worry! It was actually quite refreshing, you know? And hearing you talk like that about my band means your words aren't biased—" The archer stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing as he processed the phrasing. "Wait. Did you just say 'prankless harm'?"
Ignoring the idol's confusion, Zachary turned to the huntress with a grin. "So, ready to go, Minerva?"
Effie regarded him for a beat before a wide, predatory smile broke across her face. She stood up from her seat. "Of course. I'm getting really curious about which dark corner you've been hiding in."
Sneering playfully at her words, he stood up too. Placing a hand on Kai's shoulder, Zachary said warmly, "It was nice meeting you, man. See you later."
Kai blinked, then mirrored the smile. "Bye, Zach. I hope we can see each other again soon."
Leaving the idol behind, the two of them walked toward the lodge doors. As they stepped out into the oppressive air of the Dark City, Effie spoke up behind him, her grin widening. "So, are mommy and daddy done fighting?"
Zachary looked back at the huntress. Refusing to let the jab get under his skin, he shot back with an amused glint in his eye, "Would that make you my daughter, then?"
She recoiled instantly. "Forget I said anything."
Effie huffed, quickly walking past him toward the edge of the Settlement. Zachary followed with a laugh until they reached the stone seat overlooking the ruins. Effie studied the blackened streets carefully, her voice turning serious. "Ready?"
"Yes," Zachary answered. He dropped into a squat, stretching his legs. "How fast can you run, by the way?"
Effie looked down at him with a puzzled expression. "Pretty fast. Why?"
Standing up and rolling his neck until it popped, Zachary flashed her a jagged smile. "Try to catch up, then."
He didn't wait for an answer. He simply blasted forward, a blur of motion heading straight into the heart of the Ruins.
Effie stared at his retreating back for a fraction of a second, the realization of the challenge finally landing. Her eyes went wide, and she immediately gave chase.
During his long exile, Zachary had discovered a new way to traverse the cursed city: Haste.
There had been times when his precious interns had been injured in the line of duty, receiving involuntary, unpaid vacations within his Soul Sea. Since he couldn't simply stop his operations just because his employees were sidelined, Zachary had been forced to innovate.
He had laid the foundation for this on his very first day in the city. By moving at high speeds through the soot-stained alleys, he minimized the exposure of his blasphemous presence. Now, with his senses sharpened by a dozen near-death encounters, Cinder Eyes and Danger Sense were perfectly calibrated to navigate the labyrinthine death trap.
Zachary pivoted agilely around a collapsed pillar, glancing back to see Effie following a respectable distance behind. He gave her another mocking smile before making a sharp, ninety-degree turn into a narrow alley. To his left, the faint rustle of shifting stone and the settling of dust signaled the presence of something massive nearby.
With her vast hunting experience, Effie noticed the signs too. She followed him into the alley, only to see him vaulting from wall to wall, gaining height until he reached the rooftop of a crumbling building.
"You fuc—"
But he was already gone. Not wanting to be left behind in the kill-zone, she followed, climbing nimbly up the broken masonry and reaching the roof seconds later.
Zachary wasn't waiting. He took a leap toward the next building, but he appeared to miscalculate, his fingers failing to reach the stone cornice. Just as Effie was deciding whether to worry or laugh, a steel cable hissed from his hip with a sharp whistle. The anchor bit into the stone, and Zachary swung in a wide, controlled arc toward a smaller building in the distance.
He looked back at her, clearly feeling her gaze. The grin on his marred face asked a very silent, very annoying question: Can you do that?
"Motherf..." She bit back the curse. Knowing she'd be stranded if she didn't move, she took a massive leap, clearing the gap Zachary had cheated across. Keeping her momentum, she rolled and came up right at his side.
Zachary nodded in approval. As a veteran warrior, her agility was world-class. He turned away, speaking without looking back. "Come on. We're only halfway there."
They continued their frantic dance through the ruins. It was a completely different style of movement than Effie was used to, but she adapted with frightening speed. Zachary's pace was outstanding, made even more impressive by the fact that he wasn't using Flow Control. His speed was the pure result of a fully saturated Core and Unity, which pushed his power to a hundred and twenty percent efficiency.
Combined with Balance Control—which gifted him an almost supernatural mastery over his own Body—Zachary had effectively become the greatest parkour athlete of this nightmarish world.
The sun was beginning to dip when they finally reached the shadow of the great Cathedral. Zachary's stomach gave an audible growl; he was starving. Thankfully, he'd left a meal slow-cooking. If his internal clock was accurate, it would be ready in minutes.
"You don't actually live there, right?" Effie asked, her chest heaving as she breathed heavily. She pointed a trembling finger at the Ruined Cathedral. "I know for a fact that nothing comes out of that temple alive."
Zachary sighed and kept walking. "Yes, I do live here. More specifically, upstairs. The room below is currently being rented by a Fallen Devil—not the best roomie, but I've had worse."
He really had.
Back in the Other World, before he finally managed to rent his own studio apartment near campus, he had shared a flat with a French guy. The first misstep had been the man's refusal to speak English, claiming he wouldn't 'tarnish his tongue' with such a language. Zachary had been forced to learn a patchwork of broken French just to tell him to do the dishes.
But the worst part was the bastard's gall; he brought home a different girl every single day. Not every weekend—every day. He'd inevitably forget their names or hide from them, leaving it to Zachary to deal with the aftermath. There were times when a new girl would arrive while another was still there, and Zachary found himself acting as an unwilling mediator in an ontological nightmare of romance and rage.
"Wow... what happened here?"
Effie's question snapped him back to the present. She was staring at the jagged, shattered stone along the side of the Cathedral. It was the grim vestige of his opening clash against the Stone Saints.
"What does it look like?" Zachary asked, not caring to elaborate.
"There's no blood, but by the state of the floor, I can tell there was a fight. A massive one."
"Well, there you have your answer, Effie. Aren't you a smart one?" he said with a sarcastic tilt of his lips as he walked past the scars in the masonry.
"Oh, fuck you," she shot back with a mirthful scoff, though she followed close behind. As they neared the rear of the structure, her expression turned instantly serious. "Wait. You really live up there?"
"Yes. The Devil doesn't emerge even if it detects me out here, and my quarters are far enough above that it loses the trail once I'm inside," Zachary explained as he began to scale the back wall. "It also kills anything that tries to follow, so I don't have to worry about uninvited guests. Now, come on."
They began the climb. After his initial experience of dragging his mangled body through the hole in the roof, Zachary had scouted a more 'gentle' entrance via a support beam at the rear. Reaching the beam, Zachary leaned back and hissed a whisper.
"Now, just because we're up here doesn't mean we can be careless. That guy's senses are—"
CRUNCH.
The sound of grinding rubble and falling dust cut him off. Effie's wide, powerful shoulders had snagged on a twisted support strut; in her effort to wrench herself free, she had taken a sizable chunk of the wall with her.
"You gangly, uncoordinated girl! I'm not getting hogtied over your lack of grace." Zachary hissed through clenched teeth.
Effie froze, looking genuinely shocked by his choice of words, her eyes darting toward the suffocating darkness of the hall below. But a quiet, mischievous chuckle from Zachary dispersed her panic.
"Just kidding. Here, hold my hand. The Devil doesn't usually patrol this far back." Guiding the huntress carefully, they navigated the final stretch and slipped into the Priestess's room.
"We're finally here," Zachary said, his voice returning to a normal volume. "You can summon a Memory if you want. Let there be light, or something like that."
Effie summoned a luminous Memory, and the room was suddenly bathed in a soft glow. She whistled sharply, her eyes darting over the ancient furniture and sacred decorations until they landed on a jarringly foreign addition: a single-person sofa.
"How did you even get this thing up here?" she asked, dropping into it with an appreciative sigh.
Zachary watched her for a few seconds before sighing. "You don't ask a magician to reveal his secrets."
To be honest, it had been a nightmare just remembering the sheer physical labor required to haul that thing through the ruins and up the wall. But the Zachary of two months ago had desperately wanted a sofa. That guy was a real prick to work for.
Effie stood up and moved toward the far wall. What had once been a space for religious iconography was now entirely consumed by a massive map of the Dark City, meticulously carved into the stone. Every corner, alley, bridge, and tunnel was signaled with clinical precision. It marked the walls entrances, the Bright Castle, and the broken lighthouse.
Effie studied it, clearly cross-referencing it with the map in the Lodge. She turned to him, her voice uncharacteristically solemn. "You haven't been wasting your time, I see."
Her gaze continued to travel along the wall until it reached a distant, shadowed corner. There, the decorations changed—from tactical carvings to the dark, dried sprays of blood that still adorned the floor and walls.
"...What happened here?" Effie asked aloud, leaning down to study the traces. "Look at how the marks start on the floor and climb the walls so irregularly. It isn't spray. Whatever left these must have rubbed itself against the surface. When you butcher something, the pattern is organic, predictable. But this... the irregularity means whatever left these was still alive."
Effie was an experienced huntress, and seeing such a violent array of blood in the place she was meant to sleep for a week triggered her professional instincts. She ignored Zachary's grim silence, her fingers hovering just inches from the masonry.
"The color isn't deep despite the length of the smears," she continued, her voice dropping into a diagnostic hum. "That means the subject didn't have much blood left to give, or it hardly bled at all. And yet, the sheer volume of traces suggests the wounds were deep." She touched a dried mark, muttering to herself. "The chaotic array... so many twists and sharp turns. Moving like that while injured would only make things worse. Whatever left these was out of its mind—or in such agony that it no longer cared."
Effie looked up then, her eyes searching for his marred face, locking her gaze into his single, remaining eye.
The question behind her expression was deafening. There was no way Zachary would bring prey back to his sanctuary to butcher; the risks were too high. And since the traces were fresh compared to the ancient dust of the Cathedral, there was only one logical conclusion.
The "subject" was him.
Despite the brute force she usually projected, Effie refused to voice the question. The concern in her eyes was visible even without the help of Cinder Eyes, and it made Zachary's heart feel leaden. He pressed a hand over his chest, a flash of phantom pain radiating beneath his fingers.
"Who are you, Dexter?" he scoffed, trying to break the weight of her stare.
Effie's face twisted into confusion before her eyes snapped wide. "You know Dexter?"
Recognizing that look, Zachary mirrored her surprise, pointing a finger at himself and then at her. "Oh, I know Dexter. You know Dexter?!" He couldn't believe it. Of all the people to catch one of his references, it had to be the barbarian huntress.
"Of course I know him! I've read the books!" Effie said excitedly, her professional concern vanishing in an instant. "I remember the one about the campus and the bull heads!"
Zachary nodded eagerly, a genuine grin splitting his face. "Have you read the one about the cannibal—"
"No spoilers!" Effie cut him off immediately, backing away with her hands up. "I haven't been able to find the rest of the series. They're incredibly rare. I've only read the first and the third one."
'So she doesn't know about Doakes yet,' he thought with a smirk, shaking his head.
He realized he couldn't mention the TV series. Based on her reaction and what he'd gathered about the Waking World, there was a massive digital graveyard between his time and hers. With the loss of North America and Europe, most digital media had been purged or corrupted. Only physical media—actual paper books—had stood a chance of surviving the Dark Ages.
His mind flickered back to Kai. If even a world-class artist was ignorant of the industry's most prominent names, the cultural gap was wider than he'd thought. But before he could pursue the thought, Effie had wandered away from the blood-stained corner toward the heavy wardrobe.
"Now, what do we have here?" she asked with a wide grin, throwing the doors open—only to flinch back a second later.
"Why are you checking things that aren't yours?" Zachary asked with a defeated sigh.
"Well..." she said reluctantly, peering into the dark interior. "I wanted to see if you hid any skeletons in your closet. I didn't expect to find actual skeletons."
The wardrobe that once held the fine silks of a priestess now looked like the workshop of a mad taxidermist. Fragments of chitinous carapace, jagged pincers, and curved scythe-limbs hung from ropes or were nailed to the wood. A myriad of other creature remains were carefully dissected inside, their surfaces covered in various experimental wounds.
"How did that get in there?!" Zachary asked with feigned shock. When he saw Effie's flat, unamused stare, he coughed into his hand.
"Joking. I'm joking." He reached out to touch a pincer from a Scavenger. "I noticed a while back that the carapaced creatures from the Labyrinth had a specific vulnerability to fire. I wanted to test the temperature thresholds—see if the trait was shared across species."
He continued his clinical explanation, but Effie had already stopped listening. She closed the wardrobe and began to move away, her luminous Memory held aloft, when something else caught her eye.
"And this?" she asked, pointing to the narrow gap behind the wardrobe.
Zachary frowned, leaning in to follow her finger. There was supposed to be nothing there. But as the light hit the stone behind the heavy furniture, his heart turned to ice.
Tucked away, positioned so the design was partially obscured by the wood but unmistakably intentional, was a drawing.
A black snake.
The scales, the fangs, and every trace of dark ink were rendered with such painstaking detail that the drawing almost looked alive.
'What is...' Zachary couldn't even finish the question as he stared at the drawing in shock.
He was rightfully stunned. In his three months living in the Cathedral, he hadn't noticed the mark once. He hadn't been particularly interested in the history of the place, so he'd never taken the time to scrutinize the Priestess's quarters, and the way the drawing was tucked away made it nearly invisible at first glance.
But the most jarring realization was that even if he had been looking, he still would have missed it. The snake's ink was peculiar; it remained invisible in the shadows, only manifesting under a direct source of light. And in all this time, Zachary hadn't needed a lamp.
'Has it always been here?' He tried to regain his composure, leaning in closer. 'Was this a detail the novel glossed over?'
But the question didn't take root. Instead, a deeper, more uncomfortable thought began to itch at the back of his mind. He felt a sickening sense of familiarity looking at the coiled serpent. It resembled something he had seen before. Yes, it was back in—
"Why so interested in snakes, huh, Mr. Inconvenient? Is yours feeling lonely?"
Effie's voice boomed mere inches from his ear. Zachary jumped back, caught completely off guard. He had been so focused on the discovery that his enhanced senses had momentarily tuned out the room around him.
Effie stood there with a predatory grin, clearly delighted by his reaction. Sighing in defeat and knowing that any deeper theorizing would only be interrupted by the huntress, Zachary decided to push the mystery aside for now.
"Gregorio?" he asked, backing away from the wall with a frown. "I keep him busy so he doesn't get lonely."
Effie raised an eyebrow, her gaze flickering with amusement. "Wasn't your friend called Bartholomew?"
'She remembers?' Zachary thought with a pang of pained surprise. Trying to let the topic die, he muttered, "He changed his name."
But Effie had no intention of letting him off the hook. She clearly found the subject of his "friend" extremely entertaining. "Oh my, has he been baptized? Who's the lucky girl... or guy? I don't really judge."
'What is she!' Zachary winced and passed a tired hand over his face.
He wanted to drop the subject, but he knew the moment he showed any weakness, Effie would never let it go. He swallowed a curse and decided to go all-in. Giving her a roguish smile and jerking his thumb behind him, he leaned in.
"Actually, there's this Nightmare Creature down the alley—"
"Ahhhhh!" Effie cut him off with a yell, clamping her hands over her ears. "I do judge! I do judge! I lost! Just stop it... Damnation."
"Hahahaha!" Zachary's laugh echoed through the stone room, feeling a surge of pride in his victory.
Leaving the huntress to her self-inflicted suffering, he finally listened to the frantic demands of his stomach. He walked toward the far side of the room, where the statue of the nameless goddess acted as a screen between the quarters and the Cathedral's main chambers.
At the statue's feet sat a heavy metal oven, modified with hand-drilled holes and a makeshift curved lid.
Effie finally emerged from her "trauma," watching him with a curious look. "What's that?"
"This is a makeshift smoker," Zachary answered, kneeling before the contraption. He looked back at the gluttonous huntress, a genuine smile playing on his lips as he unsealed the lid. A massive, fragrant cloud of woodsmoke billowed out, swirling around the goddess's shoulders before drifting into the Cathedral.
"And this, my friend... is Demon's Pork Belly."
Effie's eyes went wide. She stared into the dark interior of the smoker, where a massive slab of dark, shimmering meat rested on a makeshift rack. Despite its deep color, the surface was weeping juices, glistening with a richness that promised incredible tenderness. Her gaze followed the thin ribbons of smoke as they drifted toward the ceiling, whisked away by the room's natural ventilation, yet the fragrance remained—a heavy, savory perfume that filled the air.
Zachary heard the audible, heavy gulp she made. Using a makeshift knife, he carefully lifted the meat and transferred it to a silver plate. At that moment, the huntress finally found her voice.
"You... you hunted a Demon? Alone?" Effie took a few tentative steps toward him, her eyes never leaving the steaming prize.
"I did. After a fair amount of study and preparation," Zachary said, using a cloth to grab a silver cup of juices from the smoker to pour over the meat. "Actually, you should be more impressed by the smoker itself. It took a lot of trial and error to get the airflow right, especially keeping enough water inside to maintain the humidity in this dry tomb."
Effie wasn't listening. Her focus was entirely on the dark, rosy surface of the Demon Belly. Zachary ran the edge of his knife over the skin; the sharp, crackling sound that rang out was a testament to its perfect crispiness. Effie gulped again.
"Now, watch this." Zachary pressed the blade down. The crunch was loud, like breaking thin ice, and the knife slid through the rest of the meat as if it were soft butter, revealing a perfectly rendered, white-and-pink interior. Juices and rendered fat pooled onto the silver plate, and the room was suddenly flooded with the concentrated aroma of the feast.
Inhaling deeply, Zachary let out a satisfied sigh. "The seasoning is basic—just rock salt from the Dark City's walls and some leftover Artisan spices. But even so, the quality of the meat carries it. I think this stuff would taste incredible even if I'd cooked it over a plain torch."
He looked at Effie. She appeared mesmerized, a literal string of saliva threatening to escape her lips.
"I don't know if you've had the chance to eat a Demon before, but they taste damn good," Zachary said, a fleeting tint of regret crossing his mind as he remembered the Carapace Demon. "I think it's the Soul Essence. It enhances everything in a Nightmare Creature—strength, speed, and apparently, flavor. A Demon's meat is just richer. Perhaps an Unholy Titan is the Holy Grail of gourmet dining."
He cut a small piece and blew on it carefully. "I could have roasted it over an open flame like a barbarian..." He glanced at her playfully. "But if I'm going to eat meat of this caliber, it's only logical to do it right. Well... Bon Appétit."
Just as he was about to take the bite, Effie spoke up, her voice uncharacteristically sweet. "Mr. Incon—I mean, Zachary, my friend... I have always known you were a kind and selfless soul. You'll share a little with me, right?"
"Oh, Effie... I'd love to," Zachary said, continuing to blow on the meat. "But our contract was strictly for asylum. Nephis made it very clear that you brought your own rations."
Effie looked at her Memory bag, likely thinking of the dry, tasteless jerky inside. She bit her lip. "Come on, Zach. Be a good host. Share a little. Just one bite. Medium-sized."
'Medium-sized for her is a full meal for a normal person,' Zachary lampooned internally. He shook his head. "I am being a good host, Effie. I've allowed you to roam through my sanctuary without a word of protest." He moved the fork toward his mouth.
"Then be a good friend! Just one bite, Zach!"
"On the contrary, Effie, you should be the good friend here," Zachary countered. "You know how much you eat and how precious this meat is. You shouldn't even be asking."
Finally, under Effie's tortured gaze, Zachary took a bite.
It was even better than he had hoped. The shattering crunch of the skin gave way to a soft, melting texture that coated his tongue in savory bliss. There was a faint, complex sourness from the smoke and a perfect hit of salt, all elevated by the lingering heat of the Artisan spices.
Zachary closed his eyes and exhaled, chewing slowly to savor every second. He thanked Cinder Eyes for his sharpened senses; his mouth had become a cathedral of flavor. He remembered those sleepless nights in the Other World, watching cooking videos so perfect they felt like a form of torture, only to satisfy the craving with a bowl of soggy cereal.
This made every bit of that struggle worth it.
Effie watched his expression with a pained wince, her fists trembling. When she finally spoke, her voice was dangerously low.
"How much?"
Zachary opened his eyes and arched an eyebrow. Effie's composure finally snapped.
"How much for a bite?! Name your price, you scum! How dare you make a lady like me beg!"
"Effie! Don't say things like that," he said with mocking offense, cutting another piece. "People will think I'm extorting you. I'm doing no such thing."
She trembled as she watched the fat drip from the blade. She leaned in, her voice a desperate mutter. "...I'll... I'll tell you a secret."
His head perked up. "A secret?"
Effie's eyes glowed, sensing she had finally found his price. She leaned toward the tray, her hand creeping forward. "Yes. A secret about the Princess... if you just give me some..."
"A secret about Nephis?" Zachary asked. Just as her fingers were about to reach the plate, he snatched it away with a scoff. "I'm not some teenage gossip, Effie. Please, be serious."
"But... I'm hungry..." She said with a tiny, desperate voice.
"Hi hungry, I'm Zach."
The defeat in Effie's eyes was total. Her strongest card had been swiped off the table. But seeing her genuine despair, Zachary finally chuckled and sighed, extending the piece of meat on the end of his knife toward her.
"Here. Take it. You're making me feel like a monster."
Like a junkie finding a needle, Effie lunged. She moved so fast that for a split second, a ghost of smoke remained in the shape of the meat she had snatched.
Zachary watched her inhale the piece, momentarily worried she might actually swallow her own tongue. "It's not free, though," he reminded her. "You'll have to let me use that spatial Memory of yours once, whenever I ask. Deal?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Effie managed between frantic chews. She swallowed hard and looked back at him with predatory intent. "Are there seconds?"
With a defeated sigh from Zachary and a gleaming, greasy smile from the huntress, they sat at the small table to share the spoils. Effie began a rambling explanation of how her high-grade jerky was superior to the Settlement's standard fare, but Zachary didn't believe a word of it. The way she was eyeing the smoker told him that, as far as she was concerned, her jerky was now nothing more than flavored cardboard.
Taking a massive gulp from the Endless Spring, Effie leaned down to carve a thin slice of the Demon Belly. Despite her hunger, she had enough class—or perhaps enough respect for the chef—not to abuse his generosity.
She studied Zachary for a long, quiet moment before asking seriously, "Now, be honest, Mr. Inconvenient. How did you even survive this long in the Ruins? It's an impossible feat for anyone, but for you?"
She left the question hanging, but the implication was clear: she was talking about his cursed Attribute.
Sighing, Zachary took a slow bite of the meat. "I'd like to give you a clever answer. But honestly? I've been closer to death more times than I'm proud to admit." He looked briefly toward the bloody corner of the room before continuing. "In truth, I could have avoided fighting entirely. I found a method to bypass my Attribute, to an extent."
Effie arched a brow, intrigued.
"But I knew that such a 'commodity' would lead me nowhere," Zachary said, his shoulders slumping slightly. "So I pushed myself. I sought out situations dangerous enough to force me to grow."
Effie frowned, her fingers pausing as she cleaned them on the table. "Why would you even do that? Why seek out the fire?"
Zachary played with a piece of juicy meat, turning it over with his knife. After a few seconds, he raised his gaze to meet hers. He studied her hazel eyes—the exact shade the novel had described.
"You should know better than anyone, Effie," he said softly. "For people like us... for those who have something worth fighting for, weakness is a luxury we can't afford." He finally took the bite, but it didn't carry the same flavor as before. "I forced myself to be strong so I could reach the end of the dream."
The atmosphere turned heavy. Effie no longer cared about the food on her plate. Her gaze drifted from the bloody traces on the wall—the marks of a haunting, lonely agony—to the ruin of his face. The missing ear, the empty socket, the puckered burn marks and jagged scars.
"What could possibly be so great," she asked, her voice carrying a depth of feeling he couldn't quite identify, "that it justifies... this?"
Zachary chuckled lowly, a dry, hollow sound. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. "Is there any dream bigger than going home?"
The words danced through the room, carrying a sacredness the Cathedral had forgotten centuries ago. Effie looked at him, trying to maintain her casual, mocking grin, but his words had struck a chord she usually kept buried under layers of bravado.
Her face twisted into a grimace that she quickly tried to hide with a scoff. "What if that home was hell? Would you still want to return to it?"
The question chilled the air between them. Zachary didn't blame her. He knew the huntress's story. In the Forgotten Shore, Effie was a goddess of war—strong, fast, and free. In the Waking World, she was a prisoner of her own body, bound to a wheelchair. To leave this place was to willingly return to her own personal purgatory.
He understood her burden. He knew her family situation was dire, and that her life support capsule was a relic held together by hope and debt. To someone like Effie, being loved while being unable to give back made her feel like a burden. Weakness wasn't just a physical state; it was a penance she served every day she wasn't in the Dream Realm.
Zachary felt a kinship with that pain. His "home" wasn't in the Waking World; that world was a graveyard of a history it could no longer recognize. His "Heaven" was something far more distant, a goal at the end of a long, dark road.
"I guess we can only try to build a little piece of heaven in a place like that, right?" he said with a weak, tired smile. "Keep walking, keep growing, and who knows... maybe John Milton was right. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell."
Effie looked at him for a long time, her grim expression softening into a reluctant, curious smile. "You try too hard to be a poet, Mr. Inconvenient... but I guess the role suits you. Unfortunately, I have no idea who John Milton is."
He laughed honestly at her words. He felt no bitterness at her failure to recognize the quote; after all, the message had been received, and that was what mattered. Standing up, he wiped his fingers on the hem of his mantle and stretched his arms behind his back, his joints popping in the quiet room.
He looked down at the huntress, who was still watching him with a lingering, uncharacteristic softness in her gaze. With a sigh, he gestured to the table. "You can finish the food. I'm going out."
She didn't make him say it twice. Effie lunged for the leftover Demon Belly, shoveling it onto her plate with practiced efficiency. "Where are you going?" she asked, her voice muffled by a massive mouthful of meat.
"Oh, nowhere in particular," Zachary said, already moving toward the jagged hole in the roof. "I just have to make some preparations for the future."
With those cryptic words, he hauled himself up, climbing through the rafters until he stood upon the peak of the Cathedral.
He turned toward the west. The Nameless Sun was beginning its slow, agonizing descent into the Crimson Spire, causing the sky above to bleed in shades of bruised purple and violent orange. Zachary shaded his eye with a hand, taking a moment to simply exist in the cooling breeze before dark sparks began to dance across his palm.
The Flame of the West appeared in his grip. The longsword he had purchased from Stev felt heavy, its blade thirsty. Without a second thought, he drove the weapon into the stone of the roof, nailing it deep into the masonry.
'It absorbs light...' he thought, watching the blade begin to drink in the dying rays of the sun. 'A week should be enough for what I'm planning.'
Leaving the sword to its silent vigil, he descended the side of the Cathedral. As his shoes hit the stone of the plaza below, his precious interns manifested with sparks. Zachary smiled as he saw Pepe Silvia watching him with a hint of what looked like nervousness. He knew Echoes weren't truly alive—that they were merely copies of the Spell—but seeing them display even a semblance of personality made him grateful.
They had made his long exile in the Dark City more than just a struggle for survival; they had made it enjoyable.
"South..." Zachary muttered vaguely, his fingers trailing over the cold, hard surface of the Carapace Scavenger. 'I have to retrace the route the cohort originally took before turning toward the Lighthouse... It shouldn't be difficult to find what I'm looking for.'
Dark sparks erupted from beneath his mantle, swirling and solidifying into an elegant, terrifying set of stone armor. The time for reflection was over. This was his final preparation before the narrative's momentum became an unstoppable landslide. Everything—the ending he wanted, the lives he hoped to save—relied on the success of this one move.
With his will steeled, Zachary took a step forward into the encroaching dark.