The chapel's fractured stained glass splintered the smog-filtered light into jagged shards, painting Claire's maps in a sickly green haze. Dust motes swam in the silence, disturbed only by the drip of congealed wax from long-dead candles. Natalie sat hunched on a pew gouged with rebel slogans—DOWN WITH THE FIVE DAYS—her knuckles bone-white around a purifier vial. The vial's faint hum mirrored the tremor in her hands. Devon hovered near the altar, his form flickering between corpse-pale solidity and static, the air around him unnaturally still as the Void leeched smog from the room. Each breath tasted metallic, like licking a battery. The sterile chill clung to Natalie's skin, colder than the morgue slab where she'd once identified her brother's body.
"I thought you were dead." Natalie's voice cracked, the words clawing up her throat like broken glass. She could still smell the gallows—rot and iron, the sour tang of fear-sweat from the crowd. "They hung you for days. Let the crows pick your bones." Her fist clenched around the purifier vial until the plastic groaned. Devon's corpse had swayed in her nightmares, eyeless sockets tracking her failures. Now he stood before her, a ghost wearing a smirk.
Devon tilted his head, the motion too fluid, too wrong for a human neck. "That was my mortal shell. Useful for a message, less so for breathing." His grin split like a fresh wound. "Turns out, decay's a great fertilizer."
Claire's quill snapped against the parchment. "You're not funny."
"Debatable." He flicked a shadowmoth off his shoulder; it dissolved into ash. "The ISB's report called me 'posthumously insufferable.' High praise."
Natalie lunged, her fist passing through his chest in a burst of static. "We mourned you! Lapen lit incense! Melissa poured out your shitty homebrew ale!" Her voice frayed. "Claire almost got herself killed trying to…"
"To what? Storm the gallows?" Devon's form solidified just enough to grip her wrist, his touch colder than the chapel stones. "That funeral march would've buried you all. Even Claire's stubbornness has limits."
Claire didn't look up, her quill marking people selected for their new movement. The nib tore the parchment where she'd written Lapen's sister's name weeks earlier—a casualty barely avoided. "Gonov. Myrtle. Lyla. Roza. Melissa. Trent. Baruch. Bruno. Georg" Each syllable was a hammer strike. Bruno's name lingered like a curse. She'd recruited him herself, charmed by his bravado. Now his ego could get them all killed. Her scar itched where the sigil had been, a phantom limb she still reached to hide.
Natalie recoiled. "Bruno? That blowhard's loyal to his own ego first."
"Exactly." Claire's scarred collarbone gleamed where her Urban Guerilla sigil had been. "Egos are predictable. Loyalty's a liability." She tossed the list to Devon. "We disappear tonight. No farewell speeches. No martyr's ballad."
Devon skimmed the names, static crackling at his fingertips. "Generous of you to give the Monarch two weeks' notice."
Natalie snorted, swiping at her eyes. "Asshole."
"But your asshole," he said, bowing with a conjuror's flourish.
Claire slammed her palm on the altar. "Enough. Natalie—Devon needs to sever your Stealth Brawler sigil."
Natalie froze. "What?"
"The Monarch's system is a feedback loop." Devon drifted closer, his void-eye reflecting her fractured silhouette. "Rebel, Imperial—your classes are just different cages in the same slaughterhouse. Your sigils?" He tapped her rib, where the Seraphim's HOPE IS HERESY scar throbbed. "Surveillance tags. The Scholars and Inquisitors share the same ledger."
Claire unbuttoned her shirt, revealing smooth skin where her sigil once burned. "They track our kills. Our magic. Even our grief. Devon's… method removes their leash."
Natalie traced her own sigil, the raised flesh humming with dormant power. "And if I say no?"
"Then you'll die as their weapon," Devon said softly. "Not ours."
The shadowmoths stilled. Somewhere, sewage dripped like a ticking clock.
Natalile exhaled. "Do it."
The stench hit first—rotten eggs and burnt hair, the acrid tang of purifier chemicals masking worse beneath. Devon wrinkled his nose. "Charming. Smells like Murdoch's cologne."
Claire elbowed him. "Play nice. The Queen tolerates you."
"Tolerates?" A homeless sentry emerged from the gloom, his coat stitched from ISB fatigues. "She'd sooner skin a spy than feed one."
Devon grinned. "Good thing I'm a ghost. Skinning's redundant."
The sentry's knife hovered at Devon's throat—then clattered as the Void dissolved its edge to rust. "Proceed. No weapons."
"Define 'weapons,'" Devon muttered, eyeing a rat gnawing a human femur. "Asking for a friend."
Claire dragged him onward.
The Court sprawled like a necrotic heart, its tunnels throbbing with the arrhythmic pulse of black-market chaos. Hawkers peddled filter cores cannibalized from Holy Drones, their buyers' faces scarred by smog and suspicion. A child—no older than Lapen's sister—haggled over a Seraphim's severed finger, its ring still glowing with censer magic. The air reeked of burnt hair and desperation. Rats skittered over a mound of rusted loyalty collars, their squeaks drowned by the clang of a blacksmith forging shivs from Inquisitor armor. The Sewer Queen's throne wasn't the only thing forged from scrap. Her eyes—one milky with cataracts, the other a polished Talin-stone lens—tracked Claire's every move. "Your ghost stinks of rebellion," she rasped, her voice like a saw through bone. A mangled crow perched on her shoulder, its beak snapping at the static crackling off Devon. "Rebellion's a luxury here, Lindberg. My people are hungry, principles mean nothing here." She leaned forward, barbed wire creaking. "You'll pay for this meeting in gold, not promises. Ten crates. By dawn." Claire's jaw tightened. But the Queen's court hid more than black markets; it hid the Monarch's blind spots. Worth the price, Claire lied to herself, ignoring the ledger of debts already staining her conscience.
"Lindberg." The Queen's voice echoed, a rasp honed by decades of smoke and screams. "You brought a ghost."
Devon bowed. "Guilty. Though I prefer 'postlife enthusiast.'"
The Queen's laugh rattled like a death rattle. "Mind he doesn't haunt my larder, Claire. The rats are jumpy enough."
Natalie stiffened as shadows shifted. Gonov lurked by a support beam, his sniper rifle strapped to his back like a child forbidden a toy. Myrtle crouched beside him, her Firefly drones disassembled into a makeshift distillery. Melissa and Trent bickered over a gutted Talin-core, their insults drowned by Baruch's off-key humming. Lapen stood apart, his sister Lissa clinging to his arm, her breaths shallow but steady—thanks to Devon's purifier. Georg arrived with the help of one of his trainee - Rug rat - Dwang, he still was not able to walk by himself.
Bruno arrived last, his bulk squeezing through the tunnel with a grunt. "Lindberg! Heard you found a new pet mystic." His laugh boomed too loud, eyes darting to the shadows where the Queen's sentries lurked. He clapped Devon's shoulder—a gesture meant to bruise—and froze as his hand passed through. "What the fuck?" His smile faltered, fingers twitching toward the knife sheathed at his hip. A faint sheen of holy oil glistened on the hilt.
Devon materialized behind him. "Define 'pet.'"
The room erupted.
Melissa tackled Devon in a hug, her wrench clanging against his ribs. "You bastard! We drank to your corpse!"
"Which I attended!" Lapen's smile wavered. "Well, the hanging. Not the… drinking."
Gonov spat. "Waste of good ale."
Baruch sniffled. "You owe me a eulogy!"
Georg whispered. "I'm glad. More hands for my revenge."
"Enough." Claire's voice cut through the chaos. "He's here. We're here. Now we survive."
Devon drifted to the center, his form flickering under the lumen-moss. "The Monarch's system chains you—even in rebellion. Your sigils feed his soul engine. Your classes?" He conjured a golden thread, frayed at the edges. "Strings for his puppets."
Bruno crossed his arms. "And your Void hocus-pocus is better?"
"Yes." Devon's void-eye flared. "Because it's yours."
The room stilled. Even the rats paused.
Claire stepped forward. "We've all lost people. Homes. Hope. The Void isn't salvation—it's a weapon. One they can't tax, track, or tame."
Natalie peeled back her sleeve, revealing fresh void-sigils swirling beneath her skin. "No more cages."
Bruno scoffed. Both Claire and Devon looked at each other and nodded, they already noticed Bruno's dual sigil - Stealth Brawler and an Inquisitor.
Devon was on him in a breath, void-tendrils erupting from the shadows to pin Bruno against the damp wall. The man's sleeve tore with a sound like a scream, revealing twin sigils—Stealth Brawler and Inquisitor—pulsing in grotesque harmony. The golden threads writhed, desperate to reconnect to the Monarch's ledger. "You reek of holy oil," Devon hissed, static distorting his voice into a chorus of the dead. The Court froze. Even the rats stilled, sensing the kill. Claire's hand drifted to her hip, where her buckler had once hung—a habit she'd thought broken.