Calestia's fingers tapped once against the desk - a sound like a deathwatch beetle counting down final seconds. The shadows between them seemed to hold their breath.
"Experience isn't something you borrow," she said, her voice carving through the silence like a straight razor. "Before you can even whisper 'Temporal Enforcer', you'll need power that cracks bones and experience that stains your soul." Her fedora tilted, revealing one mercury-bright eye. "You still think you're ready?"
Kura's fused ring pulsed in time with his heartbeat. "Try me."
Her laugh was a dry thing, like pages turning in a cursed tome. "Then prove it." She rose, the very darkness stretching toward her like worshippers to a saint. "In my closet - a coat, a hat. Wear them all. The uniform isn't just clothing. It's armor against what we face."
The walk through Vertica's endless night felt like a procession to an execution. They stopped before a derelict building whose windows stared like cataract-clouded eyes. Calestia's boot shattered the door with a sound like breaking ribs.
"Your trial begins," she declared, smoke curling from her revolver's barrel though she hadn't fired. "Kill a soul tonight. But remember - this is just the first page of your examination."
Kura crossed the threshold alone. The staircase yawned before him, each step groaning underfoot. His ring flared, casting hellish light that made the walls appear to bleed. He froze mid-step.
This wasn't random. The ring's glow intensified with danger - and right now, it burned like a branding iron. The realization struck him: in Vertica, the ring never fully dimmed because danger here was as constant as the night.
At the landing, a corridor stretched into darkness, lined with doors that hung slightly ajar. His ring's light pulsed violently as multiple dragging sounds converged from different directions - too many sources, too many rhythms. From one room, wet laughter. From another, something that might have been a whimper. Behind door number three - the unmistakable click of a hammer being cocked.
Kura's hand found the revolver at his hip - when had Calestia armed him? The metal was warm, its engravings writhing against his palm like living things. A shadow moved at the corridor's end. Then another. Then the doors began creaking open in unison.
Somewhere outside, Calestia lit a cigarette, the ember flaring like a tiny hellfire in the perpetual night. The real test wasn't whether Kura could kill a soul.
It was whether he'd recognize which one needed killing.
Kura's boots sank into the hallway's rotting carpet as he advanced, the revolver's weight both foreign and familiar in his grip. The air tasted of mildew and something metallic - like old blood soaked into floorboards.
This isn't just creepy, he realized. This place is hunting me back.
Shadows twitched at the edges of his vision, resolving into humanoid shapes before dissolving again. The doors lining the corridor stood at unnatural angles - some ajar enough to reveal slivers of darkness, others shut tight with visible claw marks gouged into the wood.
His ring pulsed violently as his enhanced senses mapped the threats:
- To his right: A frozen shadow, coiled like a spring
- Ahead: Three... no, four disturbances moving with predatory intent
- Behind: The faintest whisper of fabric against moldering wallpaper
"Hello?" Kura's challenge sliced through the oppressive silence. His thumb cocked the revolver's hammer with a click that echoed unnaturally loud. "Any souls here worth killing?"
The response was immediate - a chorus of wet, rattling breaths from multiple doorways. The temperature plummeted. Frost crackled across the revolver's barrel as the first visible spirit manifested - a gaunt figure with too-long fingers, its jaw unhinging slowly like a serpent's.
Kura's ring flared white-hot as the frozen shadow to his right finally moved - not toward him, but in retreat.
Interesting, he thought, sighting down the revolver's now-glowing sights. The coward might be the smart one.
From outside, barely audible over the building's sudden moaning, came Calestia's voice floating through a broken window: "Remember brother - souls lie best when they're screaming."
Kura's ring pulsed like a panicked heartbeat, its crimson glow throbbing in time with the unseen threat creeping closer. He took a careful step back, his boots sinking into the rotten floorboards as the air thickened with the scent of decay and ozone.
Before him, the soul-shadow lurched forward, its elongated jaw unhinging with a wet crack, needle-like fingers clawing at the air. The scream it unleashed wasn't sound but a vibration, rattling Kura's teeth in his skull.
He didn't hesitate.
The revolver bucked in his grip, its report sharp and hollow compared to Calestia's reality-rending shots. But it was enough. The bullet, a glinting silver streak, punched through the specter's core. The creature writhed, its form unraveling like smoke in a gale before dissolving into nothing.
Kura exhaled, his breath fogging in the suddenly frigid air. His gaze flicked to the right.
The other shadow, the smart one, had retreated further, melting into the hallway's gloom. Not aggressive. Not yet. But the doors lining the corridor trembled in their frames, muffled thuds and whispers slithering from behind them.
Kura watched the last wisps of the dissolved soul evaporate, his ring's pulse slowing to a wary rhythm. "Three left," he muttered, but even as he spoke, the predatory pressure from ahead dissipated like smoke. His finger stayed tense on the trigger. *Too convenient. They're not retreating - they're repositioning.*
The hallway's silence became its own kind of threat. Kura's boots creaked against floorboards that felt suddenly fragile, as if the building itself might collapse under the weight of what lurked within. His breath fogged in air gone unnaturally cold.
To the left - movement. Not the frantic lurch of the first soul, but something deliberate. Calculating. The shadow there held its ground, its edges shimmering with an almost intelligent glow.
Kura's grip on the revolver tightened.
A drop of sweat traced his temple as realization dawned: this wasn't just a test of marksmanship. Calestia had sent him into a nest of predators to see if he could distinguish mindless hunger from something far more dangerous - a soul that knew enough to wait.
The other doors stood silent now, their earlier rattling ceased. Kura's pulse hammered against the ring fused to his finger. This quiet was worse than any scream.