"Get the hell back!" Vesper screamed, her boot slamming into the chest of the first thug who burst through the door.
Lucian didn't hear her. He couldn't. He was slumped on the floor, his lungs feeling like they’d been filled with hot wet cement. Every time he tried to draw a breath, a thick, metallic taste flooded his mouth. He coughed, and a spray of iridescent black blood splattered across the bleached floorboards of Silas’s clinic.
"Damn it, Lucian! Stay with me!" Vesper yelled. She didn't look at him. She couldn't afford to. She was a blur of motion, her knives flashing in the dim light as she carved a path through the three men who had just turned the clinic into a kill zone.
One of the attackers, a scarred rat with a jagged scar running through his lip, lunged at her with a rusted pipe. Vesper stepped inside his guard, grabbed his wrist, and snapped it with a sickening pop.
"Who sent you?" she hissed, jamming her elbow into his throat. "Talk, or I start taking fingers."
"The... the High..." the man wheezed, his eyes rolling back.
Vesper didn't wait for the rest. She drove her blade into the base of his skull. He dropped like a stone, his body twitching once before going still.
Lucian tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet, rattling sound. The backlash from the Dream Realm was tearing him apart from the inside. He could feel the Obsidian Rift trying to pull his consciousness back, dragging his soul through a needle's eye. The power he'd used to brand Vesper—that god-like authority—was now a poison in his veins.
He looked up, his vision blurring. Vesper was standing over him now, her chest heaving. She was covered in blood—mostly not hers—and her eyes were wide with a mix of fury and something that looked dangerously like panic.
"You're pathetic," she spat, though she reached down and grabbed his shoulders.
As her skin touched him, she flinched. A sharp hiss escaped her teeth.
"God, you're burning up," she muttered. "What the hell is happening to you? You look like you're rotting while you're still alive."
"Stop... talking," Lucian managed to choke out. He gripped her forearm, his fingers digging into her skin.
He could feel it—the brand on her wrist was reacting. The black lightning he'd etched into her soul was humming, vibrating against his own erratic pulse. For a second, the distance between them vanished. He could smell the sharp scent of gunpowder and cheap leather on her, feel the heat radiating from her skin. It was a violent, electric tension that made the air between them feel thick, like they were submerged in oil.
"Let go of me, you half-dead bastard," she whispered, but she didn't pull away. Her gaze dropped to his lips, then flicked back to his eyes. There was a strange, magnetic pull there—a power imbalance that shifted every time he gasped for air. He was a broken man in a wheelchair, but in this moment, the shadow of the Dream Sovereign flickered behind his pupils.
"Help... me... up," he wheezed.
"I'm not your nurse," she snapped.
She did it anyway.
She hauled him up with a grunt, her muscles straining as she dragged his dead weight back into the wheelchair. The friction of her clothes against his, the warmth of her body pressed against his side as she steadied him—it was too much. Lucian felt a surge of something that wasn't pain. It was a hunger. Not for food, but for the life force she radiated, the fierce, stubborn will to survive that he had forgotten existed.
"You're lucky I'm getting paid for this," she muttered, wiping a smear of blood off her cheek with the back of her hand. She stepped back, her eyes scanning the room for more threats. "Silas! Where the hell are you? We've got corpses in the lobby!"
Silas emerged from the back room, his mechanical eye whirring as it zoomed in on the dead bodies. He didn't look horrified; he looked annoyed.
"I told you this place wasn't secure, Vesper," Silas said, stepping over a puddle of blood. "The wards are practically lace. Who were these idiots?"
"Street rats," Vesper said, her voice cold. "But they didn't look like they were hunting for scraps. They were looking for him."
She pointed a blood-stained finger at Lucian.
Lucian leaned back in the chair, his breathing finally stabilizing, though his chest still felt like it had been crushed by a hydraulic press. He watched Vesper. She was pacing now, her movements predatory, her hand never leaving the hilt of her knife.
"Why would the slums' lowest scum be hunting a crippled ex-cop?" Silas asked, leaning in to examine the black blood on the floor. He dipped a finger into the liquid and sniffed it. "Strange. This isn't normal blood. It's... concentrated. Like it's been distilled through a nightmare."
"I'm not a cop anymore," Lucian said, his voice rasping. "And I'm not just a cripple."
"Right. You're a magnet for trouble," Vesper countered. She walked toward him, her boots clicking on the wood. She leaned down, her face inches from his. He could feel her breath on his skin. "Listen, Lucian. I don't care what game you're playing or who you're hiding from. But if you bring this kind of heat to my doorstep again, I'll be the one putting you in the ground. Understand?"
Lucian didn't flinch. He looked straight into her eyes, a ghost of a smirk touching his pale lips. "You'd have to catch me first, Vesper."
"Don't push it," she warned, but the aggression in her voice was wavering. The tension between them was a physical thing now, a wire stretched to the breaking point. She wanted to hate him—he was a liability, a broken shell of a man—but the brand on her wrist was still tingling, reminding her that she was bound to him by a force she didn't understand.
She straightened up and turned toward the bodies. "Clean this mess up, Silas. I'm going to check the perimeter."
"Wait," Silas called out. He was kneeling by the man Vesper had killed first. He was reaching into the dead thug's pocket, pulling out a small, heavy object.
Silas frowned, polishing the item on his apron.
"What is it?" Vesper asked, pausing at the door.
Silas held it up. It was a gold pocket watch, the casing ornate and heavy. He flipped it open, and the light caught a crimson emblem embossed on the inside of the lid.
Lucian felt his heart stop. He knew that mark. He'd seen it every day for ten years—in reports, on warrants, and on the uniforms of the men who had broken his spine.
"The High Inquisition," Silas whispered, his voice laced with sudden dread. "Vesper, these weren't street rats. They were sanctioned hunters."
Vesper looked at the watch, then at Lucian. Her expression shifted from irritation to a cold, sharp realization.
"You didn't tell me the church was after you," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "You told me you were a disgraced detective. You didn't say you were a fugitive of the Holy See."
Lucian closed his eyes. The black blood was still staining the floor, and the silence in the room became suffocating.
"I didn't think they'd find me this fast," Lucian replied.
"They didn't just find you," Vesper said, her hand tightening on her knife. "They're tracking you. Which means they're tracking me too."
Just then, a distant sound echoed through the slums—a heavy, rhythmic booming. It sounded like a giant hammer hitting the earth, over and over again. The floorboards beneath Lucian's wheelchair began to vibrate.
"What is that?" Vesper asked, stepping toward the window.
"That's not a hammer," Lucian whispered, the blood in his veins turning ice cold. "That's a Purge Engine."
Vesper looked back at him, her eyes wide. "A what?"
"It means," Lucian said, his voice trembling, "that they aren't coming to arrest me. They're coming to burn this entire block to the ground with us inside it."
Vesper didn't hesitate. She grabbed the handles of his wheelchair and spun him around, heading for the back exit. "Move! Silas, get your gear!"
As they raced through the narrow hallway, Lucian caught sight of the gold watch still sitting on the table. He wondered if the Inquisition knew about the Rift. He wondered if they knew that the man they were hunting was no longer entirely human.
They reached the back alley just as the first explosion rocked the building. A wall of white fire erupted from the front of the clinic, sending a shockwave that knocked Vesper off her feet.
She scrambled up, coughing through the smoke, and immediately lunged for Lucian, shielding him with her body as debris rained down around them.
"You're a nightmare, Lucian Cross," she gasped, her face pressed against his shoulder. "A literal goddamn nightmare."
Lucian looked at the towering figures emerging from the smoke—armored giants in white robes, carrying censers that leaked a suffocating, golden gas.
"You have no idea," he whispered.
One of the giants stepped forward, his voice booming through a silver mask.
"By the authority of the High Seat, we seek the heretic Cross!" the giant roared. "Surrender the vessel, or we cleanse the slum!"
Vesper looked at the army of inquisitors, then at the fragile man in the chair. She didn't let go of him. Instead, she stood up, her knives out, her body trembling not with fear, but with a sudden, violent defiance.
"He's not a vessel," she yelled back. "He's my paycheck!"
Lucian felt a flicker of something in his chest—a spark of the Dream Sovereign's power. He reached up and gripped Vesper's wrist, the brand glowing a dull, menacing purple.
"Vesper," he whispered, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together. "Run. Now."
But before she could move, the lead inquisitor raised a massive, glowing mace, and the ground beneath them shattered.