Page 10 of The Madness Within

And then we were falling.

Not through space. Through sin.

When the descent ended, we were not in the city anymore.

We’re outside of it.

In the catacombs of Saint Aloysius, the ruined cathedral. The pews were rotted. The altar cracked. The windows blacked out by time and soot.

I dragged the blade across his arms in symbols no mortal church could read, carving markings that mimicked the glyphs of old cults, blood sigils stolen from forgotten grimoires.

Candles, placed in precise corners of the room, flickered with dark flame, casting false shadows of ritual.

Burnt sage. Rotten flowers. Latin etched into the floorboards in blood. A spectacle, crafted not to confuse, but to mislead. To give them something else to fear.

I scattered childlike drawings, real ones, pulled from sealed court evidence, beside his body.

Let them find what he did.

Let themthinksome avenging devil with ancient power came calling.

But only one thing mattered. One thing I’d leave behind. A single obsidian scale, smooth as sin, tucked in the pocket of his shirt.

I placed it gently. Reverently. Because this was a sentence.

And the scale?

That’s my signature. The mark of balance restored.

I rose, breath steady. The cameras never saw me. The locks rewired themselves in reverse. There was no DNA. No prints. No trace.

Only blood.

Only fear.

Only myth.

Chapter Three

??The Refined Monster in a Suit

Dorian

They came to me wrapped in Armani and the scent of blood they thought no one could smell. Whispers slithered through courtroom corridors. Names spoken like prayers.

Mine, always last.

They wore crocodile skin shoes and smiles carved from lies. Men who shattered their wives’ jaws over breakfast. Women who drowned their infants, then wept on morning shows. Predators. Traffickers. Human filth in silk garments.

Monsters, every last one of them.

And I?

I welcomed them.

I shook their hands. Looked them in the eye. Let them believe they were safe. Because monsters recognized their own. And I spoke the language fluently… With teeth.

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