Chapter 21: Escalation

The rain began to pour in thick, relentless sheets as I ran through the back alleys of Enmar, each drop slapping against the stones and echoing the pounding in my head. The water made the cobblestones slick, and my footing nearly gave way more than once no matter how strange that sounded, but I pushed forward, unmindful of the cold biting through my ghostly clothes or the fatigue building in my legs. I had one thought, one singular panic-fueled truth swirling like a storm inside my chest.

The Empire was after Nira.

I told myself it might be coincidence… just a rumor or hearsay. Maybe Irene had it wrong. Maybe the girl they were looking for wasn’t Nira. But my gut twisted each time I tried to believe that. Her silver hair. Her being a ‘witchspawn’, and a lot of things that all lined up too perfectly.

The Twinfist Gang had seen her. It could be them. They’ve seen Nira. That made them loose ends. Could I kill them to keep her secret buried? Could I even stomach the thought of turning on the other kids? Lydia? How far was I willing to go?

I skidded to a halt in an alleyway, chest heaving, water pooling around the stone. And there she was… Lydia, barring my path like a phantom out of nowhere, soaked through, her habit plastered to her frame, face taut with strain. She was panting, bent slightly forward, her hair clinging to her cheeks from the rain. How had she caught up?

Before I could even try to slip around her, I pivoted to bolt in the other direction.

I was too slow.

“Holy Bind.”

A silver halo snapped into being around my waist with a flash of light, locking my body in place. I couldn’t even raise my arms. My limbs went stiff. I was paralyzed, hovering an inch off the ground.

“Stop. Running. Away…” Lydia’s voice cracked as she struggled for breath, straightening her back with effort. Her face softened, but her eyes remained firm. “I can only help you… if you let me help you…”

I fought the pressure, tried to conjure a spark from within. A flicker of electricity shivered through me, but in my ghostly state, it was pitifully weak, useless against a binding like this.

“It’s futile,” she said, stepping forward, rainwater trickling down her jaw. “Even if you manage to run, I’ll find you. I have the Third Eye… I can see through the immaterial.”

So that was it. That was how she was able to perceive me, despite my ghostly existence. I glared at her, caught between fear and fury.

“I refuse,” I said flatly. “That Irene… she said the religious institutions hate witches. You’re one of them, aren’t you? You are… a nun…”

Her expression didn’t falter, but the pain in her eyes deepened. “Please, Ren… don’t make this harder. For yourself. For Nira.”

I focused on the puddle forming beneath me, murky and distorted. The silver halo glowed faintly in the reflection, but there was no sign of me. Just light and water. I remembered the feeling of phasing through the world. I wasn’t sure if I could replicate it, not while bound, but I had to try.

The moment flickered.

Then I slipped downward, melting into the puddle, through the stone and into suffocating darkness. Cold gripped me, silent and absolute, as if I had drowned in the belly of the earth. I clawed, panicked, through the void, forcing myself forward, until…

I blinked back into being inside the old church.

Nira sat with a few of the other children, giggling, caught in some innocent game of pretend. They’d gathered old pillows and broken bits of furniture, stacking them into crude thrones. A length of cloth hung from a crooked beam, forming a makeshift banner. It was a castle to them. A fantasy, a home.

She noticed me almost immediately. Her silver hair shimmered even in the dim light of the church.

“Ren,” she said, tilting her head curiously, “is there a problem?”

I stared at her, heart pounding. “We need to leave.”

Nira frowned. “Leave? But… this place is good, isn’t it? Everyone’s nice, and—”

A crash of shattering glass interrupted her words. An arrow, thick, barbed, and wrapped with fletching, pierced through the window and struck her shoulder with a sickening thud.

The impact threw her backward. She screamed and her small body slammed into a pew with brutal force. Wood cracked. Blood smeared across the polished surface. The bolt had embedded her to it like some horrific painting come to life.

I froze, breath caught in my throat.

The other children screamed.

My mind went blank.

I stared at Nira, her tiny frame slumped against the broken pew, a thick crossbow bolt jutting from her shoulder like a grotesque ornament. Blood soaked through her dress, dripping onto the wooden floorboards in sluggish trails. Her lips were moving, forming words I couldn’t hear. All sound faded into a muddled hum: her voice, the children’s panicked shrieks, the rustling of their frantic movements… it was all muffled, distant, and unreal.

Then the glass on the window caught my eye. Cracked. Still trembling from the impact.

And something inside me cracked too.

A cold fury crawled over my spine, sharper than any fear. I turned from Nira and ran straight for the wall, phasing through it without thought. The sensation was jarring, like swimming through freezing mud, but I barely registered it. I tried to command my body to rise. Flying still felt awkward, my ghostly form sluggish in the rain, but I managed.

There.

The attacker stood on the adjacent rooftop, a crossbow in hand, green scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. He looked older than most I’d seen. He was weathered and grizzled, likely past his thirties. He didn’t see me at first, too busy whispering into a small, mundane-looking wristband.

“The little girl’s bounty is worth more alive than dead,” he muttered. “So I decided not to take the kill shot… The nun hasn’t appeared. Seems she’s not home. Still, I advise caution. The nun was said to be a former adventurer.”

Then her voice answered. It was familiar, clipped, and calm.

“I know that already. Lydia only knows white magic. She’s not a threat to us. We need to be more careful with the witchspawn.”

Irene.

My breath caught. Irene. The woman who had spoken to us with kindness, who’d sat beside Lydia as though they were allies. All this time.

Finally, my fingers brushed against the man’s face. I didn’t hesitate… I blinked into him, my essence slipping into his like a needle threading through cloth. My rage burned, but I forced it down, swallowing the urge to drive the nearest bolt through his skull.

Through clenched teeth, I spoke into the wristband. “I thought you were friends. Why betray her?”

There was a pause. Then Irene replied without a hint of guilt.

“I thought the same. That’s why I asked her about the witchspawn, to see if she’d come clean. It was truly a surprise to see her lie. And here I thought she was incapable of it.”

So that was it. My panic in the alley, my decision to run… It had all been a distraction from the real threat sitting right beside Lydia the whole time. I fell victim to my paranoia, and it grated my nerves. I looked toward the church again.

The front doors slammed open.

Two men burst inside. They were both human. One carried a mace, the other a sword and shield. Irene wasn’t among them.

I raised the crossbow and leveled it toward the entrance, steadying it with the skill of someone far more experienced than me, whoever this man was before I possessed him, he’d handled this weapon plenty.

“Why didn’t she come clean?” I asked, almost to myself. “Your friend, I mean.”

No answer came, only the roar of rain as I pulled the trigger. The bolt flew true and fast, slamming straight into the neck of the sword-and-shield man. He choked on blood, gurgled, then collapsed onto the stone floor, twitching violently.

The children scattered. Some screamed and bolted for the rear, others huddled around Nira, sobbing, shaking, unsure of what to do. The scent of blood mingled with incense and wet stone.

The other man, the one with the mace, ducked behind a pillar, clearly panicked. He didn’t seem ready for any sort of confrontation.

Irene’s voice snapped back through the wristband, sharp and alarmed. “What’s happening? Eric reported someone shot an arrow—”

I didn’t stay to answer. I bolted for the space between the church and the roofline, dragging the possessed body with me in awkward, jerking movements. He wasn’t built for speed, but I forced him forward.

Then Irene’s voice returned, sharp and venomous.

“Marco, how dare you betray us?”

A crooked grin curled my lips inside Marco’s borrowed face. “You got the wrong person,” I said, not that she’d hear it. “I will kill you.”

I soared above the alley and released my possession.

The feeling of unmooring from Marco’s body was violent.

Marco let out a violent scream as his consciousness returned. He fell to the alley below, crashing into a pile of crates with a wet, meaty plop. The rain surged harder, pounding the stone streets. Thunder cracked across the sky like divine rage, and lightning flashed, momentarily bathing Enmar in cold white light.

I crashed into the church walls, phasing through them.