Vescrutia: Legacy

Four days had passed since his brutal clash with the Ninneko clan and their fierce heiress, Zanzamushi. What should have been little more than a stretch for his limbs turned into a world-shattering fray that nearly cost him his life. Loath Kinslayer to admit it, the many minor shinobi clans scattered across Edo were growing in power and cunning. The existence of the B'halia warships and invading forces aside, it would seem his existence, after devouring the Owaki clan whole, has now ushered in the evolution of the clan's prowess. Once again, the Shi and their infamy ran on the ears of all in Edo, and fear of the Black Sun dawned upon the horizons of many of Edo's countryside borders.

Good...

This is what he wanted. The power structures that made Edo the war-filled cesspit it was clamouring for solutions, trying to find a way to forestall what he and they knew to be an inevitability.

Upheaval, chaos incarnate once more in the form of a blackened blaze to wash Edo clean of war once and for all. Yet just as the continent evolved around his existence, he was evolving despite their attempts.

Each threat on his life, each assassin sent to claim his head, in the end only forced the Serpent to grow, learn, and become even more deadly. And after claiming the soul of the powerful Ninneko Hieress, Kinslayers could feel the well of his darkness growing even still. But he knew...that with each powerful soul he fed his Dankestu Mugen, Aphosis's power grew as well. For now, his will was such that he was able to keep the Nether Spernet contained within him.

But it was a petty deity, whispering venomous words and intcing bargain, trying to weaken his resolve. It is what had brought him here, to the home of the Shrouds. Once revered as a shadow organization with deep ties to the Edo information network and the underground black market. It was they who assisted him in his operation to face the Owaki. Yet it was also they who leaked his whereabouts to the Ninneko clan, leading them straight to him.

The scent of aged wood and distant spice lingered in the air of The Daimyo, the tavern’s usual hum muffled by the thick shoji screens of Lady Rhea’s private study. She adjusted the abacus before her with practiced fingers, though her mind was far from ledger balances.

She did not hear the door open. She did not see him enter. But she felt the weight of his presence the moment it settled upon her shoulders—cool, unyielding, like death’s fingers brushing her collarbone.

Rhea froze.

Then, slowly, she exhaled and set her brush aside.

“I knew you would come... Shadowfang.”

The name tasted bitter, a relic of a man long devoured.

Behind her, Kinslayer’s voice was a blade wrapped in silk. “There is no more Shadowfang, Lady Rhea.” His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind her—she was not in control here. “Only Kinslayer.”

He stepped into the lantern light, and for the first time, Rhea saw the full horror of his evolution. His flesh was interlaced with crackling, techno-arcane circuitry, veins of unnatural blue pulsing beneath his skin. The black dragon mask obscured his face, but she knew his eyes—those damned, soul-stealing voids—were watching her.

Her fingers twitched toward the dagger hidden beneath the desk.

“Well,” Kinslayer mused, tilting his head, “aren’t you going to offer me tea? We have much to discuss, after all.”

Her hand stilled.

Play the hostess. Survive.

“Yes... of course.” Rhea forced her lips into a practiced smile and rose, smoothing the folds of her kimono. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

She gestured to the low table where a porcelain set lay untouched. Kinslayer took his time settling onto the cushion opposite, his movements deliberate, unhurried. The way a predator lounges before the kill.

As Rhea poured the tea, her pulse thundered in her ears. Why hadn’t he killed her yet?

“You betrayed me,” he said at last, lifting the cup but not drinking. “The Shrouds sold my location to the Ninneko.”

The accusation hung in the air, thick as smoke.

Rhea’s grip on the teapot tightened. There was no point denying it. “I did what I had to.”

“For coin?” Kinslayer’s voice darkened. “Or fear?”

She met his masked gaze. “Both. They came with the collected heads of over fifty of my men...and threatened my family next. A sentiment I'm sure you understand...”

A chuckle, low and dark, rumbled from him. “Honesty. A rare thing in Edo.” He set the cup down untouched. “Tell me, Rhea—do you know why I haven’t ripped your soul from your body yet?”

Her skin prickled.

“Because you owe me a debt,” he continued. “And I intend to collect.”

Rhea exhaled slowly. “What do you want?”

“The same thing I’ve always wanted.” Kinslayer leaned forward. “Vineration for my clan...”

She frowned. “You mean to burn Edo to the ground.”

“No.” His fingers traced the rim of the teacup. "Not yet, at least. Aphosis...as I grow, so does it. It has... complicated my plans immensely. As such, I need the only power I know comparable to it..."

Rhea’s stomach twisted. To aid him was to sign Edo’s death warrant. To refuse was to die here, now, her soul forfeit to his abyssal gaze.

“You wish for me to aid you in unleashing the Nether Serpent,” she whispered.

“Contain yourself...Lady Rhea” Kinslayer’s voice was ice. “I’m asking you to assist me in finding the one force on Edo that might help me tame it. The destruction of Edo's current regime is burned in the annals of fate. There is no avoiding what I will bring. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Aphosis stirred within him, whispering, coaxing. Rhea couldn’t hear the deity’s words, but she saw the flicker of hunger in Kinslayer’s posture—the serpent hungered still.

"But the Nether Serpent seeks dominion over what grows from Edo sooted remains. It will stop at nothing, spare no expense, women, children, elderly, nothing will keep it from having its way. Whereas I merely wish for my people to be unburned by the authority that binds them...Aphosis desires to become authority itself."

Her fingers trembled. Then, with the slow resignation of a woman sealing her fate, she reached beneath the desk and placed what appeared to be a ledger before her.

"It wishes to become the Stellar Supreme...."

The title of the being who stands as the sole arbiter of Edo';s fate. One who rules with absolute control over it. The title that his ancestor Ains fought and died for, failing to obtain.

"Fine...whom is it you seek then?"

His finger coily tapped the side of the glass as he reclined in his seated position.

"The Midlight Beldam and their little book are the ones officiating these contracts. That... doesn't concern me. If anything the are keeping them from having to look for my next meal.

The tapping ceased, the tension grew. As if the name he was about to invoke held immense weight of its own.

"Tell me how to reach the Kismet themselves."

The air in Lady Rhea’s study was thick with the scent of aged tea leaves and dread. It was a calculated aroma, one she curated to put visitors at ease, but tonight it was failing. The fragrance curdled around Kinslayer, a stain of ozone and cold, deep earth that no incense could mask. He sat across from her, a void in the shape of a man, a silhouette cut from the fabric of a starless night and propped in her finest velvet chair.

Rhea’s gaze, unable to settle on the darkness where his eyes should be, drifted to the gilded lantern on her desk. Its flame trembled, not from any draft, but in resonance with the low, thrumming vibration that emanated from him. Her voice, when she finally found it, was a near-whisper. In the Xio'Lin Spire, even the plaster had ears, and some secrets were too old, too terrible, to be spoken aloud.

"What you ask could cost me everything," she breathed, the words tasting of ash. "The Kismet are powerful, Kinslayer. Ancient is an understatement."

She found herself lamenting the boy she once knew, now what seems like a lifetime ago, as Shadowfang. A blade in the dark, yes, but a young man. One with sorrows and limits, sure, but still held a voice that carried the breath of hope upon it. What sat before her now was a monument to those shattered limits. “What you seek could unmake me. They are not mere arbiters—they are architects. They wove the first laws of fate into the bones of Dunlao. To speak their name is to invite the Midlight Beldam. To seek an audience? It is suicide disguised as ambition. They do not grant audiences to the desperate, only to the inevitable.”

From within the mask, his voice came—an Abyssal rasp, as if stone were being ground in the belly of the earth.

“There is nothing more inevitable than the Black Sun, Rhea. My name is already in the Bingo Book as a force that cannot be contained. How do I make them listen?”

The casual blasphemy of that nickname—Bingo Book—sent a shiver down her spine. She knew it as the Book of Blood, to the Kismet, it was the Sanguine Archive, and it contained far more than just the names of those slain by the Bingo Knights.

Rhea closed her eyes. Not to shut him out—but to see her grandmother’s face, wrinkled and fierce, whispering secrets beneath the blood-red moon. “When the world forgets its scars, the Kismet remembers.”

She opened her eyes, leaned forward. The silk of her robes sighed like a mourner.

“There is a cipher,” she confessed, the words carving a wound in her soul. “A phrase, passed from the first natives of Edo. It is a key—but it turns only once. Speak it, fail to move them, and you will not die. You will be unmade. Name erased. Breath recalled. Memory dissolved. Even the gods will forget you.”

“Speak it.”
Not a request. A verdict.

Her breath hitched. “When you stand before the golden doors at the peak of Xio’Lin Spire, the guardians will demand tribute. Do not offer gold. Do not offer blood.” Her voice dropped to a thread. “You must say: Bargain bartered by blood, covenants signed in ash.”

The hum in his veins deepened. The porcelain cup before him—never touched, never sipped—fractured fully now, collapsing into a drift of white dust beside the cooling tea.

Kinslayer repeated the phrase, slow, deliberate, each syllable a shard of frozen fire.
“Covenants… signed… in ash.”

Rhea nodded, a single, trembling motion. “It speaks of the First Conflagration. The pact that ended the Great War of Clans—when the last of the flame-born elders burned themselves alive to seal the truce. The Kismet judged that sacrifice worthy. They remember fire. They remember cost. This phrase tells them you know the price of peace. They will grant you audience.”

She hesitated, then added, her voice breaking, “But know this: they do not trade in coin. They trade in destiny. They will offer you what you crave—revenge, power, absolution—and take what you cannot live without. A mother’s lullaby. Your first memory. The name you were given at birth. Choose the price you are willing to pay… and pray it is enough.”

For a moment, silence. Then, he rose—fluid, inevitable. The darkness in the room did not flee from him. It followed, pooling at his feet like spilled oil, coiling like a serpent ready to strike.

Just as he reached the door, Rhea spoke—soft, almost tender.
“Tell me, Kinslayer. How is old Yin?”

He halted.

The air turned to ice.

Then, heat—sudden, suffocating. A wave of bloodlust, raw and ravenous, uncoiled from him like a python tightening around her throat. Rhea gasped, her vision speckling. Her heart stuttered. She braced for oblivion.

But then—just as fast—it receded. Controlled. Contained. He had chosen not to kill her. Yet his blood screamed at him to chose differetnly. The grief...it had not yet left him.

When he spoke, his voice was a tomb opening.

“He’s dead… I killed him.”

He turned. The shadows turned with him. The door did not open. It simply stopped existing—for a breath, it was nothing but smoke, and then he was gone, stepping into the night like a blade drawn into darkness.

The study exhaled.

The lantern’s flame steadied, tall and bright. The dust of the shattered cup glimmered like fallen snow.

Rhea did not move. Her hands trembled in her lap. She had given him the key to the most sacred lock in existence. She had handed a scalpel to a hurricane and pointed it at the heart of fate.

She did it because she was afraid.

But also… because she remembered.

She remembered Jao—the boy with fire in his eyes and hope in his voice. Proclaiming dreams of a free Edo. A world without the regime's shadow, without the Spire’s tyranny.

She had watched him become Shadowfang—a wraith in the alleys, a blade for the voiceless. And now… this. Kinslayer. A god of vengeance. A harbinger.

Was there still a man beneath the mask? Or had the Black Sun consumed him whole?

Outside the window, the peak of the Xio'Lin Spire pierced the heavens, a needle threading the tapestry of the stars. Somewhere, high above the world, three ancient witches would soon feel a tremor in the fabric of their designs.

And the serpent was coming to collect.

The confession to Rhea was a stone in his gut, a cold, immutable weight that anchored him to the moment he had spoken the truth of Yin’s death. It echoed still, a faint whisper beneath the relentless, scraping pressure within his own skull. The Nether Serpent, Aphosis, coiled and writhed in the prison of his mind, a constant, psychic siege against the walls of his will. Each day it spent testing its chains was a day he drew closer to failure. To hold it, he had to be more than a man; he had to be a monument, his emotions petrified, his empathy cauterized. There was no room for the man who grieved, only for the vessel that contained a starless dark.

He moved with a purpose that bordered on the preternatural, a shadow slipping across the war-torn land of Edo. Borders and patrols were mere suggestions against his focused intent. Within days, the jagged horizon softened, then sharpened again into the impossible skyline of Dunlao, the City of Commerce.

It rose from the earth like a coiled dragon armoured in neon and gold. While the rest of Edo bled, Dunlao prospered, a defiant monument to neutrality where a man’s allegiance mattered infinitely less than the weight of his purse. It was a vertical labyrinth of avarice. At its base, the Low Markets sprawled in a chaotic web, the air thick with the scent of sizzling street meat, exotic oils, and the sharp, living ozone of naten-infused commerce. Above, the Entertainment District shimmered, a gilded cage where rival warlords, who would gladly spill each other’s entrails on a battlefield, sat across velvet tables, their war conducted with dice and decks of cards. And crowning it all, the Xio'Lin Spire—a needle of white stone and crystal—pierced the heavens, regulating the flow of wealth with an indifferent, bureaucratic grace.

He remembered this city through a different lens. As a blind boy trailing his father, it had been a symphony of sensation: the percussive rhythm of countless transactions, the olfactory tapestry of food and charred wood, the press of a thousand unseeing bodies. Now, for the first time, Kinslayer saw it.

And he saw the souls.

They were everywhere, a seething aurora of life force. Merchants glowed with the keen, sharp light of avarice. Guards thrummed with a dull, disciplined ochre. Patrons flickered with the volatile hues of hope, desperation, and euphoria. So many. So… ripe.

But the hunger was a luxury he could not afford. He was not here to feed; he was here to chain his tormentor. He wove through the sea of patrons, a shark moving through a school of glittering fish, untouched and unimpeded. His path was singular, his destination clear.

He stopped.

Before him hung a sign, weathered oak swinging on iron hooks, depicting a comically inebriated owl. The Drunk Owl. A tavern of no particular renown. Yet, as he stood there, a seismic shift occurred within him.

Aphosis stirred.

It was not the beast’s usual simmering rage or its corrosive contempt. This was something new, something deeper. A vibration that defied all previous understanding. It was a sensation that coiled through the shared space of their prison, a feeling so profound it felt less like an emotion and more like a fundamental law of the universe being violated. It was akin to anger, but no… it was deeper, older. Primal.

It was fear.

Kinslayer almost staggered. He could scarcely conceive it. Something capable of worrying the Great Wingless One? The Black Sun that hung in the void of his soul? This dread was a physical tremor, a cold that leeched into his marrow and quaked in the core of his spirit. His vision swam, and for a terrifying instant, he saw it—a harrowing light, a blinding, incandescently radiant serpent woven not of flesh, but of crystalline fury. The image was a searing brand on his mind’s eye.

A vortex of blackened fear threatened to crumble his resolve, its weight the gravitas of a sullen, dying star. He clenched his jaw, every ounce of his will focused on reinforcing the psychic walls, on containing the Serpent’s sudden, catastrophic panic.

“So,” Kinslayer whispered, the words a dry rasp in his throat. “There is something even you fear.”

His first thought was the Kismet. Even here, in the low markets, he could feel the undercurrent of their formidable power, a regulated hum filtering down from the Spire above.

But no.

This was different. What Aphosis feared, this lingering light whose source was long gone, felt closer to its own nigh-incomparable nature. It was a symmetry of opposition, a light that was its absolute antithesis. Somehow, with a certainty that chilled him more than the fear itself, Kinslayer knew that should he ever cross the path of its source, he would have no choice. He would be compelled to snuff it out with extreme prejudice.

The moment passed. The vision faded, though the Serpent’s agitated dread thrummed like a plucked nerve. The task at hand reasserted itself. He turned his back on the tavern, on the echo of a terrifying light, and continued his ascent through the city.

The cacophony of the Low Markets gave way to the controlled murmur of the commercial districts, then to the hushed, opulent silence of the administrative rings. Finally, he stood at the foot of the Xio'Lin Spire itself. Before him, a vast plaza of polished moonstone ended at a stairway of pure white alabaster. At the top, set into the flawless face of the tower, were twin doors of beaten gold, inlaid with silver circuits that pulsed with a soft, innate light.

Two guards flanked the door, their armour not metal but hardened, sculpted light, their faces hidden behind featureless helms. As Kinslayer ascended, neither moved, but a presence focused upon him, a pressure that demanded acknowledgement.

He reached the top step. The guard on the right spoke, its voice a resonant hum, like a finger on the rim of a crystal glass. “The Spire welcomes those who seek . Who earns... Offer tribute to pass.”

Kinslayer’s mind, still rattled by the Serpent’s fear, scrambled for the memory. Rhea’s voice, calm and certain, surfaced through the turmoil. This was the key. Not coin, not weapon, but words. A covenant.

He met the featureless gaze of the guard, his own voice low and steady, betraying none of the storm within.

“Bargain bartered by blood,” he intoned. “Covenants signed in ash.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then, without a sound, the immense golden doors began to swing inwards, revealing a corridor of shimmering, ambient light. Without a backward glance, Kinslayer stepped across the threshold.

The doors closed behind him, sealing with a soft, final click. The sound echoed not in the plaza, but in the depths of his soul, a portent of the reckoning to come.

The moment he stepped through the gilded doors, the world shattered.

Light, once refracted by the crystalline arch, collapsed inward like a dying star. What followed was not absence, but presence—a darkness so deep it had weight, texture, memory. It slithered into his lungs, thick with the iron stench of old blood and older oaths. Kinslayer stood motionless, blind, drowning in an air that tasted of war and weeping. His eyes, honed to pierce shadows, were useless here. This was not shadow. This was between—the space where fate curdles and gods whisper.

Then came the voices.

"My my, sisters... what do we have here?"

A woman’s voice, bold and amused, echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"Do our eyes deceive? No—his might, but ours pierce the veil of time."

This one softer, lilting, like wind over tombstones.

"It comes bearing the face of Jao-Den Denkoushi… yet has the soul of the adversary bound to him."

Stern, ancient. The voice of a judge who had sentenced empires.

The darkness shifted.

It peeled back like rotting flesh, revealing a chamber forged from bone and blasphemy. Thrones of interlocked vertebrae. Fountains bubbling with blood that did not cool. Candles made of waxed sinew, burning black flames. And upon those thrones—three women. much younger than he was expecting.

The Kismet.

Their hair flowed like liquid aurora, shimmering with shades of drowned oceans—aqua marine, deep-sea black, storm-laced silver. Tribal sigils, glowing crimson beneath their skin, pulsed with each breath. Their eyes were not eyes at all, but pools of molten blood, reflective and endless.

Kinslayer did not bow.

“You are they… the Kismet.”

A ripple passed through the sisters. Xelpha, the youngest, leaned forward with a grin too sharp for mortal lips.

“I am Xelpha. The Bound Ethic.” She traced a finger across her own throat, drawing a thin line of blood that vanished into ink. “And you… are infamous. A nightmare classification. A stain on the annals. Kinslayer.”

Xennon, middle sister, chuckled—a sound like pages tearing. “I Xennon do have an eraser. Fufufu. Want me to use it? You wish to scrub your name from our ledger.”

Xeria, eldest and coldest, spoke without moving. “It cannot be done. What is paid for with blood must be balanced with blood. I Xeria, make sure it is so. As it has always been.”

Kinslayer exhaled. Not fear. Not anger. Just the weight of centuries.

“Please, continue to send your scouts. They are nof no consequence to me.” His voice was a blade dragged over stone. “I come to bargain.”

Silence.

Then—laughter.

Not cruel. Not mocking. Delighted.

Xelpha threw her head back. Xennon clapped once, twice, the sound cracking like whips. Even Xeria allowed the barest curve of her lips.

“Bargain?” Xennon purred. “The Serpent’s vessel dares to negotiate? You, who walk cloaked in chaos, bound to Aphosis—the Djynn of Darkness itself—ask us for terms?”

Kinslayer did not flinch.

“Aphosis seeks to become the Stellar Supreme,” he said, voice low. “To kneel all of Edo beneath its heel. To unmake the stars and reforge them in its image. You know this. You remember the Unlit Dawn...”

Xeria’s eyes flickered. “We do. When the sky bled and time stuttered. When the Serpent wore a crown of dead moons.”

“And you stopped it,” Kinslayer said. “With seals older than language. With blood older than bone. But it returned. Not in form—but in spirit. In me.”

He placed a hand over his chest, where the sigil of the Ouroboros writhed beneath his flesh.

“I was born of the Shi. I bore their name—Jao Shi. I sought freedom for my clan. But I was arrogant. I reached for power beyond my grasp. And so Aphosis crawled in. Not as invader. Invited...”

His voice cracked.

“I burned Mek Mountain with shadowfire. I slaughtered my kin. All of this...is for them. I was not a man—I was a vessel. A puppet.”

He looked up. “But I am awake now. And I will not let it wear my skin any longer.”

Xelpha tilted her head. “So you wish to break the bond.”

“I wish to invert it,” he said. “I do not ask to be free of Aphosis. I ask to devour it. To strip it of its sentience. To bind the Djynn like a dog on a chain so I may wield its full power—without becoming its mouthpiece.”

The sisters exchanged glances. Not through sight. Through something deeper. A language of blood and silence.

Xeria spoke first. “To bend a primordial storm… to cage a god of chaos… It is possible. But not without a key.”

“A key?”

Xennon rose, descending from her throne. “You speak of the Death Quill...”

Kinslayer’s breath caught.

“It’s myth.”

“Was myth,” Xerpha corrected. “A divine instrument forged before the first city. A pen that writes fates into being. That unwrites them too. With it, we could forge a seal so absolute not even time could erode it.”

“But it is broken,” Xeria said. “Shattered across the spectrum of Edo. Components scattered, hidden, forgotten.”

Her blood-red eyes locked onto his.

“You wish us to gift you dominion over a god. And what, pray tell, will you give in exchange?”

Kinslayer did not hesitate.

“My Sou-.”

The sisters stilled.

"Please, we care not for that managled thing...no..."

"My service then..."

Xennon laughed. “Your service? You, who walk in blood and shadow?”

“Not service as slave. As errand boy, you have been a slave long enough...” Xeria mused. “To retrieve what we cannot touch. To walk where even we fear to tread.”

She gestured to a vault behind her throne—a door of fused ribs and obsidian, pulsing like a heart. It opened and from it came a blood-dripping tome of refiend fleshwrapped in laced sinew. Along it spine, spinnel of bone.

“The Sanguine Archive,” she said. “The true form of the Bingo Book. Not a ledger of bounties—but a living record of every sin, every fate, every debt owed in blood across Vescrutia. It knows you, Kinslayer. It hates you.”

“And yet,” Kinslayer said, “you let me stand here.”

“Because you are useful,” Xelpha snapped. “Because balance must be kept. Because Aphosis, unchecked, would unravel the threads of Edo’s fate. And know...there are forces Edo holds at bay that would make the Nether Serpent shudder...”

Xennon stepped forward, holding out a shard of black crystal, veined with crimson.

"Without the Quill, new contracts cannot be formed. We don't need to spell out for you the danger this poses.”

“Humor me.”

Kin replied

It was Xeria, the Eldest, the Banker. Her mask was fashioned from dark, smoky quartz, etched with intricate runes that seemed to swim in the firelight. Her voice was the oldest, layered with the weight of countless transactions and witnessed decays. “We have kept Edo from regressing to the Age of the Unlit Dawn that Aphosis once spat across the continent.”

“This age was so brutal the land itself nearly perished,” Xeria intoned, her words painting a vivid horror in the thick air. “Blood ran so thick across the soil that nothing could grow, animals died, and the nation nearly fell to ruin. Chaos, pure and unchecked. The breath of your passenger.”

Xennon picked up the thread, her featureless mask turning towards him. “To avoid this, we sired the Midlight Bedlam, officials of transactional war through Edo. This, along with the coliseum, has been a pillar protecting Edo from reverting to that terrible time. We give the violence a channel. A purpose. A contract.”

“But without new contracts,” Xeria’s voice cut back in, sharper now, “commerce will become scarce. The low-level thugs, the Rats, will seek to grow. They will be forced to evolve, to shed their petty skins and become Nightmares. And as you can well see…” She let the sentence hang, a pointed glance around the chamber that spoke of countless bounties catalogued and hunted. “…one Nightmare-class bounty possesses enough danger to Edo in and of themselves. Now imagine the whole of Edo filled with them. A plague of apex predators with no one to hunt them but each other, until only one, unimaginable horror remains.”

The final pronouncement came from all three sisters in a chilling, harmonious whisper. “It will be the end of everything.”

Silence returned, more profound than before. The shadows in the room seemed to deepen, pooling around Kinslayer’s feet as if drawn to him.

“So,” he said, his voice a low thrum that vibrated in the chest. “You wish for me to find another of these quills for you.”

“Not found. Forge,” Xelpha, the youngest, finally spoke again. Her mask was carved from a single piece of blood coral, and her voice was higher, laced with a zealot’s fervor. She was the mistress of Bound Ethics, and her excitement for the components was palpable. “The quill is forged from the Spine of a Dinagourge. A demon whose breath is said to be from the underworld itself. It must be harvested while the creature still draws it.”

“The feather of a Nihlea Crow,” Xennon added. “A devilish bird found only in the sunless, lower regions of the realm. It does not fly; it moves between moments of despair.”

“And lastly,” Xeria finished, her quartz mask glinting. “The blood of a Liliralia. A being so radiant, its mere existence is a balm to the world. To slay it is considered a bane upon the very soul of the murderer.” A dry, rattling chuckle escaped her, a sound like bones shaking in a jar. “But… you’re already cursed, aren’t you, Kinslayer? Fufufu.”

The offer was clear. They knew his price. He had come to them seeking the ultimate binding, a ritual to strip the sentience from the god in his veins, leaving only its primordial power for him to wield. They would grant him that knowledge, that power. In exchange, he would embark on a suicide mission to gather the impossible ingredients.

He saw the logic, the brutal, beautiful symmetry of it. The vessel of chaos was sent to hunt the components of order. The already-damned soul sent to commit a grievous sin, thus sparing one of them the spiritual stain. It was a transaction only the Midlight Bedlam could conceive.

"Fine...you will have your trinkets."

Arms folded as he began to turn away from them.

"Without the Quill, new contracts cannot be formed. We don't need to spell out for you the danger this poses.”

“Humor me.”

Kin replied

It was Xeria, the Eldest, the Banker. Her mask was fashioned from dark, smoky quartz, etched with intricate runes that seemed to swim in the firelight. Her voice was the oldest, layered with the weight of countless transactions and witnessed decays. “We have kept Edo from regressing to the Age of the Unlit Dawn that Aphosis once spat across the continent.”

“This age was so brutal the land itself nearly perished,” Xeria intoned, her words painting a vivid horror in the thick air. “Blood ran so thick across the soil that nothing could grow, animals died, and the nation nearly fell to ruin. Chaos, pure and unchecked. The breath of your passenger.”

Xennon picked up the thread, her featureless mask turning towards him. “To avoid this, we sired the Midlight Bedlam, officials of transactional war through Edo. This, along with the coliseum, has been a pillar protecting Edo from reverting to that terrible time. We give the violence a channel. A purpose. A contract.”

“But without new contracts,” Xeria’s voice cut back in, sharper now, “commerce will become scarce. The low-level thugs, the Rats, will seek to grow. They will be forced to evolve, to shed their petty skins and become Nightmares. And as you can well see…” She let the sentence hang, a pointed glance around the chamber that spoke of countless bounties catalogued and hunted. “…one Nightmare-class bounty possesses enough danger to Edo in and of themselves. Now imagine the whole of Edo filled with them. A plague of apex predators with no one to hunt them but each other, until only one, unimaginable horror remains.”

The final pronouncement came from all three sisters in a chilling, harmonious whisper. “It will be the end of everything.”

Silence returned, more profound than before. The shadows in the room seemed to deepen, pooling around Kinslayer’s feet as if drawn to him.

“So,” he said, his voice a low thrum that vibrated in the chest. “You wish for me to find another of these quills for you.”

“Not found. Forge,” Xelpha, the youngest, finally spoke again. Her mask was carved from a single piece of blood coral, and her voice was higher, laced with a zealot’s fervor. She was the mistress of Bound Ethics, and her excitement for the components was palpable. “The quill is forged from the Spine of a Dinagourge. A demon whose breath is said to be from the underworld itself. It must be harvested while the creature still draws it.”

“The feather of a Nihlea Crow,” Xennon added. “A devilish bird found only in the sunless, lower regions of the realm. It does not fly; it moves between moments of despair.”

“And lastly,” Xeria finished, her quartz mask glinting. “The blood of a Liliralia. A being so radiant, its mere existence is a balm to the world. To slay it is considered a bane upon the very soul of the murderer.” A dry, rattling chuckle escaped her, a sound like bones shaking in a jar. “But… you’re already cursed, aren’t you, Kinslayer? Fufufu.”

The offer was clear. They knew his price. He had come to them seeking the ultimate binding, a ritual to strip the sentience from the god in his veins, leaving only its primordial power for him to wield. They would grant him that knowledge, that power. In exchange, he would embark on a suicide mission to gather the impossible ingredients.

He saw the logic, the brutal, beautiful symmetry of it. The vessel of chaos was sent to hunt the components of order. The already-damned soul sent to commit a grievous sin, thus sparing one of them the spiritual stain. It was a transaction only the Midlight Bedlam could conceive.

"Fine...you will have your trinkets."

Arms folded as he began to turn away from them.