Chapter 12: Blood Reunion

Lucien drifted downward in slow, gravity-less silence, deeper into the womb-like velvet of the dark space. All around him was stillness—no wind, no ground, no ceiling, no horizon. Just black threaded with hints of crimson light that shimmered like dying embers behind a veil. Torch perched softly on his head, tail curled around one ear, purring like a lullaby too old to be remembered. His breathing was calm. He wasn't in pain anymore. 

His body felt whole, intact, not a scar or burn or fracture left behind from the brutal fight in Judex's domain. No screaming gods all over the place trying to kill each other, no sickening laws carved into reality like a knife—only the soundless lull of endless space, and his thoughts, finally uninterrupted. He floated, arms out, like a corpse sinking in an ocean with no bottom.

'It's my fault..it really is my fault..isn't it? I was reckless…a fool..now it's gone…forever.. my soul. I sometimes wondered if it's a good idea that I can't die. I could get my revenge easy. I could take more risks. But now..I don't even know. I got beat in one swing by someone I didn't know anything about. Mainly because Artemis kept shit from me like the creep she is. It's still my fault anyway. I should've ran. But I couldn't live with myself if I did that, because I never ran. Now I'm a stupid dilemma: my defeat to Judex is stuck in my head now. Another anchor in my life I have to grow out of. So in the end, I lost twice…I don't understand everything in this world, I feel like I'm only scratching the surface.' 

He wondered—did Artemis let that conversation happen on purpose? Did she want him to hear everything the Witch Queen said through Judex? Was that her way of showing him some version of the truth? He had heard everything.

Lucien's jaw clenched as the questions began to rise in him like red mist, thickening around his thoughts, biting at the edges of his skull with quiet fury:

'Why was Artemis bound to me since birth? Did my parents do it?'

'How did all the Tarot cards end up scattered? What was the trigger that broke them apart?'

'Remzelle… the Witch Queen's baby boy… what is he really? A god? A vessel? Just a dream that forgot how to wake?'

'How did a mere human like the Witch Queen outsmart gods? Even with the Jester's help—how? How did she even convince them? Isn't he a Tarot god too? Did he betray the deck just for fun, or something worse?'

'Why does she make witches spread the Red Death? What does the plague have to do with breaking Laws? Is it eating away the world on purpose? It can't be. She's all about freedom like me, but her take is wanting a world with no rulers, only free roaming all over the place letting everyone do what the hell they want. So the plague being spread holds power. Maybe I could go on a witch hunt and capture one of those women, and get questions.'

'Who the hell are the outer beings? Are they a collective? A council? Another pantheon? Or just… fragments of something older?'

'What or who is Wonder, really? Not just the Father of Thought, but what kind of mind creates gods like tools? What about Fantasia? The creator of beasts and animals?'

'And the new Tarot card she plans to create… how would that even work? A blank one? One that could hold all the prindorial deities that hold up the foundation of the world? How do you combine Major Arcana without destroying everything? Is her sons body really enough to contain all those divine Laws?'

The more he thought, the more still the void became, as if listening. Lucien's fingers tightened into fists. He didn't want immortality. That wasn't the point. But when the Witch Queen spoke those words—"To unravel the secrets of the universe, only then will one become immortal"—he repeated them under his breath with bitter clarity.

"To unravel the secrets of the universe… only then…"

He wanted truth. He wanted the real shapes behind the veil. Not to live forever—but to never be a pawn again. To have true freedom. To have his life belong only to him. 

'But to do that, I need more knowledge. I'm not going into another fight with a god and getting my ass kicked like that. Never again. I know there are hundreds upon hundreds of cults, monasteries, churches, and groups dedicated to most of the Tarot, but I never bothered to get Involved with them because I called them crazy ass fanatics. I need to venture out. Head to other cities and states. Talk to more people. Oh yeah, and continue my good money making business. That became my passion out of nowhere. Keeps me busy.'

But then his jaw clenched tighter, the purr of Torch still steady against his scalp. Artemis. 

'That creep.'

She'd tethered him like a leash—attached Torch to his soul, laced his blood with chaos, set her summons to permanently stick with him. 

'I appreciate her trying to make me run. I might be able to see her again if she comes back after hearing what her and the others talked about. Saying she'll die but return…'

The void began to shift.

The black peeled away like smoke curling from an extinguished candle. Light spilled in—not blinding, not divine, just warm and earthly. He was standing now. Carpet underfoot. Velvet and oak all around. A chandelier shimmered above with soft amber gaslight. He blinked, slowly turning his head.

A long hallway stretched behind him—gilded frames, golden rails, the paintings of saints and military men. It looked… noble. 

Victorian, upper class stuff. He'd seen estates like this when he was a kid, staring through the gates while scoundrels and plague-cullers patrolled the alleys. He looked to the left—and children. Dozens of them. Laughing, running, phasing past him like ghosts of memory, not bumping into him, just brushing by. Their eyes sparkled with joy, faces pale and dressed in finest ballroom attire. Boys in velvet coats and short polished shoes. Girls in white dresses, gloved hands holding the hems like they were butterflies caught mid-flight.

"The hell…? Where am I now?" Lucien scoffed.

Torch remained on his head, unbothered.

Lucien stepped forward, baffled.

'It doesn't really feel real. I don't have all my senses. Just my sight. This has to be a dream then. Or something like it. What's it gonna show me? Is it gonna tell me I'm the chosen one? The so-called hero who'll save the world? Ha..here I am making jokes out of all times. I'm taking after Gunthr the way I'm just trying to distract myself from my own thoughts.'

From a side door came a tall woman, her face hidden beneath a long white veil that spilled down to her chest. She wore a smooth white dress, high-collared and pinned with an obsidian rose over her left breast. Her voice was cheerful, soothing, with the accent of someone educated in old royal courts. 

"Come now, little ones! No more running! The guests will be arriving any moment—places, places!" she called, clapping her hands twice. The children giggled and obeyed. They raced into a grand room beyond.

Lucien followed, but slowly.

"Can any of you see me?!" Lucien said with a straight face but loud. 

No one bat an eye towards him.

Lucien continued, "Worth a shot I guess. Or maybe their parents told them not to talk to strangers."

Torch slightly scratched Lucien's face, but Lucien felt nothing. "Haha! Stupid rat!"

Torch was scratching him like crazy, but Lucien just laughed, grabbing him by the head, and launching him away hard. But a second later, there Torch was again, folded on the top of his head like he wasn't thrown a few feet through the air.

Inside the ballroom, golden arches lined the high ceiling like ribs of some mechanical cathedral. Musicians stood in the back, well dressed men in charcoal suits lifting violins, bows already poised to play. 

There were no lyrics. Only humming. Swift humming from young women behind the band, faces raised, eyes shut, and it was beautiful. No distortion. None of that godly terror. Just the soft sound of music.

The children lined up in pairs, girls across from boys, posture rigid.

The woman with the veil strolled in front of them, hands clasped. "Now—remember what I said: Ballroom dancing is not about beauty. It is about presence. You are not twirling for applause—you are embodying poise, balance, control." She gestured broadly. "Stand tall. Shoulders back. Let your partner feel your rhythm—not in the feet, but in the breath. Match their breath. Let your motion predict theirs. That is how nobles move. With intention. If you guys want to actually BE something in Orrenthol, you have to be perfect." She clapped twice again. "Now. Begin."

The violins lifted. The girls hummed again, long and graceful.

And the children danced. Slow at first, a patient, gliding waltz, the shoes of dozens of pairs slipping over lacquered floors like poetry in motion.

Lucien stood in the back, Torch unmoving on his head.

He didn't understand any of this crap.

"Dancing children, and the mention of Orrenthol. Isn't that the largest city-state in the world? Ruled by the Empire of Heaven? Ruled by King Arthur? Well, not really King Arthur, he's an emperor, but people adore his leading to the extent where they keep calling him king. I've never been there."

Torch just meowed. Lucien clicked his tongue, "Tch. I don't even know why I'm asking you."

The ballroom was a living painting, golden light flickering off the polished floor as dozens of tiny shoes spun and stepped in practiced rhythm. The children moved with practiced steps, their forms stitched with little imperfections—an occasional late spin, a hesitant hand placement, a nervous glance to see if they were doing it right. 

But none of it ruined the beauty in the woman's eyes. If anything, it gave the moment breath. The violins whispered a slow, lyrical waltz, carried by the humming voices of the women behind the orchestra. 

"Gently, Caelin," whispered a tall redheaded boy to his partner, "you've got to step with me, not on me—my foot still need time to heal from last week."

The freckled girl narrowed her eyes, chin tilted. "Then maybe you should wear boots instead of slippers."

"Maybe you should stop dancing like you're attacking a wasp."

"Jerk. I'm telling on you."

"Do it, I don't care. You don't scare me."

"Children," said the veiled woman, gliding past with calm authority. "Posture, not pouting. Shoulders lifted. Chins tall. You're not peasants fleeing a fire—you're heirs of a ballroom." She paused behind a pair whose arms had collapsed into limp spaghetti. "Liorah, Orlan—if I see one more slouch from either of you, I'm tying your spines to broomsticks."

"But my arms are tired," A girl named Liorah muttered.

"Good," the woman said brightly. "That means they're working." She adjusted the girl's elbow, fixed a boy's crooked collar, straightened another's bowtie. "Do you know what Dame Alcinia of Marledane once said?" she asked, more to the room than to anyone in particular. "She was the greatest footwork stylist of the Fourth Wyrd Court."

No one knew what or who that was. They just went along with it for the sake of it.

The room paused for dramatic expectation.

The woman lifted a finger. "She said: 'A step taken with fear is a stumble disguised as a prayer. But a step taken with rhythm is a vow to the earth beneath you.' Remember that, little ones."

Lucien leaned against an invisible column, arms crossed, Torch still calmly nested atop his head like a smug crown. 

"This is definitely someone's memory," he muttered. "Or a dream. Or a weird slice of the past I got shoved into." He glanced up. "You see this, cat? Ballroom lectures and toe-bruised noble brats. You think the Witch Queen has dreams like this tucked in her skull?" Torch gave a disinterested blink.

Lucien continued, "Still, someone's showing me this. Definitely not Artemis. She would show me some chaotic battlefield, nothing this peaceful."

Then Lucien saw him.

Off to the side of the ballroom, standing awkwardly behind a pillar, was a boy with pale skin, shoulder-length messy white hair, and large light brown eyes that didn't seem to know where to look. His outfit was beautiful but clearly tugged on too quickly—collar uneven, cuffs loose. He was biting his lip, feet shifting in place. The woman spotted him instantly and crossed over, lifting her veil slightly so her voice could be heard with more clarity.

"Remzelle," she sang warmly, "why aren't you dancing?"

Luxien slightly gasped at that name, "Remzelle?!"

'The Witch Queen's son…?'

The boy Remzelle looked down, rubbing his wrist nervously. "I… I'll mess up again. Like last time. I—I'm not good at this. I step on people's feet."

"You also breathe funny and forget to bow," she said without malice. "So what?"

Remzelle pouted as she grabbed his shoulders and yanked him into a headlock. "Oy!" he squeaked, struggling. "That's not helpful..I'm going to my room."

"Stand still, you hedgehog." She pulled out a silver-handled hairbrush from nowhere and began brushing his unruly hair with comic ferocity. "This hair is a crime against presentation. It looks like you tried to fistfight the wind."

Remzelle groaned. "It makes me look girly! Don't touch me—!"

"It makes you look brushed, you dramatic little mushroom," she said as she yanked a tangle. "Besides, the banquet later demands neatness."

Around them, the children snickered.

"Remzelle looks like a haunted doll!"

"Remzelle looks like his mom combs his hair with a fork!"

"Focus!" the woman barked with good humor. "Keep moving or I'll make everyone brush their hair next!"

Remzelle huffed as she finished grooming him into something almost princely. He whispered, "They're all gonna stare at me…"

The woman crouched beside him and took his hand. "Let them. You dance for you, not for their stares." She squeezed. "You know what Lord Feridan Rosetail said, when he invented the nine-step pivot in front of three kings and tripped on a chicken?"

Remzelle blinked. "He… he tripped on a chicken? And who or what is that?"

"Indeed." Her eyes twinkled behind the veil. "And then he said: 'Every step, even a stumble, still brings the world with you. So stumble beautifully.'"

Remzelle gave a crooked little smile. "Yeah…okay. Right..yeah."

"Now—middle of the floor. You and me. Everyone else—give us space!"

The children scattered respectfully. Lucien folded his arms again, intrigued despite himself. "So this is Remzelle, huh…?"

The veiled woman led Remzelle by the hand to the center. "Musicians," she called, "something more upbeat—something to let the floor spin, please!"

The orchestra struck a new tune.

She tilted her head. "No, not that one. Too weepy."

Another tune.

"Too slow. I'll die of boredom."

Another.

"Yes. That one."

It started with a soaring note from the lead violin, quick and playful. The humming women fell in gently, like the song itself was grinning.

The dance began.

She guided Remzelle's hands, placing one on her waist and the other in hers. He stumbled immediately. She grinned. "Again."

Step. Turn. Misstep. Step again.

He looked down, then back up. Dozens of children watched. His face flushed red.

"Don't look at them," she said gently. "Look at me."

He tried, and it's like the world heard him as the music rose.

His feet fumbled but adjusted. His shoulders rolled back. His grip steadied. Another mistake. A recover. Another mistake. A slight smile.

"You're not dancing," she told him, "you're remembering. What you are, what you're made of. Let your feet speak for you."

The dance picked up speed.

Remzelle twisted with her hand, their movement spinning across the floor like a gentle storm. The children began clapping in rhythm, cheering as he stumbled once, twice—but didn't stop.

"You're doing wonderfully," she laughed. "As always, my son."

"Thank you."

But then, almost naturally, Remzelle turned to the Lucien, but he was crying blood and his eyes were dark as night.

Lucien clenched his fists as he felt nothing but malice.

Then a flash of bright white, Lucien was being moved somewhere, with Torch holding onto him.

…..

Drakehelm was unrecognizable. Smoke suffocated the skyline, curling from collapsed factories and half-crumbled spires where steam once billowed with pride. The jagged skeletons of airships hung from iron scaffolds like ruptured insects, their engines cracked open and leaking bronze fluids. Streets were split down the middle, stone ripped apart like paper, revealing subterranean steam pipes hissing out boiling mist. 

This was a city of plague rotten people, assassins, and people who enjoyed daily life and festivities with no rulers making up laws; handlers and contraband dealers trotting through the black market like rats? But couldn't it stand for something? A city-state like Drakehelm without righteous laws or leaders doomed to fall? Lucien knew it would always come to this.

Dead bodies littered the walkways—Inquisitors, civilians, rogue alchemists, even mangled Steel Gear automatons twitching in their last electrical spasms. The scent of scorched metal and blood hung heavy in the air, and the soundscape was madness—screaming, the mechanical screech of twisting gears, and the sharp, vicious report of gunfire that echoed like war drums.

Lucien lay motionless beneath a twisted iron signpost, staring blankly at a sky he barely recognized. His breath hitched. He was alive. But he shouldn't be. He pushed himself up slowly, the blood-rusted cobblestones groaning beneath him. 

"Ugh…"

His fingers brushed his chest. No pain. But his coat was torn open where the massive wound had been—only now, there was no blood. No scabbing. Just a deep black spiral-shaped mark, burned into the skin like a god had branded him.

He stared at it for a long time.

"…Torch?" he muttered.

There was no reply, no cat curling around his neck, no weight on his shoulder. No furball scratching the shit out of his face, but he felt something. 

A warmth just under the skin, deeper than nerves—alive, breathing, watching. It pulsed gently with every heartbeat. His breath shivered.

"…So you've climbed your way inside my chest." He gave a dry chuckle. "Dumb cat." He paused. "If you haven't done this, I would've bled out. Guess I have Artemis or you to thank. But I'd rather thank nobody just yet."

He laughed, just once. Hollow, biting. "I spent days trying to ditch you. You were a cursed fuzzball who scratched me every time I spoke. And now you're the only reason I'm not unmade or whatever." He sat there a moment longer, touching the mark. 

Torch had become the anchor—a living fragment of Artemis, overriding the Law of Death itself. Because Lucien had no soul, that was the cruel irony of it all: unmaking him had always been easy. There was nothing to tether him to life. Just pain, memory, and obligation.

But now, Torch was that tether.

"The Queen summon is gonna be happy to see you again, rat." Lucien stood. The world swayed, but he steadied. Ahead, in the distance, came the thunder of another explosion, and somewhere nearby a Steel Gear automaton shouted orders in a monotone voice, half-cracked from damage. "I guess I'll deal with you lot for now." Lucien said to Torch.

'Remzelle…did he show me it? Isn't he in some coma? Asleep? Was that hyper woman the Witch Queen? Why was her face covered? Will I get something like that again?'

He began to walk. Step by step through the wreckage, past children's shoes lost in the debris, past fallen plague doctors with gas masks shattered and burnt into their skulls, past claw marks in steel walls where something divine or monstrous had rampaged through. His boots crunched glass. His eyes swept over the bodies.

He gasped slightly. "Sella!"

'Is she still alive? What the hell happened out here? I haven't even thought of her until now! Shit was so messed up my mind was all over the place!'

He looked around.

Her face haunted his thoughts. Not as a burden, not as some grand emotional pull—just as doubt. Did she survive? 

"Sella! I need you alive so I can get my revenge! Don't forget! You being dead fucks our contract up! Even though we didn't sign anything…"

The street groaned beneath his step.

'These bodies… pity them..don't I? Would I pity Sella if she died?'

He had asked himself that countless times. The ones without Soul Alchemy. The ones without a god's power in their veins. The ones who died here. The ones who had to live ordinary lives just to be crushed by a divine mistake. He hated thinking about it. But he always did. That was the issue with Drakehelm. No righteous law and upheld loyalty saved the weak, the city just told them to live their lives like gods aren't fighting all around them.

'They all want freedom,' he thought. Just like me. But what the hell is freedom, anyway? People would love to live here since people weren't breathing down their neck as much. But stepping out of line meant death. Either by that crazy ass Vulthein, or any trigger happy idiot.'

He scoffed. 

'Freedom isn't just about being away from the Exarch. Even now, after escaping all that madness… I'm not free. Artemis was with me before I could even walk. Before I even had a name, probably. Tied to me from birth like a shadow beneath my skin. My parents must've done something. A ritual? A contract? Or was I born into it, some bastard deal made before my first breath? So many questions I need answered.'

He shook his head.

He stopped walking. Stared at the body of a young man crushed under a burning automaton, eyes wide open to the sky. Then, he looked up at the half-collapsed tower spires still glowing with embers.

'The freedom I want,' he thought, 'Isn't just being away from chains. It's not feeling them. It's not feeling anything at all.'

'Artemis dangled my soul like a carrot. Telling me If I killed gods I could get it back. And she knew that would work. Because she knew I couldn't stand being owned. Got a taste of my own medicine. Well played.'

He walked slower now. Shoulders tight, eyes burning. All those times he laughed at people who begged for power, clawed at his feet for help. All those lives ruined just by being too close to him. And now he was one of them.

Lucien stopped again. His hands clenched.

"That's all I was, huh?" he whispered. "A tool since birth. A weapon someone else made."

'How in the hell..do I grow from this? I can't die, and I don't wanna live forever. I'll be stuck in stupid loop of growing and failing, growing and failing. I don't have time for that, do I?'

Lucien shook his head, focusing. "Sella!"

A mile away, Vulthein lay on his back, ribs creaking with every breath, the sky overhead a tapestry of soot and ruin. Smoke trailed lazily through the cracks of shattered cathedral windows, and somewhere nearby, a fallen automaton twitched weakly, steam leaking in wheezing bursts. His body was broken. Torn from the inside out by Death's domain and spat back out as if he were unworthy of its keep. And still—he lived. Barely. Blood matted his greying hair to his temple, his white cloak scorched black across the chest.

His lip trembled. It was small at first—barely noticeable beneath the ragged drag of his breath. But then came the sound, the sort that didn't belong to men like him. A quiet, pitiful sob. Then another. And Vulthein sat up, hunching forward, clutching at his stomach as if to hold the pain inside. His face contorted not with anger, but shame. His shoulders shuddered violently. 

A man with too much command, too much failure. "I should've been better…" he whispered, not to Adrien, not to the gods, but to the fading memory of the man whose name he still bore. "…I'm sorry, Father." With shaking fingers, Vulthein reached to his elbow, gritting his teeth—and with a single sickening crack, he snapped his own arm backwards. A jagged, grotesque angle. He didn't scream. Just lowered his head and took the pain like it was holy. Punishment, for what his commands had cost.

A few feet away, Adrien slowly sat upright. Blood streaked his face like warpaint, and the torn remains of his uniform barely held shape. His hands trembled, but not with fear. With fury. Quiet. Focused. His stare bore into Vulthein like a bullet held back by skin. "I will kill you…" he muttered, voice hollow and cracked. "Vulthein. My squad's death…is on your hands…!"

Vulthein turned slightly, cradling his mangled arm. "This is all Lucien's fault…Do-Do not blame me! You see the things he walks with…. The gods he provokes! And he still breathes. He still walks!"

Adrien's jaw tightened, blood running down from his brow to his chin. He didn't blink. Didn't yell. He only rose to his feet slowly—like every movement hurt more than the last. "You killed them. Ari. Enoch. Markus. You're obsessed…" He started walking away, not looking back. "We'll settle this… the next time I find you. I'm done fighting for the Inquisition."

"Then go," Vulthein barked, teeth clenched around the scream in his throat. "Run like a coward…I don't need you."

Adrien didn't answer. He disappeared into the smoke, footsteps slow and final.

Vulthein looked up and screamed, "I-I don't need anyone! Just my own strength! And success! I'll rebuild Drakehelm with only my Steel Gear if I have to! I will restore it to its former glory! Right, father?!"

⸻

In a shattered garden tangled in thorn and ash, Sella bled alone. Her body was curled in a crater where a collapsing bell tower had hurled her. One leg was twisted wrong, and her ribs heaved with shallow, broken breaths. Her hand gripped her rapier made from blood, but it trembled, the blade phasing in and out of form like it couldn't hold shape. Her vision was smearing at the edges. Everything felt far away.

Floating above her was Ephellos, the Tarot God of the Golden Gun.

He made no sound as he hovered. His fingers clicked softly, shaped like loading cylinders and cocking levers. His head was unmistakably human—perfectly so. But too perfect. Unsettling. As if the gods had sculpted him from flawless memory and not flesh.

The golden halo of suspended bullets circled in slow, mechanical elegance—each one engraved, spinning like a second hand on the clock of some divine execution. But each sound was like the ticking of one.

He smiled down at Sella, calm and wide. Gunthr was laying elsewhere, his right arm crushed and bloody. Zuka had used Vaelle as her own shield to protect her, and Vaelle was regenerating.

Ephellos's rifle was already aimed. A masterpiece—a golden, mythic steampunk rifle lined with turning gears and glowing valves, wrapped in velvet steel and pulsating with holy rounds that hummed with judgment. From the barrel curled a divine heatwave that warped the very air in front of it.

Sella raised her arm, trying to point her blood-formed rapier upward. "Get… away…" she wheezed. Her limbs wavered. Her knees collapsed under her. Her blood had run too low. Her throat ached. She needed Lucien. Needed it—his blood. "I'll kill you like the rest of them…"

The rifle chamber clicked. Ephellos tilted his head. The halo of bullets over his head clocked faster, and faster.

Then—KRAKTHOOM!

A flaming red warhammer smashed full force into the side of Ephellos's head.

Gold and blood exploded like fireworks. Ephellos was launched sideways through an entire row of ruined archways, the impact shaking the earth and toppling a nearby automaton with a shriek of splintered metal.

Sella gasped. Her eyes widened in disbelief, tears burning at the edges of her vision. She saw a silhouette walking through the smoke, hammer dragging behind him in a trail of fire and sparks. 

Lucien's vare bloody chest was scarred with a black spiral in the middle, marking where Torch entered. His eyes were heavy with death—and somehow still alive.

"Ha…" Lucien grinned, leaning on his warhammer like a cane. He pointed lazily. "You're a damsel in distress."

Sella just looked at him, "You…" her voice came out as a cough. She wearily got up fast and ran towards him, staggering towards his body, half-collapsing, blood trailing down her lips. "You're alive…" she whispered, breath catching. "You asshole!"

She didn't wait.

She stumbled into his chest, grabbed his collar, and sank her teeth into his neck.