Malachai crawled through the dirt.

  Not with purpose, not with pride, but with the twitching instinct of the barely living.

  His ribs cracked with each breath. His vision swam in static. Every part of him screamed in pulses of white-hot agony—not from blade or claw, but from something else. The Bishop had struck with absence, and absence was still devouring him from the inside.

  He dragged himself past the boundary where the fog thinned, past the gate patrols who stared at him in silence. No one offered help. No one dared.

  The Veil rippled behind him like a dying banner.

  He didn’t remember how he reached the elevator shaft. Didn’t recall crawling up the last flights of stairs. But eventually, the door to his room groaned open.

  And he collapsed.

  Face down. In blood. In silence.

  He didn’t sleep.

  He waited.

  Hours passed before he rose.

  A rib popped back into place with a crack. The Veil flexed and pulled threads of black essence from the bandages of his gear. He reached for the tablet with a hand that barely stopped shaking.

  The screen flickered.

  The apps pulsed with outdated light.

  But he had a direction now.

  The Faceless Bishop.

  He typed it.

  Nothing came up.

  He refined the query.

  “Obsidian-faced being.”

  “Bishop class entity.”

  “Alpha Elite sightings.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Then he found it.

  A classified tag.

  Category: Omega Threat

  Codename: Faceless Bishop

  He opened the file.

  At first it refused. Then, when it finally loaded, only four lines greeted him:

  ? Known Class: Null-Priest of the Hollowed Man

  Confirmed Deaths: 3 S-Rank Awakened. 17 A-Rank Hollowed.

  Survivors: 0

  Recommendation: FLEE ON SIGHT

  ---

  The air in the room seemed to grow colder.

  He scrolled further.

  A corrupted image. Glitched. A shadowy silhouette wrapped in black. No facial features. Just the glint of the mirror-mask.

  And beneath that, scribbled notes from what appeared to be an ex-guild scribe:

  ? “The Bishop does not speak. It shows you your worst self. And it doesn’t kill for pleasure. It kills to silence. If it marks you, you do not live long.”

  Malachai’s hands clenched the tablet.

  He searched next for its words. What it had said.

  “You were watched because your soul touched the Wombgate and did not scream.”

  He typed: Wombgate.

  The response returned blank.

  Just one entry: Term Redacted by Order of Council Cthonica

  His breath hitched.

  He had heard of them in passing—the shadow governance behind the Twelve Fortified Cities. He knew enough to understand that when they hid something, it meant it was real. And terrifying.

  He looked down at his claws.

  They twitched.

  He opened his status screen.

  The reflection in the cracked glass beside him didn’t look like a man.

  It looked like a shadow in human shape.

  A reaper born not of death, but of graves.

  And something had taken notice.

  The Bishop had said he was being watched.

  Because he hadn’t screamed when the Wombgate touched him.

  Because his soul hadn’t recoiled.

  He wasn’t just evolving.

  He was becoming something that wasn’t supposed to exist outside the Gates.

  He sat in the dark.

  Bleeding slowly.

  And whispered to no one:

  “Then maybe it should be afraid of me.”