Max had been patrolling for maybe an hour when he first noticed something was off.
It started with small scenes. An old man struggling with a bag of groceries at the corner of a crosswalk, and before Max had even finished deciding whether to help, three teenagers were already there, one taking the bag, two others flanking him on either side, walking him slowly across the street like he was made of glass. The old man beamed the whole way, patted each of them on the shoulder when they reached the other side, and then, to Max's genuine surprise, pulled out his wallet and started pressing bills into their hands.
The teenagers protested loudly at first, hands up, shaking their heads, and all clearly embarrassed by the gesture. But the old man wouldn't let up; he kept pushing the money at them with the kind of stubborn insistence only old men seemed capable of, and eventually they gave in, pocketing the cash with sheepish smiles and a few awkward thank-yous.
Max watched the whole exchange with his arms crossed, mildly charmed.
Then he kept walking, and he saw it again. And again.
A waitress at a café got tipped twice, maybe three times what her bill actually asked for, and the man paying didn't even seem to register it as unusual, just leaving the money and walking off with a small, satisfied smile, like he'd done something routine.
Further down the street, a woman helped an elderly stranger across the road even though there was no traffic to speak of, walking at his pace, patient and warm, like she had nowhere else to be in the world. Outside a bank, a small line had formed, people withdrawing cash with a kind of quiet purpose, and when Max got close enough to actually listen, he heard more than one of them mention buying food for people they'd never met.
The whole street had gone soft somehow. Mellow. Like someone had turned the volume down on every hard edge Paris usually had and replaced it with something warm and hazy instead. People were smiling at strangers. Actually smiling, not the tight, distracted smile city people gave each other out of politeness, but something that reached their eyes and lingered there.
At first, Max didn't think much of it. If anything, he liked it. It matched something in him, some old, easy instinct toward kindness that rarely got much room to breathe given the life he lived. He found himself smiling along without really meaning to, eventually finding his feet slowing to help an elderly woman with her shopping bags before he'd even consciously decided to; he noticed the warmth in his own chest rising to meet the warmth radiating off everyone around him.
He probably would have kept going. Would have folded seamlessly into the crowd, become just another smiling stranger handing out kindness without asking why, without questioning any of it, sinking deeper and deeper into something soft and mindless and endless.
But Max wasn't a normal person, and normal people didn't have a Domain of Emotions sitting quietly at the edge of their perception, humming faintly whenever something started tugging at feelings that weren't entirely their own.
The hum sharpened into something closer to an alarm, and Max blinked, the warm haze in his chest suddenly obvious for what it actually was. It wasn't his own feeling. It was something placed there.
His brows furrowed as he drew out a thread of purple liquid, flecked through with tiny white particles, and let it pool briefly in his palm before it shifted, color deepening, curling into a small yellow bubble tinted faintly pink. The moment it fully formed, the kindness pressing against his chest simply switched off, clean and total, like someone had reached in and turned a valve shut.
He stood there for a second, blinking, feeling strangely clear-headed compared to everyone still smiling and helping each other around him.
"The Goodness Pathway," he thought, glancing around at the street now with a very different kind of attention. "Its uniqueness effect is in the entire city. The walker must be somewhere here."
His first instinct was to reach Eric, so he pulled at his golden thread out of habit, already halfway through composing what he wanted to say.
Nothing answered back.
Max stood there a beat longer, staring at the dead thread hanging uselessly in his grip, and let out a short, humorless breath. "Of course." Twice now. Twice in two days he'd reached for Eric only to find the connection cut clean, like the universe had decided that was simply how things were going to go for a while.
He shook his head, filed the irritation away for later, and got moving.
His vision shifted, pink light rising behind his eyes, and he began scanning the street properly now, searching for whatever was feeding this effect into the city like a slow, steady drip. Whoever it was, they were close enough to still be affecting people this strongly. He just needed to find them.
A moment later, golden light wrapped around him, and Max was gone.
...
Ruby moved through the apartment on autopilot, laundry basket balanced against her hip, a load of towels already tumbling in the dryer down the hall. She wanted to get through the list fast today; the sooner she finished, the sooner she could collapse onto the sofa with something mindless playing on the TV, the kind of video where she didn't have to think about anything at all.
Her shoulders ached. They'd been aching for days now, a dull, persistent weight that no amount of stretching seemed to touch, like something had settled there and simply decided to stay. She set the basket down and rolled her shoulders, wincing slightly, then reached up to knead at the muscle with her fingers.
She caught her own reflection in the hallway mirror on the way past and stopped for a second, studying herself. Same face. Same tired eyes, same slightly frizzy hair she hadn't bothered fixing yet. Nothing looked different, not on the outside, but something underneath felt wrong in a way she couldn't quite put into words.
It was the quiet, mostly. The apartment felt too quiet lately, especially with Eric gone most of the day and Max dragging him off on whatever this new job actually involved. She found herself glancing over her shoulder more than she used to, a small, prickling awareness at the back of her neck whenever she was alone in a room too long, like she was being watched from somewhere just out of sight. She'd tell herself it was nothing. Then she'd catch herself doing it again five minutes later.
She was halfway through folding a towel when the doorbell rang.
Her whole body flinched before her brain caught up, heart lurching hard enough that she nearly dropped the towel altogether. She let out a breath, annoyed at herself, and made her way to the door, glancing through the peephole out of habit before opening it.
Zoe stood on the other side, practically vibrating with energy, a wide grin plastered across her face.
Ruby opened the door and stepped back to let her in, some of the tension in her chest easing the moment she saw a familiar face. "What happened? You look way too happy right now."
"Nothing happened," Zoe said, breezing past her into the apartment like she owned the place, though there was something a little too bright about the way she said it, a little too much energy behind an answer that claimed to be about nothing at all.
Ruby closed the door behind her, and just having someone else in the apartment made that prickling, watched feeling at the back of her neck finally settle. She followed Zoe toward the kitchen. "Are you hungry? I bet cooking for Max is exhausting."
"You have no idea," Zoe said, dropping onto one of the kitchen stools. "He eats like he's trying to personally end world hunger. In himself."
Ruby laughed and reached automatically for the fridge, already running through what she had on hand. She'd been meaning to cook something for Zoe for a while now, some small gesture to say thanks for however many favors she owed her at this point, but it had always stayed exactly that: a vague someday plan she never quite got around to.
Except now, standing there with the fridge door open, she felt it pulling at her properly for the first time, an urge that went well past politeness, closer to something she genuinely needed to do. Not later. Right now. She wanted Zoe fed, wanted her sitting at this table with a full plate in front of her, wanted to watch her actually enjoy something Ruby had made with her own hands.
She didn't think much of it. It felt like her own thought, the kind of warm impulse she got sometimes when she cared about someone. She started pulling ingredients out without a second thought.
Somewhere in the middle of reaching for a pan, she realized the ache in her shoulders was gone. Not lessened. Gone completely, as if it had never been there at all. She rolled them experimentally, waiting for the familiar twinge, and found nothing.
She didn't stop to question it. She just smiled, genuinely pleased for the first time all day, and got to work.
Zoe, without being asked, slid off the stool and came around the counter to help, grabbing a knife and starting on the vegetables like it was the most natural thing in the world, humming something under her breath, the two of them falling easily into the rhythm of cooking side by side.
Neither of them noticed how strange it was that both their urges had lined up so perfectly, or how neither of them had actually decided any of this. They just cooked, comfortable and warm in each other's company, the quiet apartment finally feeling a little less empty than it had all morning.
...
Claude sat at his desk, a stack of files open in front of him, the words on the page refusing to settle into anything coherent no matter how many times his eyes passed over them. He rubbed at his temples, tried again, and still nothing stuck. Whatever was wrong with him today, it wasn't going to let him focus. Eventually he gave up entirely and turned to look out the window instead, watching the street below without really seeing it.
That was when it started.
A pull came from somewhere deep in his chest, sudden and sharp, like a hook sinking into muscle and dragging. He doubled forward in his chair, one hand flying up to grip at his shirt, breath catching hard in his throat. And then, without any warning at all, a laugh tore out of him. Not a real laugh. Something closer to a wound trying to sound like joy, high and cracked and completely wrong coming from a man who never so much as smiled in front of his own officers.
His hand moved on its own.
He watched it happen almost from a distance, his fingers closing around a pen, dragging it across a blank sheet of paper with quick, sure strokes that had nothing to do with any conscious decision he was making. A shape began to form. A figure, cloaked in black, descending a mountain that was also black, every line drawn with a kind of desperate, practiced certainty, like his hand had done this a hundred times before and simply needed his body along for the ride.
The black pen wasn't enough. Something in him wanted red, needed red, and when the pen refused to give it, his hand reached for a second one and drove it straight into his own palm instead, again and again, fast and mechanical, blood welling up and smearing across the page in place of ink his hand had decided it needed.
The pain in his chest sharpened with every stab, and somehow that pain seemed to be exactly what the drawing wanted.
Eventually, mercifully, his hand stopped. The pull in his chest released all at once, leaving him slumped in his chair, drenched in sweat, staring down at a half-finished nightmare bleeding across his desk in his own blood.
This wasn't new. He'd started calling them attacks after the first time it happened, the first time his hand had tried to draw this same figure without his permission. They'd been getting worse lately, closer together, harder to hide. Dr. House had witnessed one firsthand, and even he hadn't had much comfort to offer. A rare condition, he'd called it, something that would take real effort to even understand, let alone treat. He couldn't promise Claude he'd ever be able to cure it.
That admission alone had frightened Claude more than the attacks themselves. He'd spent his whole life believing there was always someone better, always another doctor, always a solution if you looked hard enough. Hearing that this might simply be beyond anyone's reach had shaken something loose in him that he still hadn't managed to put back. Still, Dr. House had promised to do everything in his power, on the condition that Claude tell absolutely no one. Claude had agreed without a second thought. What choice did he have?
He wiped the sweat from his face with a shaking hand, cleaned the blood off the desk as best he could with his handkerchief, and wrapped a spare cloth tightly around his palm to stop the worst of the bleeding.
A knock sounded at the door.
Claude startled hard enough that his chair scraped back against the floor. He shoved the drawing beneath a stack of files in one quick motion, straightened himself as best he could, and slid his bleeding hand out of sight beneath the desk.
"Come in," he said, keeping his voice as level as he could manage.
A scrawny young officer stepped inside, still dressed in his standard blue uniform, wearing an unusually wide smile on his face. "Captain, I have very good news to tell you."
Claude studied him for a moment, genuinely thrown. This officer was normally quiet to the point of being forgettable, reserved, someone who kept to himself and rarely said more than necessary. Seeing him grinning like that felt almost as wrong as everything Claude had just been through.
The officer's smile faltered slightly as he took in Claude's appearance. "Captain, why are you sweating so much?"
"It's nothing," Claude said quickly, forcing something that was supposed to resemble a smile onto his own face, though it came out twitching and uneven. "I turned the air conditioning off for a while, that's all. What's this good news you wanted to share?"
The officer blinked, seeming to need a second to remember why he'd come in at all, before his face lit up again. "Oh, right! I'm getting married, Captain. I'd be honored if you could come to the wedding."
There was real warmth in his voice, threaded through with a kind of nervous respect, like he hadn't quite expected himself to be standing here saying this out loud.
Claude's chest still ached faintly beneath the surface, but something else pushed through it now, something warm and swelling that didn't feel entirely his own. The officer crossed the room and placed an invitation card on the desk, and Claude felt his throat tighten unexpectedly, his eyes stinging with something dangerously close to tears.
It struck him, distantly, that this reaction wasn't right either. He hadn't cried in years. He wasn't about to start now over a wedding invitation from a subordinate he barely spoke to. And yet here he was, blinking hard against it, a strange and swelling kindness rising in his chest that felt less like an emotion and more like something being poured into him from somewhere else entirely.
"Tell everyone their salaries are being raised," Claude said, before he'd fully decided to say it. "To celebrate the occasion."
The officer stared at him, clearly certain he'd misheard. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and took a long moment just processing the words. Then his face broke into a wide, disbelieving smile, and he bowed low, thanking Claude over and over before finally excusing himself and hurrying out the door.
The office fell silent again.
Claude sat alone at his desk, one hand still wrapped in a bloodied cloth beneath it, staring at the closed door and wondering, with a creeping unease he couldn't quite name, exactly how much of what he'd just felt had actually belonged to him.
...
Kalamine sat slumped on a bench outside a café, staring at her phone with the particular despair of someone who had just received her forty-seventh rejection email of the month. She had a PhD. An actual, real, framed-on-a-wall-somewhere-in-storage PhD, and Paris still would not give her a job stacking books, let alone one that used a single word of her thesis on post-structural semiotics. At this rate, she thought bitterly, she'd have gotten more career mileage out of a diploma in interpretive dance.
She was seriously beginning to consider whether her home country, with all its flaws, at least had the decency to employ its own overqualified academics into miserable, underpaid obscurity, instead of leaving her to do it here, in a country whose language she'd technically mastered on paper.
Her stomach growled, loud enough that the couple at the next table glanced over.
That was the other problem. For the last three days, her appetite had transformed into something closer to a natural disaster. She ate constantly, ordered food like she was feeding a small platoon, and somehow remained just as hungry ten minutes later as she'd been before the plate arrived. It made no sense. She hadn't gained a single pound. If anything, strangers kept giving her the concerned, pitying look usually reserved for people who looked like they hadn't eaten in a week, which, technically, in terms of feeling full, she hadn't.
Worse, her wallet had started to reflect it. She'd budgeted carefully enough to survive two full weeks in Paris without income. At this rate of consumption, she'd be lucky to survive the weekend. She was fairly sure she'd single-handedly kept the café's croissant supply chain afloat over the past seventy-two hours, and at some point the waiter had stopped asking if she wanted anything else and simply started bringing extra without being told.
She was halfway through raising her hand to order yet another pastry, mentally already justifying it as "an investment in her continued survival," when she spotted a small boy wandering along the street, clothes a little too big, expression a little too tired for someone his age.
Something in her chest cracked open immediately, entirely without her permission, sympathy surging up so fast and so overwhelming that it completely steamrolled the sensible, financially terrified part of her brain that had been screaming about rent for the last three days.
"Well", she thought, standing up before she'd even finished the thought, "there goes my dignity and my last twenty euros."
She marched over, bought the boy more food than one small child could reasonably eat in a week, and stood there afterward, watching him go with a warm, glowing sense of having done something good.
She would, several hours later, remember this moment and wonder what exactly had possessed her to spend money she absolutely did not have on a stranger's child while simultaneously being unable to afford her own next meal. For now, though, she just smiled, sat back down, and, out of nothing but sheer instinct, ordered one more croissant.
...
Near the high school, Adrian and Marie sat together in a café, the kind of easy, unhurried conversation between them that only came from actually liking someone's company.
"That movie was actually really good," Adrian said, still laughing a little at something from it. "The plot wasn't complicated at all, but somehow it worked way better than half the overcomplicated stuff that comes out these days."
"Right? And Jess was hilarious," Marie said, grinning. "Every scene he was in, I was just waiting for him to say something ridiculous."
They sat with that for a moment, both still smiling, before Marie's expression shifted slightly, as something had just surfaced in her memory.
"Hey, random question," she said. "Do you know about the Shirakawa-go thing? The village in Japan?"
Adrian frowned, trying to place it. It took him a second, but the memory came back in pieces. "Wait, you mean that whole village that got, like, crushed? Six years ago, right? And everyone there died?"
"That's the one." Marie nodded. "I found an article about it last night and ended up going down this whole rabbit hole. It was a huge deal when it happened, but I feel like nobody really talks about it anymore."
"Yeah, I remember it being creepy as hell," Adrian said, leaning forward slightly. "Like, everyone there. Not one person survived, and from what I remember, the bodies weren't even, like, normal. Everything was just... crushed. What even does that?"
"Nobody knows," Marie said, her voice dropping a little. "That's the freakiest part. It all happened in a single night. There were a bunch of theories floating around after: earthquakes, some kind of gas explosion, even people saying it was a meteor, but none of them actually held up. It just happened, and nobody's ever been able to explain it."
Adrian sat back, a small shiver running through him despite the warm café around them. "That's genuinely terrifying. What if something like that happened here?"
"Don't say that!" Marie swatted his arm, half-serious, half just trying to shake off the same chill he clearly felt. "Don't jinx us."
They both went quiet for a moment after that, the earlier lightness of the conversation fading into something heavier. Adrian found himself thinking about all those people, an entire village, gone in a single night for no reason anyone had ever figured out, and felt an unexpected wave of grief for strangers he'd never known.
Marie must have felt something similar, because a few seconds later she looked at him and asked, quiet and a little uncertain, "Do you want to go light a candle or something? For them?"
Adrian nodded without needing to think about it. It felt like the least they could do
...
Back in the Church of Serenity, Eric rose from the pew and made his way toward the confessional room at the edge of the nave. The door creaked softly as he opened it, revealing a space far smaller and tighter than he'd expected, barely enough room to sit, let alone move. Darkness filled every corner of it, thick and complete, the kind that swallowed light rather than simply lacking it.
He stepped inside anyway and settled onto the narrow seat in the middle, the silver earring still clutched in his right hand, its faint warmth the only thing grounding him as the door swung shut behind him and sealed away the last traces of candlelight from the church beyond.
For a moment, there was nothing. No light, no sound, no sense of space at all, just an absolute stillness that pressed in from every direction.
Then, from the small booth window in front of him, a thin sliver of light appeared, pale and steady, and a voice drifted through it, gentle and layered, carrying none of the weight a human voice would.
"Hello, child. Are you here to confess your sins?"
Eric let the question settle for a moment before answering, his own voice quiet in the enclosed space. "Yes, I am. But before that, may I know your name?"
"My name is Atid," the voice replied, unhurried. "You may speak whatever is in your heart, if you'd like. Or, if you prefer, I could ask you some questions instead."
Eric's eyes narrowed slightly in the dark. "You're only offering to ask questions because your friend already read my memories and handed them over to you. Aren't you?"
There was the faintest pause before Atid answered, something almost sheepish in the tone despite its ethereal quality. "Yes. I suspected you wouldn't be the type to simply start speaking on your own, not unless something else opened the door for you first. I hope you're not too upset. Looking into others' memories uninvited is, admittedly, a bad habit of my friend's. If there's anything we can do to make it right, we're willing to."
"There's no need for that. Not right now, anyway." Eric's tone stayed flat, though something in it had eased slightly. "Just remember what was promised. And you're right, for what it's worth. I'm not someone who can just start talking without a reason to. So go ahead. Ask your questions."
"Hmm. Let's start here, then." Atid's voice carried a quiet weight to it now, patient but deliberate. "What do you feel about killing that assassin girl who came for you yesterday? She had her whole life ahead of her. You may not have chosen the circumstances, but you were the one who ended her, thoroughly and without hesitation, ruthlessly murdering her. Do you feel any regret for that?"
Eric didn't answer right away. He let the question sit in the dark with him for a moment before finally speaking, his voice steady, his hand coming to rest against his own chest.
"No. I don't feel any regret." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "She might have had her own history, her own reasons for being there, her own life before that moment. But in that moment, my life was the one in danger. I couldn't afford to think about her perspective while she was actively trying to end mine. I'd never met her before that fight. Never hurt her, never touched anyone close to her, not as far as I know. She was simply following orders, trying to prove herself. I understand that. But everyone's trying to prove something to someone. She wanted to kill me to do it, and I wanted to live." He exhaled slowly. "I don't take chances like that. What was I supposed to do, let her go and hope she wouldn't come back to try again?"
Silence followed for a moment, and then Atid spoke again, softer this time, shifting toward something more personal.
"Let's talk about your friend, then. Max Water Charles. How do you feel about him? Does his recklessness ever wear on you? His loudness? Does the way he carries himself ever hold you back, in your work, in your life?"
Eric's expression eased slightly at that, something almost fond settling into his features.
"No. None of that. He's been with me since we were kids, since the orphanage, after we lost our parents. He was the only real light I had back then, and he still is, most days. People have come and gone in my life since, plenty of them, but he's the one who has always stayed and supported me. Had my back when it mattered. Never once letting me down." He allowed himself a small smile. "Yes, he's loud. Yes, he's reckless. But that's exactly why it works between us. He balances out the parts of me that go too far one way, and I balance out the parts of him that go too far the other. Like puzzle pieces, more or less."
"That's genuinely touching," Atid said, and there was real warmth threaded through the words now. "The trust between the two of you is rare. Commendable, even. It's the kind of bond that could make something like me almost envious." A brief pause followed before the voice continued, gentler now, more careful. "Then let's move to another question. Your wife. Ruby. How do you feel about her?"
Eric went still.
"Does her smile bring you happiness?" Atid continued, unhurried. "Does it mean something to you, watching her try new recipes, watching her get excited about some dish she found online and made just for you? Does it hurt you, seeing her in pain? Is she part of your family, the way Max is?"
The voice paused, letting the question hang in the dark a moment longer than the others had.
"Do you," it finally asked, each word deliberate, "love her?"
The small, easy smile that had been sitting on Eric's face vanished entirely. His expression flattened, went blank, his eyes darkening in the dim light of the booth until they seemed almost hollow. For a long moment, he said nothing at all. The silence stretched on, heavy and complete, filling every corner of that tight, dark space until it felt like it might never break.
When he finally spoke, his voice came out level, careful, each word chosen with the precision of someone walking across thin ice.
"Yes. I feel happy when she smiles. I feel something settle in my chest when I see her enjoying herself, actually enjoying herself, not just going through the motions." He paused briefly. "I respect how hard she works to keep our home clean and comfortable. I feel grateful, genuinely, when she makes something new and gets excited telling me about it, even if half the time I have no idea what she's talking about. I feel relieved knowing there's someone in this world, besides Max, who cares about me." His jaw tightened slightly. "No. She isn't part of my family. And whether I love her or not, I honestly don't know. That's something I'm still trying to work out."
His face stayed blank the entire time he said it, expressionless in a way that felt deliberate rather than natural.
Atid was quiet for a moment after that.
"There was a small lie in what you just told me," the voice said eventually, gentle rather than accusing. "I'll let it go, considering you have no real reason to trust either of us yet. But I'd suggest speaking with her more. Really speaking with her. I think you'd find there's a great deal more to her than the masks she tends to wear around you. I suspect you'll come to love her once you finally open her up properly, the way you would a book you've never actually read past the first page."
The warmth in the voice cooled slightly as it continued.
"Now. Tell me about Shirakawa-go." A pause, deliberate, weighted. "If I've read your memories correctly, you were the reason that village was destroyed. Weren't you?"
Eric didn't answer right away. He could feel Atid's attention settling on him through the small window, patient, unmoving, waiting. He lowered his gaze to the worn wooden floor beneath his feet and let the silence stretch before he finally spoke.
"That happened eight years ago," he said quietly. "I was sixteen at that time. Max and I were living unstable lives back then, moving from place to place, never really settling anywhere, more like ghosts passing through than actual people. I was an Auri Nova at the time, and I decided I wanted to advance as fast as I could. So I did it there. In that village."
He drew in a slow breath before continuing.
"Something went wrong during the process. My Aura spiraled out of my control completely. If Max hadn't been there, I probably would have lost myself entirely in that moment. As it was, the entire village still got crushed. Every single building, including every person in it." His voice stayed level, but something underneath it had gone taut. "I successfully advanced and finally reached the Lysi Nova rank, but in the process, I killed hundreds of people who had nothing to do with any of it."
He was quiet again for a moment, staring at nothing in particular.
"I felt a lot of regret afterward. I never cried over it, not once, but I stayed silent for a long time." His voice softened, something flickering behind his eyes for just a moment, a faint shine catching in the dark of the small booth like light hitting glass before vanishing again. "Even now I'm not entirely sure how I managed to hold myself together through that much guilt without losing control completely."
He lifted his head slightly, and by the time he spoke again, the shine was already gone; whatever had surfaced there tucked away just as quickly as it had appeared.
"If you're asking about who I am now, I'll tell you honestly. There's still guilt there. It lingers." His voice steadied, grew firmer with each word, the softness from a moment ago sealed away completely. "But I don't dwell on it the way I used to." He straightened his back, meeting Atid's presence through the window directly for the first time. "And if I had to do it again, to advance the same way, I would do it all over again"
Atid was quiet for a moment, as if turning the answer over carefully before responding.
"You've changed a great deal," the voice said finally. "On the paths your kind walks, coldness and the slow loss of feeling are more or less inevitable. You were different once. Immature. Ignorant, in your own way. Selfish, careless about anyone outside the narrow circle of yourself and your friends. And now?" A pause. "Now you understand people. You think about them, consider them, even care for them in your own manner. But none of that stops you from putting yourself first when it counts. You can kill without regret, without guilt weighing you down afterward. You've learned to survive, and more than that, you've learned why survival matters more than anything else." Another pause, longer this time. "One last question, then, and we'll be done for today. What do you think of yourself?"
Eric blinked, caught off guard in a way the question shouldn't have managed, his eyes widening just slightly before he could stop them. He sat with it for what felt like a long time, turning the question over in the dark, before he finally answered.
"What do I think of myself?" He said it slowly, almost testing the shape of the words. "I'm not a narcissist. I don't walk around believing I'm some kind of perfect, untouchable thing. But I don't think of myself as pitiful either, or lesser than anyone else." He exhaled quietly. "I'm selfish. I live by killing when I have to. I wear more masks than I probably even realize anymore, and I hide most of what I actually feel from almost everyone. I lie... a lot. I keep things from the people who care about me. It's easier that way. It protects something in me I'm not ready to hand over yet."
His voice didn't waver, though something behind it had grown quieter, more honest than before.
"I'd kill to keep my own life. I'd sacrifice that same life for Max without a second thought. I can leave the past behind easily enough when I need to, without letting it drag at me the way it probably should."
He paused, and for just a moment, something almost vulnerable crept into his voice.
"I want to live something close to a normal life, someday. I want to remember what my dream even was, before I lost track of it somewhere along the way." His hands tightened slightly in his lap. "And more than anything, I want to actually feel like I'm choosing my own path, instead of constantly being led toward it by everyone and everything else around me."
His voice had grown heavier with every word, and by the time he finished, it dropped away entirely, leaving him staring down at his own hands in the dark. Now that the questions had run their course, his head felt strangely light, almost hollow in a good way, like something he'd been carrying for a long time had finally been set down.
For a while, neither of them said anything. The silence stretched out, comfortable in a way the earlier silences hadn't been, and Eric let himself sit inside it without the usual urge to fill it.
Then, softly, Atid spoke.
"You've passed."
"This was a test?" Eric thought, something in his chest tightening slightly at the realization.
"Yes," Atid said, as though it had heard the thought as clearly as if he'd spoken it aloud. "A Test of Self, if you want the name for it. We don't offer it to just anyone who wanders in here. Only to those the church itself takes an interest in, those it believes might be worth the risk of trusting."
The voice continued, unhurried, almost thoughtful. "It isn't a test of goodness, whatever you might expect from a place like this. We aren't measuring you against some impossible standard of kindness or selflessness. We're only asking whether you actually know yourself. Whether you can look at what you've done, what you want, who matters to you, and answer honestly, even when the honest answer isn't a comfortable one." A brief pause. "Most people can't. Most people lie to themselves so completely that even sitting in the dark with nothing but their own voice, they still can't tell you the truth about who they are."
"And I passed," Eric said, more statement than question.
"You did. Even though you're not someone selfless, and even though you weren't entirely honest with me in one or two places, you're still someone who understands exactly what you are, what you want, and who stands closest to you in this life. That's rare enough on its own. And for someone who doesn't walk the Goodness Pathway, someone who was never going to be gentle or self-sacrificing by nature, it's more than enough." The voice softened slightly. "You may go now, child. Come back whenever you'd like to talk again. The door will always be open to you."
Eric rose from the small seat, joints stiff from sitting so long in that cramped, dark space, and reached for the door before pausing, something occurring to him.
He looked back toward the window instead. "As an Angel Spirit, what's your specialty?"
There was a brief pause, the kind that felt almost amused.
"I'm a Therapist Angel Spirit," Atid said simply.
Eric said nothing to that. Somehow, in hindsight, it made a strange kind of sense. He gave a small, quiet bow toward the window, more out of habit than anything else, and pushed the confessional door open, stepping back out into the warm, flickering candlelight of the church proper, the weight in his chest lighter than it had been in longer than he cared to admit.
Father Irenaeus was still seated where he'd left him, in front of the altar, quiet and composed. Eric's eyes drifted briefly to the statue above him, the old man carved in stone, scarred and weathered, and some small part of him wanted to ask about it, wanted to know the story behind that face. But he'd already asked enough for one day, already given away more of himself than he usually allowed anyone to see.
"Father," he said instead, "thank you for having me. But I shouldn't overstay my welcome."
Father Irenaeus rose slowly from his seat and turned to face him, a gentle smile settling over his features. "Yes, you're right to think so. If the church lingers in one place too long, it can begin altering the memories of everyone nearby, permanently, in ways even I can't always control." His smile deepened slightly. "Better to leave while things are still exactly as they should be."
"How exactly are we going to meet again?" Eric asked.
Father Irenaeus rested his hand gently against the altar's edge, the old stone cool beneath his palm despite the warmth radiating from everywhere else in the church. "You needn't worry about that part, my child. Let's simply choose a day and hold to it. Today is Thursday, isn't it?" He seemed to consider it for a moment, though something in his tone suggested he'd already known the answer before asking. "Then let it be every Thursday, from now on. Whatever you need when you come, I'll do what I can to provide. Domain cards, if you require them. Relics of the Goodness Pathway, should the right ones present themselves. Angel Spirits, if yours ever need replenishing. Knowledge, on whatever subject weighs on you." He paused, and something almost fond crept into his voice. "Or, if none of that is needed, we can simply talk. Sometimes that's enough on its own."
Eric considered that for a moment, turning the offer over the way he turned over most things people gave him freely, waiting to see where the catch might be hiding.
"That sounds more than fair," he said eventually. "Can I bring anyone with me? Max, maybe?"
Father Irenaeus shook his head slowly, though not unkindly. "No, my child. Only you are permitted here. This place doesn't open itself to just anyone, not even those you trust most."
Eric nodded, unsurprised by the answer more than anything else. "Fair enough, I suppose."
With that, he turned toward the main door, footsteps unhurried against the old stone floor, and pushed his way back out into the evening air. The heavy black door groaned shut behind him, and for a moment he simply stood there at the top of the staircase, letting the cool air settle over him after everything the church had pulled out of him inside.
He descended the steps slowly, and somewhere around the third one, he felt it happen. The pity, the kindness, the swelling empathy that had followed him through the streets all day, tugging at his chest, softening his edges, urging him toward strangers he'd never met, simply lifted away, all at once, like a tide pulling back out to sea.
He stopped at the bottom of the staircase and turned around, some old instinct telling him to look back one more time before walking away entirely.
There was nothing there.
No church. No staircase, no pillars traced with silver, no stained glass catching the last of the daylight. Just an empty stretch of overgrown, abandoned land, weeds pushing up through cracked earth, silent and forgotten, as though nothing had ever stood there at all.
Eric stared at the empty lot for a long moment, feeling the last echoes of the church's strange, sacred stillness fade from his chest, replaced slowly by the ordinary noise of the city around him, cars somewhere in the distance, a dog barking, the low hum of a Thursday evening in Paris continuing exactly as it always had.
He allowed himself a small, tired breath, tucked the silver earring carefully into his pocket, and turned to walk back toward the life waiting for him beyond this quiet, forgotten street.