The clock tower in the center of Ypisisti struck 2:00 a.m. as Lou and William finally crossed the city limits.
The cobblestones, slick with midnight dew, echoed under the horse's hooves as they navigated the labyrinth of streets.
Lou guided William toward his lodgings, his mind a chaotic mess of adrenaline and exhaustion.
What now?
He wasn't ready to go back to being just a struggling baker in a world he didn't understand.
He needed William. He needed the Hunter's business as a gateway to the system of this world, to the spirit energy manipulation that might, if he was lucky, eventually point the way back to his original home.
He dismounted, the silence of the city feeling heavy after the boom of the cottage.
He looked up at William, wondering if this was the end of the quest and their partnership.
William didn't say a word. He just reached into his pocket and flicked something small and stiff toward Lou.
Lou caught it out of the air. It was a playing card.
The Joker.
"What's this?" Lou asked, turning the card over in his fingers.
On the back, written in a sharp, disciplined hand, was an address.
"I have a feeling you're looking to earn a few extra pence, lad," William said, his silhouette dark against the moonlight. "And a Seer with a steady trigger finger is a rare commodity. Come find us there when you're ready to stop playing civilian."
Without waiting for a thank-you, William nudged the horse into a gallop, the sound of hooves fading into the distance.
Lou watched him vanish, then pocketed the Joker with a small, tired smile. But as he turned toward the door of his lodgings, reality came crashing back.
Rachel.
She'd probably spent the entire night scouring the city for him after the horror at the bakery.
He'd vanished without a word, expecting to be back in an hour, only to end up mid-homicide and blowing up a witch's hut.
If she's awake, I'm dead. If the door is locked, I'm sleeping in the gutter.
He reached for the handle, his heart hammering against his ribs. To his immense relief, the latch clicked. The door swung open on silent hinges.
He stepped inside, freezing as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the oppressive darkness.
Slowly, the shapes of the room began to resolve. He saw the sofa, and on it, two figures tangled in a restless sleep.
One was Rachel. The other was a man, the Doctor. Her fiancé.
Lou let out a long, silent breath. She must have called him in a panic. He probably spent the night helping her look for me, or at least making sure she wasn't alone with her grief.
He didn't linger.
Tiptoeing with the precision of a thief, he reached his room, slipped inside, and shut the door with a soft thud.
He didn't even bother taking off his boots. He tossed himself onto the bed, the mattress groaning under his weight.
He stared at the ceiling, the smell of gunpowder and charcoal still clinging to his skin. What a hell of a first chapter, he thought, his eyes finally fluttering shut. Tomorrow... tomorrow I figure out how to be a Joker.
-------
Lou was floating in a void so absolute it felt like being suspended in ink. Thick, silvery mists swirled around his limbs, and the stars which were vibrant and dangerously close, pulsed with a light that felt like it was humming against his skin.
Wait. I'm dreaming, Lou realized, his brain immediately categorizing the surrealism. But this is too vivid. I'm aware. Is this a Lucid Dream? Or is this the 'Seer' kit finally kicking in?
He tried to swim through the air, but the physics of the space were non-existent.
"Most importantly... where the hell am I?"
The answer came with a violent shift in pressure. Gravity, which had been a suggestion a second ago, suddenly became a mandate.
Lou plummeted.
He was a streak of terminal velocity, a comet screaming through the mists.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. "What... the... hell... is... going... ON!"
The ground rushed up to meet him, but instead of the bone-shattering crunch of stone, he slammed into water.
The impact should have liquefied his organs, but he just kept sinking, plunging through the dark depths with the same terrifying speed he'd fallen from the sky.
His lungs burned. His eyes snapped shut as the last of his oxygen vanished into a trail of bubbles. Just as the darkness was about to claim him, he hit bottom.
His eyes snapped open. He was standing on solid, dry ground.
Lou scrambled up, coughing violently, the phantom sensation of drowning still clawing at his throat.
That felt way too real for a dream, he thought, wiping a hand across his mouth.
Then he looked up, and the breath he'd just fought for vanished again.
Ypisisti was gone.
Or rather, it had been erased. The city he'd just walked through was a skeletal ruin, looking less like a capital and more like the aftermath of a nuclear payload.
The streets were jagged trenches of rubble and ash.
"What happened here?" Lou whispered, his voice lost in the dead silence. "Is this a vision? A nightmare?"
Everywhere he looked, there were bodies. Not just dead, but torn as if the city had been put through a cosmic paper shredder.
As the horror began to sink in, a stray newspaper tumbled through the ash-choked wind and slapped against his face.
He ripped it off and stared at the ink. The headline was a scream in print:
THE GODS ARE DEAD. DARKNESS PREVAILS. WORSHIP THE MOTHER OF RUIN BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
The Gods are dead? What is this, a Nietzsche fan-fic? And who the hell is the Mother of Ruin?
He checked the date in the corner.
Wednesday, May 1, 1776.
Before he could scan the sub-headlines, the wind snatched the paper away. Lou lunged for it, his boot catching on something soft
He tripped, sprawling across a corpse.
He found himself nose-to-nose with a girl. She had pale blonde hair and wide, sightless silver eyes that seemed to be staring straight through his soul. Her body had been severed at the waist, her entrails a grim decoration on the gray cobblestones.
Lou scrambled back, his stomach doing a slow, sickening roll.
As he regained his footing, he saw her.
A woman in a sweeping black mourning dress was walking away from him.
She wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a lace veil that trailed behind her like smoke, and her black stilettos clicked rhythmically against the debris, a sound that shouldn't have been possible in this chaos.
"Hey! Hey, wait up!" Lou shouted, his voice cracking. "What happened to the city?"
The woman halted for a fraction of a second, then continued her steady, haunting pace.
"Hey! Don't ignore me! I'm talking to you!"
Lou took off, sprinting over ruins and dodging the mangled remains of the citizenry.
He followed her around a jagged corner, emerging into a clearing in front of the Great Cathedral.
The massive structure stood untouched. Amidst the absolute annihilation of the city, the Cathedral rose tall, proud, and terrifyingly pristine.
The woman stopped.
"What happened here?" Lou panted, stopping a few feet behind her.
"The gods died," she said. Her voice was a statement of fact, cold and final.
She turned to face him.
The heavy netting of her hat obscured her eyes, leaving only the bottom half of her face visible. Her skin was a startling, marble white, contrasted by lips painted a deep black.
"You shouldn't be here, Klein," she said softly. Then, she tilted her head. "Or should I call you... Lou Lin?"
Lou felt like his heart had stopped. The air in his lungs turned to ice.
How? Klein is the name of the body, but Lou? No one in this world knows that name.
"You shouldn't be here, Lou," she repeated, her black lips curling into a tiny, cryptic smile. "The gods are dead. Worship the Mother of Ruin before it's too late."
"Who are you?" Lou hissed, his hand instinctively reaching for a weapon he didn't have.
"I am Change. The opposite of life. I am the Omega. I am the end of everything."
She raised her hand. In a blur of movement, a weapon appeared in her grip.
A flintlock pistol. The exact same one William had lent him.
"Hey, what are you doing with that?" Lou asked, his voice rising in panic.
"Putting an end to infinity," she said, leveling the barrel at his forehead. "An end to your power. Everything has to be finite, Lou. Even you."
She pulled the trigger.....