The transition from "Fool" to "Fugitive" happened in the span of a single heartbeat.
The damp silence of the market square was obliterated not by a roar, but by the sickening, wet impact of Baphomet's body slamming into Hunter Luke.
The collision sent a shockwave of displaced shadow through the air. As Faust scrambled to his feet, a voice that wasn't his own—a voice that felt like cold oil pouring into his skull—vibrated against his consciousness.
"So... you are a half-human... indeed... or half-demon... no, half-devil... but how..."
The entity's confusion was a jagged, telepathic static.
Faust didn't wait for the creature to solve the riddle.
The Professor in him was screaming a singular, frantic command: Leave.
He sprinted toward the distant archway, his feet slapping against the cold, iron-scented stone. The searing pain in his abdomen was beginning to subside into a dull, throbbing heat, but the mental trauma was only beginning to bloom.
As he passed a shattered shop mirror, he caught a fleeting, terrifying glimpse of himself. Under the smeared white greasepaint and the jagged black star, his left iris was no longer brown. It was a swirling, incandescent gold that pierced through the darkness.
"Curse it," he hissed, his voice a ragged edge of its usual gravelly tone. "Curse the poems, curse the scrolls, and curse every bit of my academic curiosity. I am a doctor of the physical, not a plaything for the abyss."
With a violent tug, he ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of his under-tunic. He wrapped it tightly around his head, covering the left side of his face in a makeshift bandage.
He didn't have time to diagnose the change; he only had time to hide it.
He reached the familiar exit—the spiral staircase that led back to the sanctuary of Saint-Eustache.
But the path was blocked.
A dozen men in heavy, white-and-gold robes—the Bishop's personal guard—stood in a rigid line, their halberds leveled. A small, frantic crowd of merchants and survivors were huddled before them, pleading for passage.
"Stand back!" one of the robed guards barked, his voice echoing off the stone. "The Bishop has declared a temporary lockdown. No one leaves the lower ward until the cleansing is complete!"
A sudden, glacial sensation flooded Faust's palms. It wasn't the cold of the cave; it was the familiar, heavy weight of the American iron he had sworn to carry.
The instinct to survive, honed by a century of hidden history and the rigid training of his father, took over.
Faust didn't argue. He didn't beg. He simply raised the heavy revolver in his right hand.
The shot was a thunderclap that silenced the screams of the crowd.
The lead ball caught the lead guard squarely in the forehead, snapping his head back with a sickening crack before his body even hit the ground.
The smell of gunpowder instantly replaced the scent of rotted lilies.
Mephisto stood in the center of the tunnel—nearly naked, face half-bandaged, eyes burning behind the cloth—holding a smoking gun in a house of God.
As if caught by shock of his own action, Mephisto's eye(s) widened.
Malicious thoughts infiltrated his mind.
And he pointed the gun at the next guard.