~The Lure~
The city lights of Seishu seemed dull and distant beneath the mounting pressure building behind Luke's eyes. He stood on the edge of a deserted shipping district beside Vianne, the Covenant Ring pressing like an icy band against the jagged scar on his finger.
Lure. You are the lure.
The words echoed in his mind, a rhythmic chant that matched the thrumming of his heart. He could feel the chaotic energy within—the Dark Crimson of the Morningstar and the Golden-White of the Apostle—snarling at each other like two starved wolves in a cage. Tonight, Vera had ordered him to let the bars slip. He had to let that scent bleed into the night air.
"You're stiff, Luke-kun. You're trying to act like a circuit breaker again," Vianne reprimanded. She stood with her hands in her hoodie pockets, looking relaxed, but her magenta eyes were darting across the horizon. "You need to be a dimmer switch. Let the scent bleed out slowly. If you force a flare, you'll burn out before the hunt even starts."
"Easy for you to say," Luke muttered, rubbing his temple. "It feels like my soul is screaming at the whole city. It's... noisy."
He focused inward, visualizing the two pillars. He didn't try to stop them; he simply loosened his grip. Immediately, a wave of wrongness radiated from him—a spiritual frequency that shouldn't exist. It was the smell of a cathedral on fire.
He didn't have to wait long. Vianne's posture shifted. Her smile grew sharp, professional, and predatory.
"Bingo," she whispered. "We have a bite. Not the Watchers big guns—not yet. This one is a scavenger. Desperate. Hungry."
Luke looked up. A shape detached itself from the jagged skyline of a warehouse across the street. It didn't fall; it glided, its outline shifting against the pale moon.
The Winged Shadow.
The figure landed with unnerving silence on the asphalt ten yards away. This was Zeriel, a Fallen Angel of the Watchers. He was clad in midnight-blue armor that looked as though it had been carved from obsidian glass.
His eyes, fixed on Luke, glowed with a fierce, unwavering holy light that made Luke's own Divine fragment throb in recognition.
He carried no sword, but his very presence created a zone of unnatural silence. His wings were sparse—two razor-sharp blades of bone and grey feather, designed for the brutal physics of a dive-bomb, not for beauty.
Vianne stepped forward, her voice dripping with aristocratic boredom. "A scavenger, indeed. Did the Watchers really send a low-level bottom-feeder for a prize of this magnitude? How insulting."
Zeriel ignored her. His gaze was locked onto the Morningstar sigil pulsing through Luke's shirt. "I am Zeriel," he stated, his voice a cold, mechanical rasp. "The paradox you carry is an offense to the natural order. Prepare for purification."
Zeriel lifted a hand. The air around him shimmered, and pure, concentrated golden light coalesced into a dense, screaming orb of holy energy—a purification bullet designed to erase the "stain" of Luke's existence.
Vianne's magenta eyes hardened, glowing with a deep violet sheen. "Purification? How quaint."
She didn't use a shield. She didn't use a blast. As the golden orb launched, Vianne's Vice Ring flared. Using her specialization of Separation and Redistribution, her demonic wave hit the orb not with blunt force, but with surgical precision.
The holy energy didn't explode; it split.
Luke watched in awe as the single, deadly sun was divided into four smaller, harmless streams that were redirected into the ground. They burned four perfect, smoking holes into the asphalt—erased from reality.
"Impressive," Zeriel admitted, his wings blurring. "But a devil can only redirect so much."
He propelled himself forward with terrifying speed, shooting past Vianne's defensive line like a blue streak. He wasn't aiming for the Vice; he was aiming for the Lure.
Luke dove to the side, the wind of Zeriel's passing punch cutting a literal furrow in the air where his head had been a second ago. He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering.
"Underestimating you was a mistake," Zeriel hissed, his eyes now filled with murderous intent. "This time, I'll take the hand that holds the contract."
Zeriel didn't launch another orb. He fired a focused, low-yield Holy energy dart—not at Luke, but directly at Vianne's Vice ring. It was a tactical strike. If he severed her connection to the Morningstar core, she would be neutralized, leaving Luke defenseless.
Vianne saw it, but she was mid-calculation, her energy still redistributed from the last block. She was open.
Luke saw the motion. He saw the threat to the person who was currently the only thing standing between him and the void.
Screw the protocol. Screw the cage.
He reacted not as a Vassal, but as the boy who had survived Rome. He shoved his right arm forward, aiming the Covenant Ring directly at the incoming dart.
He bypassed the Dark Crimson. He reached deep, tearing at the Holy Pillar with everything he had.
The Golden-White pillar erupted.
It wasn't a controlled beam. It was a screaming, blinding, unstable Conceptual Discharge. The Divine energy was so intense it didn't just meet the dart—it swallowed it whole. And then, the inevitable happened. The suppressed Demonic half, sensing the Divine surge, lashed out in a territorial frenzy.
KZZZZZZT. BOOM!
The explosion was a riot of physics. The asphalt was simultaneously flash-frozen into brittle, smoking ice and melted into a bubbling molten crater. Luke felt his arm being pulled into two different dimensions. He screamed as the Conceptual Wounding overloaded his nervous system, his vision turning white as he collapsed.
When the light cleared, the world had changed.
The explosion had left a massive, throbbing, multicolored Conceptual Scar on the fabric of the street. It pulsed with nauseating crimson and gold light—a beacon so bright it was likely visible from the highest watchtowers of the Vatican.
Zeriel was gone, his senses likely fried by the raw Divine output. But the victory felt like a defeat.
"Luke-kun! What have you done?!" Vianne rushed to him, her ring flaring in a panic he had never seen before.
"I... I couldn't let him... hurt you," Luke gasped, the pain in his arm feeling like a thousand needles made of dry ice.
"Vianne. Report."
The air condensed. Vera materialized in the center of the smoke, her silk dress fluttering in the unnatural wind. She looked at the crater. She looked at the Scar burning into the reality of the city. Finally, her gaze settled on Luke.
["The signature is massive, Vera-sama,"] Mitoma's voice crackled through Vianne's ring.
"Unprecedented. Lamina Mortis will be here in forty-eight hours. The lighthouse is lit."
Vera knelt by Luke. She didn't offer a hand. She pressed her cold fingers onto his Covenant Ring, sending a brutal, stabilizing shock of Demonic energy into his core to stop the bleeding of his soul.
"Your failure of protocol is unforgivable, Vassal," she stated, her voice pure ice. "You have made the Morningstar House a priority target. You are a walking time bomb."
Luke grit his teeth, accepting the reprimand. He had failed the mission, but he had saved Vianne.
"However," Vera murmured, a sliver of predatory satisfaction touching her lips. "Your impulse to protect Vianne is... noted. And the power you unleashed proves that my investment was not in vain. You have forced the hand of the Watchers."
She stood up, her aura expanding to cover the district. "Go home. Use your human life as a shield for the next forty-eight hours. Vianne, mask this eyesore. We have two days until the Executioner arrives."
* * *
The walk home was a blur. Luke shoved the terror of the impending Executioner into a dark corner of his mind. He opened his front door, and the scent of cooking rice hit him like a physical weight. It was too normal. It was a lie.
"You're late, Luke," Sora said from the kitchen. She wasn't cooking; she was waiting.
"Long day. Club stuff," Luke lied, his voice cracking.
Sora walked toward him, her eyes sharp and terrifyingly clear. She didn't look at his face. She looked at his right arm, which he was clutching to his side.
"Don't lie to me," she whispered. "The scent... it's like ice. And the color of your aura... I know the gold light, Luke. I saw it in Rome."
She took his hand, her thumb pressing onto the Covenant Ring, right over the Apostle Key scar. Her touch was warm, but her eyes held a profound, soul-deep terror.
"This power... it's shattering you," she whispered. "Please. Rome was enough."
She let go of his hand, her final words hanging in the air like a death sentence. "If you want to keep going... at least get your strength back. You don't have to carry the whole world, Luke."
Luke stood in the quiet hallway as his mother walked away. He went to his room and collapsed onto the bed, still in his uniform. The Conceptual Scar he had created was still burning in his mind's eye.
He was a Holy Devil. A beacon for death. A Vassal to a Princess who was currently furious with him.
"If this is strength, why does it feel like a chain," he muttered into the pillow.
But as exhaustion claimed him, he felt a new, cold resolve. He had forty-eight hours. He had to get stronger. He had to bridge the gap between the Red and the Gold, or the Executioner wouldn't just kill him—she would destroy everything he was trying to protect.
If I'm going to fight, I have to bridge the gap. No more running.