"All right. You can stop," Bernadette said, lifting a hand. "I believe you."
The corner of her mouth twitched despite herself.
Now she finally understood why her father had never taught her the private script he used in his journals.
For half a second, she had been moved by the line about her being his most beloved child.
That feeling died almost immediately afterward.
She wasn't naive. She understood the kind of man her father had been, and she understood the era he lived in. None of it truly shocked her.
Still…
Twice?
Witches?
Father, you really had no shame.
She knew enough about that particular mystical path to be deeply uncomfortable with the implications.
Bernadette pushed the thoughts aside and refocused.
"You're collecting my father's diaries because you're searching for the Blasphemy Cards. I have many more of his journals in my possession. I don't want any of the cards. In exchange, you tell me everything you find about what happened to him in his later years."
Rowan Mercer studied her quietly.
"You think he didn't die."
Bernadette didn't answer, but her silence was confirmation enough.
Rowan turned the Black Emperor card over in his fingers, pausing on the final section of its hidden knowledge.
"If he truly completed his transformation," Rowan said, "then survival isn't impossible."
He explained only what mattered.
The Black Emperor's ascension required founding a nation, reshaping its laws into something fundamentally unnatural, and constructing nine hidden mausoleums. If the ascension succeeded, destruction of the body was not final.
As long as even one mausoleum remained intact, resurrection was possible.
Bernadette's breath caught.
"One of his mausoleums has never been found."
For the first time in many years, something fragile and dangerous stirred in her chest.
Hope.
Rowan gave a faint smile.
"Then we have a deal. If he's alive, I intend to find him as well."
Bernadette frowned slightly.
"You knew my father?"
Rowan did not answer directly.
Instead, he met her gaze.
"Your father believed no one in the world could read his private script. And yet I can."
The implication settled between them like slow-falling ash.
After a moment, Bernadette spoke.
"I'll retrieve the journals. We meet tomorrow at the Beckland Bridge. Before we exchange anything, we sign a spirit-bound contract."
She wasn't accusing him.
She was being careful.
Rowan nodded. "That's reasonable."
The contract meant nothing to him. But there was no reason to say so.
"One last question," Bernadette said as she prepared to leave. "Your name."
Rowan's lips curved faintly.
"Call me No-One. I serve the Fool."
Bernadette's eyes flickered with confusion.
"The Fool?"
A god she had never heard of.
Perhaps an ancient power stirring from dormancy.
She committed the name to memory and stepped backward into the spirit world, vanishing without another word.
Rowan watched the space she had occupied for a second longer, then turned away.
He intended to return home.
Halfway through forming into flame, he paused.
"Let's take a walk first."
The night was still young.
The East District of Beckland was quieter than the city center, but it hid uglier things.
Rowan hovered above a narrow alley, looking down at a massive black dog the size of a calf.
The creature was hunched over a corpse, its jaws buried in a woman's chest.
It was eating her heart.
Rowan sighed softly.
"Not bad luck at all."
The dog wasn't an animal anymore.
It was a demon creature aligned with abyssal power, already strong enough to be dangerous even to trained mystics.
Some beasts, like humans, stumbled into supernatural power by accident.
Others were cultivated.
Rowan had seen cases where pets consumed mystical substances and became something else entirely.
This one belonged to someone.
And its feeding wasn't random.
It was preparing for a ritual that required repeated murders, each accompanied by devouring the victim's heart.
Rowan stepped forward in a ripple of flame.
The demon dog barely had time to lift its head.
Rowan slapped it.
The creature's skull detonated like rotten fruit.
The body collapsed.
Silence returned to the alley.
Rowan extracted the remaining essence from the corpse and pulled free the lingering soul, scanning its memories with practiced ease.
"A practitioner one step higher than you," Rowan muttered. "Good enough."
He glanced at the girl lying in the alley.
Her soul hadn't fully separated yet.
Rowan knelt, pressed her spirit back into her body, and closed the wound with a wash of soft light. The physical damage faded. The terror of her final moments vanished with it.
She would wake later, confused, alive, and unaware of how close she had come to dying.
Rowan stood.
He hadn't done it out of heroism.
Sometimes it simply cost nothing to be decent.
The night carried him west.
Edward Street, Number Six.
A well-kept villa behind wrought-iron fencing.
Its owner, on paper, was Patrick Jason. Cheerful. Charismatic. Investor in a small private bank.
In reality, he was Jason Belial.
A member of a blood-worshipping family tied to abyssal cult activity.
Rowan entered.
Minutes later, he left through the front door carrying a corpse.
Leafing through the man's memories, Rowan's expression turned faintly amused.
"Another attempt on Duke Nigan," he murmured. "And the payment is one of Roselle's Abyss Cards."
Whoever was funding this had deep pockets.
Very deep pockets.