Chapter 7
And so he screamed again, one last time, the sound ripping out of him like a soul tearing from flesh. It echoed across New York, bouncing from brick to glass, rattling shutters, startling birds from rooftops. It was the cry of a boy becoming something else, something darker, born in the moment of unbearable loss.
The final scream tore from Micah's throat like the breaking of creation itself. His body arched, his hands clutching Mira's lifeless form, but the sound that erupted was no longer human. It was the howl of a heart ripped out, of grief so pure it had crossed into something unearthly. Windows in the surrounding buildings exploded in unison, shards cascading into the street like deadly rain. Carriage horses reared, screaming, bolting wildly as reins snapped and drivers were hurled aside.
The sky itself seemed to recoil. Morning sunlight bled into scarlet, a grotesque hue staining every brick, every cobblestone, every face. The world turned red—not by shadow, not by storm, but by something deeper, primal, unnameable. It was as though reality itself bled in sympathy with his grief.
The ground trembled. Cobblestones cracked, fissures splintering outward from where he knelt. Lamps along the street burst, spewing fire and oil, while signs tore from their hinges and clattered to the ground. Even the iron rails groaned as though they too might snap beneath the pressure of his scream. For a single, terrible minute, it seemed the city itself would be torn apart.
The shooters staggered. The moment his scream erupted into magic, every surviving gunman fell to their knees as if struck by a hammer. Blood spurted from noses, ears, mouths—thick and sudden. They clutched at their throats, gagging, choking, vomiting crimson onto the cobblestones. Some screamed, others gurgled, their guns clattering uselessly to the ground as they writhed, their bodies convulsing beneath the unseen weight of the aura.
Even Horace Blackwood faltered, his pistol dropping from his hand as his body doubled over. His face turned the color of chalk, veins bulging at his temples, eyes wild with a terror greater than his envy. He vomited onto the street, bile streaked with blood, his hands clawing at the air as though trying to fend off something no one else could see. "What—what are you?!" he rasped, voice shredded raw.
The crowd, those unfortunate enough to remain, fled in utter panic. Women shrieked, dragging children by the arm. Men stumbled into each other in blind terror, abandoning carts and goods as the very street seemed to scream back at them. Even those beyond sight—blocks away—felt it. Glass shattered in their homes, plates split on shelves, and more than a few clutched their chests, gasping as if the boy's grief had reached through ribcages to squeeze their hearts.
For one harrowing instant, reality itself fractured. The air wavered like heat over stone, but worse—images bled through. Faces, countless and pale, flickered at the edges of vision, wailing silently, eyes black with sorrow. Some swore they saw the dead of centuries—starved children, broken women, beaten men—standing in alleys, gazing with hollow eyes. Others whispered later that the walls themselves had wept, that they saw a lullaby written in crimson flame across the sky.
Time stuttered. The tick of pocket watches froze. The roll of carriage wheels dragged in syrup-thick motion, only to lurch back with a violent snap. For that minute, all of New York felt as though it stood on the edge of unraveling, the world quivering like glass about to shatter.
And at the epicenter—Micah. His body shook violently, his eyes rolled back, but his voice carried on, unbroken, tearing itself into the air. Blood trickled from his own nose, but he did not falter. His scream had become more than sound—it was power incarnate, a curse born of grief so pure it transcended the bounds of ordinary magic. Aura poured out of him in waves, thick, suffocating, corrosive.
Mira's lifeless body lay cradled against him still, yet even in death she seemed to burn with faint reflected light—his grief clinging to her as if refusing to let her go. Her crimson hair fanned across his arms, stained deeper in the tide of blood spilling into the cracks of the street.
And then—silence. Sudden, absolute. His voice broke off, his chest collapsing inward as though his scream had ripped out his very soul. The red in the air lingered for several heartbeats, staining the city in its nightmare hue—then bled away, draining back into the world as quickly as it had come.
Where moments before had been a bustling street, now lay devastation. Shattered glass glittered across cobblestones, twisted iron groaned, pools of blood spread beneath twitching men. Smoke and dust hung thick, muffling the morning sun. And in the center, Micah knelt in ruin, Mira's body still clasped to his chest, his own breath ragged, shallow, broken.
The air still trembled from the scream, glass crunching underfoot where windows had burst, the cobbles fractured like brittle bone. The silence that followed was not peace but a suffocating pause—every living thing seemed to recoil from him. Micah staggered forward, his chest heaving, his throat raw and torn. Tears burned down his face, but even as they fell, something inside him was breaking.
Not just grief. Not just rage. Something older. Something Mira had always feared.
The world shuddered again. Not from his scream this time, but from within him. A crack—not in stone, not in glass, but in reality itself—split open around his soul. His body jerked as if pulled by invisible strings. The air around him twisted, bleeding a dark, unnatural heat. The ground beneath his knees blackened, as though scorched by fire that no one else could see.
Micah's hair began to lengthen, strand by strand unraveling down his shoulders, then his chest, until it cascaded like a river of pale silk, gleaming and ghostlike in the crimson light that still lingered. It grew impossibly fast, twining itself into braids and threads that shimmered faintly with otherworldly luster. Stray locks whipped about him though there was no wind, as if alive, as if whispering in voices only he could hear.
His skin paled—first like candle wax, then like bone itself. The color drained from him as though the earth had sucked it out. The soft, youthful roundness of his face sharpened, cheekbones cutting higher, his jaw narrowing into something both regal and terrible. His mouth twisted into silence, lips pressed bloodless, until his face resembled the mask of some ancient god of death.
And then his eyes—once bright with life—darkened into pits of smoldering crimson, burning from within as though lit by coals stolen from hell's own hearth.
A hush rippled outward. The surviving gunmen who had not yet fled froze where they stood, their fingers trembling on their pistols. One vomited blood again, not from Micah's aura this time, but from sheer terror at the sight of him. This was no boy. This was no merchant's son. This was something else entirely—something that should not exist, and yet had been born before their eyes.
Micah rose. Slowly. Deliberately. His movements no longer those of a grieving youth, but of a being unmoored from flesh and time. His long hair, now streaked with threads of crimson fire, flowed behind him as though caught in a current invisible to the mortal eye. His shadow stretched unnaturally long, splitting, clawing across the cobblestones like skeletal hands.
The air bent around him. The world itself seemed to flinch.
And in that moment, the first echo of what Mira had always dreaded was made flesh. The curse of their bloodline—twisted, sharpened, magnified by grief—had found its vessel. He was no longer wholly Micah, nor wholly human. He was something caught between man and revenant, a scion of wrath and sorrow, marked forever by this day.
As he stood there, a choir of voices rose—a vast, layered chant that seemed to pour from the very air, each note folding into the next until the sound became a living cathedral of harmony. It swelled with haunting majesty, neither mortal nor earthly, as though the stars themselves had found voice to grieve. The song was ancient and unending, echoing sorrow, wrath, and eternity itself.
And the sight of him was enough to freeze even hardened killers where they stood.
Horace Blackwood staggered backward, breath rattling like a man drowning on dry land. His pistol slipped from his grip, clattering against the stones, its echo vanishing in the heavy silence that clung to the street. He could not look away, though every nerve in him screamed to flee. His lips moved soundlessly, but no prayer came—only the shallow rasp of terror.
The city recoiled around them. Cobblestones cracked beneath Micah's feet, fissures branching like veins of shadow. Lamps guttered and burst, spilling sparks that died before they touched the ground. Even the wind seemed to withdraw, leaving the air thick, suffocating, pressed flat by the low, unearthly hymn that now clung to him—a thousand voices, layered and eternal, rising as if the heavens themselves bent to mourn.
Micah stood unmoving, already transfigured. His hair, pale as bone and threaded with crimson fire, flowed though no wind stirred. His eyes burned like coals sunk in ash, steady and pitiless, fixing themselves upon the ruined men before him. When his gaze fell on Horace, the man shuddered violently, his knees buckling further as though crushed beneath an invisible hand.
The boy was gone. In his place stood something vast, inevitable, and merciless. He carried no anger in his face, no grief in his voice—only the implacable stillness of judgment itself. He was less a man than a decree made flesh, a revenant born of sorrow too deep for the world to contain.
When he spoke, the sound was not his own. His voice rang layered, resonant, each word striking the air like a tolling bell. "You have touched what was mine."
The words were quiet, but the street shook. Glass cracked in its frames, iron groaned, and the bloodied men clutched their ears as though the sound itself sought to rip them open from within. Horace whimpered, a broken sound, half-plea, half-denial, swallowed quickly in the weight of silence.
Micah's shadow lengthened unnaturally, stretching across the cobblestones, splitting like black roots clawing into the street. Shapes flickered at its edges—faces pale and sorrowing, their mouths open in soundless cries. Every blink of his crimson eyes dimmed the light, every breath bent the world closer to collapse.
A child peered from a window and screamed, though she could not say why. All she had seen was the sky darken and the shapes behind him, faceless yet watching, countless and near. Her cry carried into the silence, then was swallowed whole.
Horace was already on his knees, yet still he tried to crawl backward, palms scraping the cobblestones raw. His voice broke in a plea he had never thought he would utter. "Mercy." The word quivered, small, empty of all conviction, sounding more like his own death sentence than salvation.
Micah did not so much as twitch. His face was serene, his expression untouched by pity or rage. When his voice came again, it was vast and absolute, cutting through the smoke and silence like law spoken into the marrow of the world. "There is no mercy. Not for thieves of blood. Not for defilers of the eternal."
He raised his hand—not in haste, but with the slow certainty of the rising moon. Shadows bent toward it, writhing, dragged into the curl of his fingers. The hymn swelled into a terrible crescendo, a living cathedral of grief and wrath. Every soul who heard it felt the truth: the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for the moment when it could no longer endure.
He half-stretched his right arm, palm turned sideways as though testing the weight of unseen heavens. With deliberate slowness, he swirled his fingers—tracing an invisible spiral in the air—until the motion left his palm facing upward, open, expectant.
The gesture was a riddle. None watching could guess its meaning. Yet the silence that followed told the truth before the first cry was ever heard.
The hymn, once mournful, collapsed into stillness. The air itself seemed to clot, thick as tar, pressing down into lungs, into bones, until breath became pain. The ground trembled faintly, as though recoiling. His palm hung there, calm and merciless, an altar awaiting sacrifice.
Then Horace twitched. His body convulsed, shoulders snapping back so violently his collarbones cracked audibly. His eyes bulged, red veined, then ruptured into crimson haze as pressure forced the whites to burst. His jaw clenched so fiercely that his molars shattered in splinters, blood and enamel spraying through his lips.
A shimmer of pale light pushed through his sternum, faint and quivering, a filament no thicker than a strand of hair. It pulsed wildly, like a trapped thing, desperate to stay hidden inside the cage of flesh.
Micah's fingers curled, just slightly.
The thread jerked forward, and Horace's body broke.
His scream tore the silence into rags, raw and piercing, spraying blood from his throat with each convulsion. His back arched into a grotesque bow, vertebrae popping one by one as if being hammered loose. His ribcage groaned, bone creaking like old timber, then snapped outward, cartilage splitting. The shimmer of light thickened into cords, writhing and straining, dragging themselves free in spasms that made his whole body judder.
Blood vessels burst in his face, painting his skin purple and black. Veins writhed like worms beneath the surface, swelling, twisting, fighting to anchor the soul inside. His fingers tore bloody trenches across his chest in futile rebellion, nails breaking, peeling, splitting down to raw quicks as he tried to claw the cords of light back into his body.
But the pull was merciless.
The cords dragged longer, thicker—like ropes of intestine, slick and glowing—tearing themselves loose from muscle and marrow. Horace's body revolted. His lungs collapsed, coughing up a froth of red and bile. His stomach heaved until acid and half-digested matter poured from his lips. His bowels betrayed him, voiding in shame as his body emptied itself in death's prelude. His tongue swelled in his mouth, choking what little scream he had left, leaving him to gurgle on his own blood.
Another pull.
His ribs split wider. Cartilage snapped. His chest yawned open, skin tearing like paper as the cords thickened into writhing cables of light, dragging flesh with them in twitching threads. His muscles tore from the bone in ribbons, snapping like overstretched sinew. Tendons screamed as they split, and his shoulders wrenched violently out of socket with a sound like tearing leather.
The hymn dragged on, slow and suffocating, each note drawn out like chains grinding across stone. Time itself felt sick, sluggish, as though it resisted moving forward while such torment persisted. Every heartbeat landed like a hammer, every breath like a verdict—and still the light came, strand by strand, tearing deeper into him.
His organs ruptured under the strain. His liver split, spilling rot-dark fluid through the cavity. His kidneys shriveled, veins bursting in sprays of blood. His intestines writhed and slumped through the torn lattice of ribs, half-slick, half-burning with the glow of the soul being dragged past them. Each tear brought a new sound—wet ripping, tendon snapping, bone splintering—and each sound was swallowed by his animal cries.
And still the soul would not stop.
It stretched, tore, screamed in luminous cords, unwilling to surrender yet dragged helplessly toward the black altar of the open hand. The more it stretched, the less human Horace became. His face sloughed downward, skin sagging gray and bloodless. His eyes sank into their sockets, leaking thick black fluid that dripped down his cheeks. His teeth loosened, falling from his mouth in bloody fragments. His hair fell in clumps, strands ripping from a scalp that peeled away in sheets.
Then came the breaking point.
With a violent, ripping crack, his chest cavity split wide, his ribcage snapping in two as the last of the cords of light tore free in a blinding torrent. The sound was like every tendon in his body tearing at once, a symphony of destruction. His scream hit its peak, then broke into silence as his throat shredded, collapsing into a raw hole that spilled blood with each convulsion.
The soul came loose, whole now, writhing, radiant, howling in a voice deeper and older than flesh. It shrieked as it was dragged through the air, flailing, begging in a tongue no one could understand. The sound was worse than any mortal scream—it clawed into the marrow, vibrating through bone, echoing inside skulls until every listener felt their sanity splinter.
Micah's hand remained steady. His palm caught the soul, the writhing mass collapsing into the black gravity of his grasp. It twisted and screamed, its light bending into impossible shapes as it tried to escape, but the hand did not falter. The palm closed just enough to bind it, and the screaming did not cease—it shrieked, tore, and keened, the sound bouncing endlessly in the prison of his grasp.
Horace's body collapsed into ruin at his feet. A mangled husk—bones jutted like broken stakes through ragged flesh, organs spilling in grotesque heaps, skin sloughed away until only a gray, collapsing shell remained. His limbs twitched once, twice, spasms like a butchered animal, then fell still. He was no longer a man. He was meat, and less than meat—a shattered cage that no longer had a prisoner.
And in Micah's hand, the soul screamed on. Endless. Agonizing. Forever.
The witnesses could not look away.
The moment Horace's ribs split and the light tore free, something inside the onlookers broke as well. They staggered, gasping, as though their own lungs were caught in the same grip that had shredded him. Faces turned pallid, mouths gaping without words, eyes wide with the helpless terror of animals about to be slaughtered.
Some retched where they stood, vomiting bile and half-digested meals onto the stone, their heaving drowned beneath Horace's soul-scream. Others dropped to their knees, clawing at their ears until blood streaked their necks, trying desperately to tear out the sound that burrowed deeper with every instant. A few simply collapsed, bodies twitching in the filth as their minds buckled under the shriek that bent thought into splinters.
One soldier tore his own nails down to the bone clawing at his face, sobbing as he screamed, "It's inside me! It's inside me!" before collapsing in a pool of vomit and blood. Another turned and ran blindly, only to smash into a wall and break his nose, then crumple in a sobbing heap, rocking back and forth like a child.
The hymn, slowed and endless, threaded into their ears like barbed wire. Its resonance made teeth ache and jaws lock; it set eyes rolling white in their sockets. For some, it conjured visions behind their eyelids—graves splitting open, corpses crawling, their own loved ones torn apart strand by strand just as Horace was now. More than one witness fainted mid-scream, their bodies slumping like puppets whose strings had been cut.
But the worst was not the sight, nor even the sound. It was the understanding.
They felt it—the truth of what was happening—deep in the marrow of their bones. They knew, without question, that Horace's torment was not ending with flesh. They felt the soul's agony bleeding into their own, the weight of eternal screaming that could never be silenced. Their thoughts buckled under the certainty: what was happening to him could happen to them. It could happen to anyone.
Men wept openly, their tears running in streaks down dirt-stained cheeks. Hardened soldiers of a dozen battles sobbed like children. One woman tried to pray, clutching her rosary until her fingers bled, but the words shriveled in her throat as the scream inside Micah's hand clawed through every syllable. Another began to laugh—a broken, high-pitched giggle—until it pitched into shrieking hysteria that made her collapse, convulsing, eyes rolled back.
The stench of blood, bile, piss, and rot mixed thick in the air as bodies broke both within and without. Some fainted, some vomited, some clawed their own flesh, but none escaped the sound. It gnawed through them all, worming past skin and bone, lodging itself deep in thought.
And still Micah's hand remained steady. Still the husk twitched on the floor. Still the soul screamed on, a knife across every heart, a dirge that promised no end.
Micah stood unmoved amid the ruin. In one hand, the soul writhed—a luminous mass, tangled cords of radiance twisting like eels in a net, shrieking without breath, without end. Its glow pulsed against his skin as though it were burning him, yet his palm did not flinch.
Slowly, he raised his other hand.
Every gaze locked on him, paralyzed. He extended one finger, and with the same deliberate patience as before, he reached toward the writhing mass in his grasp. The soul recoiled, its light spasming away from the touch as if it could flee—but there was nowhere to go.
Micah's finger pressed gently against its surface.
The scream that followed was beyond human. It ripped through the air in jagged waves, shaking stone, rattling bones, a cry of agony so vast it seemed to claw at the sky itself. The sound wasn't merely heard—it was felt in the marrow, in the teeth, in the soft places behind the eyes.
And then he drew.
With dreadful precision, Micah dragged his finger across the trembling light as though etching a line into glass. The soul convulsed violently, its shape warping, light tearing and curling back upon itself. Every inch he carved unleashed another shriek, sharper, higher, more agonized than the last—like a blade drawn slowly across raw nerves.
The witnesses fell again into chaos. Some dropped flat, hands over their heads, whimpering as though shelter could protect them from the sound. Others beat their fists bloody against their own ears, desperate to escape what could not be escaped. One man clawed his own eyes out, screaming that he could see the cut as well as hear it. Another bit clean through his own tongue, choking on blood as he convulsed in silence.
The soul buckled in Micah's grasp, thrashing like an animal in slaughter, but the hand that held it was iron, unshaken. His finger traced steadily, unhurried, as if inscribing a sigil of torment that only he could comprehend. The light split beneath his touch, radiance shattering like glass under strain, each fracture releasing another wail of torment that bent the sanity of all who heard.
When at last he lifted his hand, the line remained—burned into the essence itself. The soul sagged in his grasp, light flickering in uneven spasms, its cry diminished but not ended. It whimpered now, a sound worse than the scream: a broken keening, endless and pleading, as though even eternity had been wounded.
Micah gazed at it, and in his eyes there was no mercy.
Micah's crimson gaze smoldered from the cavernous sockets of his skeletal face, his expression carved from bone yet alive with terrible intent. His jaw was angled in regal stillness, lips long since withered, yet the shape of his grin emerged unmistakably across the bared teeth. The thorns of his crown curled skyward, jagged silhouettes against the blood-red horizon, as though creation itself bent into his throne.
The soul writhed in his grasp, convulsing with luminous terror. Micah's free hand rose again, his talon-like finger hovering above it. Slowly—agonizingly—he carved another line into its radiance.
The shriek was deafening, sharper than the first, the sound of glass shattering across every nerve. The glow fractured beneath his touch, bending into warped patterns like veins burning in fire. The witnesses convulsed at the sound, some retching, others clawing their own faces raw.
But Micah did not stop.
He traced a second line. The soul howled, splitting itself into dissonant chords, the agony multiplied, a sound that bent the air until it wavered. A third line followed, then a fourth, each stroke deliberate, each mark an incision of dominance. The once-glowing mass was now a lattice of scars, a script of pain seared into the very essence of what Horace had been. It quivered, light dimming, its cries breaking into pleading whimpers—yet still, he carved.
When the final mark was drawn, the soul sagged in his palm, trembling, fractured, its glow little more than a twitching ember. Micah leaned forward, the crimson flare in his eyes brightening as the grin widened across his skeletal visage. His cheekbones cast hollow shadows, his jaw parted with a hiss of bone on bone, and the cavern of his mouth opened wider, darker, deeper than the void itself.
The soul understood.
Its glow spasmed violently, thrashing like a beast in a trap. It clawed at the edges of his grip, pulling, stretching, shrinking, writhing in frantic desperation. The witnesses swore they could feel its terror flooding through the air—the absolute knowledge that what awaited inside Micah's mouth was worse than hell, worse than fire, worse even than the abyss itself. It was not annihilation, nor torment—it was something beyond either, something without end.
The soul screamed as it tried to flee, jerking in spasms of light, but Micah's hand was iron, unyielding, skeletal fingers locking it in a prison it could not escape. His grin widened further, jaw creaking as though savoring the moment. His tongue, blackened and shriveled, moved within the darkness of his mouth like a serpent ready to coil around its prey.
Micah's skeletal grin widened as he brought the writhing soul toward his waiting maw. The red glare of his eyes sharpened, twin furnaces burning from hollows of bone, and his jaw creaked open with dreadful patience. The darkness inside his mouth was not shadow but something deeper—an abyss that bent the air around it, pulling light inward like a whirlpool of night.
The soul thrashed violently, light spasming, screaming in a voice that rattled the marrow of every witness. They felt it not just in their ears, but in themselves—memories dragged forward, regrets they had buried surfacing raw and fresh. One man saw his dead son's eyes, wide with betrayal. A woman tasted the soil where she had left her child to starve. Each soul present was made to relive its darkest stain as Horace's essence wailed in their midst.
Micah's jaws closed.
The sound bent. The shriek collapsed inward, compressed into a pitch so sharp it made the sky shiver. Clouds warped overhead, twisting like wrung cloth; shadows peeled from the ground, writhing as though they wanted to flee the world itself. The very stone groaned beneath him, splitting in hairline cracks.
He swallowed.
The scream did not end. It went inside. His chest rattled as if ribs were pipes of an organ, amplifying the soul's torment. Light flickered between his bones, trapped and thrashing, its brilliance forced through a cage of death. The witnesses clutched their heads as they felt the sound inside their skulls, a muffled, endless howling that could not be blocked.
One soldier staggered backward and began to laugh—not madly, but with the hollow voice of a man who no longer remembered joy or grief. Another fell to his knees, whispering apologies to sins long past, convinced he too was being eaten. A third simply stared, unblinking, lips moving in silent prayer that no god answered.
Micah straightened slowly, the spines of his crown silhouetted against the bloody sky. His grin did not fade as the muffled screams inside him continued, now a ceaseless chorus vibrating through his bones.
The sound was not confined within. It resonated.
His ribcage trembled with each shriek, the hollow lattice of bone turning into pipes of an unholy organ. Every gasp, every wail of the trapped soul shuddered through him, amplified, warped, spilling outward in waves of dreadful harmony. The cavities of his chest thrummed like drums beaten by invisible hands; his skull rang with a hollow echo, a cracked bell tolling in time with Horace's agony.
Light flickered faintly between the seams of his skeleton—threads of radiance writhing, trying to escape—only to be pulled back into the cage, forced to reverberate through the hollow corridors of his frame. The witnesses could feel it: the scream was not simply heard, it was carried into them by vibration, crawling under their skin, rattling their teeth, sinking like hooks into their spines.
Micah lifted one skeletal finger and tapped idly against his sternum. The sound that emerged was not the dull clack of bone, but a resonant chime—as if the soul's voice had turned his body into an instrument of torment, each touch plucking a new note of agony. He tapped again, and the scream bent upward, warbling, distorted, as though Horace's essence itself were being strummed like a harp of suffering.
His grin widened, the red glow of his eyes steady, patient. To him, the shrieks were not horror, nor punishment. They were music. A symphony only he could conduct.
And the witnesses realized the worst truth of all:
Horace's soul was not gone. It was alive, still suffering, still screaming—forever, a note in the endless song of Micah's body.