The skyline bled gold.
Not sunrise—scripture. Glyphs etched into the atmosphere, turning clouds into pages. Light into lies.
Azari pressed the cracked shard against her chest, gasping.
"I can't hear them anymore."
Jung Min holstered one pistol. "Good."
"No—I mean I can't. It's too quiet."
He looked up.
Everything had stopped singing.
Yunhwa fell still.
Not peaceful—expectant.
Like the final breath before a trigger pull.
Jung Min scanned the rooftops. Every building was aimed inward, windows shaped like cathedral slits, glass reflecting only one thing: him.
"This whole place is a gun," he muttered.
Azari looked around.
"And we're in the chamber."
From the silence, one figure walked.
No choir.
No relics.
Just a woman in a tattered Saint's coat—black, blood-streaked, dragging a sledgehammer that hummed with every step.
She didn't blink.
Didn't speak.
But the moment Jung Min saw her, his face changed.
Azari noticed.
"You know her."
He nodded.
"Captain Seo Jiyoon. She trained me."
Azari froze. "She's dead."
"Yeah."
"Then what the hell is that?"
Jung Min stepped forward. "My past. Made flesh."
Seo didn't raise the hammer.
She just appeared—one second away, the next a foot from his chest.
Jung Min parried with his forearm—bone cracked instantly.
She swung.
He ducked.
The hammer dented the concrete like wet clay.
Azari moved—rifle up. Fired.
The bullet curved away mid-air.
Seo turned to her, and in a voice not her own:
"You were never part of the verse."
Jung Min tackled her.
They rolled, fists and fury, Saint against Saint.
Seo's skin peeled in flashes—beneath it, threads of scripture. No muscle. Just doctrine.
He whispered through gritted teeth:
"You used to be better than this."
She headbutted him.
"You used to believe."
Azari sprinted forward, the broken shard shaking in her grip. She shoved it against Seo's chest.
Nothing happened.
Jung Min yelled, "She's been canonized—the Choir wrote her in."
"Then how do we erase her?!"
He reached into his coat.
Pulled out a bullet. One left.
Handed it to Azari.
She stared.
"This is—"
"The Choir's name," he said. "Carved in lead."
She loaded it.
Took aim.
Seo turned to her, eyes full of fire.
"You are not a Saint."
Azari pulled the trigger.
"I'm not trying to be."
The bullet sang.
Not a scream.
A goodbye.
Seo shattered mid-step—ashes caught in glyphlight.
The hammer fell, and the sky rippled.
Jung Min sat back against the ledge, arm broken, lip bleeding.
He stared at where Seo used to stand.
"She died a long time ago," he said.
Azari sat beside him, shaking.
"Are we even winning?"
He didn't answer.
Just watched the glyphs in the sky twist—then align into something new.
One symbol.
Familiar.
Her name.
Azari looked up.
"…They canonized me now."