Chapter 7: Echoes of the Altar

Chapter 7: Echoes of the Altar

Morrigan stood in the spectral ruin of Blackwood Asylum, long after the last of Kael’s fiery embers had faded. The silence he left behind was heavier than before, filled with unanswered questions that circled her like vultures. A commodity. Competition. Unusual energy. His words had cracked the foundation of her new reality, revealing a world far more complex and predatory than Thanatos’s sterile, corporate version of the afterlife.

She was trying to process it, trying to scrub the memory of the Hollow’s soul-sucking cold from her essence while wrestling with Kael’s infuriating, unsettling revelations. She was so lost in thought that the familiar, chime-like sound of the Soul Ledger updating made her jump. It materialized before her, the glowing blue text a stark intrusion into the asylum's gloom.

A new assignment. Good. A simple, straightforward task was what she needed. Something to focus on besides the fact that she was a cosmic intern with a target on her back from horrors she couldn't fight and a potential rival who thought she was a joke.

Then she read the name.

TARGET: Elias Vance STATUS: Natural Causes (Cardiac Arrest) TIME REMAINING: 47:32… 47:31…

The name itself meant nothing. But the file photo that shimmered into view beside it sent a jolt of pure ice through her. It was a man in his late fifties, with a gaunt face and eyes that burned with a cold, fanatical light. She knew those eyes. She had stared up into them from a cold stone altar as her life bled out. He was one of them. One of the robed figures who had chanted in a language of nightmares as they’d killed her.

Her breath hitched. The scythe in her hand pulsed with a dark, hungry energy, reflecting the surge of toxic rage she’d absorbed from Marco Santoro. For the first time, she was grateful for the gangster’s grimy spiritual residue. It was a shield of pure aggression against the wave of crippling terror that threatened to drown her.

The location was a rundown apartment building in the industrial sector, a part of the city that stank of rust and forgotten dreams. This wasn't a job anymore. This was personal. This was a ghost facing her killer.

You are a transition, not an executioner, Thanatos’s voice echoed in her memory, a distant, ignored warning.

"He transitioned me just fine," she snarled to the empty hall. "It's called professional courtesy."

Driven by a white-hot fury that finally eclipsed her fear, she let the Ledger guide her. Phasing from the asylum to the city was a blur. She moved through the mundane world like a wraith, her focus narrowed to a single point. The psychic noise of the living was a meaningless buzz she pushed aside with contempt. She passed through brick walls and closed doors, her spectral form a whisper of vengeance, until she stood inside the designated apartment.

The place was sparse, almost monastic, but the air was thick with the same wrongness as the basement where she’d died. The faint, coppery scent of old blood and the ozone tang of dark magic clung to the peeling wallpaper. Her target, Elias Vance, was sitting in a threadbare armchair, his chest still. His life-thread, a sickly, bruised-purple cord, was flickering weakly, stained with the same fanatical energy she remembered.

But he wasn't alone.

Two other figures, also in the simple, dark clothes of the cult, stood before him. They were speaking in low, urgent tones, their voices filled with a chilling reverence. Morrigan froze, melting back into the shadows of the room, her intangibility a perfect cloak.

"The Master grows impatient," the younger one, a woman with unnervingly blank eyes, said. "Elias’s passing is a sign. The vessel we prepared was flawed. It should have been a perfect conduit, but its will was too… defiant. It broke free from the Master's grasp upon its death."

Morrigan’s non-existent blood ran cold. Vessel. Defiant. They were talking about her.

The second man, older and broader, nodded grimly. "A setback. But not a total loss. The ritual was not a failure. The Master's power touched the vessel's soul, marked it. Even in death, it absorbed a significant charge. That power is now untethered, a beacon in the ethereal plane."

A beacon. Kael's words slammed back into her. Crackling with some very… unusual energy. He had seen it. He had sensed the demonic mark on her soul.

The woman stepped closer to Elias’s body. "We don't need to find another random innocent for the next ritual. That was a crude, preliminary step. Now, we hunt. We have the means to track the unique resonance of the escaped vessel. The Master's mark calls to its own."

The full, horrifying truth crashed down on Morrigan with the force of a physical blow.

They weren't just a cult that had killed her and moved on. Her death wasn't the end of their plan; it was the beginning. They hadn't chosen her at random because she was an orphan no one would miss. They had chosen her for a specific quality in her soul, a resonance their demonic master craved. They had intentionally sacrificed her to be a vessel, to be infused with a sliver of their patron’s power.

And it had worked.

That familiar, dangerous energy that pulsed from her scythe, the power Thanatos found so ‘interesting’ and Kael found so ‘unusual’—it wasn't a cheat code. It was a tracking device. A brand.

She had thought she was a ghost haunting the edges of their world, a potential avenger they didn't know existed. The reality was a thousand times worse. She was the one being haunted. She was the prize they had lost, and now they were coming to collect. Her new life as a Reaper hadn't made her safe; it had made her a bigger, brighter target, a super-charged spirit wandering the very plane they were searching.

The older cultist placed a hand on Elias's shoulder. "His spirit will join the Master's choir soon. For us, the work continues. The High Priest has divined the location for the new ritual. And this time, we will forge chains of soul-fire, strong enough to bind the untethered spirit when we find it."

The woman smiled, a bloodless, chilling expression. "It cannot hide forever. No soul can."

Frozen in the corner of the room, Morrigan watched as the timer on her Ledger for Elias Vance ticked down to its final seconds. The simple, bureaucratic instruction—Reap a soul—seemed like a cosmic joke. She was here as a hunter, an agent of cosmic law. But she had just discovered, with bone-deep certainty, that she was nothing more than the hunted.