The sound of my car's door shutting echoed across the empty lot and bounced against the houses across the quiet street. The gun's weight was an awkward, distressing burden tugging upon my resolve. I wiped my hands on my hemline and as I tried to steady my shaking nerves, a voice spoke from behind me.

"Idiot."

I whirled about and landed on my rear, skinning my palms on the lot's craggy asphalt. The Sin of Pride crouched on the car's roof with his chin perched upon his cupped hand. He watched me curse on the ground with dark, ominous cheer. "You really, really are an idiot sometimes, Sara Gaspard."

"You scared me half to death!" I hissed as I regained my footing. The gun left a throbbing bruise against my hip, and I gingerly probed the spot for further damage. "What are you doing?!"

"Waiting for you, obviously."

"Waiting for—?"

"You." Darius unfolded his lean frame, rising like a grim statue one might see hovering over a grave in an old, decrepit cemetery. He hopped down without a sound. "I'm not foolish enough to expect you to do what is in your best interest and stay behind."

I swore at him, but otherwise had nothing to say in my defense. I straightened my blouse as I shot Darius a furious look, then strode toward the dumpy little store where the cultists would supposedly be meeting in ten minutes.

Darius followed with his amusement weaving under my skin like prickling vines.

"I see you wore your Klau uniform. It seems you've really thought this through. If they were unsure of where you worked, they'll certainly know now."

"I don't intend for any of them to live past tonight," I grumbled. There was a stretch of concrete before Techie-Goods and the neighboring stores covered by thick roof extension balanced on brick pillars. I paused at one end of the walkway to scour the underside of the plaster overhang. There was a camera aimed toward the lot—but further inspection proved it to be a fake. I moved on.

Darius smirked as he caught a lock of hair escaping my ponytail and threaded it around his fingers. He gave it a sharp yank. "My vicious little harridan is out for blood tonight, I see."

"I'm out for answers," I huffed as I straightened my hair. We slowed our pace as we came upon our destination. Techie-Goods was shut tight for the evening, the only light coming from the neon sign bolted to the overhang's front. The single-pane display window dominating the store's front was cool to the touch, but as I pressed my eyes to the edge of the glass, I could see nothing inside but the bulky shapes of inventory and the blurry outline of a distant counter.

"Do you think we're wrong? That there's no one here?" I whispered, cupping my palm about my face in an attempt to see more. I couldn't discern any movement within the shop.

Darius' hand rose to grip the back of my neck, sending a shock through the length of my spine. "Hold your breath."

I did as he said, and the Sin attempted to shift us through the waiting Realm. A blow to my midsection had me doubling over as we emerged no more than a second later inside Techie-Goods. Darius stumbled as he cursed in an ugly, consonant heavy language and gripped a shelf for balance. For a brief instant, the Sin's flesh regained its unsettling luminosity before Darius could dampen whatever untold magic burned in his veins.

We had appeared in an aisle on the far side of the homely shop. The air was warm and fetid, carrying strains of the squalid scent tainting the air outside. Flimsy posters hung on wires from the ceiling announced oddly worded, ambiguous bargains. The shelves surrounding us were comprised of a low-grade synthetic metal and were stocked with late-model merchandise. Nothing about the place attracted customers; no one would want to buy this trash at such exorbitant prices.

I ran my hand along the nearest shelf. My fingers came away white with dust.

"I doubt this place has seen a paying buyer in ages," I murmured as I stood on the lowest shelf to see over the aisle's partition. Aside from the peculiarities I had already noted, nothing about the store seemed amiss. There were no signs proclaiming "Cultist meeting tonight!," not that I had expected there to be. The hush was pervasive, smothering my ears with the need to hear anything besides my own heartbeat and Darius' low, even breathing.

"There are voices," the Sin muttered, his gaze focused on the back wall. There was a door there I had neglected to see, painted the same off-beige as the rest of the wall. As we rounded the aisle's end, I saw there was a thin strip of light peeking out from beneath the door's warped threshold. The door itself was just barely ajar, as though the latch had not quite caught when someone closed it.

Inside rose the muffled static of low voices.

Darius' brow creased as his hands balled into rough-knuckled fists. "Something's not right."

The Sin took two steps forward and kicked the door, allowing it to swing wide and bash the inner wall. Surprised by his brusque entrance, I didn't step into the room until I heard Darius seethe with rage.

The room was empty. There was a collection of rotting merchandise boxes stacked along the square, blanks walls and a single discount folding table positioned below the hanging light fixture. There were no other exits or windows within the space, only the boxes, the table, and a phone sitting within the small pool of yellow light. The red indicator flashed, telling me there was an open call line.

"Hello, Sara."

The voice that filled the room was tinny with static and warped by a modulator. I froze in place as an unwanted sliver of dread worked its way down my throat. Staring at the phone with my lips parted, I was unable to think of the words to express my outrage or incredulity.

We've been tricked.

"It is Sara, isn't it? And her brute enforcer. Yes, hello. We've prepared a bit of a...surprise for you."

The sound of safeties being clicked off emanated from behind us. Two men and a woman had appeared at the doorway. The men were masked and aiming pistols toward the Sin. The dark-haired woman held nothing but a bunch of crinkled talismans in her fist.

"You shouldn't have taken John's datebook. I always warned him not to write down the meetings, but it seems his shortsightedness has worked in our favor. And I wouldn't bother interrogating your new friends there. They're not ours, after all. We hired them especially for you and your...partner."

My heart had leaped into my throat but I forced it down, edging sideways to put Darius between myself and potential bullets. The Sin could survive being shot. I could not. "Who are you?" I demanded of the disembodied voice, my eyes locked upon the waiting phone. "What is your name?"

"You didn't really think it'd be that easy, did you?"

The two men raised their guns. Darius tracked the motion as his head tilted to an unsettling angle upon his neck and the chill began to build.

"The only reason you're still alive is that I want to know how you did it. How you contracted your Sin."

"Why would I tell you anything?"

The person on the phone chuckled. Their laughter crackled within the receiver as if they had their lips pressed to the phone's mouthpiece. "I'll let you live another day, Sara. I'll let you have just one more day. Wouldn't that be nice? Tell me his name. Tell me how you found him, how you bound him to you without the ritual or the sacrifice."

I realized this was why the Exordium had not killed me yet, why they had only spared a few paltry assassins in their quest to claim my life. This was why the cultist had infiltrated my home and hadn't brought a weapon; they had been searching for information. The Exordium had gone to great lengths to conceal their existence and summon Balthier. I imagined it was galling that I, a stupid woman beneath their regard, had accomplished what they strove for with so little effort.

I would've felt smug in that fact, if not for the guns pointed at my back.

"I won't tell you anything."

"Then perhaps I am addressing the wrong person. Demon."

Darius did not reply to the voice's prompting. He continued to watch the weapons aimed for us as black frost bit at my ankles and nose.

"I know you're there, demon. Tell me your Sin. Kill your wretched host and form a contract with me. I will see you endowed with more souls than you can imagine. You will feast as you have never feasted before."

Darius touched the nearest wall. Frost shot outward from his hand, crackling the cheap paint, spooking our attackers. They collectively took a step back as the grip upon their chosen weapons increased. The masked men glanced at the woman as if asking for directions.

"Sure," Darius responded—much to my alarm. "I'll kill her and form a contract with you. But I have only one price, and it's the same price I demanded of her. Can you match it?"

"Name it." The voice had become eager, their excited breathing creating additional static in the line. "Name anything the little bitch gave you and will see that you have it."

"How very eager." Darius turned his head far enough to grin at me standing in his shadow. "Give me your soul."

The voice was silent. I held my breath, wondering if Darius would actually do it. Would Darius kill me if the mysterious cult leader promised his own soul? Would he? I could almost see the outline of the word Betrayer through the fabric of Darius' t-shirt.

The person spoke, voice twisted with anger and resignation. "Kill them."

I dropped to the floor. Guns went off like fireworks, and I expected to feel the twinge of a bullet striking my body—but I felt nothing but the continued ache in my side. Darius grunted as several slugs struck him in the torso. His blood misted upon my bare skin as the Sin remained before me. The firing stopped for only a moment, but Darius vanished in that instant and suddenly one of the assassins was screaming. I heard wet crunching but I did not have time to look. I rolled to my shaky knees and yanked free my borrowed pistol.

"Drop it!" I snarled at the remaining gunman, who seemed unsure as to where he should be pointing his gun. His fellow was on the ground three yards away, cloaked in the shadows being thrown by one of the aisle shelves. Darius was on top of him, and I thanked God I couldn't see what the Sin was doing to the caterwauling man.

The woman threw her skinny hand in my direction. "Her!" she shouted at the gunman before she darted toward Darius' oblivious back. The mercenary lifted his weapon to aim, but I did not give him the opportunity to shoot. I fired first.

I was not used to the heavy weight of the pistol. I pulled the trigger and the recoil yanked the gun from my hand. I had aimed for the man's legs—but my panicked trajectory was off. The bullet struck the masked man in the chest, and he toppled after firing a single round into the ceiling.

My entire body shook with surprise. I killed him, I thought as numbness percolated through my heart and my ears continued to ring. My hands trembled with adrenaline or shock, and I could not find my gun in the abstruse lighting cast by the cut-rate light fixture. I meant to kill him—and yet I was not prepared for it. I wasn't prepared for this!

My anxious thoughts were cut short by Darius' screams.

The woman had landed upon his back with a slender vial clenched between her crooked teeth. Dark liquid oozed from the vial's mouth and dripped from her long-fingered hands. She had pasted one of the talismans upon the Sin's upper back, which twisted about his spine and under his left shoulder. As I ran from the back room into the main area of Techie-Goods, I spied the foreign, jagged characters drawn upon the talisman's length.

She was not just a woman. She was a witch.

Darius flung the witch from his person with terrifying strength. She flew across the expanse and struck one of the walls, going down under an avalanche of old, graying computer monitors. She did not get up, and I did not think it possible anyone could survive such a blow.

The Sin raged like a wounded animal, prone on the floor at the gunman's side as his fingers clawed furrows in the linoleum. "Sara—!"

I slid in the dead man's blood and nearly landed on top of Darius. I sucked in a breath as I saw what the talisman was doing to the Sin's back. The characters had burned through the paper talisman and were seeping into his flesh and bone like acid slowly corroding through metal. The magic empowering the characters felt...wrong. I had been papered from head to toe in Saule's talismans, and her magic always enveloped me in a sense of earth and greenery. This energy wasn't natural. It felt...rotten, as though it had been dug from soil where bodies were planted.

I tore the talisman free—and though the paper burned my fingers, the characters remained. I smelled burning flesh.

"Blood—," Darius panted through gritted teeth. Whatever magic the witch had used, it worked on a layer deeper than just physical flesh. The agony on Darius' face was unearthly. "Blood breaks the script—."

I slapped my hands in the gunman's blood and touched the Sin's wound. He howled, but nothing happened. "It's not working!"

"Fresh! It has to be fresh!"

I remembered visiting Baba Yaga's for the first time. I remembered the Sin of Pride biting into his own flesh to paint the talisman upon the lintel in his own blood.

Unsure of what else to do, I mimicked the Sin's actions from that day. I bit into the side of my palm, sinking blunt teeth into the flesh until blood welled and tears streamed from the corners of my eyes. I hurried to place the damaged hand over Darius' injury, and I felt the spell carved into his body crumble beneath my ministrations. The scent of green things crested above the witch's fouler odor. It was as if we stood in a sunbaked meadow instead of in a ramshackle store littered with dead sycophants.

Darius took in a single, rasping gasp—and suddenly I was airborne. I yelped as my middle collided with the Sin's rigid shoulder and his arm formed a vise upon my legs to keep me in place. By the time I recovered equilibrium, we were in the back room again at the table's edge. Bloody footprints trails in Darius' wake. The light above us flickered, then died as ice crawled upon the fixture and shattered the naked bulb.

The phone was still on.

"Think upon your actions today, cultist." Darius' words echoed in the dark, reaching through me with a hellish, scorching heat that resonated with energy just as unnatural as the twisted witch's. My side ached with the heat as my hand continued to bleed. "You speak not to a dog and his master, but to a Sin and his host. You wish to know my name? I will carve it into your flesh as I take your life. You have earned my wrath. You will know Pride's fury before the end."

The store's integral structure wailed. The shadows gorged themselves upon Darius' rage, pressing upward and outward, straining the studs and beams that held Techie-Goods upright. The foundation cracked, heaving beneath the pressure of Darius' power. Items were tumbling from their shelves in the other room to explode upon impact with the floor. The ceiling buckled. The energy Darius summoned was a tangible thing, spiraling around us with the Sin at its apex, forming a palpable wind that tore the very paint from the walls.

I had never experienced such a thing before. It felt as though a tornado was forming beneath Darius' feet, rising upward toward the invisible sky.

The Sin's grip tightening upon my thigh. "Even if I have to scour all of Terrestria," I heard him say as I covered my head to protect it from flying debris. "The Exordium dies by my hand."

He turned, and we vanished into the night.