Chapter 118 – Hel Hood

The silence of the room, hidden inside the Hood palace on that long and dark night, felt like the silence of a forbidden grave untouched for ages.

Yet four beings sat around a cracked, ancient table, looking at one another with eyes that showed nothing but anger, spite and outright contempt.

None of them bothered to conceal it, finding it entirely pointless. Or perhaps — just perhaps — they quietly enjoyed letting the others see how deeply they loathed them.

That was certainly true of Morenna Hood, whose eyes rested on the rather old woman seated across from her.

The old woman had crimson hair streaked with the withering white of age, and bright red eyes that glowed like sapphires.

A vertical scar ran from above her right eyebrow to the very edge of her chin, carved into a face that was beautiful despite its deep wrinkles.

She rested both elbows on the ancient table, and her right hand was nothing but bare bone, stripped of all flesh and blood and any material that gave a living body its substance.

Her left hand was entirely normal.

She wore Church of Death robes without the hood and without the scythe mark on her forehead. In every visible way, she looked like any ordinary believer of Vorn.

And she was. Yet her power and authority within the Church dwarfed Helene’s completely.

She was Morenna Hood’s grandmother-in-law. She was Hel Hood.

And she parted her lips.

"I will not exhaust myself speaking to this wretched woman in front of me, Dantes." Hel whispered, her gaze moving from Morenna to Helene. "Nor to this useless woman who has spent her days hating a family while lacking the spine to seek any kind of revenge. I despise useless women." Her eyes settled at last on Dantes, cold and choked with fury. "And even you sicken me, Dantes. But you are my blood."

She fixed her grandson with a stare that dropped the temperature of the room.

"So speak, you useless little bastard. Tell me how in Vorn’s damned name you allowed your own father’s Linked Artifact to be stolen. SPEAK!"

"Grandmother." Dantes growled, his eyes going cold with frost. "I would also love the answer if you happen to have it."

He reached inside himself, plunged his hand deep, then tore it back out in one motion. He slammed it on the table, showing a black key covered in crimson runes.

"This key has always been inside me. Always! And there is no copy of this key. So look, grandmother, I am just as confused as any of you about how any of this was possible."

"Then why not ask your wife?" Hel retorted, pointedly refusing to look at Morenna. "Or would you prefer I call her your mother?"

A cold snicker followed.

"And why would he ask me?" Morenna laughed humourlessly, tilting her head. "Do you think I would do anything to harm Mort?"

"I do not think, Wretched." Hel spat. "I believe it. You have more than enough reason to seek out Mort’s remnant soul. And spare us your useless pretence. Don’t bother hiding your true self here."

She finally turned her head toward Morenna, eyes dripping with scorn.

"You don’t need to hide. Show us all. Show us your real face. The face that killed my—!"

"Grandmother." Dantes cut in again, his face cracking, a swarm of crimson-black flies slipping through the fissures. "Don’t come here and pretend you know nothing of what happened that day. You know there was no other choice. You know it well."

"There was another choice. There is always another option." Hel replied without budging. "But none of you bothered to look for one, did you?"

She laughed harshly, sweeping her crimson eyes between the two of them, ignoring Helene entirely.

"And why would you? When each of you was consumed by lusting after something you could never obtain." She sneered. "Look at what you have done. Both your children are cursed. Your daughter can barely keep her legs closed, like some common fucking whore. And your son will doom you all, and why? Over a woman!"

Dantes and Morenna went quiet. Their eyes went cold, but neither could say anything to refute it.

They both knew they were the reason Esmeray carried that Curse. The curse that had dismantled her life in the most painful way possible, even if she didn’t fully understand it herself.

They were also the reason why Raven, despite appearing entirely normal to the outside world, was anything but.

Their son lived with a level of disconnection between his mind and body that was bone-chilling. A disconnection that made him unable to perform any action without being fully, consciously aware of it first.

Every movement was calculated before it was made. His mind was always, always working: estimating which leg to lift, which hand to use, how much force to apply.

Nothing that should have been automatic was automatic anymore.

That nightmarish condition made his actions look, most of the time, not natural, but performed. As if he were an actor on a stage rather than a person living.

Sometimes he forgot to blink. Other times he spoke and moved as though an audience were watching his every gesture.

None of it was natural. It had all become something that resembled naturalness only after years of training and relentless adaptation.

But it remained artificial.

Raven called it his natural artifice, in quiet self-mockery.

And that condition was the primary reason Raven was so deeply obsessed with Anesthesia Amaris.

That girl — through her Resonance Aspect — was capable of bringing his mind and body into perfect synchrony, making him feel normal again whenever she was near.

Normal.

That feeling, obtainable only when she was close, had become dependence. Then love. Then obsession. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

And it was why neither Dantes nor Morenna had ever truly moved against that relationship, because inwardly, they both carried guilt for what their children had become.

Their regret was plain on their faces. Hel Hood could not have cared less.

"You reap what you sow." She spat. "You placed your faith in some ancient text from an unknown Age, about children chosen by something nameless. And look! That belief made you stand by and do nothing while my son fought a god alone and was destroyed! You chose to let him die. My son. MY SON!"

She bellowed. The room shook with her fury. Helene watched from her seat without expression.

"But it is fine." Hel continued, smiling coldly. "I find comfort, at least, in seeing your children in such wretched states. Fated to be nothing but slaves...either to their lack or their excess."

"Are you finished?" Morenna said, her face frozen despite the effort it took to remain calm. "If so, then perhaps we should discuss the more pressing matter. In other words, the Crimson Daggers."

She paused. Her all-black eyes fractured, splitting into dozens of pupils — some human, some monstrous, some wholly abnormal as if sourced from unknown dimensions — and fixed them all on Hel.

The temperature in the room dropped. Suddenly, the sensation of dozens of presences filled the space, each one carrying a harrowing weight, a pressure that could have strangled the breath from any Mortal rank being until they stopped moving.

"However, dear grandmother-in-law," Morenna continued, her voice now sounding as if someone else entirely were speaking through her, "I will warn you once, and only once. Do not speak about my children. Not Sefira. Not Seraphim. Not Raven. Not Esmeray."

She smiled with murderous calm.

"Keep my children’s names out of your mouth, will you?"

"And if I don’t feel like it?" Hel retorted, unbothered, her voice lazy.

Around her, a thick scent of death began to bleed into the air. Something like a mournful lament started to echo through the room, the sound of the dead being called back toward the living world.

The cracking of bones resonated from nowhere visible.

"You will not like what follows." Morenna replied. "You know me, Hel. I don’t need to explain what would happen."

"Let me—!"

"Sigh."

Dantes exhaled. He raised his right hand — where the Sigil of his {Seat} as Herald of Vorn was glowing — and clicked his finger. Every power inside the room was suppressed by his {Authority}.

Silence fell.

Morenna’s eyes returned to normal. Hel’s dead returned to the Gate of Death.

"You may bicker as much as you wish later." Dantes said flatly. "You may even kill each other afterward, that is your own concern. But right now, the only thing worth discussing is how we deal with the Crimson Daggers. They have attacked us. We will retaliate, and this time, without mercy."

"The Church will be part of it." Helene finally spoke. "Two sisters were killed during the attack. And the strange thing was that only they were killed out of the entire sea of maids and butlers surrounding them."

Her black eyes hardened.

"This is a message to us, us the believers of Vorn." She looked at each of them. "They are challenging our faith. Challenging our god. And that is something we will never tolerate."

"For once," Hel said, "this useless woman says something worth hearing. From this point forward, it is no longer merely a matter of the Royal Family against the Crimson Daggers."

She smiled coldly.

"The Church of Death will join the fight."

"Good to know you can be useful for once." Morenna added.

"Wretched, after this meeting, you and I should find a quiet and deserted place. You appear to have forgotten what my Soulblade or Phantasm feels like."

"I am not interested in old women, grandmother-in-law." The Queen smiled thinly, entirely ignoring the second half of that sentence. "And you must forgive me, but not everyone here enjoys cheating on their husband."

Hel went still. Then she mirrored Morenna’s smile precisely.

"Touché."

Morenna’s eyes gleamed with quiet victory. Helene suppressed a laugh, earning herself a hard, disgusted glare from Hel.

Dantes rolled his eyes with the expression of a man who had endured this for far too long.

’I despise being in the same room as both of them.’

It was always like this with them.

Eventually, after Morenna and Hel had satisfied themselves with enough curses and unveiled threats for the evening, a decision was reached.

"The Crimson Daggers are secretive, but not to us. We know them. And we have a way to locate them." Dantes said, looking at each of them. "We will sacrifice the souls of thirty-three prisoners and use the Soul Balance to extract a single piece of information about their location. Given our history with them, thirty-three will be more than sufficient. And after we have that..."

He smiled. His mouth spilled out a swarm of flies that filled the room instantly.

"...who among you wants the role of eradication?"

Hel and Morenna looked at each other. Then they smiled at the exact same moment, with the exact same smile.

They parted their lips together — two voices belonging to the dead — and spoke as one.

""Leave it to me.""

"I want my son’s Linked Artifact returned." Hel added.

At those words, Helene smiled quietly to herself.

’Mission: placing the Church of Death behind the assault on the Crimson Daggers. Officially complete.’

’Ah... Lord Seraph, are you proud?’

—End of Chapter 118—