Deep in the Blood Pool beneath Sacred Heart Hospital, sealed off from the influence of the upper levels by layer upon layer of rituals.
Falling.
Falling endlessly.
Falling without end.
Horn fell into an unfathomable nightmare.
Unlike his previous dream, where he had soared through the sky, high above all things, this time he drifted downward through a cold river.
Toward death.
All he could see was scarlet. All he could feel was pain.
Resentment, regret, howls, wails.
Weary, Horn closed his eyes. Gradually, he began to understand.
He was immersed in tears.
"Give me one more dose. Just one, please! I swear it's the last one!"
A junkie wept and fell to his knees at Horn's feet, humbly begging for his mercy.
He spoke the cruelest words.
"I know I'm out of money, but I have a wife and kids. Two of them! I'll put them both up as collateral. They'll be good, I promise!"
The trembling man made his reckless offer, then cautiously accepted the syringe of flowing scarlet liquid that Horn tossed to him with disdain. Tears of gratitude slid from the man's eyes.
Under Horn's indifferent gaze, the man's figure seemed to catch fire. It twisted and vanished.
Then the next phantom appeared.
The madam gripped the young prostitute by the hair and ground her toes beneath the sharp heel of her shoe. She cursed furiously, spittle flying and ruining the girl's heavy makeup.
"You ungrateful little money pit! Tell me, what can you do besides sell yourself? Get out there and take customers, like I told you!"
The middle-aged woman, spewing venom, had completely forgotten the torment she'd suffered when she first entered the trade. No—if anything, she remembered it all too well. That was why she wanted others to suffer even more than she had.
Those who'd been caught in the rain had to knock away everyone else's umbrella.
And so, as she drank in the suffering of others, she found it utterly sweet.
The wound on the girl's chest, where her previous customer had bitten her, oozed red pus. Tears ran down her tender face, which the thick layer of lead-white powder couldn't disguise.
Beneath Horn's still-indifferent gaze, their figures twisted and warped as well, drifting away like smoke.
Another phantom appeared at once.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
A figure trembled violently on the bed. His left hand, knuckles white, clutched the sheets in a crumpled fist, while his right pressed hard against his chest, trying to stifle his cough so he wouldn't wake his wife and child beside him.
His wife worked as a laundress, but no matter how hard she tried, she earned barely enough to get by. Their child was too young to be sent to work in a factory. And after an accident left him plagued by illness, the factory had fired him. They were barely scraping by.
So he reached beneath his pillow and pulled out the divine Gift his former coworker had forced on him long ago, claiming it could cure every disease.
After a long while, he closed his eyes and opened his mouth.
His cough gradually eased, and hunger surged through him like a tide.
Cool moonlight shone through a hole in the ceiling. The reflection of scarlet eyes appeared on the now-empty glass bottle. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, where sorrow and ecstasy mingled.
Then another, and another, and another...
Endless tears streamed around Horn, as if millions of people were weeping and screaming. Amid the waves of suffering, a devout chant arose.
"Let the one who brings the Burnt Offering skin the offering and cut it into pieces. Let him put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire."
"Then the priest shall arrange the pieces, the head, and the fat on the wood burning on the altar."
"But the entrails and legs of the Burnt Offering must be washed with water. Then the priest shall burn it all on the altar as a Burnt Offering, an aromatic offering by fire to Baal."
The priest's child lay naked on the altar. Tears ran down the knife gripped in his father's hand and fell onto his tender chest. A ram licked the blood streaming from the altar, pure delight in its scarlet, sideways-slitted eyes.
The tears kept flowing, into a history more ancient and forbidden still.
Before a bizarre statue of a flayed bull, flames flickered through the rising smoke.
One by one, children whose throats had been slit and hearts cut out were laid on their backs beneath the idol, atop the pyre, in front of the earthen sacrificial platform, awaiting the priest's arrival.
As with countless ceremonies before it, this rite was held in the Oak Forest at midnight. Flutes had to blare, drums thunder, and screams ring out. The dancers, stripped of their skins, and the powerful priestesses of the Sisterhood of Knots would preside over the ceremony together. The parents sacrificing their children to the god had to stand by and watch. They were allowed to give in to their grief and weep bitterly, but they were not allowed to look away.
The more tears shed during the ritual, the better. Those tears represented rain: the more that flowed, the more rain there would be the following year. And more rain meant the god was more pleased.
For offering their children as sacrifices to the god was a privilege, an honor bestowed only upon families of noble blood.
They believed that if they could make a covenant with the deity they worshipped, the blood they shed would surely bring them more comfortable and peaceful lives.
"The offering of a human as a Burnt Offering may be accepted before Baal. He shall lay his hand upon the head of the offering, and the Burnt Offering shall be accepted to atone for him."
"He shall slaughter it before the deity. The one making the sacrifice shall present the blood and sprinkle it around the holy altar, upon the soil of the roots, and upon the ancient rocks."
A rasping voice that turned the stomach rang out. Saliba wore a white robe dyed red with blood, clinging to his body like a second skin. In a harsh, awkward tongue, he joyfully chanted and prayed before the altar.
Tears of delight glimmered in his eyes.
"Who shall skin the offering? The one who confesses his sins! He shall skin the offering and cut it into pieces!"
"Thus shall his sins be washed away, his life made long, and his works brought to completion."
"His sins shall be forgiven!"
"Forgiven!" "Forgiven!" "Forgiven!"...
The acolytes joyfully echoed the cries, their cheers answering the cheers. Then flames sprang up. The blood of the innocent took the place of the guilty person's death, and their beautiful prayers rose with the fragrant smoke. Above, dark clouds gathered in the heavens, and thunder rumbled.
A storm was coming.
When the ritual was complete, the blood-soaked fields would grow abundant, and the officiating priest, cleansed of sin, would ascend.
Drunk on the ecstasy of their imminent triumph, Saliba frantically tore off his robe, taking the skin stuck to it with him. He felt no pain. Only his pounding heart, growing louder and louder, sang out in praise.
Scales wriggled out of his mangled flesh, one after another, proclaiming that he had cast off his mortal nature and was transforming, step by step, into a noble, immortal body!
And yet, tears still fell.
Through all that resentment and hatred, all that pain and sacrifice.
And from the corner of Horn's eye, as he watched every tragedy unfold.
Why had he borne witness to it all?
Because he was the spark that set everything in motion—the one who interfered with predetermined fate, the seed of change who brought transformation to the willing and the unwilling alike.
"The ruler of the Kingdom of Tears," "the Demon King painted with the tears of parents and the blood of children," "the messenger of pain and sacrifice"...
These were all names for this divine standing. At its core, it was the blazing purifying fire kindled upon the ritual altar.
The fire of sacrifice: Moloch!
Having understood his own nature, he faced the river of pain formed from gathered tears, stretching endlessly across history, and the tiny spark cried out with all its might:
"Hey! Can you see me? I'm right here!"
Before you continue