In his memories, Konrad Curze had been somewhat paler than this man. But within moments, he realized that the black-robed, crowned figure before him was no living thing. Staring at that smile, Horus Lupercal sighed, stepped forward, and spoke softly.
"Do you know what I am?"
The Night Haunter raised an eyebrow, spread his hands ambiguously, and shrugged without saying anything. That reaction was, in itself, an answer.
Suppressing the increasingly powerful urge to flee born of his conscience, Horus asked again, "Then, you came to—"
"—collect a debt?"
The Night Haunter cut him off at precisely the right moment. His drawn-out tone was frivolous, but his pitch-black eyes sharpened in an instant.
"That was roughly what you meant to say, wasn't it?"
He asked the question while staring directly into Horus's face.
But Horus did not answer. He could not.
Konrad Curze sneered and casually removed the crown from his head, holding it in one hand.
The fading moonlight streamed down, making his otherwise plain, even somewhat tattered black robe appear as smooth as silk. Yet in the next instant, it began to tremble. The shadows twisted like living things, exuding astonishing brutality and killing intent hidden beneath a veneer of calm.
Horus Lupercal suddenly realized that he could not look away.
This sight, so strange it bordered on evil, robbed him of the choice to avert his eyes. The killing intent that was gradually spreading was replaced by an even thicker stench of blood.
Without him noticing, the corridor's silver changed, becoming ancient and desolate. Nearly shattered stone paving replaced the metal floor. Spired towers shrouded in darkness pierced through the walls, grim as blades slicing open flesh. Fear grew madly across their walls, long and stretched like a plant, or like exposed blood vessels and tendons. Gargoyle