Chapter Summaries

Isaac stayed in the room beside Halperin’s and spent the night on edge after sensing an unseen danger. He saw a pale face repeatedly rise outside his third-floor window, then heard something approaching in the hallway, leaving him surrounded by unexplained activity.

• Glen left Isaac in the room beside Halperin’s, and Isaac found a bag containing canned broth and black bread outside his door.
• Isaac ate a few slices of bread and prepared to spend the night awake, keeping his revolver, letter opener, and sword cane close.
• Isaac felt what he recognized as Spiritual Alertness and watched the room while holding the twenty-sided die, wondering whether Carlo could sense it.
• A pale half-face rose above the windowsill to watch Isaac, withdrew, and appeared again, while Isaac stayed still and tried to judge its intentions.
• Isaac heard a floorboard creak in the hallway as something seemed to approach, leaving him aware of activity both outside his window and beyond his door.

Isaac was trapped between a long-limbed corpse climbing through his window and a figure battering down his door. The executioner attacked Spider-Man instead of Isaac, leaving Isaac unsure why the two creatures were fighting.

• Isaac heard one creature outside his door and another watching him through the window, and Carlo failed to help him sense what was in the hallway.
• Carlo identified the window creature as a weak corpse driven by a Foul Spirit, nicknamed Spider-Man, and warned Isaac when it began climbing inside.
• When the door crashed open, Spider-Man snapped off its own hand and hurled it at Isaac, who rolled away from the attack.
• A sack-headed executioner carrying a great axe entered and dragged Spider-Man back from the window.
• The executioner struck Spider-Man twice with its axe while Isaac watched in confusion.

Isaac watched the Executioner destroy a spider-man that had climbed into his room, then learned from Glen that it was likely sent by a group of former Cult members. The chapter left Isaac carrying the spider-man’s severed hand as Carlo wondered whether Halperin had sent the creature.

• The Executioner chopped the spider-man into pieces and left Isaac’s room, while Isaac hid the severed hand beneath a blanket.
• Glen told Isaac that the Executioner was a guard created through the Cult’s Great Arts and identified the spider-man as a crudely made walking corpse.
• Glen explained that former Cult members had broken away a year earlier and sometimes attacked the Cult, and he suspected they had sent the spider-man to probe the base.
• Glen told Isaac to sleep in a room next door, and Isaac bundled up the severed hand and left his room.
• Carlo asked Isaac whether Halperin might have sent the spider-man.

Isaac questioned Halperin about the messenger and learned that the elder opposed Glen’s faction and was being held under house arrest. Halperin asked Isaac to kill him, but Isaac became suspicious that Glen might have arranged their meeting and withheld his decision.

• Isaac used taps to question Halperin, who confirmed he had sent the long-limbed messenger with the severed hand.
• Halperin confirmed the executioner had stopped his messenger and that he was not allied with Glen and the others.
• Halperin told Isaac to kill him and confirmed that Glen’s group was holding him there.
• Isaac asked what he would gain and noted that killing Halperin would not serve his goal of joining the Cult for protection and longevity.
• Isaac questioned why Glen had placed him next door to Halperin and allowed them to meet, then suspected the request might be part of Glen’s plan.

Isaac refused Halperin’s request to kill him after learning Halperin claimed to be a lich, and reasoned that Glen might be trying to make an outsider bear the cost of Halperin’s death. In the corridor, Glen admitted he had intended to use Isaac, leaving his purpose unclear.

• Isaac questioned Halperin’s request and learned that Halperin said he could return from the dead because he was a lich.
• Isaac concluded that Glen might want Halperin dead but was seeking an outsider to carry the risk, and he refused to kill Halperin without a more convincing explanation.
• Isaac left Halperin’s room and found Glen waiting in the corridor.
• Glen asked what Halperin had told Isaac, and Isaac said Halperin claimed he could return from the dead.
• Glen said Isaac should not believe Halperin, then admitted he had intended to use Isaac when he let him stay there.

Isaac confronted Glen about the Cult’s plan to use him to kill Halperin, then left the apartment after demanding a clear answer from the Cult’s leaders. He met Li Jiehao and Fenri outside and revealed that Carlo had ordered him to withdraw.

• Glen explained that the Cult wanted Halperin dead but needed an outsider with a plausible reason to kill him.
• Isaac accused the Cult of using him and told Glen he would leave with the ring unless the Cult gave him a clear answer.
• Glen said he would consult his superiors, but Isaac immediately left the apartment and told Glen where to leave a message.
• Glen let Isaac go and decided to evacuate the location in case the Joint Investigation Bureau was closing in.
• Isaac met Li Jiehao and Fenri in an alley, asked Fenri to check for followers, and said Carlo had ordered him to withdraw.

Isaac and Li Jiehao returned to the office after abandoning negotiations with Glen, and Carlo explained why leaving would put pressure on the other side. Carlo then discussed Halperin’s apparent lichdom and described the vampire-ruled Southern Territory, where nobles of the blood race ruled over ordinary people and slavery was widespread.

• Isaac returned the twenty-sided die to Carlo and questioned why he had been told to leave Glen before their talks had reached a dead end.
• Carlo explained that Glen could not make decisions himself and that holding the ring would force the people who wanted it to approach them directly.
• Carlo identified Hailin as Halperin and said he seemed to have succeeded in becoming a lich.
• Isaac mentioned that his father had once spoken of meeting a lich, and Carlo joked that Isaac suspected him of being one.
• Li Jiehao asked about vampires, and Carlo explained that the Church of the Holy Blood ruled the Southern Territory through transformed vampire nobles.
• Carlo said that slavery was more extensive in the Southern Territory, prompting Li Jiehao to wonder whether it might fight the Western Territory.

Isaac read about Vista’s parliament and its debate over repealing the Corn Laws while waiting alone at Carlo’s office. Andy, a boy who delivered newspapers and gathered homework, arrived with a report of a massacre at Elias Nursing Home.

• Isaac read that the upper house had passed the repeal of the Corn Laws and reflected on Vista’s complicated parliamentary process.
• Andy knocked on Carlo’s door and introduced himself to Isaac as the squad leader Carlo had appointed.
• Andy took food from the storage room, then told Isaac someone had sent him to report an important case.
• Isaac read Andy’s note about a night massacre at Elias Nursing Home, which had been cordoned off that morning.

Isaac investigated reports of a murder at Elias Nursing Home after Carlo sent him there in disguise, but he found the entrance guarded by the City Police Force and sensed something watching him. The chapter ended with Isaac trying and failing to charm open a locked back door using the die.

• Andy told Isaac that Andy Number Two had been turned away from Elias Nursing Home after reports of a murder and multiple deaths.
• James delivered Carlo’s message and disguise props, including a fake beard, an overcoat, a bowler hat, and the twenty-sided die.
• Isaac disguised himself, took his revolver and ring, and walked to Elias Nursing Home without his cane.
• Isaac saw police officers guarding the nursing home, then sensed that something was watching him from the building’s direction.
• Isaac tried the locked back door and requested support with the die, but his charm check failed.

Isaac entered Elias Nursing Home after overhearing officers discuss a workshop where corpses had been processed into walking corpses. He reached the third floor, where he found blood covering the corridor and several chalk outlines marking bodies.

• Isaac overheard two officers say the nursing home basement contained a workshop for making walking corpses and that the Joint Investigation Bureau had already investigated it.
• Carlo explained that Elias Nursing Home was privately run and that investigators had detained its director and senior staff while they looked into the foundation behind it.
• Isaac used his letter opener to release a window latch and climbed into the kitchen.
• Isaac quietly passed a police officer and climbed to the third floor, where bloodstains and seven or eight chalk body outlines covered the corridor.

Isaac investigated the grisly third-floor massacre and entered the room where the killer seemed to have emerged. After the door shut behind him, a strange ringing and darkness revealed a face forming from blood-red pigment inches away.

• Isaac hid in the stairwell while two police officers discussed signs that an other species had slaughtered the victims and the Joint Investigation Bureau would take over.
• Isaac examined the corridor’s increasingly fragmented body outlines and concluded that the killer had come from the room at its end.
• Isaac entered the dark room and found its walls covered in a damp, mottled dark-red coating.
• The door closed behind Isaac, and a deep ringing distorted his hearing and vision as the room fell dark.
• Isaac lit another match and saw a face of bleeding pigment hanging from the ceiling close to him.

A letter from Nehir Elesha described how a ritual left her haunted by an ever-present entity, and she begged Schuster to help her. In the present, Isaac survived a disturbing vision with Carlo’s Sanity Save and learned how the safeguard worked.

• Nehir Elesha wrote that after completing a ritual, she saw an entity everywhere and pleaded with Schuster to help her close the door she had opened.
• Isaac struggled to distinguish a face before him from a false memory as it seemed to invade his recollections.
• Carlo triggered a Sanity Save, and the die landed on 3, causing pain that dispelled the face.
• Isaac left the room and asked Carlo what had happened.
• Carlo explained that a Sanity Save spent Sanity Points to offset mental corruption and that sanity could later recover.

Isaac questioned Carlo about the demon he had encountered at the massacre scene and learned how demons were summoned and behaved. He concluded that either the demon had not caused the killings, or someone had instructed it to kill.

• Isaac asked Carlo to explain the entity that had interfered with his memory and perception, and Carlo called it a demon.
• Isaac questioned whether the demon had caused the massacre, when it had arrived, and why the City Police Force seemed unaware of it.
• Carlo explained that, in the narrow mystical sense, demons had to be summoned and could not be effectively restrained without knowing their true names.
• Carlo said an uncommanded demon had no clear goal or malice and mainly changed its surroundings through cognitive interference.
• Isaac concluded that either the demon had not killed the victims, or someone had summoned and instructed it to do so.

Isaac investigated why the demon had attacked him and discovered it was following him, then searched the nursing home director’s office for records. He learned that Nehir Elesha had lived in the demon’s room and that Carlo had once received a letter from him asking for help.

• Carlo explained that the demon’s spirit form had forcibly triggered Isaac’s Half Spirit Vision and said it had waited for Isaac before approaching.
• Carlo sent Isaac to inspect the director’s office, and the demon opened its lock after Carlo told Isaac what to say.
• Isaac found admission registers showing that the demon’s room had been unoccupied until he reached a record from seven years earlier.
• Isaac discovered that Nehir Elesha had lived in the room and read that he had been referred for suspected dementia and long-term care.
• Carlo recognized Nehir Elesha and told Isaac that Nehir had written him a letter asking for help nine years earlier.

Isaac and Carlo investigated the nursing home’s history and uncovered a likely Ghoul Cult takeover after Elesha killed its founder seven years earlier. Carlo revealed that Glen was among the victims of the recent massacre, leaving Isaac shocked.

• Isaac learned that Elesha had been brought to the nursing home by the City Police Force and had stayed in a third-floor room with his demon.
• Isaac and Carlo discovered that Elesha had killed the nursing home’s founder, Ailias, and then stabbed himself seven years ago.
• Isaac concluded that the Ghoul Cult may have taken over the nursing home after Ailias’s death, using its basement as a zombie workshop and the upper floors as cover.
• Carlo told Isaac that Glen was among the massacre victims and that only his head was reasonably intact.

Isaac investigated the nursing home where Glen and other Ghoul Cult members had died, then escaped the Joint Investigation Bureau as a demon continued following him. Halperin appeared to meet him, but the demon repeatedly tore the lich apart before he could finish speaking.

• Isaac learned that Glen had died at the nursing home and suspected Halperin or a demon had killed the Ghoul Cult members there.
• Isaac and Carlo heard Joint Investigation Bureau agents arrive, so Isaac slipped out through a kitchen window; Carlo’s check let him pass Andrew Grayson unnoticed.
• Isaac asked Carlo whether the demon was still following him, and Carlo confirmed it had not left his side.
• Halperin appeared in the alley and thanked Isaac, but an unseen force repeatedly struck him and scattered him into luminous mist.
• Halperin reassembled and asked Isaac what deal he had made with the demon, then was torn apart again before Isaac could answer.

Isaac arranged to meet Halperin that night, then returned to the office, where a distorted demon appeared and begged Carlo for help. Carlo questioned it about a ritual and its identity, then prepared to test its claim that it was Nehir Elesha.

• Halperin tried to arrange a meeting with Isaac, but something repeatedly destroyed his head and body until he fled.
• Isaac agreed to visit Halperin at the apartment building that night and returned to the office first.
• Isaac found Carlo, Li Jiehao, and Fenri at the office, where a warped demon appeared and pleaded with Carlo to save it.
• Carlo questioned the demon about a ritual, but it said it could not remember anything.
• Carlo helped Li Jiehao recover from the demon's effects with a die roll, then asked the demon what it was.
• The demon identified itself as Nehir Elesha, and Carlo took out ten-sided dice to check its claim.

Carlo used a successful check to give the nameless demon the true name Nehir Elesha, restoring its human form and helping Elesha regain some stability. He explained that Elesha’s soul had filled the empty demon after his death, leaving him both a demon and Nehir Elesha.

• Carlo succeeded at a check and named the demon Nehir Elesha, causing its distorted form to become an elderly man.
• Isaac brought Elesha a blanket, and Carlo explained to Li Jiehao that Elesha was a scholar who had summoned something dangerous.
• Elesha recalled writing to Carlo and traveling to Vista, while Carlo recounted how Elesha had been mistaken for a homeless man, sent to a nursing home, and killed Ailias and himself.
• Carlo told Elesha that he had possessed the nameless demon after his death, and that the demon was now a demon whose true name was Nehir Elesha.

Elesha learned that he had become a demon who still perceived himself as human, and Carlo advised him to stay in Vista while he stabilized. Elesha then recalled that Halperin had commanded him to kill Halperin and the people around him, explaining the demon’s attacks on the Ghoul Cult and Halperin.

• Carlo explained that Elesha’s body and needs followed his perception, but strong emotions or attempts to deny his existence could make him lose control.
• Elesha admitted he could not remember whether he had properly told his apprentices he was leaving, and Carlo warned that they might think he had died.
• Carlo advised Elesha to remain in Vista because returning to the Eastern Territory in his current state was unrealistic.
• Li Jiehao asked Elesha what color clothes he liked, then left with Fenri to get them.
• Isaac asked Elesha about his memories, and Elesha recalled a frail, old voice ordering him to kill the speaker and the people around him.
• Isaac concluded that Halperin had given the demon the command to kill him and the Ghoul Cult members, causing the demon to attack Halperin again after his resurrection.

Isaac met with Halperin, who explained how Annabelle seized control of the Ghoul Cult in Vista and asked to ally with the Joint Investigation Bureau to defeat her faction. Halperin offered to make the Cult less dangerous if he regained leadership, but Isaac questioned whether his offer was valuable enough.

• Halperin told Isaac that Annabelle had stolen and destroyed his phylactery, leaving him incapacitated while she controlled the Cult in his name.
• Halperin explained that Glen and others wanted him dead because he knew their secrets, while Annabelle wanted to keep him alive for his usefulness.
• Halperin asked Isaac to help the Joint Investigation Bureau eliminate Annabelle's faction and revealed that they sought the source of the Tree in the Lake at Lake Pote.
• Isaac pointed out that the Bureau already knew about the Tree in the Lake and Lake Pote, weakening Halperin's proposed bargaining chip.
• Halperin offered to return the Cult to a less harmful state if he regained leadership, promising that it would steal corpses instead of killing the living.