Jonathan woke up choking on his own spit and the reek of rot, moonlight slicing through his foggy vision like a razor. His chest heaved like he'd been underwater for hours, or like the Righteous Blade had just finished squeezing the last bits of life from his lungs. The alley walls around him wept rusty tears, and the bitter stench of memory-acid burned in his nostrils, clinging to the back of his throat like a parasite.
The living dagger throbbed in his white-knuckled grip—its edge humming with the souls it had devoured, their half-heard screams echoing under his skin like worms burrowing through flesh.
"Fuck," he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut against a wave of nausea. He felt the Blade's consciousness stir inside him, cold and ancient as a glacier, whispering directly into the meat of his brain: *Rise. Rule. Remember.*
Metal teeth sank deeper into his palm, drawing blood that sizzled on contact. The dagger knew what terrified him most: complete surrender to its hunger.
Jonathan's other hand—part rotting flesh, part grafted meat—trembled violently. He couldn't stop seeing that hollow-eyed kid, staring up at him, waiting for salvation. The boy's broken thank-you still echoed in his skull. *No. Not you, you sick piece of shit,* he thought, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. *Not this fucking time.*
He hauled himself upright, knees scraping through a layer of ash and what felt like shattered skull fragments. The Blade's voice slithered through his mind again: *You've always been me, Jonathan. Always will be.*
"SHUT UP!" he snarled, hurling the dagger into the alley wall with all his strength. The weapon hit brick with a meaty thunk, quivering as its blade sank in until only those pulsing, living runes showed on its surface. For one heartbeat, the universe went still.
Then Jonathan lunged forward, ripping the Blade free with a growl. Steel met flesh—his own—and he gasped as a shard of someone else's memory sliced into him like a fishhook through gristle. The world tilted sideways. He gripped the dagger with both hands and slammed its hilt against his ribcage. Pain exploded like a black flower blooming beneath his skin, but underneath it, something crystallized: his own goddamn defiance.
"Not. Today," he spat through lips cracked and crusted with dried blood.
The Blade hissed, twisting in his grip like a living thing. Its runes glowed brighter—hungry—and Jonathan felt the crushing weight of every sacrifice etched into its core: priests who'd force-fed Hue to screaming orphans, nobles who'd jerked off while watching death matches, cultists who'd painted the gutters with blood they called sacred. He staggered backward, jamming both hands against his eye sockets until the dancing specters dimmed to nothing.
In that moment of silence, Jonathan clawed his way back to himself. He dropped to one knee and forced a ragged breath: in... and out. The Blade's insidious song faded, replaced by the jagged thunder of his own heart.
Lifting the dagger, he watched its unnatural warmth drain away. The metal pulsed weakly, like a bruised thing, but no longer demanded his soul as tribute. He slid it—carefully, with something like reverence—into the sheath at his side.
*I am Jonathan fucking Simpson. Mind-Warden. Hunter.*
---
Dawn hadn't even broken before whispers of last night's bloodbath slithered through Ironhollow's guts faster than the boneflies' miserable dirge. In the Whorl Market, a vendor found his precious vials exploded from within, glistening entrails of glass scattered across his stall; down in the Cathedral's dank crypts, acolytes woke up screaming about a man with a blade made of stolen memories. Each retelling transformed rumor into gospel: the Righteous Blade himself had risen in the filthy streets, wrestled his inner demon... and walked away whole.
Lady Elsira Mortlock's teeth chattered like castanets as she huddled in her bone-laced parlor, pouring out the story to Lord Ralf de Vyr.
"He held the Blade in his bare hands," she whispered, her fingers trembling around a goblet of bloodwine. "And bent its will back on itself like it was nothing but a child's toy."
"The stupid bastard," Ralf muttered, but his own hand shook as he reached for the decanter. "Who the hell else could tame that fucking nightmare?"
Below them, in the Dissonant Covenant's flesh-gallery, Veyl threw a severed head against the wall, spraying his acolytes with gore as he ranted: "If he stands against the Blade, he stands against everything we've built! I want every trace of weakness purged from your miserable bodies by nightfall!"
Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Crimson Cipher hunched over his workbench, etching fresh sigils onto an infant's skull helmet, chanting over bubbling vials of stolen Hue: "The Mind-Warden will come sniffing around our communion. Despite our Favours to him, but the mad man knows not mercy only judgements. We need to be ready to rip his fucking spine out."
By midday, blood-spattered parchments appeared across the city, nailed to walls with rusted spikes:
*To Jonathan H. Simpson—Righteous Blade or ballsy imposter—*
*Bring your blade and whatever truth you think you've found to the Throne of Broken Memories.*
*All factions will bear witness.*
*At dusk, under the Blood Eclipse.*
*Don't be late.*
---
That evening, Jon stood beneath the shattered portico of the old cathedral, alone except for his memories. Moonlight carved the crumbling columns into skeletal fingers clawing desperately at the night sky. His cloak—woven from his own data-hooks and memory-cloth—thrashed around him like a dying spirit. The living dagger hung silent at his hip, pacified... for now.
He paused before the dais they now called the Throne of Broken Memories, its surface gleaming wetly with rusted iron spikes and fragments of polished bone. Perched atop it sat a thing that used to be human—the Forgotten Champion, once the Archivist who'd guided Jon to the perfect arithmetic. Now, the pulsing hue-Crystal kept that corpse twitching like a puppet on invisible strings. Jon's gaze softened. Behind every sacrifice was someone's kid, someone's family, someone's face that deserved better than oblivion.
He started climbing the throne's blood-slick steps. Each rung was studded with names carved into strips of flayed skin; each step represented another life devoured by the city's endless hunger. At the summit, he turned to face the gathered factions under their straining banners.
Crimson Cipher cultists, their black-inked flesh writhing with freshly carved sigils.
Dissonant Covenant zealots, faces twisted in religious ecstasy as they clustered around Veyl like maggots on meat.
Order of the Veiled Scepter nobles, with Caranth's silver ceremonial claws catching the torchlight.
Metallica Inquisitors, battered but standing tall, their cross-shields raised defiantly.
A handful of Mind-Wardens—Silas, Scriv, Corrin—standing apart in their ragged cloaks, waiting.
The crowd fell silent as Jonathan cleared his throat, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade through tendon.
"I'm Jonathan Simpson," he began simply. His words hung in the chill air like smoke. "I held the Righteous Blade against my own throat and didn't break. I crushed its will... so I could forge something better."
A shout erupted from somewhere in the crowd: "Tell us your fucking terms, Mind-Warden!"
Jonathan looked first to Veyl, whose obsidian eyes flickered with naked contempt. Then to Mistress Evaris, whose cracked porcelain mask couldn't hide her trembling. Finally to Silas, whose skeletal frame shook with the weight of terrible truth.
"Your bullshit doctrines have bled this city drier than a corpse in the sun," he said, voice tight with disgust. "You've drunk power-Hue like cheap wine, jerked off to flesh-art atrocities, and summoned demons with words you call sacred. Tonight, every last one of you will either prove your creed is worth a damn—or crawl away and die."
He beckoned the Speaker forward with a curl of his fingers. Draped in infant skulls with ink dripping from self-inflicted wounds, the cultist approached carrying a vial of pure Hue—their so-called salvation. "Behold your truth," the Speaker intoned, voice bouncing off the cathedral arches.
Jonathan tapped the dagger's hilt twice against the throne. Reality rippled outward like a stone dropped in still water. The vial's glass fractured with a sound like breaking bones, spilling vapor that wailed like tortured children. The Speaker inhaled greedily—and immediately convulsed, drowning in memories of every life he'd stolen to make his precious elixir. He collapsed, tears carving black trenches down his cheeks.
"Your salvation tastes like despair," Jonathan said quietly, watching the man writhe as the gas ate into his brain. "Go ahead. Embrace your fucking truth."
Next, Veyl strutted forward, offering chaos as his creed. Mistress Evaris and Caranth held their breath as the covenant leader raised a skeletal hand, tattooed with shifting symbols.
"Madness is our order!" Veyl snarled, spittle flying from blackened teeth.
Jonathan pulled the Cloak of Memories tighter around his shoulders. In its shimmering folds surfaced vivid visions of infant jars and hair-woven tapestries—Veyl's "art." He swept the cloak's edge across Veyl's face. The zealot's scream tore through the night air as his own art burrowed into his flesh, consuming him from within until only bone shards and whispered pleas remained.
"Chaos always devours the kids it promises to save," Jonathan observed coldly.
High Scepter Caranth was last. His silver claws clicked against the bone-marbled floor like nervous spiders. "We purge the rot," he declared with practiced dignity.
Jonathan's mechanical arm hummed temporal frequency in response, producing a low chord that rattled teeth and bones glitching reality. The plaza's stones flickered with scenes from the Spire of Law—magistrates taking bribes from nobles, children branded for their parents' debts, laws literally written in blood.
Caranth fell to his knees, his ornate armor cracking under invisible pressure. "I... forgive... myself," he rasped, his mask splitting as he sobbed silently.
Jonathan gave a single nod. "Mercy comes with a price tag: remembering every fucked-up thing you've done."
---
Silence blanketed the cathedral. Jonathan descended from the throne and approached Silas the Archivist. The old man's hollow eyes met his, unflinching.
"You gathered shards of a curse and called it wisdom," Jonathan said. "Now we forge something real." He pressed his free hand to Silas's withered palm, carving a counter-rune into soft flesh. Silas gasped as memories flooded back uncorrupted—betrayals and hopes and loves. Tears streaked his weathered face as he whispered, "W--what.. I remember everything."
Jonathan turned to the remaining Mind-Wardens. "Join me or get the hell out." Scriv, Corrin, and a handful more stepped forward, taking his hands. Together they formed a circle around the throne. Jon spoke the new oath, voice steady:
"We mend time, heal memory, protect every goddamn soul."
One by one, they repeated the words—each syllable a promise that rippled outward, tearing apart the crimson haze of the Bloody moon like tissue paper.
---
From the crowd's edge, two former cultists carried forward a hollowed boy on a makeshift stretcher. His veins still pulsed with blue-black corruption, but his eyes were clear as glass. Jon knelt beside him.
"Your memories belong to you now, kid," he said, placing a carved bone talisman around the child's neck. The boy clutched it, voice surprisingly firm as he replied:
"I'll teach them what I remember. Everything. The good parts too."
A single nod from Johnathan—the first spark of genuine hope lighting those hollow eyes.
---
By dawn's watery light, faction banners burned in a communal pyre, the fractured throne was reforged into a meeting table, and Johnathan's sigils—now a single spiral surrounded by the Mind-Warden's emblem—glistened wetly on his chest like a fresh brand.
The factions scattered to rebuild something from the ashes:
Crimson Cipher alchemists began brewing healing balms from purified Hue.
Dissonant Covenant flesh-artists sculpted memorials for the forgotten, using their own skin as canvas.
Order of the Veiled Scepter senators drafted laws banning childhood sacrifice, their hands shaking with guilt.
Inquisition priests balanced their sanctified syringes with something resembling compassion.
That evening, Jon and his council—Mind-Wardens, reformed cultists, penitent nobles—gathered around the new Table of Unity beneath the cathedral's vaulted ceiling. At its center stood an obsidian monolith where Silas carefully inscribed the first line of what he called the "True Arithmetic":
"One soul, one memory, held in trust by all."
Outside, Ironhollow's clocks ticked in unison for the first time in centuries—a steady heartbeat of hope replacing centuries of decay. The blood-mist thinned to nothing; the constant dirge of boneflies finally fell silent.
Jon placed the living dagger at the monolith's base. Its edge no longer hummed with insatiable hunger, but pulsed with purpose. He met each face around the table—marked by grief, scarred by choices, but alive with resolve.
"This," he said softly, " is the first real piece of the perfect arithmetic, righteousness, their are seven more to go, till we break free from this prison rotting city that has imprisoned our ancestors for millenniums, and this is our first real fucking victory. May we never forget how we bled for it."
And as the reclaimed bell tolled once more—its voice clear and strong—the city seemed to inhale deeply, ready to remember together, forging something like strength from the bloody fragments of despair.