I opened my eyes to a garden.

  A garden - serene, almost impossibly beautiful. Flowering vines climbed stone walls that surrounded the space like a courtyard hidden in some forgotten estate. Rose bushes bloomed in impossible colors - deep purples that shouldn't exist, blues too vivid to be natural. Ivy cascaded down ancient brick. The air smelled of earth and petals and something faintly metallic.

  The walls surrounding the garden flickered at the edges. Blurred. As if reality couldn't quite decide whether they existed or not.

  I breathed a long sigh of relief. One filled with both mental and physical exhaustion.

  Thank God, it worked.

  I'd entered her mind - her soul made manifest. The place where the divine and consciousness collided.

  The space was empty except for a single figure - a young girl sitting on a weathered tree stump in the center of the garden - isolated from the rest of the garden. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. At her feet lay a mirror, its surface cracked into a spiderweb of fractures.

  I walked toward her slowly, boots silent on grass that felt too soft to be real.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  Her head snapped up. Blonde hair framed a face still young, still human despite everything happening outside. Her eyes met mine - and I saw the black pooling in them like ink, tears streaming down her cheeks and hitting the ground in dark droplets. Where they landed, the grass withered, spreading in web-like patterns of decay.

  "Who... who are you?" Her voice was refined despite the trembling - the careful diction of nobility even in despair.

  "Just an angel."

  Her eyes widened. "Truly? Are you telling the truth?"

  I tilted my head slightly. "I think so. Depends on what you'd call an angel."

  She studied me for a long moment, then shook her head. "You don't appear frightening."

  "That's good. I'd certainly hate to be called frightening."

  "...What shall happen now?" she whispered, formality cracking under fear.

  I looked at the walls. Cracks were forming - spreading like lightning through stone. Black chains poured through the fractures, writhing like living things as they reached across the garden toward the girl.

  "Depends." I gestured at the approaching corruption. "Do you trust me?"

  She shook her head after a moment. "Non. I do not."

  "Smart." I kept my gaze on the advancing chains. My eyes grew listless. "But we're running out of time."

  One chain snaked forward with terrible speed. It wrapped around her arm.

  She flinched, breath hitching.

  "I'll rephrase the question, then."

  I steadied myself.

  "Can you trust me?"

  She looked at me - at my calm demeanor, my steady posture - and something in her eyes shifted. Finally, she nodded.

  "I am... infected, am I not?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "With the Nightlurker plauge?"

  "Yes."

  Her hands clutched her dress. "Did I... did I do this to myself?"

  "You did."

  "But why would I-" Her voice broke. "Why would I ever-"

  "It doesn't matter anymore." I glanced down at the cracked mirror at her feet. "I'm here to cure you of your sin. To heal you of your ailment. Nothing more, nothing less."

  A reflection stared back. But it wasn't hers.

  It was almost her. Same face. Same blonde hair. Same features arranged in nearly identical configuration.

  But uncanny.

  The eyes were too wide. The smile stretched a fraction too far, pulling skin that shouldn't move that way. It mimicked her expression perfectly - too perfectly, like a painting that captured every detail but missed something essential about being human.

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  The thing in the mirror watched me, observing my every move.

  It grinned - lips peeling back to reveal teeth that were just slightly too uniform, too white, too many.

  I met its gaze with my own.

  One that bled red.

  The smile faltered. Twisted into a frown that looked even more wrong than the grin.

  Its eyes glowed in rage, watching me with even more intensity than before.

  I only smiled mockingly in return.

  It recognizes me, doesn't it?

  I raised my leg above the mirror, savoring the taste of its enraged expression.

  Your only a low-level demon.

  I crushed the mirror under my foot.

  Don't get cocky.

  Glass shattered. The reflection screamed - not with sound but with pressure, the kind that made reality bend - before dissolving into black smoke.

  The garden shook. The walls crumbled faster. Chains erupted from every crack, surging toward the girl like a tidal wave.

  I pulled my revolver from inside my coat and aimed it at her head.

  She didn't flinch. Just looked up at me with those black-pooled eyes and asked quietly, "Why can I not see your face?"

  I smiled. "I'm an angel. Angels don't need faces."

  Her expression softened into something sad and knowing beyond her years. "Perhaps, you are right." she said quietly, "But won't the angels need faces more than anyone. For how else would they remember they were once human?"

  I smiled in return.

  "Touche', young lady. Touche'"

  I steadied my aim, the screeching from the cracking walls growing louder by the second.

  "What's your name?"

  "Céleste," she said. "Céleste Beaumont."

  "Thank you, Céleste." My finger found the trigger. "Have a good sleep."

  She smiled brightly.

  "Merci, monsieur angel."

  I pulled the trigger.

  ---

  I gasped awake, vision swimming back into focus.

  The ballroom. Marble floor beneath me. Smoke and silence pressing down like a physical weight.

  The black mass was melting.

  It dissolved like wax under flame, shadows streaming away into nothing until only two figures remained in the center of the destruction - me, and the girl.

  Céleste lay unconscious on the marble, pale skin unmarked except for the thin red line on my cheek where my blade had kissed her. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. She was alive.

  And completely naked.

  I adverted my eyes.

  I really need to get paid more for this.

  I shoved myself upright, legs shaking, and looked at the nearest noble - a man in his fifties frozen in place with his mouth hanging open.

  "Jacket." I said through the mask's vox. "Now."

  He scrambled to comply, nearly tripping over himself as he shrugged off his coat and thrust it toward me.

  I took it and draped it over Céleste's unconscious form, covering her as best I could.

  "Guards." My voice cut through the stunned silence. "Don't touch her. Call the Church officials immediately. She has been cleansed, but it's still best to be cautious."

  Boots shuffled. Murmured acknowledgments.

  I turned toward a new hole torn through the ballroom's far wall - one the creature had smashed open during our fight. Moonlight spilled through the jagged opening, cold and silver.

  My legs screamed in protest with every step. My ribs ached. My arms felt like lead weights.

  But I walked.

  Behind me, footsteps approached. I glanced back to see the commissar - the same one who'd ordered his men to fire - kneeling at a respectful distance.

  "Sir Inquisitor," he said, voice formal but genuine. "Do you require assistance?"

  I reached the edge of the hole, wind flowing through my coat as it swayed in the turbulence.

  I looked back at the commissar.

  "Just do what I asked."

  I let myself fall backward.

  The commisar's face twisted in shock - mouth opening to shout something - but I was already gone, tumbling backward through empty air.

  The world inverted.

  I looked up to the hole of which I had fallen through, while I slowly took my mask off to feel the cold bite of the wind. Instead of a building like a mansion or complex, I was greeted by something much more spectacular.

  An airship.

  The airship loomed above me - a massive steampunk leviathan of brass and steel, propellers spinning lazily as it floated through clouds painted silver by moonlight. Its hull stretched across my vision like the belly of some mechanical whale, lights glowing from portholes, large glass windows and observation decks.

  On its side, a title written in cursive letters could be seen. A name befitting of such a beautiful ship.

  Celestine Lumineux.

  I'd been fighting inside it. Now I was falling away from it, back toward the earth far below.

  The night sky stretched endlessly above me. Stars more numerous than the humans on the ground, cold, distant, yet impossibly beautiful.

  By the mere sight alone, I felt my mood mellow.

  When you're above the clouds, the night sky really is something else.

  I fell into the cloud layer. White mist swallowed me whole.

  I started to feel tired. My eyes became as heavy as lead as the wind carried me down. All sound drowned out as my body succombed to exhaustion.

  I started to close my eyes, feeling the weight suddenly collapse on me all at once.

  Maybe just a short-

  My thoughts were interrupted by the cloud layer ending abruptly. Below, the capital spread like a field of lights - spires piercing upward through lower clouds, streets glowing with lanterns, the whole city alive even at this hour.

  Nevermind, stupid idea. Lets find somewhere on ground first before I accidentally kill myself.

  I turned my head slightly.

  I spotted a bell tower rising through the clouds. Old brick, copper roof turned green with age, and at its peak - a bell housed under a small overhang with just enough space to land on.

  Hopefully I've got enough left in the tank.

  As the tower drew level with me, I blinked.

  Reality compressed. Expanded.

  I materialized stomach-first on the bell tower's upper platform, the impact driving every bit of air from my lungs. My ribs screamed.

  I rolled onto my back, coughing. Blood flecked my lips.

  "Shit." I gasped. "Pushed myself a bit too hard."

  I shifted until I was lying across the wooden hatch that led down into the tower, blocking anyone from sneaking up on me. My legs dangled over the platform's edge, boots pointed at the city far below.

  Despite the hard surface, mentally I was already near the state of exhaustion. If anything, the privacy of the bell tower just below the clouds created a comforting sense of privacy.

  My eyes were already closing. The last thing I saw was the night sky stretched above me - tars mixed with smoke, beauty and ugliness existing side by side.

  Just like everything else in this world.

  My eyes shut.

  Sleep took me.