The night that returned from Brooklyn's harbor had ended. Velvet Thorn's mornings came late. When the neon signs died and the smell of the kitchen drifted down the hallway, Frank Moretti knocked three times on Eliya's door. "[cold]Your job as a bodyguard ends today. It's an order from Damon." The former boxer's face was flat as always, devoid of emotion. No envelope, no business card, nothing—just those words, and then he turned his back. "[angry]...What the hell are you talking about?" But another man was already standing in front of the door. One of the bodyguards. Broad shoulders, arms crossed, simply there. No words were necessary. Just being there was enough. Eliya stepped into the hallway. The man took one step forward. He didn't push back. He just stepped forward. That was all. But the meaning came through. Eliya returned to his room. He closed the door. A room about six tatami mats in size. One bed, one chair, a frosted glass window. The Midtown neon was dark now, and all that could be seen from the window was the back wall of a building. On the first day, he punched the wall. He kept punching the plaster wall with his left fist. The skin on his knuckles peeled, and he felt cracks forming in the bones of his fingers, but he kept punching. They regenerated. He punched again. They regenerated again. A hole opened in the wall. The next morning, Frank brought a contractor and quietly repaired it. He punched on the second day too. On the third day, he stopped. The realization that nothing would change had seeped into his very bones. It was the same as when the blade wouldn't cut through in EP3. But this time it was happening in a confined space, and it felt worse. The time when his anger had nowhere to go was far harder than the time spent punching. Meals came twice a day on a tray. Bread, soup, and sometimes a piece of fruit. It was enough. That made him even angrier. They weren't starving him, weren't destroying his things, weren't saying anything—they were just keeping him alive, locked away. His freedom was gone, but his stomach was full. That combination slowly wore away at something inside him. --- On the first night, the door opened. Blackwood Damon came in. Black suit, neat black hair, red vertical-slit eyes that gleamed even in the dark room. His 188-centimeter frame changed the air in the room. Eliya remained sitting on the edge of the bed, unmoving. Damon pulled up the chair and sat across from him. Unhurried. Not threatening. Just sitting, watching Eliya. "[serious]Recite Hebrew for me." His voice was quiet. Not a command, but the voice of observation. "[angry]No." "[cold]Shema Yisrael. Adonai Eloheinu. Continue." Damon recited it. The opening of a Hebrew scripture. But the pronunciation was slightly off. Intentionally, one sound at a time, just a little wrong. Eliya's throat moved. Wrong, he thought. That's not it. That's not how the word sounds. When Samuel taught him at five years old, he'd repeated the correct pronunciation dozens of times. That sound was wrong. "[serious]Can you say the rest?" Eliya opened his mouth. Words were about to come out. They didn't. The shape of the sound was in his head. He remembered the pronunciation. But the root that moved it was nowhere to be found tonight. Same as three days ago. Like a tree with only bones left, no flesh. Damon waited a moment, then spoke slowly. "[cold]Ah, you can't anymore. God isn't listening anyway, not to your voice." It wasn't mockery. It was the quiet voice of confirmation. That made it worse. Eliya said nothing. Damon stood and left the room. --- On the second night, Damon brought a candle. He placed it in the middle of the room and lit it. Then he carefully mimicked the gestures of a Jewish Sabbath prayer—Damon himself, with precision. He spread his hands, closed his eyes, and recreated the motion of lighting the menorah. It was accurate. The gestures were perfect, not a single mistake. That was the worst part. Something burned inside Eliya. Those gestures were meant to be performed on Friday evenings before the congregation. Gestures that belonged with the quiet air of a synagogue, Hebrew songs, and the serious faces of people. And this man, in this room, without any faith at all, was recreating them perfectly. "[angry]Stop." "[cold]Why?" "[angry]That's not for you to do." "[sarcastic]Not for me to do, no. It was for you to do, wasn't it? Once upon a time." Damon blew out the candle's flame. The room went dark. --- On the third night, Damon brought nothing. He just sat in the chair and began to speak. It was a sermon Eliya had once given to his congregation. Word for word, it was accurate. Words Eliya had spoken in the synagogue five or seven years ago, Damon was now saying verbatim. There was no way to know where he'd heard them, who he'd gotten them from. But they were accurate. Even the intonation was similar. "[cold]These were your words, weren't they? A very long time ago." The moment Eliya heard those words, something inside him hardened. It hardened and grew cold. A very long time ago. Yes. A very long time ago. The Eliya of those days still believed in God. He felt his words reaching the faces of his congregation. He thought it was real. Now those words came from the mouth of this red-eyed demon. Eliya said nothing. After Damon left the room, he struck the floor with his fist once. A loud sound. His hand hurt a little. It regenerated. Only the memory of pain remained. --- The fourth night was short. Damon came in, looked at Eliya's face, and slowly left. He said nothing. That was all. It felt stranger when nothing was said than when words came. He hadn't been waiting for anything. But when the door closed with nothing happening, Eliya realized without knowing it that he'd relaxed his shoulders slightly. When he realized that fact later, he felt angry. On the fifth night, Damon brought two glasses of whiskey. He placed one in front of Eliya. Eliya didn't drink it. Damon tilted only his own glass and spoke quietly. "[cold]Is the Lower East Side community still active? Did the old man Goldman at the synagogue seem well?" It was a non-sequitur. Just those words, then he set down his glass and left. That night, Eliya remembered Samuel's face. The face he'd seen in front of Barnes, with calm brown eyes looking at Eliya. The voice that said it wasn't too late yet. He remembered it and closed his eyes. He didn't want to think about it. --- The sixth night. When Damon came in, he was holding a stack of documents. He spread papers from a brown envelope across the table. Papers. Old papers. English text typed on a typewriter, mixed with handwritten German. "[serious]April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto. Escape records." Eliya's entire body froze. "[cold]The Nocturnal Covenant's information network is vast. Records from that time still exist." Nocturnal Covenant—the network of deals between demons and humans that Damon had built since the 17th century. It had bases in New York, London, and Paris. That information network had dug up records from Warsaw. Damon read the documents quietly. A nighttime escape. A group of several people. One person left first. The location of the hideout where the others remained. The record of Nazi troops raiding it the next morning. There were names. Not Eliya's name. The names of those who remained. One by one. Eliya couldn't speak. "[cold]The morning after you escaped alone." No. That's not it. That night was—what happened that night—there was another reason. There wasn't time to go back. There was no way to get word to them. That was the situation. But the words wouldn't come. His throat wouldn't move. "[whispers]Is that the price of immortality? Is that why you survived? God didn't abandon you—you abandoned God." His voice was quiet. Not angry. Not mocking. Just finding the exact place to strike and placing his words there. Something inside Eliya collapsed. Without a sound, but certainly, it collapsed. The air of the Warsaw night came back. The smell of smoke, distant gunfire, the cold of stone pavement, the breath of running. That night, Eliya survived. His body regenerated so he couldn't die. Because he couldn't die, he ran. Because he ran—. "Stop." His voice came out. It was hoarse. "[crying]Please stop." His knees hit the floor. His body, which had been standing without him noticing, lost its strength. The wood grain of the floor was in front of his eyes. His fingers gripped the floor. Tears fell. Not just one. "[crying]Please... stop... I'm begging you..." His pride went somewhere. He didn't know where. He didn't have the energy to look for it. He just knelt on the floor and spoke those words toward Damon's feet. This was the first moment in Eliya's life that he had laid bare his weakness to someone. Damon didn't move for a while. He looked down at Eliya crying. He watched quietly. Then he crouched down. Damon's fingers touched Eliya's chin. He tilted his face upward. At an angle where he couldn't escape. The red eyes were close. The vertically slit pupils gleamed even in the dark room. In that instant, something in Eliya's body beat in a strange way. Fear. Yes, fear. This man was terrifying. That was all. Nothing else. But the fact that he had to convince himself of that meant something else was mixed in. "[cold]Those eyes." Damon spoke. His voice was quiet and low. "[cold]Still not broken. Good." He stood up. His fingers left Eliya's face. Eliya's face turned toward the floor. "[cold]More fun this way." Footsteps, and the door closed. --- Deep in the night. Eliya was on the floor. He didn't feel like moving. The distance to the bed seemed far. Midtown's neon blurred through the frosted glass. Orange and white mixed together, becoming a color that couldn't be called anything. After a while, something slid out from the hem of his coat. A small metallic sound, and it rolled across the floor. A Star of David pendant. Tarnished silver. One point of the hexagram was slightly bent. The chain was tangled. It rolled and stopped near Eliya's fingertips. Eliya looked at it. With trembling hands, he picked it up. In that moment, a voice rang in his ears. The voice from that morning in front of Barnes. —It's not too late yet. Samuel's voice. Calm, quiet, not blaming. Eliya gripped the pendant. Tonight, he couldn't stand. Couldn't pray. Couldn't scream, couldn't rage, couldn't do anything anymore. But his hand wouldn't open. In six days, almost everything had been worn away. Pride, anger, bravado—all of it came out tonight with his tears. And yet his hand, trembling as it was, wouldn't open. He didn't know why. No matter how much Damon trampled him with words, something didn't reach him. Something in this hand. Eliya himself didn't know what it was. Just that it was there. Watching the wood grain of the floor, gripping the pendant, his hand wouldn't let go as the night deepened.