Mother Oak Church: a tombstone pinned to the city’s rotting chest. I killed my cigar and rolled out of the car. Niro was still fiddling with the park job. The place smelled of stale incense and cold, dead air—a silence heavy as a guilty conscience. The tiles under my feet were cracked like promises in this town. Like my own silence when damnation ran wild.

  "The smoke, my child. It might kill you quicker than Satan himself."

  The voice was an echo from a coffin. He was there—black hat pulled low, a grey-haired shadow. Hands shaking but firm; a cross like a noose around his neck. Father Francis Styward: a man powerful enough to own the city’s future. Niro popped up with an umbrella—a weak shield against the rain and the world.

  "Then it’d be a quick escape from hell, Father," I said.

  He looked past me, a phantom in the rain. "Little Niro seems fine." Then those eyes—wrinkled like a map of bad choices, but with the look of a lion who hadn’t forgotten the taste of blood. "Confess, my child. Let the Lord wash away your sins."

  His calm tone didn't fool me. "He’s abandoned this city, Father. Confession’s just a whisper in an empty room."

  I snuffed the cigar for real this time. He shook his head, a gesture older than the church itself, and disappeared behind the heavy wooden doors, swallowing the light with him. "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

  Later, Crush and Web showed up. Their clothes were soaked with something that might’ve been rusty water—or something worse. We didn’t keep money in banks; we kept it where the rot was deep. We drove to the Rose Petal Cemetery, a place that reeked of cheap perfume, a sick joke in this city of death. Under the famous Oak, we met the Shield—a protector for hire, a gutter-level god for a price.

  "How’re the sheep tonight?" he growled, his voice a rusty hinge.

  "Looking for direction from their shepherd," I replied, the usual dance.

  He held out a hand, a greedy claw. On my nod, Crush tossed the suitcase. The Shield’s smirk was all cheap gin and greed. "Which direction?"

  "A case," Crush bit out. "Six years ago. October 25th, 2008. Boot Street near Cloud Depths."

  The smirk died. His face went grey, like the slate of the church roof. He threw the money to the wet ground. "NO! Not that. I lost everything to that thing. That... Darkness."

  He ran—a rat from a sinking ship, leaving the cash behind. The walk back to the cars was quiet, the kind of silence that happens when everyone is busy drowning in their own heads. Darkness. The word hung in the air like smoke. Near the curb, I dug my heels in.

  "Wait for me," I muttered, the lie tasting like copper. "I think I’ve got an appointment."

  I turned on my heel and slipped into the church. Inside, the air was a paradox—biting cold, yet heavy with ancient secrets. A few stray candles flickered in a slow pulse, cutting a jagged path toward the confession booth. They danced as if they’d been expecting me. I stepped into the cramped dark of the box and sat.

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  Why am I here? I asked the shadows.

  "I knew you would come, my child. What troubles you?"

  The voice was unmistakable. Even through the screen, that tone hit me like a familiar punch to the gut.

  "I don’t know why I’m here," I started, the words catching. I took a breath, trying to steady the shaking in my chest. "I came to this city three years ago. A 'fateful night'—that’s what the papers would call it. I was framed for a murder I didn’t commit."

  "And then?" he prodded. He wasn’t just listening; he was digging.

  "I ran. Panic is a hell of a drug. A cop put a bullet in my foot before I could find the exit. The trial was a joke—the kind where the punchline is twenty-five years and a date with a noose."

  I stopped. The old scars were throbbing again, surfacing like ghosts. I forced myself to keep going. "The day they processed me, a guard with a soul gave me a map of the hell I was entering. Told me how to breathe among the monsters."

  "Keep going," the voice encouraged.

  "I met the Redneck. He broke my jaw the second he looked at me, then he made me one of his own. But today... today the floor fell out. I found out who really set me up. I killed one of the men who framed me, and now I’m hunting for the shadow that took the Redneck's life. I’m looking for clues from six years ago, but the trail has gone cold. I’m lost, and I don't even know why I'm still bleeding for this."

  The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a man.

  "You have suffered, my child," he finally said, his voice a low gravel. "God eases the burden, but remember—you aren't walking this gutter alone. Perhaps there’s a design to this chaos. Don’t lose hope. Not yet."

  The weight of the world finally buckled my legs, and I hit the floor of that wooden box.

  "Then it’s a cruel design," I rasped, the words tasting like ash. "I’ve lost the only lead I had. Maybe God did design something, Father, but I’m not on the blueprint."

  My voice was jagged, cutting through the dark with a bitterness I couldn't fully name. There was a soft rustle from behind the screen—the sound of old parchment and older secrets.

  "Here," he said, his voice like grinding stones. "Maybe this will help."

  A scrap of paper slid through the slot, torn and yellowed at the edges. I held it up to a sliver of light. There it was—a name, a headline, and the very ghost I had been chasing.

  CRIMINAL LAWYER SURYA KRISHNAN PRONOUNCED DEAD AFTER GOING MISSING ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 25, 2008.

  The fine print was a descent into madness. It spoke of a home turned into a slaughterhouse—allegations of a wife driven to the unthinkable, a family erased.

  I tucked the paper into my pocket, the ink feeling like a cold brand against my hip. I stood to leave, but stopped with my hand on the latch. "Expect more visits, Father. Maybe Church visits do help after all."

  Silence was his only answer, but it wasn't the empty kind. It was the silence of an open door.

  I stepped back out into the rain and joined the crew. Niro and Web were shadows, but I went straight for Crush. I didn't give him room to breathe.

  "You know something, Crush. Talk. It’s important." I shoved the paper into his chest. "Look at this and tell me what you know."

  Crush looked at the headline, and for a second, the tough-guy act crumbled. He knew he was backed into a corner where the only way out was the truth.

  "It was the Redneck’s job," Crush muttered, his voice barely rising above the rhythm of the rain. "But no one knows what happened to that lawyer. No one went in there with him. All we knew... all we were told... was that it was the Devil’s order. A message that needed sending."

  He looked at me then, his eyes wide and hollow. We both knew the local gospel: no one survives the Devil’s Judgment once the sentence has been passed.