The wall behind him tore open without sound, a smear of ink blooming outward like a shadow learning to breathe. From it, Kaiser was hurled. He hit the ground in a low crouch, marble biting through the soles of his boots, the chill holding for a moment before seeping away.

He straightened and took in the corridor before him. It stretched far past what the eye should allow, a single endless line broken only by the rhythm of paintings hung at measured intervals. The walls were a pale, expensive stone, their polish soft enough to catch light without returning it. The windows between the frames showed nothing, black so complete it looked like poured ink, yet each painting's gilded frame still glowed faintly, lending the hall its only illumination.

They were all sunsets. No portraits, no landscapes of bustling life, just skies locked in the dying hour, each one caught at the point where light had begun to surrender. Clouds burned in shades of gold, blood, and fire, the horizon melting into colors that made the eye ache if held too long. Every one was different in its arrangement of clouds, in the precise bleed of color, yet the feeling was the same: beauty pinned in its final breath. And at the bottom corner of each, in looping black script was the same name—Hieronymus Bosch.

The air was still, but not empty. Somewhere, far off or just behind the walls, came the sound of movement. It faded before it could be placed. The smell followed: the sharp tang of turpentine laced with something sweet, almost floral, almost rotting, the scent of something preserved past its time.

Kaiser's gaze lingered on the nearest frame for the space of a breath, not out of wonder, but to catalogue the details, to fix the pattern in memory. Then he began to walk. His steps landed without hurry, each one met by a muffled echo that returned a heartbeat late, as though the mansion was considering whether to give it back at all. The hall stretched ahead, unbroken, each sunset watching him pass, their light steady and unblinking.

His boots carried him slightly deeper into the hall, the dying suns watching in silence. Then, without warning, a quiet sound slipped past his lips—a single, almost polite chuckle, as though he'd remembered something amusing. It lingered for a breath, deepened, and began to grow.

The laughter rolled out of him in low waves at first, then sharper, darker, until it shook the still air. "Ha… ha…" The sound gained weight, momentum—"Ha… ha-ha… hahaha…"—and in seconds it became something else entirely, a sound that didn't belong in human lungs. The cadence twisted, pitched higher, then plunged lower, until the marble itself seemed to hum with it.

By the time it reached its peak, it was a storm. "Hahahahaha—HAHAHAHA!" The walls trembled as if the very structure knew it was hearing the truth of him for the first time in decades.

'What a great day,' he thought, the words tasting clean and electric in his mind. 'What an utterly great day.'

He reached into the small leather bag at his side, the one bought from Glunko's cluttered little shop and pulled free an emergency red pack. From it came two small glass lenses. The Viz-Bots.

Kaiser had no idea how they worked, not really. He knew only that every Liberator below Angel carried one, and two more hidden on their person in emergency situations, in case the first one broke.

He placed them carefully on a low table of dark wood. Then he turned.

At the side of the hall stood a door—tall, heavy, with a single engraving at its center. A box. Simple, perfect, wrong in a way that made his skin prickle.

Kaiser's smile sharpened, stretched, then broke wider still, teeth catching the light. He could feel the grin pulling at the edge of his composure and didn't bother to stop it.

"Oh, Maximilian," he murmured, voice low, almost affectionate. "If this is how you treat your friends… you and I are going to get along just fine."

His hand brushed the door, fingers curling around its edge like he might pull the world open.

His mind drifted back to the quiet exchange before Celestine had appeared, when Maximilian's words had been nothing but a scalpel carving neat lines through the conversation.

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'Apparently,' Maximilian had told him, 'This little situation comes from an artist. One Hieronymus Bosch. A man who, by all measures, was a great one, or at least, from what I've heard. His skill wasn't just in pigment and brushstroke. No, his works were more than representations. They were… miracles. Anything he painted, anything at all, could be given life.'

How the Unborn had learned to twist that gift into something useful to them, Maximilian hadn't said outright, but Kaiser didn't need the explanation.

'I don't care how they did it. In fact, I respect it.' His thoughts sharpened. 'Going after civilians—those useless wastes of breath and space was the smartest choice they could have made. The world is crawling with them, and their deaths mean nothing, except to the ones foolish enough to cling to them.'

'The world's a gigantic place. Bigger than I thought when I arrived. Twenty villages are gone to this already… small ones, invisible enough that no Tale would ever be recorded for them. Wiped away like they were never there.'

Elsie's face surfaced in his mind, not with warmth nor sadness, but with the detached clarity of inventorying a tool.

'She's just another one of them now. Cornered. Helpless. If she dies, and becomes drained and empty... I won't mourn her. I'll only feel the sting of disappointment, because I thought she could become something more. If she proves she can't, then she'll have earned the death she gets.'

All of this fed into the cultivation of some strange seed. Maximilian had not told him its purpose, and the refusal was its own answer—it was important enough to keep locked away from even him.

The seed was ready for collection, but Heralds could not touch it. The world was laced with sensors, each tuned to detect the distinct frequency of corrupted Sol. The merest flare from a Herald would trip them all. Lower Unborn could slip past, with their Sol too weak to be noticed, but Heralds were a blaze that could never be dimmed.

So Maximilian had chosen him.

'Do this for me,' he'd said, 'And take whatever you can from Bosch's house. This is the safer part of it. Loot as you please before you meet back with your golden princess.'

The smile that had tugged at Kaiser's mouth then was the same one that lived there now.

He pressed the door open and stepped through.

The staircase was narrow, built from dark wood worn smooth by centuries of walking. It spiraled downward, the air cooling with each turn, the faint scent of turpentine thickening until it was almost tasteable. A single strip of golden light ran along the wall, illuminating his descent in a muted glow.

'An artist's house,' Kaiser thought, running his fingers lightly along the rail. 'Hidden underground, locked behind suns painted in dying light. Almost poetic… but poetry doesn't pay well. And it won't save you from a thief with good taste.'

The last step met marble again. He came to a stop before another door, this one unadorned but for a small brass handle worn to a dull shine.

He pushed.

The breath he drew in was slow. Not out of awe, though the room might have earned it.

The chamber stretched wide, high enough that the ceiling was lost in shadow. Shelves upon shelves of paintings lined the walls, their gilded frames stacked three and four high. The light here was soft and omnipresent, coming from no single source but seeming to radiate gently from the artwork itself.

The paintings varied wildly: storm-tossed seas, hunts through shadowed forests, markets bursting with motion and color, cathedrals rising into cloudy skies. Each was impossibly vivid, the detail sharp enough to cut.

Between them stood marble pedestals bearing sculptures. Some were classical—a rearing stallion, muscles tensed under stone skin; a reclining figure draped in stone cloth so sheer it seemed ready to tear. Others were stranger: three heads stacked vertically, each face caught in a different moment of grief; a column of reaching hands, each fingertip crowned with a gemstone.

Tables of polished wood and inlaid gold held smaller works: ivory birds in mid-flight, jewelry so fine it seemed almost liquid, books bound in leather too soft to be cowhide. Vases painted with landscapes that shifted when the eye wasn't fixed on them.

Kaiser stepped in slowly, the sound of his boots muffled in the thick air. His gaze swept from wall to wall.

'So much beauty locked underground. Not to be seen, not to be lived with, just hoarded. The kind of greed I understand. And the kind I'll gladly transfer unto myself.'

In the far corner, a sculpture caught his attention: a leafless tree made entirely of glass. Within its hollow branches pulsed a slow red light, like a heartbeat that had been stolen and placed here to wait.

His grin widened. He had found what he was looking for.

On a low table beside the sculpture sat a small brown pouch. Maximilian had thought ahead and prepared. Not item was special, and was way different then the pouch he had on him right now, as this one could hold more than five tons without changing weight or size. The number itself was almost ridiculous, even to him.

'Now that,' Kaiser thought, running a hand over the leather, 'Is a good friend.'

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