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Devoid of any signs of life, the chapel is quiet. Eerily so. But Byleth has never been one for company.
Strange, how inviting this crumbling edifice had looked to a lonely, rain-sodden traveler. Stranger still that he has not yet turned tail to flee. Uncanny, this place. A glance around the stale, dusty interior had convinced him that this holy place had been wholly abandoned for some time. And yet the oil lamps had sprung to life with his every step, the hearth had awakened to crackle heartily in the solitary bedroom, and the kitchen had stocked itself with stale rolls and tea. And so this orphaned vagabond had chosen to stay, far too familiar with life’s more perturbing oddities to pass on such an opportunity.
He’d been assigned an oddity himself the day he’d been pulled, silent and unblinking, from his mother’s failing body. Born under a fallen star, the midwife had cried to his father. Unfortunate, yes, but had he not been someone of his… peculiar disposition, he may have dropped in a dead faint at the sound of someone sighing directly behind him.
The skin at the back of his neck tingles as though pricked by shards of ice. Alas, this is nothing new. No matter where his travels take him, the voices and visages of lost ones are sure to follow--the way unwelcome guests are wont to do.
‘Hello?’ Byleth ventures silently.
His cautious call is only met with another sigh--the most human sound he’s heard during his night here. Huddling closer to the fire, he tries to fight down the feeling that he’s being watched. Hunted. Stalked as though he were unsuspecting prey. Unmoving, he waits.
There--a faint whisper this time. One that’s drowned out by a monstrous sigh that erupts near his ear, reverberating in his skull and snapping his jaw shut. No, do not flinch. Listen for the whisper. But all he hears now is distant clicking, much like claws against stone floors. Drawing nearer. Click, click, and a cold draft against his back.
No, merely exhaustion catching up with him. Dragging himself up and over to his cot, he settles in. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ he thinks as he rests his weary head.
The woman in the corner disagrees. The dying light of the fire dances in her scarlet eyes, her burning locks, and casts shadows against the wall. Tall, terrible, and reaching ever toward him, squirming as though alive. Hunting. Stalking.
Byleth shuts his eyes and turns away. They aren’t real. They can’t touch him.
He can hear them breathing.
*
He dreams of a door--weathered and altogether unremarkable, yet enticing. As he nears it, a whisper invites him in.
Suddenly he’s seized, dragged into shadows with a violent yank. A woman with coiled blonde hair and cackling lips looms over him, as though he were strapped to a slab. If he had a beating heart, it would freeze in terror at the sound of her haughty, maniacal laughter when she blinds him. The feeling that he was being experimented upon--cruelly dissected and scooped empty--is the only thing that jolts him awake.
Sleep escapes him the rest of the night. He prays for the ringing silence to return.
*
Each time he passes by the altar, he pauses. His eyes fix on the wall behind it, at the many slashes and scorch marks now obscuring the four peculiar sigils that had been devoutly carved into the wood. The work of wicked beings desecrating the chapel, it would seem.
Upon the altar is a framed photograph of an altogether unremarkable-looking man--though his warm eyes and dimpled smile give him the appearance of someone kindly and humble. And inscribed into the peeling gold of the placard before it: ‘In Memory of Bishop Aelfric Dahlman.’
Gone but not forgotten, as it were. Someone is certainly trying to keep the man’s memory alive. And what manner of man was he? As a bishop, it fell to him to protect and shepherd his wayward flock. A good man, Byleth decides, and a voice below him whispers its agreement.
Without warning, the small frame is sent flying. Byleth stumbles back just as the altar cracks down the center, splintered by the hasty swing of an invisible axe. Hitting the ground hard, his head snaps up to find the hulking shape of a wild-haired man standing over him. With a snarl, the shade lunges.
But Byleth knows better than to flinch. He closes his eyes and waits. The chapel is empty and silent when he opens them.
Carefully, he rises to his feet and retreats to his room. There is nothing to be afraid of.
*
A shimmering face forms before him and dissipates just as quickly--drawing him from a dream he no longer remembers as he starts awake. In his stupor, he realizes that the ill-lit corridor he finds himself in is not his room. His fingers grasp the handle of a very familiar-looking door. How curious. Something tells him to open it, to finally see what lurks beyond. A basement of sorts, by the whispers down below. Yes, do come in, we need you!
His senses, muddled as they are, suddenly snap to attention at the sound of feet shuffling behind him. Alarmed, he whirls around to give chase, all thoughts of the mystery door forgotten. Someone? Anyone? There must be another person here, though they remain just out of view. He hastens his pace back to his room and tries not to dwell upon the hows or whys of his midnight stroll.
As he’d feared, a man stands at the center of his room, shimmering in the firelight. Yet another spectre come to terrorize him. Apprehension pricks his skin as the man turns to face him.
And it’s the face from his dream, the one he’d so foolishly forgotten. How his mind had not held fast to the curve of the man’s lips, the lilac gleam of his eyes beneath lush lashes, the tumble of fine hair over his shoulders, utterly escapes him. Merely a shade, yes, but no man alive could ever compare.
“And do you plan to stare all night?”
This one actually speaks. Caught by surprise, Byleth tries to answer.
“I--” His voice, heavily disused, cracks. He clears his throat, but the words do not come.
The silence is broken by the heavy steps of something that should not be corporeal but is becoming so by the second. The more solid the man grows as he approaches, the more entrancing he is, and Byleth finds himself trapped in the talons of a magnificent bird of prey. Soon enough, the tickle of the other's breath plays across his face, but he holds steady. Finally, the spectre leans back.
“Nothing? And here I was, about to ask for your company.” He tuts, the slightest pout gracing his lips.
Before Byleth can attempt another reply, a cacophony of whispers assaults him from below. Cries for help, desperate pleas. A warning. Do not trust what you see! As his head whips toward the sound, the man steps closer, sharp eyes betraying a beguiling smile.
“Come,” he purrs, cupping Byleth’s cheek, “stay awhile, won’t you?”
That hand is… warm, almost. Irresistible. Leaning into the palm, Byleth allows the man to turn his face.
“You’re beautiful.” He blurts. What’s gotten into him? “What is your name?”
The man--the spectre, Byleth must remind himself--sighs as he leans in.
“You can call me Yuri. And you can call me yours.”
Oh, how he’d love to bridge the gap between them and taste lips that are surely sweet, surely real. But a new barrage of cries, twice as loud and urgent, makes him flinch away. No, this is a trap. He isn’t safe here.
“You--someone is down there, someone needs my help.”
“A lie,” Yuri says smoothly. “Stay with me.”
Byleth steps back with a sudden stab of panic. He must free them. How can he be safe when they are not? His father had taught him better than to abandon those in need. “I’m going, and you cannot stop me.”
Yuri switches tactics. With a flick of his wrist and a glint of steel in his palm, he hisses. “If you won’t listen, then you will see.”
The knife finds its mark deep within Byleth’s stomach, and he crumples.
When he hits the floor, he’s elsewhere. In the chapel, it seems, though it’s less decrepit--the altar and sigils unmarred. He shouts as clawed hands sink into his legs to drag him below, down, down into darkness made wild with lamplight. Walls and walls of skulls, looming and winged stone, frantic chanting, a bent and crazed figure thrashing and contorting--the screams of something not-quite-human punctuated by the sickening crack of bones and the sound of flesh sizzling. And piled at the feet of a monster unseen lie four bodies, trails of smeared blood climbing the altar whereupon four hearts rest, pulsing as though still--
Byleth awakens with a retch, gasping for air and making a grab at his stomach. But no, he’s alive and, aside from a bruised backside from an unkind floor, unscathed. Morning light now streams through the tiny, cracked window. Groaning, he turns his head gingerly at the sound of a cleared throat. Yuri is still in the room, perched on the table and inspecting his nails. And, gods, how real he looks.
“I’d intended to lure you outside for a bit of fun, you know. Let you leave the easy way. But you gave me no choice.” He gestures airily as Byleth sits up. “Well? You saw what you saw.”
“You were forced here,” Byleth says softly. “Killed.”
Yuri’s mouth twitches in amusement as he extends the hand he’d been examining. One of the church’s sigils is carved into the palm.
“It appeared when my blood was let. The others have theirs, too.” His smile is unsettling. “The Almighty Bishop Aelfric Dahlman called us his ‘Apostles.’ Bound us here while spouting off about ‘descendants’ and ‘summoning.’ In any case, he failed. Miserably, at that, heh heh.”
“But… the voices from below--there must be more of you, surely? Suffering just the same?” Those cries have gone silent, but Byleth still feels them tugging at him.
“Hah! A lie, as I said. And one you fell for. Which is why,” Yuri continues, cutting off Byleth’s protest, “you need to leave. We’ve been trying our damnedest to get rid of you. If he draws you down there, he’ll find a way to use you to break himself out of here. I know it.”
Sluggish as it is, Byleth’s mind churns. “If that were so, could you not also break free? There must be some way to unbind you all.”
Yuri levels him with a blank look. After a lengthy pause, he speaks. “Maybe. But you’d be wasting your time. This is not your fight, my friend.”
Byleth struggles to his feet, his mind now set. “It isn’t, no, but I will not leave you behind after seeing what I saw. Tell me how to help. I have nothing to lose.”
Another pause as Yuri stares, the disbelief in his eyes beginning to waver ever so slightly.
“And neither do we. So let’s get this over with, already.”
The sighing woman emerges from the shadows, followed by the mad blonde and the hulking man. Yuri breaks his gaze almost reluctantly to gesture at them. “I’m sure you’re well-acquainted with my lovely pack of wolves. Hapi. Constance. Balthus.” He counts them off, each of them nodding in succession and regarding Byleth as though they had not just spent the past several dozen hours terrorizing him.
“Let us not dither!” Constance faces him with a familiarly haughty look. “You need but remove our essences from this accursed place. A simple task for such a tenacious soul, surely?”
“You’ve seen the hearts, yeah? Take ‘em and run.” Balthus, at least, is far more succinct.
The sight of those beating, bloody hearts... though his own lies dormant within his chest, Byleth understands the power they hold over the soul. The reason he must not have one. The reason he has nothing to lose, nothing to fear. Without a second thought, he rises, snatches up his satchel, and sets off. There is no turning back. His father always told him he must fight for those who cannot fight themselves. For those that need saving.
The skull-lined hall of the catacomb from his vision is what greets him beyond the door and down the creaking stairway. His boots whisper against stone as he pushes forward, the call of the altar leading his feet. Unlit corridors and branching paths span endlessly on either side, inviting him to peer into their depths. No, pay them no heed, he tells himself. Look straight ahead. There is nothing to be afraid of.
There is nothing but the call--not the whisper belonging to the remnants of the man once known as Aelfric, but a different one. This one is wordless. Low and steady. Heartbeats that nearly feel like his own. Faster, his gait becomes. Stronger, his resolve grows. He won’t glance down the corridors, inviting as they may seem, and he won’t listen to what slithers in the dark.
The four wolves hover at the altar when at last Byleth arrives. They turn toward him in unison, eyes blazing with expectation… and doubt. You will be free, he tells them wordlessly as he reaches towards the hearts. Though they’re now hard as stone and stuck securely to the altar, they pulse beneath Byleth’s fingers. He has to dig in his nails to dislodge them--one by one he wrests them out, carefully placing each into his satchel. Yuri’s is the last and the most difficult to pry free, but it beats the hardest.
Hapi speaks suddenly, her once dull tone now agitated and alarmed.
“He feels us. He’s coming. Hurry.”
And now comes the sound of something heavy dragging itself across the floor--a nauseating combination of grating stone and wet flesh. The floor trembles with the echo of massive, skittering claws and labored breathing. Whatever the bishop has become, Byleth has no interest in seeing for himself. With a hard tug and a sharp crack, Yuri’s heart breaks free.
A roar echoes throughout the catacomb, and if Byleth had been looking for a sign to run, this would be it. The wolves flank him on all sides to shepherd him as he sprints like a frightened hare down the hall. For once in his life, with the cacophony of a monstrous body flailing and crashing behind him and the feel of its hot, fetid breath against his back, Byleth fears death.
He flies up the stairway and tackles the door hard enough to tear it off its hinges. The chapel itself is already swaying dangerously, the floor beginning to crack and sink as the weak and weathered foundation below is destroyed in an unholy rampage. Debris rains down, rubble and wood smashing pews on either side of him and pelting him like deadly hail. He bends over the satchel to keep the hearts from harm as he bolts towards the entrance.
At last, and with a shove of several hard hands, he’s propelled out of the chapel and onto the steps. He takes but a moment to recover as the outer walls start to give way, struggling forward and collapsing at a safe enough distance to watch in horror as the chapel comes crashing down. A sound that must be heard for miles, from the very heavens above. Thunder loud enough to shatter stars.
Then, silence.
Only smoldering waste, and silence. Byleth’s eyes dart to and fro wildly, but there is no sign of any creature, living or dead. Had the beast been felled at last?
His answer comes in a gentle breeze against his cheek, a soft laugh, a glimpse of lilac eyes. And in the distance, the wind howls its thanks, its farewell.
With bleeding, trembling hands, Byleth draws out the hearts, now still and shriveled, to give them the proper burial they deserve.