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The doctors warned him the wound would leave a scar, yet Barok’s heart still sank when he removed the bandages from around his face and saw his reflection. The angry lines carved into his face might have healed, but they were no less unpleasant to look at. They radiated hatred, the hatred of the man who had made them.
Cornered, grabbed, overpowered, lashing out in a panic, held down, the sight of a blade above his face, a mocking sneer, the blade descending, pain, a distant shout, running footsteps—
Barok clutched his hair and forced back the memory of the attack, but he couldn’t stop the despair welling up within him.
The Professor’s trial should have been the end of it. Klint had been avenged, even if it felt like a hollow victory when the culprit had pretended to be their friend. Barok was nothing without Klint by his side, yet even so, he’d started to pull his life back together into some semblance of order. Even though it felt like blasphemy to move on when Klint was dead, he’d started to believe he could, even if it was into a future bleaker than the one he should have had.
Still believing that, he’d prosecuted another trial. The defendant escaped justice by threatening the jury. Then… he died. Barok hadn’t thought anything of it, until the next trial he prosecuted where the defendant was wrongly declared not guilty.
And then the next one.
Now people called him the Reaper. They said he was cursed, or perhaps he was the one cursing others, or perhaps it was Klint’s spirit roaming the streets of London to kill those his brother failed to condemn.
This was the end result. He reached up and ran his fingers slowly over the scar between his eyes. Those men who cornered him in that alleyway and left him bleeding and scarred hadn’t done it because he was a prosecutor, like how Klint’s enemies had sometimes attacked him or even Barok—
A shot rang out. Genshin lay bleeding from his hand—
He gritted his teeth and drove back that memory. No, he refused to remember that traitor saving his life. It didn’t matter anymore. None of that mattered.
What mattered was that those men hadn’t attacked him as a prosecutor or even a nobleman. They attacked the Reaper they believed had killed one of their own. The man with the knife had said as much as he carved those harsh lines into Barok’s face, that he intended to kill him slowly and painfully as revenge.
Although Scotland Yard had arrived in time to save Barok, he now understood his fate. Regardless of what had caused those defendants to die, whether it was truly Klint’s spirit—surely not, but was there a chance?—or a mortal vigilante, the public had decided Barok was to blame.
And he would be hated for it. People would try to kill him again. Again and again and again…
Barok turned away from the mirror in anguish.
#
The following day, Barok dismissed all members of the manor’s staff. Some were glad to go, clearly spooked by either the rumors of the Reaper or his ill-tempered demeanor ever since the trial. Others protested, but he held firm. It was too dangerous for them to remain in his employ. His enemies might target any one of them in order to get at Barok. It was terrible enough that the shadow of the Reaper brought danger down upon him, but he had no right to extend that danger to anyone else.
So he buried his emotions, made his face hard and stern, and ordered them all to leave, despite knowing the isolation he was creating for himself might be too much to bear. If London wanted to see him as the Reaper of the Bailey, then so be it. The Reaper of the Bailey would stand alone.
The last of the staff members, a young maid, departed after a final worried glance back at Barok, the concern visible on her face even though she didn’t protest any further. He closed the doors behind her, sealing himself all alone in the manor.
Only then did he let himself cry.
#
The van Zieks manor was far too large a home for one person. Barok had never noticed its size as much as he did now. Now there was not a single footstep besides his own. Not a single voice to be heard. The only people he interacted with at all these days were the ones his job required him to, and even those he kept at a distance.
He learned to project a cold demeanor so that no one would try to approach him more than once. It worked. People began to avoid him, as rumors of the Reaper spread throughout the city.
Barok stalked the halls of the manor like a shadow, like a specter haunting his own home. This wasn’t the life he’d wanted for himself, even after Klint’s death threw him into despair.
He passed a mirror and paused. Slowly, he turned to face it. His gloomy reflection stared back at him, the scar between his eyes as prominent as ever. He remembered the man who had carved it there and all the others who had made attempts on his life since. He remembered the danger that would extend to anyone he allowed to get close to him.
With a bleak smile that could hardly even be called such, he turned away from the mirror and continued on. It wasn’t the life he’d wanted, but it was what had to be done.
At last, his slow steps took him to the hall where portraits of his family hung. The eyes of countless van Zieks ancestors followed him until he reached the portrait of Klint. He’d bring it to the office tomorrow, where it could serve as a reminder of what he was fighting for. Klint stared back at him, with no trace of the warmth the living man would have shown.
“Is it you, Klint?” His voice echoed through the hall, the only sound in a manor that had become more like a tomb. “Are you the Reaper, haunting my footsteps?”
It wasn’t. He knew that. It was an absurd notion, and even if such a thing were possible, Klint would never strike people down like that, much less in a way that would bring so much torment to Barok’s life. Even so, part of him clung to those rumors and the faint hope that Klint remained with him even in such a terrible way.
At least then, he wouldn’t be entirely alone.