Dark Parasyte
Chapter 48: Waiting for the Midnight

Chapter 48: Waiting for the Midnight

The gilded doors of the Sanctified Hall swung open with ceremonial weight, their hinges groaning like judgment passed through iron. Purifier General Elric Harthorne stepped through them with solemn precision, his white cloak trailing behind him like a banner of piety and unwavering duty. The sound of his armored boots against polished stone echoed across the high domed chamber, a cadence of faith clad in steel.

Golden seats framed the hall like an audience of deified relics, each one perched atop a marble platform and adorned with sigils of saints, sacred flames, and symbols of divine righteousness. The members of the Sanctified Council sat within their ornate thrones, their eyes heavy with age, pride, fatigue and judgment, each expression carved in stone and sanctimony.

At the far end of the chamber, elevated by steps carved with scripture and illuminated by a circle of burning lamps, sat the Pontiff.

His throne was not merely a seat, it was a testament to divine authority, layered in gold leaf and sacred runes, its spires curling upward like tongues of flame kissing heaven. Crowned in a circlet of consecrated silver and sunstone, he raised one hand. Not in welcome, but in permission.

"Yes, my child," the Pontiff intoned, his voice both gentle and echoing, like a hymn carried through cathedral arches. "Tell us of these lost children. Can they be saved from the well of sin they are drowning in? Or have they chosen shadow over salvation?"

Elric dropped to one knee, his armor clinking like a temple bell calling for reverence. He bowed his head deeply, lips moving in silent prayer, then rose and walked forward until he stood at the center of the sacred dais, framed in flickering torchlight.

He did not raise his voice. The truth carried its own weight.

"They have forsaken the flame, Your Holiness," Elric began, each word slow and sharp as a sermon etched in steel. "They wear our colors, but speak the tongue of the void. They march beneath the banners of faith, but their steps ring hollow. What we encountered at the rebel camp was not the misled flock. It was blasphemy given breath, sin carved into flesh."

He paused, letting the words settle. He turned slowly, meeting the eyes of every councilor. The faces before him flickered between outrage and denial.

"They did not seek forgiveness. They did not stumble in confusion. They declared us corrupted, poisoned by power, and blind to our decay. They spoke of rot, of a fire that must burn us clean. They mocked your name. They mocked the sanctity of your voice."

The Pontiff’s expression hardened, the light from the braziers dancing across his brow like a crown of burning judgment.

"And do you believe," he asked, slowly, "that they are still of this faith? That the light we tend might still reach the shadows they now dwell in?"

Elric clenched a gauntleted fist against his chest.

"There is nothing left to reach. Their minds are not clouded by doubt, but twisted by something deeper. An ideology that wears our scripture like a mask while corrupting the soul beneath."

Tyranus Holric, Cardinal of War, leaned forward from his gilded seat, voice low and thunderous. "Then it is open heresy. And armed rebellion against the holy flame."

Elric nodded. "It is worse. It is conviction built on sacrilege. They do not hide from judgment, they welcome it. They crave it."

A shiver of murmurs rippled through the Sanctified Hall.

"They spoke of a cleansing," Elric added, his voice dropping lower. "They called it righteous. They called us diseased."

The Pontiff remained silent for a time, his gaze turning upward, as though listening for divine counsel. Then, slowly, he leaned back into his throne, his robes catching the glow of firelight like the wings of an angel descending.

"Then we must prepare not to save them, but to cleanse what remains. The faithful will carry the flame into the north. Let the legions be deployed. Let them see that our resolve is not as fragile as the heretics believe."

He gestured to one of the scribes, who immediately began recording the decree on parchment lined with gold thread.

"Deploy the battle ready legions to the north gate," the Pontiff continued. "Inform them that the Holy Flame will cleanse the filth, the sin, and the heresy with faith and blade."

No one spoke against him. No one dared.

The chamber filled with a grave silence.

And Elric Harthorne, faithful servant of fire and judgment, bowed his head once more, not in submission, but in grim anticipation.

War had been spoken into being.

--

While the Sanctified Council issued its decrees and legions began to mobilize in the name of divine cleansing, another reality was unfolding beneath their feet, silent, surgical, and irreversible.

The south side of Verranus, half forgotten in the Council’s fixation on the rebel encampment to the north, was bleeding in shadows. It was not fire that consumed it, nor catapult or siege ram. It was something colder, sharper, more insidious.

Street by street. House by house. Basilica by hallowed basilica, Corvin’s forces advanced.

The soldiers stationed there, the priests dozing in cloistered alcoves, the acolytes mumbling verses by candlelight, they were already dead. Their flesh simply hadn’t been informed yet.

Corvin didn’t deal in overt war. His was a quiet apocalypse. He worked with shadows, with memory and mimicry, with magic so precise it seemed like artistry. Every barracks he entered was cleansed. Every church emptied, the sermons silenced before the echoes could fade. Their inhabitants especially high ranking ones were siphoned, all of them were stored into his vast inventory, soon to be raised and replaced with Covenant Bound.

These were no rattling skeletons or shrieking wraiths. The Covenant Bound were full bodied, flesh preserved undead, stitched together not by crude necromancy but by mastery. They remembered patrol timings. They recalled the mannerisms of their commanding officers. They spoke prayers with the same cadence as they had in life.

But they no longer breathed. No longer hesitated. No longer failed.

Bound to Corvin’s mind through soul link tether, they required no speech, no command, no direction. Orders flowed through the link instinctually. With each death, his network grew. Faster, sharper and more precise.

Corvin dispatched a squad of converted priests to take over a minor shrine near the merchant quarter. They lit incense, recited false litanies, and maintained every outward sign of order. From the outside, nothing had changed.

But behind the sanctum’s doors, the prayers no longer honored the gods. They honored him.

Half the city was his.

And no one on the Council had the faintest clue.

From a pristine rooftop of a basilica, Corvin surveyed his work. The late morning sun cast long shadows over domes and towers, as if the city itself was aware of what crept in its veins.

He remembered something from Earth. In any war, the greatest danger wasn’t the enemy who could defeat you. It was the one who made you defeat yourself. A necromancer was exactly that kind of enemy, each fallen soldier was another addition to his strength.

And Verranus had given him thousands.

Reports filtered through the minds he had consumed, fifteen legions preparing for deployment. Seven of them, nearly nine thousand soldiers, had already formed ranks beyond the north gate. Their banners fluttered with sacred scripture. Their armor gleamed. Their hymns, even now, echoed through the outer wall corridors.

He let them wait.

Corvin’s plan was nearing final movement.

Tonight, when the city believed the rebellion lay outside its gates, the war would come from within.

His main army bolstered with new additions, seven thousand strong and elite, would flank from the east and west. They would strike under cover of midnight, emerging like blades from mist. Inside the city, his embedded undead, disguised, prepared, and loyal would rise like wolves behind enemy lines, targeting supply routes, signal towers, and retreat corridors.

And Corvin himself would march from the north.

Lightning, metal, magma and ice. Earth and wind. Flesh and shadow.

The legions would be crushed in a storm of inevitability.

He ran his fingers across the hilt of his blade, already feeling the vibrations of the coming bloodshed. Every tactical element had been planned.

This was not conquest. This was not rebellion.

It was punishment.

The fanatics of Holy Verrenate, these extremesits, these unworth terrorists was coming to the end of their days.

Judgment was no longer coming.

It was already here.

--

Valyne and Kaelyn had been deep in conversation for nearly half an hour, gleefully dissecting Corvin’s crimes, quirks, questionable career choices and character, with all the grace of two gossiping nobility at a private lunch. If said lunch were held at a battlefield triage tent and everyone present had suffered at least mild psychic trauma.

They had compared notes, mimicked his smirk, even debated, somewhat seriously whether it was more infuriating when he was silent, or when he spoke in riddles while casually threatening political systems.

Yvanna’s left eye had twitched precisely four times.

By the fifth, she decided diplomacy could wait no longer.

She cleared her throat with such regal authority it nearly startled the teapot off the tray.

"Envoy Valyne," she said with a smile so tight it could have cracked porcelain, "you must be tired from your journey."

Kaelyn, who had just begun mimicking Corvin’s infamous one eyebrow lift, froze mid expression like a child caught with a hand in cookie jar.

Valyne smiled.

"Oh," she said. "Yes. Very."

"We would be honored to have you present at tomorrow’s coronation," Yvanna continued, voice smooth but wound tighter than a diplomat’s crossbow. "And I do believe Mr. Corvin will be joining us shortly as well. I’m told he’s planning renovations to his fief, Raven’s Nest."

At the sound of the name, both Kaelyn and Valyne blinked in unison, like two mismatched twins synchronizing over shared exasperation.

Valyne nodded quickly. "Yes, that would be... delightful."

Kaelyn, as if she were the one being invited, added cheerfully, "She’ll love it here. Palace security is much better than the docks."

Yvanna’s eye twitched again. It twitched with royal dignity.

Still smiling, still queenly. Barely.

Valyne accepted the invitation, and truth be told, staying in the palace was vastly preferable to the inn where the pillows smelled faintly of salted sea and the bathwater, while was half spiritual relaxation the other half was liquid regret. Also, she was eager to keep Kaelyn talking. One way or another, the space mage had become a living archive of Corvin’s greatest hits (and stabs).

"Did I tell you about the second Duke he killed?" Kaelyn asked as they strolled toward the guest wing.

"No, but now you have to."

And so Kaelyn did. In graphic, horrifying detail. As if she did not heard it but was there next to the Raven.

From the moment Corvin arrived in Goldhaven to the night he left, every assassination, threat, illusion, political whisper, and overdramatic cloak swirl was catalogued. Including the time he allegedly used burned Purifier skulls as a decoration.

Valyne kept nodding, kept absorbing. She learned how Corvin had supposedly cleared Yvanna’s path to coronation like a divine wrecking ball. How his actions had twisted the political web of Argyll into a thread so cleanly severed, it was almost an art form.

And now, apparently, he was in Holy Verrenate.

Doing... only the Dark Mother knew what. But if his track record was any indication, it probably involved death, fire, politics, and at least one confused and misplaced Aether Instructor.

She’d report all of these including the fief to the Sir Shadows tomorrow. After the coronation. Assuming Corvin hadn’t turned the entire Sanctified Council into decorative mosaics by then.

Kaelyn, meanwhile, chattered on. Sweet, reckless Kaelyn. She even reenacted Corvin’s posture with absurd accuracy, hands folded behind her back like a brooding scholar ready to cast judgment on gravity itself.

Valyne smiled to herself. Yes, she liked Kaelyn. But she was definitely not like her.

No, Valyne was an instructor and not a loose mouthed one. A specialist. A dignitary, at least technically. She’d given Kaelyn just enough: that this was her first mission, that she taught Aether magic at a private academy, and that Corvin had been summoned back by Archmagus Vaelorin himself. Nothing else.

She hadn’t mentioned the school’s name.

She hadn’t mentioned the Obsidian Gate’s involvement. But maybe KAelyn would connect the dots as Archmagus Vaelorin was the leader of the triach.

She especially hadn’t mentioned how utterly unqualified she felt most days, especially when being followed by shadows who took their job very literally.

And unlike Kaelyn, she hadn’t offered any secrets that might be traced back to her. She kept her stories curated, her truths wrapped in silk.

Yes, Valyne decided, smirking to herself as Kaelyn animatedly described how Corvin has invaded her bedroom and ignored her arcane traps. Kaelyn might have a sharper tongue, but hers was tied with a ribbon and locked in a box. As it should be. She was satisfied with herself.

And as for Corvin?

They could definitely make him listen.

Probably.

Maybe.

Right?

...right?