The iron door slowly creaked open, and a wave of cold air, significantly chillier than the corridor outside, rushed out to meet him. The air was thick with a pungent mixture of carbolic acid, formalin, and decaying flesh.
Ryan stood at the entrance, in no hurry to step inside.
His gaze slowly swept across the entire morgue.
It was much larger than what he had seen in the memories of the Grail Apprentice the night before, with dozens of gurney tables lined up neatly on both sides.
At the far end stood a row of massive cold storage units, with a few dim gas lamps hanging from the ceiling.
He gently adjusted his glasses. The Glory in his left eye surfaced naturally, without any conscious effort, and the world began to slowly shift.
The once-gloomy morgue suddenly burst with countless colors.
It was not light visible to the naked eye, but rather the traces left behind by aspects themselves.
A faint trace of the Winter aspect lingered on the ordinary corpses like a layer of slowly cooling frost—the scent naturally left behind after life departed.
Traces of the Grail aspect clung to the edges of the gurneys.
However, looking further inside, the scene was entirely different.
Deep within several corpses covered in white sheets, a dense mass of the Grail aspect had taken root. Instead of dissipating with death, it clung to the flesh like a parasitic plant, slowly squirming and growing, maintaining the corpses in an extremely bizarre state of equilibrium.
Those bodies were not truly dead.
At least, from the perspective of aspects, they had not yet completely transitioned into Winter.
Ryan slowly approached one of the gurneys and gently lifted the white sheet covering the corpse's face.
It was a middle-aged man.
His skin had lost all color but was not yet stiff. Although his chest did not rise or fall, his fingers occasionally twitched ever so slightly, as if something deep within was gradually reclaiming the vessel.
Ryan did not continue to examine the corpse itself, instead focusing his gaze deep inside it.
There, he saw a massive web.
Countless hair-thin threads of the Grail aspect were interconnected, extending from the corpse's heart all the way to its limbs, and then stretching downward into the stone-tiled floor of the morgue.
Following the pathways, he quickly realized that all the semi-transformed corpses in the room were connected to this single web.
They did not exist in isolation; together, they formed an incomplete ritual.
Ryan's eyes gradually lit up.
In the past, he would have only used The Glory as a weapon.
But things were different now.
Ever since returning from Moth Port, he had begun to truly understand what the Lantern represented.
Only by seeing could one understand; only by understanding could one deconstruct.
The Glory expanded in his vision, and the intertwined threads of the Grail aspect gradually grew clear. Every connection, every node, and even every flow of energy was laid bare before him.
Ryan suddenly realized that this morgue was far more than just a simple place to store bodies.
It was more like a slowly functioning organ.
The corpses were merely fuel.
What truly mattered was the continuously circulating Grail aspect.
They rewove blood, life, and decay into a new structure. If even a single corpse completed its final transformation, the entire network would become more stable.
At this thought, a faint smile played on Ryan's lips.
“So that's how it is.”
The entire hospital was nothing more than a shell concealing the ritual.
And the steady stream of casualties and corpses sent to the hospital after the East Port incident had become the perfect fuel to sustain it.
Ryan slowly raised his right hand, a soft yet incredibly pure spark of The Glory emerging at his fingertips.
As if solving a complex puzzle, he gently pressed The Glory against the nearest aspect thread, carefully feeling its flow.
The Glory was reading it.
A moment later, he had already found the first node.
Then the second.
The third.
More and more key connections hidden within the ritual were uncovered by him one by one.
Ryan exhaled softly.
The corners of his mouth slowly curved upward.
“Found them.”
If he severed these nodes simultaneously, the entire morgue's network would collapse from within like a building stripped of its skeletal support.
The light at his fingertips compressed tighter and tighter, eventually shrinking to a pinpoint-sized speck. It did not look dazzling, nor did it carry any intimidating aura, but it was far more stable than any of his previous releases.
In the next instant, that tiny speck of The Glory touched the first node.
A very soft snap echoed.
It was as if a tightly wound piano string had suddenly been snipped.
Immediately after.
The second.
The third.
The fourth.
Ryan moved with astonishing speed. Each strike of The Glory was precise, without the slightest error. Within just a few breaths, he had severed more than ten key connections in the Grail aspect network spanning the morgue.
The previously stable flow of aspects instantly spun out of control.
The corpses on the gurneys began to twitch violently.
The chests of some corpses bulged wildly before rapidly collapsing, as if countless things were squirming frantically beneath their skin. Others snapped their eyes open, their graying pupils rolling around, yet they remained unable to actually stand.
The subterranean space was suddenly filled with the sound of grinding bones and tearing flesh.
The dense, overlapping noises echoed from all directions, sending a shiver down his spine.
However.
At the exact moment the ritual was completely broken.
Deep within the morgue, a row of cold storage units suddenly began to vibrate simultaneously.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Heavy thuds rang out repeatedly.
The iron door in the very center suddenly bulged outward, forming a massive dent as if something were frantically slamming its body against the metal.
Ryan slowly turned around.
He gazed calmly toward the source of the noise.
In the next second.
Accompanied by a screech of tearing metal, the entire iron door was blown clean off by a brute, savage force. It spun through the air several times before slamming heavily against the wall.
Shards of shattered metal sprayed in all directions.
A grayish-white figure, standing well over two meters tall, slowly stepped out from the darkness behind the cold storage unit.
Ryan suddenly smiled.
At this moment, Ryan felt no fear whatsoever. His long-suppressed nature had been completely unleashed.
“So it's you.”
The ghoul slowly raised its head.
Its murky, yellowed eyes locked onto Ryan as its nostrils flared, sniffing the air like a wild beast.
A few seconds later.
A raspy, low chuckle rumbled from the depths of its throat.
“Keh...”
“Keh-keh...”
Ryan suddenly recalled the first time he had met this creature.
The East Port warehouse.
Back then, he had only just stepped into the world of the extraordinary. Capable of only the crudest applications of The Glory, he had been chased into a pathetic flight by this very monster.
Ryan took a slow step forward, his eyes calm and devoid of any emotion.
“You've recovered well.”
“It seems the hospital has been feeding you plenty these past few days.”
The ghoul actually understood him. It slowly curled its lips back, exposing a mouthful of fangs.
Crimson saliva dripped continuously from its teeth, leaving foul-smelling puddles of blood on the stone floor.
It still remembered. It was this very young man, this human who radiated that blinding white light.
The one who had ruined the warehouse ritual and beaten it half to death.
It had never forgotten.
Man and monster stared at each other in silence across a distance of over ten meters.
In the next instant, the ghoul suddenly lowered its stance.
Its thick legs flexed and exploded with power.
Boom!
The stone tiles beneath its feet shattered instantly, sending countless shards flying. Its massive body blurred into a grayish-white afterimage, lunging forward at a speed far greater than back at the warehouse. Its razor-sharp claws tore through the air with a piercing screech, aiming straight for Ryan's chest.
Had this been just a few days ago.
Ryan wouldn't have even been able to track its movements.
But now, under the light of The Glory.
Every single thread of the Winter aspect flowing within the ghoul was crystal clear.
When its muscles flexed, how its bones pivoted, how the force was transferred, and even where it planned to strike next—everything was fully exposed to Ryan's eyes.
He didn't even take a step back. He simply tilted his body slightly.
The claws, capable of shredding steel plates, brushed past the edge of his coat, whipping up a gust of wind but failing to graze even a single thread of his clothes.
The ghoul froze for a split second in clear disbelief.
It had never expected that this human, who once could only flee in panic, could now dodge its attack so effortlessly.
Yet Ryan was already at its side.
He slowly raised his right hand.
In his palm, a sphere of pure white Glory slowly began to glow.
The light was not blinding, but it was so pure that it seemed capable of illuminating all things.
Ryan looked at the beast and spoke softly.
“This time.”
“It's time to settle the score once and for all.”
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