The hall that was hidden behind the wall was being filled with smoke.

  With the sound of my footsteps and raving flames breaking through the silence.

  I pulled out the Colt Model 1860 that holds onto one round.

  Smoke started to fill my lungs, strangling air out of me, and I was unable to see the light at the end of this tunnel.

  That's about right, never being able to see the light.

  Not even in death did I get the luxury of being numb.

  … Why should I?

  The hall end was closing in, and I worried about what would be there.

  If anything was… Of course, there would be something there unless this whole hall is a bloody trap.

  I felt like I was being choked out by life itself.

  Maybe I deserved it…

  To die in some hallway, in some church.

  "Khoff, Khak, Khak.”

  I kept moving anyway; I'd rather bite a bullet or the sword than choke on flames.

  I finally reached the end of the hallway.

  Now I just need to find the goddamn door.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bashing my left fist hit the wall while my right held my gun. Can’t use my eye due to the black smoke blinding me.

  Thud.

  My fist felt different on the wall, so I started kicking it. My feet seemed more powerful than my arm.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

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  The door was being broken down while I was spitting out of my lungs.

  The rooms behind me were combusting from the heat. I knew somehow that Miyamoto had gotten everyone out.

  The shotgun would have been faster, but I wasn’t going to pull something that created holes in both a wall and myself when I couldn’t see two feet in front of me.

  My eye grew heavier as the smoke filled my lungs more, and I could feel my right leg acting up.

  Getting shot seems too much for Celeste's healing magic.

  Creak.

  The door was about to give—Bam!

  With that, the door broke off, not clean… Nothing ever was.

  UUUUA!

  Christ!

  Clean air felt like a wake-up whiskey after a hangover.

  My eye darted around, trying to find where Joan was and where the hell I was.

  Black smoke was coming out of the door and everywhere else.

  And one awful headache—the hangover simile just came back around.

  There was a small disturbance in the woods that the door led out to.

  I gave chase once more, but my right leg was acting up.

  While running down a hill.

  Water started to hit my face.

  It’s always raining, isn’t it?

  At the end of these things.

  Rain and flames washing it all away.

  My right foot started to lose feeling.

  Oh, how the past always bites me in the ass.

  Due to my poor foot, I started to fall down the hill and didn’t see Joan anywhere.

  It wouldn’t have been hard to see anything because I was falling down a goddamn hill.

  I found myself face down on the wet soil.

  Jumping back up as fast as I could and checking my weapons.

  All seemed good.

  “Joan, let’s finish this.”

  Rustling came from behind a tree.

  I raised my Colt.

  “Why not let your god protect you from my gun?”

  “What a pitiful man.

  Why couldn’t you just let their dream continue?

  All you did was destroy these people's lives.”

  “You can’t call living under another man’s will living. It's nothing more than slavery.”

  “But these people were happy; they were content with their lives.”

  “Force happiness means nothing. There is no way in any form that controlling another can gain anything from the one being controlled.”

  “You're just saying the same thing over and over again.”

  “And so are you.”

  Joan came out from behind the tree she had hidden in.

  “Tell me this, V, what makes you so sure in your belief that I’m the evil in this scenario?”

  “I don’t. Because I don’t believe in the concept of good or evil, in reality, I don’t care about any of this. Amaterasu was the one who brought me in, but I said to myself I would end any form of slavery I see, and my eye landed here, staring at you.”

  I pulled back the hammer of the gun once more.

  “How hypocritical, to tell me how evil control is when taking orders from a god.”

  I readied my aim.

  “No being can control The Devil, and no being can control the fool who has given himself the name of the beast. For he has seen it all, and reality no longer matters to him.”

  I place my finger on the trigger.

  “What a small man, a man who needs to hide behind a myth.

  For what, V?

  FOR WHAT!”

  Bang!

  …Thud.

  Birds flew out of the forest.

  The rain fired upon me like it had many times before.

  A body lay on the soil with blood surrounding the corpse and seeping into the dirt.

  I pulled a cigarette out of the old box that contained it and placed it between my teeth.

  I walked back up the hill with a small limp.

  My hat covered the cigarette lying between my lips, but to make sure it would light when I made it to the top of the hill, I cupped my hand over the cig.

  And lit it.

  I took a long drag, letting smoke back into my lungs, something I had tried to get away from so desperately mere minutes before.

  I looked at the inferno and then saw Miyamoto with a crowd of people staring at the flames and limped over to him.

  Only one thought crossed my mind while the blaze grew beside me.

  …I hate fucking religion.