The vortex closed quickly—so quickly that even the echo of that desperate cry for help hadn’t had time to fade.
Cicero kept his arm outstretched, fingers grasping at nothing but emptiness.
“Tsk.”
The scenery changed.
The shattered mirror before him became a brown wall, the air heavy with the stench of old wood.
Cicero knew that smell.
Knew it so well it made him a little nauseous.
This was a corridor with no end. On either side, countless tiny booths lined up, each covered by a deep purple curtain, with scenes of suffering carved above every doorway.
A confessional.
“Guilty…”
A voice whispered close to the nape of his neck. Wet and clammy.
“You are guilty…”
Cicero didn’t even look back. He just fished out a cigarette case, flicked one out, and bit it between his teeth.
“Of course.”
He mumbled around the cigarette, feeling for his lighter.
“If there’s no sin, what would the church live on? You think the tithe comes blowing in on the wind?”
“Click.”
Just as the flame from his lighter flared up, a chill wind snuffed it out.
Cicero’s hand paused.
He sighed, took the unlit cigarette from his lips, and held it between his fingers.
“I hate people messing with my fire.” He lifted his eyelids, his eyes void of emotion.
“Especially when I’m in a bad mood.”
The voice behind him didn’t shrink away at his cold expression. On the contrary, it grew even louder. Countless voices poured out from the confessionals in all directions—male, female, old, young—all overlapping.
“You betrayed the Lord… You’re a heretic… Your hands are drenched in blood…”
“You even… even that woman, the one who trusted you… you lied to her too…”
Cicero raised an eyebrow.
A curtain directly ahead was suddenly swept aside.
Inside, there was no priest, only a swirl of black mist. The mist twisted and gradually took the shape of a face.
A face Cicero could never forget.
Only, this face was deathly pale, tears of blood streaming from its eyes, and a hideous gash running across its throat.
“Cicero…” The woman reached out, wailing miserably, “Why did you lie to me… I’m a monster… You always knew I was a monster…”
Cicero stared at the apparition, his expression turning grim.
He shoved the unlit cigarette back into the case, and his hand slipped under his coat.
The sawed-off double-barrel shotgun aimed straight at the tear-stained, sobbing face.
“I have nothing to say.”
“BOOM——!!!”
The blast from the muzzle lit up the gloomy corridor for a split second.
The woman didn’t even have time to scream before her head exploded at point-blank range, scattered into drifting black smoke. Splinters flew, blowing a gaping hole in the confessional’s door.
“God loves all mankind.”
Cicero broke open the shotgun with one hand—“clack”—two steaming shells popped out and clattered to the floor.
He pulled two fresh shells from his pocket.
Brass base, red hull. The plastic casing was densely inked in Latin script with silver ink.
“If you all love confession so much,” Cicero shoved the shells into the chambers, snapped the gun shut, and the crisp locking sound echoed down the corridor, “then let me give you a lesson.”
The confessionals around him seemed to be enraged by that shot.
All the curtains burst open at once, whipped aside by an invisible wind.
Countless black shadows surged forth. They wore tattered cassocks, brandishing broken crucifixes or their own ribs, all charging at Cicero.
“So this is how you treat your own kin! Damn butcher!”
“Go to hell, Cicero!”
Facing this tidal wave of vengeful spirits, Cicero raised his gun lazily, barely bothering to aim.
“Bang!”
The nearest ghost was blown away, half its body missing.
“Go to hell?” Cicero fired while retreating.
“I’ve been there before, you know, but that’s a different bill.”
“Bang!”
Another ghost burst into fragments.
But there were too many of them. Kill one, two more took its place. They were an endless nightmare, trying to drown the living in sheer numbers.
A withered hand grabbed the hem of Cicero’s coat.
Then a second. Then a third.
They clawed and screamed, trying to drag him into the shadowy booths—the “judgment seat” they’d prepared for him.
“You can’t escape… your sins are too great…”
Cicero staggered a little, but his expression remained calm.
“I don’t like people putting their hands on me.”
He was forced back into a dead end of the corridor.
Cold wall at his back, a tsunami of angry ghosts before him. The reek of decay was nearly enough to make a man faint.
“That’s enough.”
Cicero suddenly holstered his gun.
The ghosts hesitated, thinking this heretic was finally giving up and ready to accept judgment.
Cicero reached into his coat, moving with a sacred gravity, as if about to pull out a Bible or some holy relic able to cleanse all evil.
The ghosts flinched instinctively, their aversion to sacred things hardwired.
But—
What Cicero produced was a glass bottle.
An ordinary, everyday glass bottle. Inside, clear liquid. Stuffed in the neck, a strip of rag.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…”
Cicero chanted solemnly, using his lighter to ignite the rag.
A flame whooshed up, tinting his pale face with a red glow.
“Amitabha… ah, no, may the Lord bless you dumbasses.”
With a flick of his wrist, the burning bottle sailed perfectly into the largest confessional.
Cicero smiled. “A gift from the Industrial Revolution.”
“KABOOM——!!!”
The bottle exploded.
High-proof alcohol met the cramped, sealed chamber—an instant, violent flash fire. Red flames surged like a waking dragon, roaring out of the confessional and racing across the dry, rotting boards.
“AAAAAAHHHH——!!!”
A moment ago, the ghosts sought to judge others. Now, they became true torches.
They fled in terror, but at these real, physical temperatures, their fragile forms couldn’t last. The heat burned not only wood, but the very resentment that kept their spirits tethered.
Flames soared. The whole maze became an oven.
Cicero stood before the inferno, calmly pulling out the cigarette he hadn’t managed to light before.
He leaned toward a burning ghost that looked like a bishop.
“Lend me a light. Thanks.”
He lit his cigarette off the bishop’s flaming beard, took a deep drag.
“Hiss—whoosh—”
The harsh smoke filled his lungs, sweeping away his lingering suffocation.
As the maze burned, the once-impenetrable “mindscape” began to collapse. The wood turned to ash, revealing what had been hidden beneath.
A stairway, leading down.
From below, he could faintly hear the sound of running water.
Cicero tapped the ash off his cigarette, glanced at the smoldering, howling remnants on the floor.
“Quit screaming. Think of it as an early taste of hell.”
He straightened his smoke-blackened collar, stepped over the burning wreckage, the soles of his shoes crunching in the ashes—crack, crack.
“As long as I take out the judge, nobody gets to judge me.”
Humming an unknown tune, Cicero descended the stone stairs.
That silhouette looked both devout—and utterly shameless.
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