I'd like to thank CB for his help with editing and my lovely tumblr followers for their support. All my love to you.

Fortuna had been a bustling city, once.

Cars had once trundled down the ancient cobbles of old town, groaning in relief when they met newer tarmacked surfaces, laid as the castle city began to grow. People crowded the streets during any of the great festivals and whenever shops availed their goods. The docks were filled with the heady bustle of fishermen and the groaning of wood as boats bobbed on the lapping waves. The playful sounds of children filled the playgrounds and residential areas, all under the cathedral's protective shadow.

But no more.

Now Fortuna was little more than a pale, sickly shadow of its former self. The Savior's rise and fall had torn the city apart like lightning sundering trees. From Port Caerula all the way to Lamina Peak, it was in ruin, laying in the sun much like a flayed rib cage, rent open and heart exposed by the carrion power-mongers that had once been its leaders.

All those lives for a dream as fleeting as castles built on sand.

Whenever he thought about it, Nero felt sick to his stomach. He was over anger now, past his grief, stuck somewhere between disgust and disdain. Sometimes he questioned why he stayed; in the beginning he told himself it was because this place was his home. But that was quickly becoming a lie he told himself; there was no more hiding his arm. People noticed. He found himself being given a wide berth if and when he encountered people on the street. Other times he told himself that there was a lot left to do and not enough people to do it. Demons still roamed the island – stragglers, really, there was nothing intimidating enough to warrant concern. Even what was left of the original Holy Knights would be more than capable of dealing with them. Soon enough, even those few leftovers would be mopped up.

Now Nero questioned whether it was really worth staying and doing anything for this mess.

People were leaving, unwilling to try and rebuild their lives on an island they believed to be cursed by any number of deities, the most pious being the most resistant to the temptation of fleeing. They wanted to rebuild and reform – the Order was all but obliterated, all that was left were a few lowly priests and officers and even they couldn't agree what to do next. Some wanted to revive the Order under new leaders, with new creeds, and even ideals. Others, disgusted with what their ruler had descended to, sought to let the Order be consumed by history, allowed to die in the shame that it had come to wear. None of those dregs wanted anything to do with him.

Nero hated that stupid squabbling. None of them cared about what really mattered: the people who were left; the lost, the grieving, the confused, the uncertain. A lot of people saw hope in Kyrie and looked to her for some guidance, some kind words – anything to cling on, really. She tried so hard, being put on the spot like that. Nero sometimes got disgusted with them too. Not just because they were like mindless sheep, bleating for a shepherd – any shepherd, even one unable to really help them out of their plight, they were… well, ungrateful. Kyrie did the best she could for them but he knew it when he watched them; they were wary of him. And of Kyrie because she wasn't.

How long could they afford to go on previously accumulated grace? When would the people snap?

If Kyrie ever even said anything about leaving, they'd be off that island that same hour. He often felt the temptation to persuade her into leaving but the way she looked over the people, the city… she was still tied to this place.

He worried deeply about her, They hadn't talked much about what happened, about what they lost, unable – or unwilling to find the time as they buried themselves in what needed to be done, those who needed looking after.

And just when he thought that the remains of the city were pulling themselves back into a semblance of normalcy… it started.

It was little things at first. Colder nights. Frost on the prows of fishing ships in the middle of summer and the unnatural, haunting howl carried by the wind.

Then it started to seep into the people, that odd feeling of someone passing you by when there was nobody there, the eerie sensation of being under observation when you were all alone. People complaining of awful dreams, of lost loved ones, of sleepless nights rendered immobile in bed when something hung over them like a disease. Something they always described as familiar, and when they did the word took on a sinister meaning. They would avoid wandering the streets after midnight because there was something there that they could never see but could feel the cold breath on their necks and the clammy touch on their hands.

Nero almost wished there were more demons to kill. Demons were easy; you found them, maybe made a quip or two, and then you killed them. That's all there was to it, nothing more, nothing less. But this, this sort of mysterious, 'spooky shit' kind of thing, it didn't sit well with him. When the Order was still functional this kind of thing was the job of the Inquisitor squads – Nero and other younger Holy Knights would sometimes call them 'squint squads' behind their backs. But now he found himself regretting the snobbery, the divide between those who were pointed towards what required the sword, and those that were required to think.

For now, all he knew was that there was something wrong in Fortuna, and, that he was struggling to make heads or tails of it. Part of him wanted to dismiss it as the effects of a wide-scale disaster on an isolated population… but ever since he had awakened to this power budding in him, he'd learned to listen to those niggles in the back of his head, the whispers from his arm.

His frustration was mounting.

That's when he started having the dreams himself. It took him a while to admit that they were weird because his dreams had already taken a turn to the bizarre since his arm changed, almost as if the change brought with it an influence that seeped into his nightscapes. He'd stopped waking up in the middle of the night to the whispers of his arm long before the whole mess with the Savior even started.

When his dreams began to echo with the familiar footsteps of people who weren't there anymore, he was curious. When they filled with shadows he knew but could no longer be counted among the living, he started to wonder. When the whispers of his arm were crowded out by the murmur of the lost, he began to think that maybe there was something really wrong.

But it took him realizing that the howling of the wind in his dreams started to sound an awful lot like Credo to really start to worry.

He tried to tell himself that it was just his mind playing tricks; that he was waking up in the middle of the night out of habit, not because he was scared. The dead don't haunt dreams, he told himself, the dead don't start to wail at you in your dreams in a way that sounds frighteningly like pain and sorrow and anger. The dead are dead.

They don't come back.

So the night that Nero woke up by throwing himself off the bed in a tangle of sheets, panting harder than a marathon-runner, clenching his teeth to keep himself from blurting out a scream, he knew that this couldn't go on any longer. He'd torn himself out of a deep sleep just as Credo had appeared to him – first as a vague form that grew in cohesion as he came closer and closer. Nero had been frozen in his dream as Credo, ash-gray with hollow eyes and an abyss of eternal blackness where his mouth had once been. The horrible spectre all but pinned him to the floor, slowly strangling him while screaming in agony the entire time, until their faces were so close that Nero could see the way Credo's skin seemed to be translucent and at the same time so much like rotting paper.

By the time Nero had pulled himself off the floor and Kyrie had rolled over and switched on the light, he had regained control of his breathing but apparently, not of the kind of startled, wild-eyed gaze, fuelled by a truly lucid nightmare.

Nero instantly prepared a carefully-crafted white lie, some bullshit about wanting to get up for a leak and tripping on the sheets, just some comforting, mundane nonsense to keep her from worrying—

"Have you been having the dreams too, Nero?"

His shoulders sagged. Kyrie now stood on the other side of the bed in her plain night dress, her hair drawn into a plait, yet mussed and unkempt from the tormented sleep. Between them the bed had become like a war zone. She looked at him with a frown of mixed concern and exhaustion – he hadn't noticed that exhaustion in her until now. There were dark circles under her eyes. How had that escaped him?

"You… too?" he croaked.

She nodded and stared at the bed. "They started a few weeks ago," she said quietly and then wrapped her arms around herself awkwardly. "I thought it was just… bad dreams that would come once or twice but lately they're become a nightly event. But I think yours are worse."

She flicked her gaze up and fixed it on his neck, her eyes going wide and her face blanching. "Nero, your neck—"

Nero frowned and turned to the stare at the mirror over the dressing table at the opposite end of the room. His eyes widened. There was a rapidly fading bruise around his neck; four fingers and a thumb. Even as he watched, it faded away slowly.

"It's… it's Credo, isn't it?" Kyrie said as her voice cracked.

Nero looked around to her again quickly, only able to watch her blinking rapidly as her eyes moistened with restrained tears. It tore at him to see her, setting off every protective instinct within him. Dodging around the bed to reach out to her, as terror gripped at his heart, would she take his hand? Would she accept him? Or would she push him away? The inner turmoil made him ill, the uncertainty cutting a hole inside. All vanished as she walked into his embrace without hesitation, allowing himself to finally breathe the breath he was unaware he held.

"You've seen him?" Nero blurted, gathering her into his arms.

"Yes," she quavered.

She rested her forehead on his chest and he mechanically hugged her. Kyrie hadn't spoken about Credo since finding out he had died, and how. She wept for a day and since then, nothing. Nero sometimes felt guilty for not pressing her to talk to him. But he always ran up against his guilt about Credo. The few times he managed to get anything out of her, Kyrie just said that she couldn't dwell on it forever. But it had always sounded so forced when she said it and it cut him up inside. It sounded like those reserves of fortitude were starting to run out.

"Sometimes when I sleep deeply enough I can even hear him," she said. "And not just him. Nero, it's like others have said. They're still here. They can't rest. They can't… move on to wherever it is they go. They're left here and they don't like it. They want to leave but they can't."

Nero rubbed her back soothingly. "They?" he asked and in the same breath he realized that he dreaded the answer.

Kyrie pushed back at stared him in the eye. "The dead!"

"Kyrie—"

"Nero, we've pretended long enough. That it's not happening. But you just all but woke up screaming and there was a bruise of a hand on your neck," Kyrie protested, still on the verge of tears. "You think I haven't heard you mutter in your sleep? You think I don't know how you growl and how your arm has an angry light to it?"

Nero reluctantly let her go, looking at the floor in shame as his fingers unthinkingly interlocked behind his head. It was stupid to try and pretend that it was all in their heads, when it was staring them in the face like this. They hadn't confronted any of this.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I didn't intend to keep things from you. I didn't… think this was real. I'm still not sure."

"I used to think the same about a lot of things," Kyrie confessed and sat on the bed, staring at her fingers. "But then all of… that happened. With the Order and Sanctus and… and Credo. It happened. It really happened. And now… this is too."

Nero felt his back gently thump against the wall across from her and he slouched. The same kinds of thoughts were running around his head too.

"Nero, I don't think we should've been so confident that we could just pretend it didn't change us, even if it seemed like the storm was over," Kyrie continued. "Or that it wouldn't… leave something behind."

Nero frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I can't… really put my finger on it," she confessed. "But I feel as though… there's a cloud hanging over the city. It's almost as it was when demons roamed the streets. But now…"

"Now there's nothing there to see and yet there is," Nero concluded. "That sort of feeling?"

"Yes," Kyrie said breathlessly. "Nero, do you think… we could go to the graveyard at the castle? I know you dislike going there but—"

Nero gulped as he began to stare hard at the carpet, letting her words sink in before finally braving to look back. "You want to visit the grave?"

She nodded. "I wanted to… I don't know what I want. I don't know what is happening. If he's… somehow restless, perhaps praying and a candle…"

Nero smiled wryly at her. "You know I'm no good at religious stuff," he said faintly. "Anyway… I doubt he wants my prayers."

He suppressed a shiver at the memory of Credo's dead, furious face, so close to his face that he could almost feel him. If Credo should be furious at anyone, it would be him.

Kyrie shook her head. "Don't say that. Credo really respected you even though you two didn't always see eye to eye."

Nero's nose wrinkled as he glanced away, He couldn't quite argue that; he had deeply respected Credo, as a friend, as a fellow Holy Knight, as a master of the sword and his teacher. But they had always butted heads over almost everything. Nero always irritated Credo with his insistence to do things his way. Credo had always rubbed Nero the wrong way since ascending to Supreme General, with his stickler attitude. And their last ever clash…

Nero didn't like to contemplate it. He had been so, so disappointed to see what Credo had allowed himself to become. Credo wasn't blind to it but he had deemed necessary – he was always like that, duty before everything even when duty seemed so stupid. It was all Sanctus' fault, twisting the most honorable and dignified man in Fortuna into just another demon puppet. He had them all fooled for so long. And Credo paid the price when he decided enough was enough. Nero may not have been the one to kill Credo, but he just as well might have.

"I know. If you feel so strongly about it, we should go," Nero said and knelt down in front of her. Gently embracing her hands in his, he kissed her knuckles softly.

And so they had gone. Nero had been apprehensive about it, but part of him wanted to. It was the least he owed to his old friend.

The castle of Fortuna might've been spared the kind of destruction that erased the Order HQ and the destruction of half the city when the Savior fell. It had still been pretty well battered by the passing of the Savior, not to mention the onslaught of demons that swarmed the island and especially the ones that poured out of Agnus' damned laboratory. And to be fair, Nero had added quite a bit of damage of his own as he passed through.

He hadn't been back since then. He didn't like the place, knowing what it had hidden. The last time he'd been here was out of duty. To Credo.

The Soldier's Graveyard was traditionally where great heroes of the Order were laid to rest. Nero and Kyrie couldn't think of a better place to make a memorial for Credo. Having no body to bury had been hard on Kyrie. The brave face that she had worn on the day left Nero feeling… well, defeated. He knew that underneath her restrained exterior, she was trying to avoid breaking down. She had cried a lot once the reality of it all had finally settled in. They interred his prized personal sword instead, the closest thing they had to a real memento of him.

Neither of them had been back since then, busy with trying to pull their lives together; busy trying to put it all behind them and move on. The majority of the people left had shared their sentiments. He didn't think anyone would really come here.

Nero didn't like the look of the castle as it loomed over them, even against the dull blue autumn sky. It was cloudy and dreary and he longed for more light. He had insisted on coming early, not relishing the idea of having Kyrie wandering around the place at night, even with him being there.

"Nero? Are you alright?" Kyrie asked him.

It snapped him out of his reverie as they stood at the edge of the bridge that led to the gates.

"Yeah," he lied.

She frowned at him but said nothing, instead taking his hand, his Devil Bringer hand, in hers before he mechanically allowed her to start him down the path across the bridge. Sooner than they could reach the gates they stopped, together, neither trying to speak, but they could both see it.

The air burst into static mere paces ahead of them, flickering and shimmering as it seemed to shift, leaving them both expecting an eruption of demons, pouring forth from some twisted tear in reality. But none came, only a constant crackle of static in the air in front of them. Kyrie's hand tightened around his suddenly as he heard her sharp intake of breath. Without realizing, Nero took a step backwards, his eyes fixed on the spot before him.

They both took another step backwards and then without saying a word, they turned around and walked hurriedly back along the bridge, wanting nothing more but to put as much distance between them and the castle as they could. Nero wanted to glance back to make sure they weren't followed but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to do so.

They had both seen it, standing in the static, wreathed and covered in ashes, with the eternal gaze of eyeless sockets and the mouth frozen open in a silent scream opened to an endless darkness, head twitching unnaturally and gaze fixed on them.

It was Credo, the very same as their nightmares.

As much as Nero tried to explain it away, all his explanations fell before the truth. As much as he tried to tell himself that dammit, whatever this was he would fight it and protect them… he knew in his gut that he couldn't. Because how do you kill something that's very clearly already dead?

Kyrie said nothing. What could she say? Or he, for that matter, what could either of them say? She just shrank against him until they returned to the safety of their home – but how safe was it really, when their dreams were so haunted? She had sat by the window, eyes wide and trying in vain to deny what she had seen.

It was the sight of Kyrie looking so scared that swayed his final decision. As much as he hated it, as irritating as it would be, he would have to turn to someone with greater experience.

He would have to go see Dante.