The echoes of the five bells still trembled in Elias's teeth as he pressed his back against the chapel's shattered doorway. Across the nave, the Middlefinger's remains hissed and bubbled where the mercury rounds had struck true—a stinking mass of dissolving flesh and broken teeth.

Ate Rosario spat a stream of betel nut juice onto the corpse. "One down. Five to go."

Lira wiped sweat from her brow, her collarbone wound now glowing faintly through her shirt—a detail Elias didn't miss. "We need to move before they—"

A scream cut her off. Distant, but unmistakable—the same layered voice as the Ringfinger, but deeper. "Found you!"

Father Mateo clutched his crucifix. "The Index. Strongest of the Fingers. It's herding people toward..." His face went pale. "The cathedral. Where we left the box."

Elias's stomach dropped. The box—still bound by his blood-seal, but vulnerable. If the Hollow King's servants reached it...

Ate Rosario's radio crackled to life. Voices overlapped in panicked bursts:

"—smoke near Quiapo—"
"—bodies walking out of the Pasig—"
"—the bells, the damn bells won't stop—"

The sniper cocked his rifle. "They're corralling survivors. Why?"

Elias knew. The bone mask's vision flashed behind his eyes—twelve figures, twelve sacrifices. "They're gathering replacements. For the guardians the Hollow King lost."

Lira's knife hand twitched. "We split up. Take out the Fingers before they—"

"No." Ate Rosario grabbed a machete from the duffel. "You two head to the cathedral. We'll handle the others." She tossed Elias a cloth-wrapped bundle—an antique pistol, its barrel engraved with baybayin. "One shot. Aim for the heart."

Elias nearly dropped it. The metal burned against his corrupted hand, the gold veins in his skin pulsing in protest. "What is this?"

"Spanish steel. Forged the day they first burned our histories." Her smile was all teeth. "It remembers how to kill traitors."

Outside, the city burned in patches—not with normal fire, but with eerie blue flames that left the buildings untouched while consuming only the people. The streets writhed with panicked crowds, their screams punctuated by that terrible, layered laughter.

Lira dragged Elias into an alley. "Your hand."

He didn't realize he'd been scratching at the gold veins until she stopped him. The corruption had reached his elbow now, the skin hot and tight.

"It's spreading faster," she muttered.

The bone mask vibrated in Elias's pack. A whisper slithered out:

"You feel it, don't you? The pull?"

Because he did. A tug behind his navel, drawing him toward the cathedral. Not just the box—something older beneath it.

Lira's fingers dug into his arm. "Stay with me."

They ran through backstreets choked with the Hollow King's horrors—corpses strung up like marionettes with golden thread, shadows that peeled from walls to whisper Elias's name. Each step sent jolts of pain up his corrupted arm, the gold flecks multiplying like stars in his vision.

Then the cathedral loomed before them, its once-white walls now veined with the same black cracks as Elias's skin.

At its steps stood the Index.

Taller than the Middlefinger, its body was a patchwork of stolen limbs—each finger, each toe belonging to a different person, all stitched together with hair-thin strands of gold. Where its face should have been rotated five mouths, each speaking in unison:

"Late, late, the twelfth is late."

Lira raised her pistol. Elias reached for the bone mask—

—and the ground beneath them screamed.

The cathedral's foundations shattered. A geyser of black water erupted, carrying with it the scent of deep earth and something far worse.

Floating in the torrent was a sight that stopped Elias's heart:

Eleven skeletons, each impaled on a silver nail.

And one empty space.

Waiting.