The street filled with Saints.
Not memories.
Not ghosts.
Living men and women.
But their eyes were empty. Their movements synchronized. Their relics—glowing with Choir sigils—pulsed like organs outside the body.
Azari stared through the broken casino windows.
"There's at least twenty."
"Twenty bodies," Jung Min muttered. "Not twenty minds."
Jihoon strolled forward, hands still raised like this was a goddamn sermon.
"Recognize any of them?" he asked.
Jung Min didn't answer.
He saw them all.
Knew the names.
Trained with most.
And he'd thought every one of them was dead.
They should be.
"They volunteered," Jihoon said. "Gave themselves to the Choir. Not possessed. Not controlled. Just… re-purposed."
"You turned saints into meat radios," Jung Min growled.
"Correction—they turned themselves. We just gave them the frequency."
He waved his hand.
The Saints outside took one step forward.
The city shook.
Azari backed away from the window. "We can't take that head-on."
"We're not going to," Jung Min said.
He holstered one gun and drew a small black sphere from his coat—etched with a single rune.
Azari's eyes widened. "That's an angel bomb."
"Yeah."
"Those are banned."
"I know."
Jihoon smiled. "You're not seriously going to drop a divine warhead in a city center."
Jung Min pulled the pin.
"I absolutely am."
He threw it.
The bomb didn't explode.
It detonated silently.
A pulse of inverted light erupted across the street. Everything stopped. Sound folded in. Time staggered.
When it cleared—
Half the Saints were gone.
The rest were on their knees, bleeding light.
Azari's ears bled. She didn't care.
Jung Min grabbed her wrist.
"Move."
They ran out the side, into the alley, slipping through steam and ruin. Behind them, Jihoon's voice echoed—too calm.
"You can delay the hymn, Min… but you can't unhear it."
They ducked into a train tunnel—abandoned and flooded.
Azari collapsed onto the tracks, breath heaving.
Jung Min stood at the edge, watching the darkness ahead.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"We kill Jihoon," he said.
"He's not the last one."
"I know."
He knelt beside her.
"But he's the one I raised my gun with. And now I'm raising it against. That matters."
Azari looked at the relic glowing faintly between them.
"Do you think we can really stop it?"
Jung Min stared into the tunnel.
"No," he said.
"Not us."
A hum stirred deep below.
And something older than scripture heard them coming.