Episode 10 — What the Waters Have Not Kept
> Codex of Ath-Emen-Raël.
"A forgotten name is a weapon."
And Léandre was no longer exactly Léandre.
He stood up.
His hands were longer.
His skin paler.
And in his voice, another timbre spoke with him.
—I remember everything.
—And I'm going to start rewriting it all.
---
> …And in the silence, what had been invoked finally decided to work. Not in the mind. But in the real world.
A few months later—Tokyo, Japan.
A light rain was falling on the Arakawa district. The sky was the color of wet bone, and the air was heavier than usual. That morning, the Tōsenji Temple was anything but a peaceful sanctuary. It had become an echo chamber for screams that no human throat seemed able to produce.
A twelve-year-old boy, Kaito Yamamura, was lying on a futon of blackened salt. The local priests had been powerless to do anything. His voice had changed. His eyes too. He spoke in an ancient language, which sounded nothing like human. He laughed in the dead of night. He shouted things that no one dared to repeat.
The temple then called upon Benjamin Borax, a Western exorcist, sent specially by the occult coalition Magna Ordo Sancta. He was no mere monk. He wore a rosary made of whale bones, a red cloak woven from the hair of sacrificed virgins, and in his pockets: vials containing sealed whispers.
When he entered the exorcism room, the boy immediately fell silent. The air turned icy. And Kaito, or whatever inhabited him, addressed Benjamin with a fixed smile:
> "You... You come from where I drowned. Do you want to remind me? You'll remember your real name."
The floor cracked around the futon. An ancient circle, sealed for centuries beneath the temple's wood, slowly revealed itself. The evil wasn't locked inside the boy. It had been brought back with him.
When Benjamin began to pray in Latin, the room lit up with a reddish light. The boy writhed, vomited a hot, black liquid, then… stopped dead.
A black, scaly arm protruded from his mouth. Then a face, eyeless, covered in moving glyphs.
The demon wouldn't flee.
It wanted to fight.
And in that prayer room, before the helpless eyes of the monks, the demon took human form, naked and abominable, trembling with rage and hatred.
> — "I am Hurald-Tha. Born in the dead river. You cannot send me back. For it was you, Benjamin Borax, who let me return."
Benjamin didn't flinch. He took out a thin blade, engraved with seven forgotten alphabets. And whispered:
> — "I am the one who lost you. I will be the one who will tear you apart."
And then…
The exorcism became a duel.