Seven years on the road. Seven years of following threads that led to dead ends and whispers that turned to smoke. The first had been easy - Balance in her valley, tending her scales with obsessive precision. She'd practically advertised herself with her perfectly maintained garden where every leaf had its place.
One soul found. Thirteen souls left to find. Six virtues, seven sins.
The second trail led me to Ironhold, a city built on the bones of older cities, where smokestacks reached toward heaven like metal prayers and the air tasted of coal and ambition. They called it the City of Progress. I called it loud. But I wasn't here for the city. I was here for the woman who was quietly tearing it apart with her bare hands.
BLK: Sienna Blackwood. The Awakened they whisper about in engineering circles. The one who makes buildings forget how to stand.
I found her name in a work order, but also in the margins of architectural journals. Theories about "structural decay acceleration" and "inexplicable material fatigue." Scientists trying to explain what happened when she touched things.
They had no idea.
The demolition contracts were just her day job. A way to use her gift legally, professionally. But I'd followed the real trail - the accidents, the mysterious collapses, the way old buildings seemed to give up their ghosts whenever she walked by.
I found her workshop on the city's edge, though "workshop" was generous. It looked more like a museum of endings. Pieces of buildings lined the walls like trophies - fragments of marble that had turned to sand, steel beams twisted into impossible spirals, wooden pillars that had aged decades in minutes.
She stood at a workbench, her hands hovering inches above a small architectural model. Not touching it. Never touching it unless she meant to.
Sienna Blackwood. Late twenties. Dark green hair pulled back in a practical bun. Work clothes that had seen actual work, but also work gloves that never came off. Even here, alone in her sanctuary, she kept her hands covered. But it was her eyes that caught me. Green like bottle glass. Beautiful. And completely empty of everything except hunger.
SNA: to the model You're beautiful. Perfect proportions. Elegant lines. Probably took weeks to build.
She flexed her fingers inside the gloves.
SNA: I could unmake you in seconds. Watch your little windows crack like eggshells. Feel your tiny foundation crumble to dust. See how long you'd last if I really tried.
The model sat there, pristine and doomed. She didn't touch it. Not yet. I watched her work for hours. She had other models - dozens of them. All untouched. All perfect. Her private collection of things she could destroy but chose not to. A gallery of restraint.
BLK: The ultimate temptation - A gift that could level cities, and she builds dollhouses just to feel the power of not using it.
The workshop walls were covered with newspaper clippings. "Master Architect Marcus Blackwood Unveils New Cathedral." "Blackwood's Bridge Connects Two Kingdoms." "The Visionary Behind Ironhold's Greatest Monuments."
And in smaller print: "Mysterious Structural Failures Plague Old District." "Century-Old Library Collapses Without Warning." "Engineers Baffled by Accelerated Decay."
Father builds. Daughter unmakes.
|Not with dynamite or wrecking balls, but with something far more intimate.
BLK: Daddy issues.
That evening, I followed her to the Harmony Theater. The building stood like a monument to better days, its marble facade catching the dying light. Beautiful. Doomed. Sienna approached slowly, reverently. She pulled off one glove, revealing a hand that looked perfectly normal. Pale. Slender. Artist's fingers. A hand that could age stone to dust.
SNA: to the building Sixty years of performances. All those voices, all that music, all those dreams echoing in your walls.
She placed her bare palm against the marble entrance. The stone began to weep. Not metaphorically. The marble actually wept - hairline cracks spreading like tears, moisture seeping from fissures that hadn't existed moments before. The building's death was beautiful, almost organic. Like watching a flower wilt in fast-forward.
SNA: Feel that? That's decades of weather in seconds. Centuries of erosion in minutes. I'm not destroying you - I'm just... speeding up the inevitable.
Her voice was soft, intimate. Like a lover whispering secrets. The building shuddered. Not from any external force, but from within. Its own materials betraying it, forgetting their strength, remembering only entropy.
SNA: Dad builds things to last forever. But I know the truth - nothing lasts forever. Nothing should. I just help things remember their mortality.
She moved her hand along the wall, leaving a trail of age in her wake. Paint peeled. Mortar crumbled. Metal oxidized instantly, decades of rust blooming like fast-growing flowers.
BLK: Why?
I whispered it to the wind. Not expecting an answer.
SNA: Because endings are honest.
Wait. She hadn't heard me at all. She was just... talking. To the building. To herself. To the empty air. Seven years of hunting souls had taught me to recognize the signs - the way people talked when they thought no one was listening. When loneliness had become so familiar it felt like conversation. She stepped back, her hand now gloved again. The building stood, but barely. Wounded. Dying slowly from her touch.
SNA: Dad's monuments are lies. Beautiful lies about permanence and legacy and things that matter. But everything ends. Everything falls apart. I'm just... honest about it.
She walked around the building, occasionally reaching out to brush a wall, a pillar, a window frame. Each touch was a small apocalypse. Stone aged to powder. Wood became dust. Glass grew cloudy with the weight of nonexistent years.
SNA: When I was little, I used to touch his models by accident. Watch them crumble in my hands. He thought I was clumsy. Destructive. A disappointment.
Her laugh was bitter as winter.
SNA: Took me years to realize I wasn't destroying anything. I was just... revealing what was always true. That everything he built was already broken. Already falling. I just helped it fall faster.
She placed both hands against the theater's main doors. The wood aged rapidly - paint cracking, surface weathering, until it looked like driftwood that had spent decades in the sun.
SNA: People think destruction is violent. Ugly. But look at this - isn't it beautiful? The way time works, the way everything returns to dust? I'm not a demolition expert. I'm a... temporal artist.
The doors opened at her touch, hinges rusting away to nothing. Inside, she moved through the theater like a ghost. Her hands trailed along seats, and they aged gracefully - leather cracking in elegant patterns, fabric fading to beautiful earth tones. The stage floor weathered to a silvery patina. The painted ceiling developed the kind of cracks that looked intentional, artistic.
SNA: Even this is too slow. Too gentle. Do you want to see what I can really do?
She pulled off both gloves. Placed her bare hands against the theater's central pillar. And let go. The pillar didn't just age - it experienced geological time. Stone became sediment became dust became memory. The change rippled outward, through the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling. Not violent collapse, but organic dissolution. Like watching a sand castle meet the tide. The theater died beautifully. Gracefully. Returning to the earth with dignity. When it was over, Sienna stood in a field of dust and memory, her hands uncovered, her face peaceful.
SNA: That's what I really am. Not a destroyer. Not a demolition expert. I'm an ending. A beautiful, necessary ending.
She looked at her bare hands with something like love.
SNA: And endings, when they're done right, are the most honest thing in the world.
She looked around the empty space where the theater had been, still talking to no one. Or maybe to everyone who'd ever listened to her father's speeches about permanence and legacy. The words of someone who'd been having this argument with ghosts for years.
BLK: The Sin of Ruin.
Two souls found. Twelve left to go. But this one... this one was different. Not just human vice made manifest, but something deeper. Power twisted into philosophy. An awakened gift that had become a calling. And loneliness that had become a theology.
She hadn't heard me because she wasn't listening for anyone. In a city of millions, Sienna Blackwood had learned to be alone with her gift, her purpose, and her endless conversations with the dead buildings that understood her better than any living person ever could.
The hunt continues. But now I know what I'm really looking for. Not just the lost souls. But the gods they're becoming in their solitude.