Gun In Another World

The cathedral of Saint Vaelor was the kind of holy site that pretended to be humble while screaming wealth, stained glass windows told stories no one had time to read, the marble pillars were taller than most city watchtowers, and the incense burned so thick it masked not just the stench of sweat and fear but also the sound of prayers whispered through clenched teeth, it was the Church's message made architecture—opulence pretending to be mercy, and Kaito hated every inch of it.

He didn't enter through the front.

He never did.

The side wall had a service tunnel used by junior clerics who hated sunlight and volunteers who got paid in half-blessings and rotbread, he slipped in wearing a borrowed robe two sizes too large, hood down, shoulders hunched, just another faceless acolyte in a long line of obedient shadows, no one questioned him because no one cared, and that was their first mistake.

Lilyeth was already seated in the upper balcony, dressed like a noblewoman with too many rings and a fan too sharp to be fashion, she watched the pews fill from behind a veil of boredom, her hand resting on the clutch that concealed two Frostbite charms and one Echo Hollow, her instructions were simple—wait for the moment Kaito signaled, and then listen to what people weren't supposed to hear.

Today's sermon wasn't being delivered by a nobody.

It was High Confessor Orenn, one of the Church's most influential speakers, known for converting entire districts with a single speech and silencing political rivals with nothing but scripture and a smile, he wore no armor, carried no weapon, but his voice held a crowd better than most chains, he stepped onto the platform with slow, practiced grace, hands raised like he was about to conduct a choir of ghosts.

"Brothers. Sisters. Repenters. Seekers," he began, voice warm, inviting, false, "Today I bring you truth wrapped in grace, and grace wrapped in steel."

Kaito slipped down the center aisle, every step in rhythm with the choir's fading hum, he moved like someone with purpose but not ambition, attention but not pride, he held the false relic in both hands—a palm-sized glass charm shaped like a holy tear, rune-etched with golden script that looked like it belonged in a vault, but was in truth a loaded Echo Hollow round encased in saint-glass and laced with intent, it didn't explode, it listened, and when it had heard enough, it spoke back.

He reached the pulpit stairs just as Orenn raised his arms again.

"We must not fear heresy," the man declared, "We must hunt it, drown it, purify it!"

Kaito knelt as if in worship and offered the charm.

"For your collection, Holy One," he said, voice low, respectful, false.

Orenn smiled.

He always smiled.

And that was his second mistake.

He accepted the relic, raised it high for the crowd to see, and whispered a blessing.

The charm glowed.

Then pulsed.

Then shattered in his palm.

And the confession began.

Not in words.

But in truth.

"I gave heretics sanctuary beneath the west chapel," Orenn said, smiling still, voice calm even as his eyes widened, "I smuggled cursed relics across the southern border for gold and favor."

The crowd froze.

Orenn kept speaking.

"I sold saint's blood diluted with wine and called it salvation. I buried orphans behind the orphanage to inflate donation requests. I—"

He stopped.

But not because he wanted to.

His voice broke.

His legs gave out.

And for the first time in two decades of preaching, High Confessor Orenn fell.

Lilyeth stood, fan snapping shut.

Rook was already moving through the rear crowd in a disguised cloak, spreading rumors in real-time.

And Kaito?

He turned his back and walked out.

No one stopped him.

No one could.

Because no one remembered his face.

Only his work.

And the Vault had just made its first public miracle.

It took less than an hour for the Church to seal off the cathedral and declare the incident a divine malfunction, guards in robes swapped prayers for swords, scribes rushed to rewrite the sermon transcript, and priests whispered terms like "possessed relic" and "forged miracles" behind closed doors, but it didn't matter, because the crowd had already scattered into the city like panicked birds, and every word Orenn had spoken was already being repeated in taverns, alleyways, baker stalls, and gambling dens, the Church could try to silence it—but you couldn't unring a bell that loud.

Kaito sat in a rooftop garden three blocks away, peeling the skin off a mana-fruit with a dull knife and watching the chaos unfold below, the rooftop was rented under the name of a dead merchant who'd "donated" the property to the Black Ink Network after a misunderstanding involving three vials of cursed ink and a misplaced dagger, it gave a clear view of Saint Vaelor's cathedral, and right now, that view was lit with tension, smoke, and too many guards pretending to know what was going on.

Rook leaned on the ledge beside him, chewing sunflower seeds and flipping a coin between his fingers, his cloak was dusty, his boots stained with mud from three different alleys, but his eyes sparkled the way they always did when plans came together without a single bullet being fired.

"You hear what the papers are calling it?" he asked.

Kaito didn't look up.

"No."

"'The Sermon of Sins,'" Rook grinned, "Scribes are arguing whether it was divine judgment or enemy sorcery. Either way, High Confessor Orenn's under temple arrest and the nobles who funded his sermons are burning scrolls."

Kaito nodded once.

"Good."

He didn't celebrate.

He calculated.

The Echo Hollow round had worked exactly as planned—it bypassed Orenn's mental defenses, latched onto buried truths, and forced his own mouth to become the executioner, it didn't matter how much he resisted, because the round didn't care what he wanted to say, only what he couldn't hide.

Lilyeth climbed up from the balcony hatch, brushing dust from her sleeves and pulling off her veil.

"They've tripled border security on magical relics," she said, tossing a folded parchment onto the table beside the fruit bowl, "You're now officially listed as a 'Relic Heretic' on five bounty boards."

Kaito raised an eyebrow.

"Only five?"

"Give it a day," she said dryly, "The Grand Inquisitor's name just showed up in the public archive logs. He's coming here."

That made him pause.

The Grand Inquisitor wasn't a myth.

But he was close.

He didn't show up for ordinary blasphemy or low-level sorcery.

He showed up when people broke the world and expected to walk away clean.

Kaito set the fruit down.

"What's his specialty?"

Rook answered for her.

"Sealing," he said, voice more serious now, "He doesn't kill with blades or spells. He binds people. Souls. Memories. Whole cities, if needed."

Lilyeth leaned on the stone column.

"We can't stay aboveground."

"We won't," Kaito replied, pulling out a rolled scroll and unsealing it with a flick, the parchment unfurled to reveal a floorplan—one stolen three weeks ago from the City Archive during a fake relic exhibition.

It was a layout of the cathedral's sealed crypts—ones even the current priests didn't have keys for.

He pointed to a section marked with faded ink and sigils scratched out in blood.

"This tunnel here? It runs underneath the confession chambers, straight into the old record sanctum."

"And what's in there?" Rook asked.

Kaito's eyes narrowed.

"Names."

Lilyeth straightened.

"You're going after their archives?"

"I'm going to rewrite them," he said, "If the Church wants to play with relics and forge history, then we feed the lie, not fight it."

She didn't argue.

She understood him now.

He wasn't just building bullets.

He was building belief warfare.

The Vault wasn't just a hideout anymore.

It was a factory of faith distortion.

And this time, the war wouldn't be fought with armies—but with rumors, relics, and reputations set on fire.

He stood up, grabbed his coat, and slid a new round into his inner sleeve.

This one wasn't Echo Hollow.

This was something else.

Unlabeled.

Experimental.

Dangerous.

He smiled.

"Let's go remind them that faith without truth is just a loaded chamber waiting for someone to pull the trigger."

Night fell hard on Redveil, but the city didn't sleep, it shifted, a quiet panic moving beneath its streets like a flood of whispers crawling through cracks in stone and silence, ever since the Confession Sermon, trust in the Church had bled from every wall like water through a broken dam, nobles cancelled their public blessings, relic shops suddenly "closed for spiritual inventory," and priests were seen carrying scrolls in both hands like shields, as if too afraid to touch anything that hadn't been sanctified twice, but none of that stopped Kaito—not when he'd just proven that fear could preach louder than scripture.

Deep beneath the cathedral, in a section of tunnels only mentioned in erased scriptures and whispered in the taverns of retired gravediggers, Kaito walked with Lilyeth and Rook behind him, torchlight pressed flat against the walls, the damp stone sweating magic that hadn't been disturbed in over a century, the path to the Record Sanctum wasn't protected by guards, it didn't need to be—because the only thing that kept people out was the knowledge that whatever truths were buried here had been buried for a reason.

"Are you sure this place still exists?" Rook whispered, stepping over a half-rotted saint statue whose face had been chiseled off.

"If it didn't," Kaito replied, "they wouldn't have drawn three protection circles just to deny it exists."

They reached the sealed arch, not one of stone, but of old prayersteel—metal infused with holy resonance, the kind that could reject curses and reflect lies if the user wasn't careful, across its surface were eleven warding sigils, each connected to a central rune shaped like an eye with a missing pupil, it watched them without moving, waiting for someone to test its purpose.

Lilyeth studied the symbols.

"This isn't normal sanctum security. These are… old faith wards."

"Obsolete?" Rook asked.

"No," Kaito said, pulling out a charm capsule with a wire-wrapped core, "They're stubborn. Which means they're predictable."

He placed the capsule against the seal and whispered the activation.

"Trigger."

A pulse of null energy spread across the metal, canceling one sigil.

Then another.

Then three more in sequence.

The arch groaned like it remembered how to hate, then cracked down the center, not breaking, just agreeing to be ignored for a little while longer.

They entered.

The Record Sanctum wasn't filled with scrolls or books—it was filled with names, thousands of them carved into marble walls, suspended on floating tags of spirit paper, engraved onto bones tied in red thread, relic records of every soul the Church had either blessed or condemned, each one bound to truth spells that resisted time and tampering—until now.

Because Kaito wasn't here to read them.

He was here to replace them.

He stepped to the central altar, where an inscribing needle sat suspended in a circle of memory runes.

He didn't touch it.

He fed it a bullet.

Not a real one.

A blank round he'd created earlier, infused with ghost ink and hollow silence from the Vault's deepest forge, when dropped into the memory circle, the round unraveled into ash and code, and the altar's records began to blink.

One name disappeared.

Another reappeared.

Saint Vaelor's confessor was now listed as a known relic smuggler.

A former assassin priest was marked as a martyr.

An excommunicated merchant—secretly one of Kaito's contacts—was now "blessed by divine favor."

And most importantly—

Kaito Sumeragi did not exist.

Not as a heretic.

Not as a relic dealer.

Not as anything.

The Church records now listed the crimes of the Gun Saint under a new name: "The Voice of the Vault."

It wasn't erasure.

It was evolution.

Lilyeth stood beside him as the final rune sealed.

"You just forged your own canon."

"No," Kaito said, pulling the round casing from the ash, "I forged their new excuse."

"For what?"

"For why they're losing."

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

Rook let out a low whistle.

"This'll get messy fast."

Kaito pocketed the casing and turned away.

"Good. The Vault sells better when the city's scared."

The stone door closed behind them without a sound, but the names on the wall kept shifting—locked now in a cycle of truth and lie, bound by a bullet forged from memory and intent, and the Church would never know what hit them until the people started praying to the wrong saint.