The Blind Path
Scene 1: Dark Discoveries
POV: Third-Person (Focused on Silas) – Night
The rooftops of Detroit buzzed with a strange quiet. A breeze brushed past Silas' hooded head as he crouched at the edge of an old tenement building, eyes scanning the dimly lit streets below. His visor flicked between normal and thermal view, highlighting clusters of people, cars, and nothing unusual—until a dark van pulled into an alley four blocks down.
He blinked and magnified the view. Three figures dressed in dark crimson robes exited the van with alarming haste. One of them kicked open a back door, and Silas's enhanced ears picked up the muffled cries of children.
"Found you," he muttered.
He dropped down in segments—balcony to railing, railing to stairwell—before melting into the shadows. Each blink of a streetlamp seemed to swallow him up and spit him out closer, faster, darker.
He followed the van discreetly to a derelict church on the city's east end. The stained-glass windows were shattered, its old cross replaced with a jagged wooden carving of something unholy—an eyeless humanoid figure whose mouth stretched far too wide.
From the outside, he counted at least twenty. Men and women in crimson and wine-colored robes, faces hidden, knives and candles everywhere.
Silas activated the camouflage instinctively—his body fading into the dark around him as if he'd dissolved into shadow. He perched quietly above, on a rafter beam just inside a broken panel of ceiling.
Below him, a man with a ceremonial dagger approached a tied-up boy, raising the blade in praise to a blind god.
The whispering chant began.
"All paths are blind. Only through blood shall we see."
Silas moved.
Scene 2: Shadows and Screams
POV: Third-Person (Focused on Silas)
He landed behind the high priest mid-chant.
The man turned, startled, just in time to be grabbed by the collar and yanked across the floor. The dagger clattered out of his hand.
Panic erupted.
Candles blew out from the sudden gust of Silas' movement, the room bathed in flickering shadows. Cultists began charging, but Silas had already created twin shadow-knuckles around his fists.
The first attacker lunged with a blade. Silas ducked, spun, and uppercutted the man with enough force to lift him off the floor. A second cultist tried flanking him from the side. Silas rolled, shifted the shadows into a short staff, and cracked the man's knee.
One tried to run. He lashed out his hand and extended a shadow whip from the floor, grabbing their ankle and yanking them down. A meaty thud echoed.
Another cultist, beefier than the rest, came with a fire axe. Silas teleported past him mid-swing, appeared behind him, and jammed a shadow spike into the man's shoulder, incapacitating him.
The chaos lasted less than three minutes.
When it ended, everyone but Silas lay unconscious or groaning, crumpled in pools of melted wax and fresh blood. He quickly checked the kids—alive, shaken, unharmed.
Then he turned to the last man still moving—bigger than the others, wearing a medallion with the blind god's insignia. A Templar. Silas didn't know what he was yet, but he could feel it: this guy was different.
He dragged the man—Gideon—by the collar into the back hallway.
Scene 3: The Clean-Up and Interrogation
POV: Silas – Third-Person Focused
The room stank of sweat, blood, and melted wax. With most of the cultists groaning in unconscious heaps, Silas worked fast—dragging the injured away from the altar and stacking their broken forms near the pews. He found a corner for the kids, all four dazed but alive, and did a quick patch job with nearby cloth scraps. One of the boys whimpered, flinching when Silas approached, but calmed when he saw the shadows retract from Silas' arms and vanish into his skin.
He turned next to Gideon's slumped form. The brute had taken a blade to the temple and was barely breathing. But that wasn't going to last long. Silas grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the blood-slick floor toward a side hallway. A few doors down, past a collapsed pulpit wall and a rusted choir loft, he found a storage room with a cracked sink and a half-rotted confessional booth.
Perfect.
He slammed the door shut behind them, dropped Gideon onto a wooden table that groaned under his weight, and secured his limbs using pieces of torn curtain and thick cords scavenged from a fallen banner.
Gideon groaned. Consciousness returned slowly—first a twitch, then a flinch as Silas poured cold water over his face.
"Morning, Father Muscle," Silas said flatly, stepping back into the shadows of the room. "You're going to tell me everything, or I'm going to find out the hard way."
Gideon's one visible eye snapped open, full of pain and unfiltered hate. "You don't… understand what you've stepped into."
"I usually don't," Silas replied, letting the shadows extend slowly from beneath his feet. One formed into a narrow, jagged dagger.
He pressed the tip against Gideon's exposed side, just enough to cut shallow lines.
"Talk. Who are you working for? Why the kids? Why the blood?"
Gideon chuckled hoarsely, spitting out a tooth with blood. "We are the hands of the Blind God. And you… are prey trying to bite the hunter."
Silas didn't flinch. He reached down and drove the shadow dagger into Gideon's thigh.
The man howled in pain, thrashing until his restraints held him firm.
"You think you're doing holy work?" Silas hissed. "You're just another psycho in a robe."
"We are more than men," Gideon wheezed. "The blood gives strength. Each sacrifice a step toward the divine. You… you'll never stop us. My master will see you drown in your own eyes."
Silas leaned closer. "You got a name for your master?"
Gideon smiled through broken teeth. "Father Grimm. And he… sees all."
A sudden burst of sirens cut through the night outside. The faint wail of engines and strobing lights started to flash through the stained-glass shards in the sanctuary.
Silas stood up, blade fading from his grip. "Thanks for the sermon."
He turned and walked out, leaving Gideon bleeding and strapped to the table. Not dead. Not yet.
But very much marked.
Scene 4: Vanishing Light
POV: Silas – Third Person
Silas walked past the unconscious cultists, stopping by the kids one last time to ensure they were stable. Then he pulled out a burner phone from his belt and dialed 911.
"911. What's your emergency?"
"I'm reporting a ritual murder attempt. Abandoned church off Jefferson and Martin. Four kids. A dozen cult freaks. You'll find them inside."
"Sir, what is your—"
He dropped the phone mid-call and melted into the shadows, reappearing several buildings away on a rooftop.
From there, he watched the flashing blue and red lights arrive in waves. Officers stormed the church. Whitlock's SUV wasn't far behind.
She stepped out moments later, surveying the carnage through the wide entrance. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted the blood-stained altar and the strange, red-robed figures moaning in agony.
Silas stood above, unseen. Hidden by shadow. Camouflaged like a predator in its den.
His voice low, almost regretful.
"All paths are blind… looks like I'm gonna need to keep an eye on this shit".
He turned and vanished into the night