The Grand Azathoth Hotel - Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Sona Sitri moved swiftly through the mist-laden streets, her coat billowing behind her as she led her Peerage toward the abandoned church. The air was thick with moisture, the remnants of last night’s rain still clinging to the stones. The scent of damp earth filled her lungs, but underneath it, she could sense something else—something far worse.

Her familiar had returned to her in a frantic state, its shadowy form writhing, trembling, whispering things that made no sense. Blood. Symbols. The walls moved. It had taken too long to regain its composure, and by then, she already knew something was very wrong.

Behind her, Tsubaki Shinra, her ever-loyal Queen, moved silently, her naginata strapped across her back, her expression unreadable behind her glasses. To their sides, her pieces—Tsubasa Yura and Tomoe Meguri—kept pace, their movements precise but tense, hands twitching toward their weapons as if expecting an ambush at any moment.

Sona adjusted her glasses, voice measured but urgent. “The familiar didn’t get a full picture of what happened inside. It fled before it could process everything. Whatever’s in there, be ready.”

Tsubasa exhaled sharply through her nose. “You think it’s Strays?”

Tomoe, always the lighter one of the group, had a rare frown creasing her brow. “Strays don’t cause my hair to stand on end before I even see them.”

Sona said nothing. She felt it, too.

The church loomed ahead, its broken steeple a jagged silhouette against the overcast sky. The stained-glass windows were shattered, the wooden doors slightly ajar. It was supposed to be abandoned, yet the air around it pulsed with something she couldn’t explain—something waiting.

The silence was unnatural.

There were no birds. No insects. No wind stirring through the ruins. Just a heavy, suffocating absence of sound.

Sona hesitated for only a moment before stepping forward and pushing the doors open.

And the stench hit them.

The air inside was thick, wet, rotting, cloying. It was not just the smell of blood. It was deeper than that. Older. The smell of something that had been left to fester, something that had been fed.

The first thing she saw was red.

Blood coated everything—the walls, the floor, the pews. It was not splattered in reckless violence but drawn with intent. Symbols, spirals, whispers of meaning that should not exist in any written language. They crawled across the stone, seared into the wood, dripping down from the rafters in patterns too precise to be random.

The bodies were arranged.

Not simply slain, but placed.

Some exorcists sat upright in the pews, hands folded, heads bowed, throats hollowed out like empty vessels. Their blood had been carefully collected, the trails running not downward, but up, curling into messages written across the ceiling. Others had been peeled, their skins draped like holy vestments, stretched over the altar in unnatural displays. Their ribs had been exposed, still connected but spread apart like cages, as if something had once been inside them but had been taken away.

A choking sound echoed beside her.

Tomoe gagged, stumbled back, and vomited onto the blood-slicked floor.

Tsubasa went pale but held her ground, one hand tightening into a fist at her side. “What… the fuck is this?”

Sona forced herself to keep looking.

This was not war. This was not a battlefield.

This was a ritual.

Her eyes scanned the bodies—exorcists, rogue or not, she couldn’t tell. But something drew her gaze further, something worse.

A Fallen Angel. A male, two-winged.

She couldn’t comprehend him at first.

His arms had been removed, but not severed—woven. His own limbs had been pulled apart and braided together, their sinew and bone forming something between a tapestry and a noose, strung high above him. His wings had not been torn off. They had been broken and reshaped, curving inward, their tips pressing against his own hollowed eye sockets.

His chest had been split open, but inside there were no organs—only light. A soft, flickering glow, pulsing, shifting, trying to form something, but never quite taking shape. It cast long shadows against the walls, twisting like reaching fingers.

His lips had been sewn shut, but the stitches were not thread.

They were script.

Etched into his very flesh, the symbols folded in on themselves, whispering. Even with his mouth sealed, Sona swore she could hear his voice.

A prayer. A plea.

Then she saw the other one.

Further ahead, another Fallen Angel, this one female.

She had been placed at the altar, lying atop a slab of stone where the priest would once have stood. Unlike the first, she was untouched—almost pristine. But that made it worse.

Her wings were spread wide, as if in mid-flight, her head tilted back, her mouth frozen in a silent scream. But she had no face.

Not that it had been removed.

It had never existed.

A smooth, blank expanse of skin stretched over where her features should have been. Yet, despite her facelessness, Sona knew she was looking at her.

Her breath caught. 

She was looking back.

A deep, slow exhale from behind her made Sona’s stomach turn to ice.

She spun around just as Tsubaki whispered—

“Fuck this shit…We have to call Lady Sitri.”

Sona nearly reprimanded her for language, but the words died before they could leave her throat.

For once, she had nothing to correct.

Because Tsubaki was right.

Shit was about to go down.

— — 

Issei Hyoudou stepped into his room and exhaled, surveying the space with quiet satisfaction. It was clean. Not just cleared of random clutter, but truly clean. The floors were spotless, his desk was neatly arranged, and, most importantly, the shelves that had once been overflowing with stacks of hentai, risqué magazines, and assorted perverse memorabilia were now completely empty. His parents had been shocked when he started throwing everything away, but he had assured them—this was the path he had chosen. The path of refinement.

The path of a gentleman.

He closed the door, loosening the buttons on his school uniform before stepping to the center of the room. His thoughts drifted back to the moment his life had changed. The warmth of the cup in his hands, the scent of deep, rich coffee curling into his senses, the first sip that had been unlike anything he had ever tasted before. And then—the revelation.

It was not about indulgence. It was not about base desires. True satisfaction came from discipline. From dignity. From presenting oneself as a man of respect and charm. The fool he had been before—chasing after fleeting pleasures, acting like some depraved beast—he was gone.

And now, he would better himself.

He dropped to the floor and began his push-ups. His arms strained, but he welcomed the burn. A gentleman must be strong, not only in mind but in body. Weakness was unbecoming. Refinement was nothing without a foundation of discipline. He counted each repetition in silence, his breathing measured, his focus unwavering.

After finishing his sets, he stood, rolling his shoulders, and made his way to the bathroom. The warm water of the shower washed over him, cleansing away the sweat. Cleanliness was essential—one could not present oneself as a proper man while reeking of filth. His old self wouldn’t have cared, would have rushed through his showers without thought. But that boy was dead.

He was something greater now.

After dressing in a fresh set of clothes, he returned to his room. The air smelled of subtle cologne—not overpowering, just enough to enhance, to refine. He moved toward his bed, lowering himself to his knees, hands clasped in front of him. His eyes closed. His heart was steady.

And he prayed.

“Manager.”

The word alone carried weight, reverence. It was not just a name—it was a title. A station above mere mortals. The Café Manager, the one who had opened his eyes, who had shown him the truth of his existence.

“Grant me strength,” Issei whispered. “Not for selfish gain, not for greed or desire, but to become worthy. Worthy of the lessons I have been given. Worthy of the refinement I seek.”

The room was silent, save for his steady breath.

“I will honor thy gift. I will embody dignity. And above all…”

His fingers curled, his voice steady with conviction.

“I will show you I am worthy of drinking more of that coffee.”

— — 

Behemoth, Rook of Serafall Leviathan, moved with the weight of the earth itself, each step shaking the ground just enough to remind it of its master. The scent of blood had faded over the days, but not enough to escape him—not enough to hide from the Magical Beast King of the Earth.

He had been tracking the lingering stench of the massacre for some time now, following the twisted trail left behind. It wasn’t just the scent of mortal blood, though there had been plenty of that. No, something deeper had been left imprinted on the land itself—something wrong. The bodies had been carved not with rage, but with purpose. That had been the most unsettling part.

Serafall had sent messages to both the Church and the Fallen, demanding to know whose exorcists had met such an end. Neither had claimed them. The Church had been dismissive, polite but distant. The rogue exorcists, it seemed, had not been their own. Expected. Azazel, on the other hand—Azazel had been disturbed.Not in the usual, lazy way where he liked to pretend everything was just an amusing inconvenience. No, his response had been different. Serafall hadn’t pushed him on it—she hadn’t needed to. He had recognized something about the massacre.

That was not Behemoth’s concern.

What was his concern was that his mistress had barely hidden her fury upon learning that her little sister had been close to it. Too close. That was the only reason she cared—Sona had been near, and Serafall Leviathan did not tolerate threats to her sister.

So Behemoth had his orders.

Track. Hunt. Annihilate.

There was no need for diplomacy, no need for investigation. Someone or something had left this mess behind, and Serafall wanted whoever was responsible reduced to dust. His claws dug into the earth, feeling the vibrations beneath him, sensing the faint echoes of something inhuman that had moved this way. The scent of iron, old blood, and something deeper still clung to the air. He was getting closer.

Whatever had done this was not going to run much farther.

And once he found it, there would be no escape.

— — — 

Robin had known, on some level, that accepting an internship at a cosmic horror’s living hotel would involve things beyond human comprehension. She had prepared herself for learning the languages of the forgotten, for serving coffee to creatures that predated stars, for navigating hallways that didn’t always lead to the same place twice. She had accepted that her boss, sweet, cute, terrifying James, could unmake reality between sips of his morning brew.

But being a midwife?

That had not been on the list.

Yet, here she was.

Her second day—or her second month. Time worked strangely in the Hotel, and even after reading James’s handwritten notebook—a valuable, sanity-destroying resource that had helped her immensely while simultaneously making her weep blood and hear whispers—she still didn’t fully grasp how long she had been here.

All she knew was that she was kneeling between Leto’s trembling, sweat-drenched legs, pressing her palms to the Titaness’s laboring belly, guiding her through something that should have been impossible.

“Push,” Robin said, her voice steady despite the sheer absurdity of the moment.

Room 1098 was larger than it had been yesterday, its walls shifting subtly as if breathing alongside Leto’s contractions. The chandelier above them flickered. The floor pulsed beneath Robin’s knees, warm and alive, adjusting its texture for comfort. The bed—if it could be called that—had extended itself into something resembling an altar, its dark silken sheets drinking in the sweat and divine ichor that spilled with each tremor of Leto’s body.

The Titaness groaned, her golden hair clinging to her damp skin as another contraction wracked her frame. Her fingers gripped the sheets, her breathing labored but determined. Robin had no formal training in childbirth. She had, however, helped deliver knowledge ripped from the bones of dead civilizations, had unearthed secrets buried beneath centuries of dust and ruin. Surely, guiding a Titaness through labor wasn’t too different.

Leto screamed, her body arching—and then, suddenly, the pressure broke.

Robin caught the first child, a robust, wailing infant, his skin warm with the radiance of something divine, golden as sunlight. He breathed, and the entire room seemed to exhale with him.

Leto, panting, barely had a moment to recover before another contraction hit.

“One more,” Robin said, wiping the sweat from Leto’s brow. “You can do this.”

Another push—another scream—and then another child.

This one was smaller, but no less powerful. Her skin carried the glow of the moon, her breath cool where her brother’s had been warm. Her cries were softer, but the room bent itself toward her as if drawn into her gravity.

Leto’s weary, tear-filled eyes gazed at them, at her newborns, and a trembling, exhausted smile broke across her face.

“Artemis,” she whispered, stroking the cheek of her moon-kissed daughter.

Then, looking at the golden boy in Robin’s arms, she beamed.

“And Apollo.”