Story
Warning, this page contains spoilers for the following chapters.
. Chapter 1 . Chapter 2 . Chapter 3 . Chapter 4 . Chapter 5 . Chapter 6 . Chapter 7 . Chapter 8 .
Flawed from the start, her ritual is a failure, but it does lead her to encounter a mysterious red-eyed boy named Eli. As he follows her around, she starts to realise he might be what she’s looking for after all.
Her hopes are dashed as she learns that what she thought was a monster is merely a human with red eyes. Not only that, but he's an escaped bloodbag, running from the cult’s "God," an immortal, soul devouring abomination known as a Shadow. But soon that's the least of her concerns, as the cult captures her and Eli. The cult offers her blood to the Shadow, dooming her to the same fate as Eli. To be pursued by the abomination until death.
She and Eli escape the cult, but are quickly cornered and arrested by Inquisitors from the Order.
James O’Brian - a mercenary hired by the Order as a guide to the cult’s city - gives chase, but loses them.
Still handcuffed, Avril and Eli make their way through the city. Eli attempts to sacrifice himself to save Avril from the Shadow, but Avril stops him. She calls him out on his suicidal behaviour. They proceed to argue until Avril falls through a rotting floor into a pit of Bobble Heads.
In a panic, Eli runs off to find James and beg for his help. James agrees, and the two rescue Avril. The three continue on together.
After James catches up with them and proves that his ability to navigate the city is an asset, Avril reluctantly agrees to work together.
Deciding the high-rise’s roof will do for tonight, they continue to ascend. On the way, Eli has the misfortune of encountering a Siphon. The mere sight of it causes a panic attack, which James expertly calms.
Further up, they catch sight of the massive Fog cloud in the centre of the city. Avril admits she wanted to use an Anathema to guide her through a Fog cloud, as she believes her father is lost within one. Though now that she knows Anathema are human, she's abandoned that plan.
As they learn more about each other, James is hesitant to turn the two kids in, but also hesitant to break his contract with the Order. They agree to figure it out in the morning.
The Shadow attacks before the sun can rise.
As they struggle to escape the Shadow, a Strider appears. They notice the Shadow flees in response. Strange.
While trying to make their way out of the city, the three briefly encounter a horse that once belonged to the cult. Continuing on, they stumble upon the cult’s village, burnt to the ground days ago by the Order.
In the destroyed village, they encounter a survivor who explains that the cult wanted to use Eli’s Anathema blood, and the bloodmancy-amplifying powers of Fog, to create unlimited supplies. However, a group called the Collectors violently corrupted one of the cult’s rituals in an attempt to kidnap Eli. Eli escaped, but the corruption caused the cult to lose control of their “God," the Shadow. Thus began its rampage, incessantly pursuing Eli, and killing anything that got in the way.
The survivor is too grievously wounded to save, so James is forced to perform a mercy kill. The gunshot draws the attention of other cultists. While trying to sneak away, James is attacked by a Nightmare. Incapacitated, he can only watch helplessly as Eli is grabbed, and Avril becomes the victim of a bloodmancy attack, knocking her out.
The Shadow appears and separates Avril from Eli and James. In her mad scramble get away, she tumbles into a cloud of Fog. James finds her before she loses herself to delusions, and they begin to make their way out of the cloud with the help of Eli. But then Avril suffers a severe nosebleed, a side-effect of the bloodmancy that knocked her out. The blood draws a legion of Abominations out of the Fog.
Seeing no other way to save James and Avril from the bloodthirsty legion, Eli uses his blood to draw the legion away. Thinking Eli dead, Avril and James get into an argument that leads to Avril revealing she’s a wanted fugitive because she murdered an Inquisitor’s daughter. A girl named Lilith.
Upon realising Eli is in fact alive, Avril explains that her father was an Order scientist who’s now wanted by the Order for stealing important research. Since Lilith’s death, Avril has been on the run also, searching for him. She’s concluded that he must be hiding at an old lab, now consumed by Fog, and wanted an Anathema to guide her through said Fog to his lab. Now understanding the weight of that request, Avril urges Eli and James to leave her to her devices. They stay.
In a last-ditch effort to defeat the Shadow, Avril proposes using a Strider to kill it. Their plan is a success, killing the “immortal" Shadow in a blaze of sky cracking glory. Following their victory, the trio leaves the city. James instructs Avril and Eli to seek out a longtime friend of his, Tiffany Liu, while he falsely reports their deaths to the Order.
This plan never comes to fruition however, as the Order finds them the next morning. Avril manages to escape, but Eli and James’ are captured, leaving Avril with only their lost poncho and ring to remember them by.
Meanwhile James is branded as a heretic, and slated for execution, while Eli learns Inquisitor Volkova is secretly an Anathema. Though the Council knows Volkova’s true identity, she can’t move freely as an Anathema within the Order, but Eli can. Volkova explains that her goal is to stop the Collectors, a mysterious group going unchecked as they kidnap Anathema. To that end, she hopes to use Eli as bait to draw out the Collectors, then track them to their HQ.
As Tiffany hatches a plan to rescue James first, then Eli at a later date, she convinces Avril it’s too risky for her to tag along, forcing Avril to stay behind while Tiffany and her friend, Order insider Kevin Santos, deal with James.
While waiting, Avril revisits files from her time at the Order’s Military academy. This proves to be a mistake when the memories of Lilith’s murder come rushing back.
The more time Eli spends with Volkova, the more he realises that everything he knew about being an Anathema is a lie. He believed Anathema were meant to be bled and used for bloodmancy. That his abuse at the hands of bloodmancers was just how the world worked. But upon seeing that Volkova has no Siphon scars, he’s shocked. The revelation causes him to mentally spiral.
Under the guise of a private investigator, Tiffany gets close enough to break James out of Order custody. Donning an Inquisitor uniform, James makes his way out of the Sanctum while Kevin distracts the guards. Despite their best efforts, Marcus spots James. The two fight, resulting in Marcus severely spraining his ankle, and revealing that James killed his baby brother. James flees.
Tiffany plays the victim when she’s questioned about James’ escape. Most of the Order buys into her charade, and releases her. But Volkova is certain she’s lying.
While Volkova digs deeper into Tiffany’s history – particularly her connection to an Order scientist that died under mysterious circumstances – Eli is accidentally exposed to an Amulet, and faints. When Eli questions Volkova about the Amulet's origins, Volkova admits she doesn’t know due to her low rank. However she intends to climb the Order ladder and become powerful enough to change its flawed inner workings. She offers Eli a place at her side, subsequently planting seeds of distrust towards Avril due to her father's possible connection to Collectors.
Before leaving, Avril attempts to hide panic attack. Realising her help might be more vital than she first thought, she agrees to rescue Eli. But not before she personally returns James’ ring. Disguised as a custodian, Avril sneaks into Eli’s room while Tiffany distracts Volkova with an interrogation. Avril and Eli escape the Order Sanctum, but Volkova gives chase, easily finding them. Tiffany realises Volkova must be an Anathema, and is tracking their lights. Kevin’s husband Ryu suggests Avril and Eli hide their lights in a tunnel coated in Clingers.
The stress of traversing the horrific tunnel causes Avril to lash out at Eli. They still manage to escape the District, but Eli has lost his trust in Avril. He confronts her with the possibility of her father being a Collector, but before they can settle things, Volkova finds them. She attempts to use Avril’s violent past with Lilith to turn Eli against Avril, forcing Avril to confess the truth. She did murder Lilith, but only because Lilith tried to frame her as a traitor to the Order. Lilith hoped the act would get her back in her estranged father's good graces. Eli’s conflict lingers, until he realises the contents of Avril’s backpack. His poncho! Getting it back gives Eli the courage to stand up to Volkova, and question her motives.
James catches up with the pair in time to fight off Volkova, but using her red eyes, she paralyses him and prepares to shoot. Before she can, Marcus appears and stops her, wanting to kill James himself. Upon realising Volkova is an Anathema, Marcus abandons all other plans and confronts her. Volkova knows Marcus has never had the guts to kill an Anathema and tells him so. This causes Marcus to vividly recall the fact that his late brother was an Anathema as well. Volkova shoots Marcus' ankle.
During the chaos, Tiffany, James, Eli, and Avril move to escape, and Volkova decides to let them go. After all, they will all make good bait if she wants to catch suspected Collector Jonathan Falk.
Before this information has time to settle, the crew is attacked by a swarm of abominations. In the mad scramble to escape, Eli attempts to use bloodmancy to cause a blinding flash that might disorient the swarm. However what should have been a harmless flash becomes an explosive ball of fire. It succeeds in killing the abominations, but nearly kills everyone else in the process.
Retreating to safety, Avril brings the Bloodhounds' notes to the group's attention, pointing out that the bounty hunters suspected Dr. Falk to have passed by a nearby hospital. Avril convinces the crew to investigate this lead.
The hospital yields little in the way of helpful information on Falk, but the group does stumble upon an old corpse, tortured and left to die. Observing the age of this corpse in contrast to the freshly abandoned Bloodhound camp, Tiffany deduces that though the Bloodhound were hunting Dr. Falk once upon a time, that's not why they're in the area now. Now they're hunting James.
Alarmed by this, James demands the group leave immediately. Before they can, Eli stumbles upon a Nightmare nest. Looking closer, Avril notices a Collector is among the bodies. She has no time to investigate as Eli is triggered, unintentionally lashing out at James with his powers.
In the wake of Eli's distress, the group leaves the hospital behind. Unsatisfied, Avril sneaks away from the group, returning to the Nightmare nest to drag the Collector out and attempt to question him. Though the Collector is still alive, he's too far gone to answer Avril's questions. Instead she searches him, finding an illustration of strange bloodmancy circle, and a cassette tape with a recording of a bloodmancy chant. Desperate for answers, Avril recreates the bloodmancy circle in the hospital’s courtyard in hopes of finding out its use. She’s interrupted by Bloodhounds.
Having noticed Avril’s absence, James, Tiffany, and Eli return to the hospital to search for her. The Bloodhounds attack, separating them. James is captured and questioned by the Bloodhound leader, presses him for the location of “Johann." James answers that he “lost Johann in the fog." Avril overhears this.
Alone in a hospital filled with the horrors of bloodmancy, Eli is once again overwhelmed. He begins setting fires all over the building using his blood. This concludes in him arriving at the courtyard just in time to rescue James and Avril from a horrible death at the hands of the Bloodhounds. James succeeds in killing the leader of the Bloodhounds, but not before the leader activates the bloodmancy circle Avril drew.
The world cracks open and fog spills out. Tiffany’s Amulet shatters under the stress of this chaotic bloodmancy and all seems lost. At the last moment, James aids Tiffany and the two manage to stop the circle from completing its terrible purpose. A mountain of twisted flesh and half realized abominations lay at their feet, and Eli is left unconscious and unresponsive.
CHAPTER 1
Flawed from the start, her ritual is a failure, but it does lead her to encounter a mysterious red-eyed boy named Eli. As he follows her around, she starts to realise he might be what she’s looking for after all.
Her hopes are dashed as she learns that what she thought was a monster is merely a human with red eyes. Not only that, but he's an escaped bloodbag, running from the cult’s "God," an immortal, soul devouring abomination known as a Shadow. But soon that's the least of her concerns, as the cult captures her and Eli. The cult offers her blood to the Shadow, dooming her to the same fate as Eli. To be pursued by the abomination until death.
She and Eli escape the cult, but are quickly cornered and arrested by Inquisitors from the Order.
CHAPTER 2
James O’Brian - a mercenary hired by the Order as a guide to the cult’s city - gives chase, but loses them.
Still handcuffed, Avril and Eli make their way through the city. Eli attempts to sacrifice himself to save Avril from the Shadow, but Avril stops him. She calls him out on his suicidal behaviour. They proceed to argue until Avril falls through a rotting floor into a pit of Bobble Heads.
In a panic, Eli runs off to find James and beg for his help. James agrees, and the two rescue Avril. The three continue on together.
CHAPTER 3
After James catches up with them and proves that his ability to navigate the city is an asset, Avril reluctantly agrees to work together.
Deciding the high-rise’s roof will do for tonight, they continue to ascend. On the way, Eli has the misfortune of encountering a Siphon. The mere sight of it causes a panic attack, which James expertly calms.
Further up, they catch sight of the massive Fog cloud in the centre of the city. Avril admits she wanted to use an Anathema to guide her through a Fog cloud, as she believes her father is lost within one. Though now that she knows Anathema are human, she's abandoned that plan.
As they learn more about each other, James is hesitant to turn the two kids in, but also hesitant to break his contract with the Order. They agree to figure it out in the morning.
The Shadow attacks before the sun can rise.
CHAPTER 4
As they struggle to escape the Shadow, a Strider appears. They notice the Shadow flees in response. Strange.
While trying to make their way out of the city, the three briefly encounter a horse that once belonged to the cult. Continuing on, they stumble upon the cult’s village, burnt to the ground days ago by the Order.
In the destroyed village, they encounter a survivor who explains that the cult wanted to use Eli’s Anathema blood, and the bloodmancy-amplifying powers of Fog, to create unlimited supplies. However, a group called the Collectors violently corrupted one of the cult’s rituals in an attempt to kidnap Eli. Eli escaped, but the corruption caused the cult to lose control of their “God," the Shadow. Thus began its rampage, incessantly pursuing Eli, and killing anything that got in the way.
The survivor is too grievously wounded to save, so James is forced to perform a mercy kill. The gunshot draws the attention of other cultists. While trying to sneak away, James is attacked by a Nightmare. Incapacitated, he can only watch helplessly as Eli is grabbed, and Avril becomes the victim of a bloodmancy attack, knocking her out.
CHAPTER 5
The Shadow appears and separates Avril from Eli and James. In her mad scramble get away, she tumbles into a cloud of Fog. James finds her before she loses herself to delusions, and they begin to make their way out of the cloud with the help of Eli. But then Avril suffers a severe nosebleed, a side-effect of the bloodmancy that knocked her out. The blood draws a legion of Abominations out of the Fog.
Seeing no other way to save James and Avril from the bloodthirsty legion, Eli uses his blood to draw the legion away. Thinking Eli dead, Avril and James get into an argument that leads to Avril revealing she’s a wanted fugitive because she murdered an Inquisitor’s daughter. A girl named Lilith.
Upon realising Eli is in fact alive, Avril explains that her father was an Order scientist who’s now wanted by the Order for stealing important research. Since Lilith’s death, Avril has been on the run also, searching for him. She’s concluded that he must be hiding at an old lab, now consumed by Fog, and wanted an Anathema to guide her through said Fog to his lab. Now understanding the weight of that request, Avril urges Eli and James to leave her to her devices. They stay.
In a last-ditch effort to defeat the Shadow, Avril proposes using a Strider to kill it. Their plan is a success, killing the “immortal" Shadow in a blaze of sky cracking glory. Following their victory, the trio leaves the city. James instructs Avril and Eli to seek out a longtime friend of his, Tiffany Liu, while he falsely reports their deaths to the Order.
This plan never comes to fruition however, as the Order finds them the next morning. Avril manages to escape, but Eli and James’ are captured, leaving Avril with only their lost poncho and ring to remember them by.
CHAPTER 6
Meanwhile James is branded as a heretic, and slated for execution, while Eli learns Inquisitor Volkova is secretly an Anathema. Though the Council knows Volkova’s true identity, she can’t move freely as an Anathema within the Order, but Eli can. Volkova explains that her goal is to stop the Collectors, a mysterious group going unchecked as they kidnap Anathema. To that end, she hopes to use Eli as bait to draw out the Collectors, then track them to their HQ.
As Tiffany hatches a plan to rescue James first, then Eli at a later date, she convinces Avril it’s too risky for her to tag along, forcing Avril to stay behind while Tiffany and her friend, Order insider Kevin Santos, deal with James.
While waiting, Avril revisits files from her time at the Order’s Military academy. This proves to be a mistake when the memories of Lilith’s murder come rushing back.
The more time Eli spends with Volkova, the more he realises that everything he knew about being an Anathema is a lie. He believed Anathema were meant to be bled and used for bloodmancy. That his abuse at the hands of bloodmancers was just how the world worked. But upon seeing that Volkova has no Siphon scars, he’s shocked. The revelation causes him to mentally spiral.
Under the guise of a private investigator, Tiffany gets close enough to break James out of Order custody. Donning an Inquisitor uniform, James makes his way out of the Sanctum while Kevin distracts the guards. Despite their best efforts, Marcus spots James. The two fight, resulting in Marcus severely spraining his ankle, and revealing that James killed his baby brother. James flees.
Tiffany plays the victim when she’s questioned about James’ escape. Most of the Order buys into her charade, and releases her. But Volkova is certain she’s lying.
CHAPTER 7
While Volkova digs deeper into Tiffany’s history – particularly her connection to an Order scientist that died under mysterious circumstances – Eli is accidentally exposed to an Amulet, and faints. When Eli questions Volkova about the Amulet's origins, Volkova admits she doesn’t know due to her low rank. However she intends to climb the Order ladder and become powerful enough to change its flawed inner workings. She offers Eli a place at her side, subsequently planting seeds of distrust towards Avril due to her father's possible connection to Collectors.
Before leaving, Avril attempts to hide panic attack. Realising her help might be more vital than she first thought, she agrees to rescue Eli. But not before she personally returns James’ ring. Disguised as a custodian, Avril sneaks into Eli’s room while Tiffany distracts Volkova with an interrogation. Avril and Eli escape the Order Sanctum, but Volkova gives chase, easily finding them. Tiffany realises Volkova must be an Anathema, and is tracking their lights. Kevin’s husband Ryu suggests Avril and Eli hide their lights in a tunnel coated in Clingers.
The stress of traversing the horrific tunnel causes Avril to lash out at Eli. They still manage to escape the District, but Eli has lost his trust in Avril. He confronts her with the possibility of her father being a Collector, but before they can settle things, Volkova finds them. She attempts to use Avril’s violent past with Lilith to turn Eli against Avril, forcing Avril to confess the truth. She did murder Lilith, but only because Lilith tried to frame her as a traitor to the Order. Lilith hoped the act would get her back in her estranged father's good graces. Eli’s conflict lingers, until he realises the contents of Avril’s backpack. His poncho! Getting it back gives Eli the courage to stand up to Volkova, and question her motives.
James catches up with the pair in time to fight off Volkova, but using her red eyes, she paralyses him and prepares to shoot. Before she can, Marcus appears and stops her, wanting to kill James himself. Upon realising Volkova is an Anathema, Marcus abandons all other plans and confronts her. Volkova knows Marcus has never had the guts to kill an Anathema and tells him so. This causes Marcus to vividly recall the fact that his late brother was an Anathema as well. Volkova shoots Marcus' ankle.
During the chaos, Tiffany, James, Eli, and Avril move to escape, and Volkova decides to let them go. After all, they will all make good bait if she wants to catch suspected Collector Jonathan Falk.
CHAPTER 8
Before this information has time to settle, the crew is attacked by a swarm of abominations. In the mad scramble to escape, Eli attempts to use bloodmancy to cause a blinding flash that might disorient the swarm. However what should have been a harmless flash becomes an explosive ball of fire. It succeeds in killing the abominations, but nearly kills everyone else in the process.
Retreating to safety, Avril brings the Bloodhounds' notes to the group's attention, pointing out that the bounty hunters suspected Dr. Falk to have passed by a nearby hospital. Avril convinces the crew to investigate this lead.
The hospital yields little in the way of helpful information on Falk, but the group does stumble upon an old corpse, tortured and left to die. Observing the age of this corpse in contrast to the freshly abandoned Bloodhound camp, Tiffany deduces that though the Bloodhound were hunting Dr. Falk once upon a time, that's not why they're in the area now. Now they're hunting James.
Alarmed by this, James demands the group leave immediately. Before they can, Eli stumbles upon a Nightmare nest. Looking closer, Avril notices a Collector is among the bodies. She has no time to investigate as Eli is triggered, unintentionally lashing out at James with his powers.
In the wake of Eli's distress, the group leaves the hospital behind. Unsatisfied, Avril sneaks away from the group, returning to the Nightmare nest to drag the Collector out and attempt to question him. Though the Collector is still alive, he's too far gone to answer Avril's questions. Instead she searches him, finding an illustration of strange bloodmancy circle, and a cassette tape with a recording of a bloodmancy chant. Desperate for answers, Avril recreates the bloodmancy circle in the hospital’s courtyard in hopes of finding out its use. She’s interrupted by Bloodhounds.
Having noticed Avril’s absence, James, Tiffany, and Eli return to the hospital to search for her. The Bloodhounds attack, separating them. James is captured and questioned by the Bloodhound leader, presses him for the location of “Johann." James answers that he “lost Johann in the fog." Avril overhears this.
Alone in a hospital filled with the horrors of bloodmancy, Eli is once again overwhelmed. He begins setting fires all over the building using his blood. This concludes in him arriving at the courtyard just in time to rescue James and Avril from a horrible death at the hands of the Bloodhounds. James succeeds in killing the leader of the Bloodhounds, but not before the leader activates the bloodmancy circle Avril drew.
The world cracks open and fog spills out. Tiffany’s Amulet shatters under the stress of this chaotic bloodmancy and all seems lost. At the last moment, James aids Tiffany and the two manage to stop the circle from completing its terrible purpose. A mountain of twisted flesh and half realized abominations lay at their feet, and Eli is left unconscious and unresponsive.