Blake Faust slowed his motorcycle when he reached the water tower outside Dry Creek. Someone had painted a skull over the Geist logo and given it a raised middle finger. He looked from the tower to the enormous white compound on the far side of town, where cooling fans worked hard enough to be heard over his engine. According to the reports, Geist had brought jobs, reliable utilities, and modern communications to this part of the Dusty Dunes Desert. According to the water tower, there had been some disagreement about that.



His watch buzzed as he pulled onto the shoulder. Ashley appeared on the small screen, sitting at a desk with several folders open in front of her. Blake took a drink from the bottle in his jacket, winced at how warm it had become, and held his wrist up where she could see him.

Ashley Faust: Did you find the place?

Blake Faust: Hard to miss. It's bigger than the town. Apparently we're not very popular here.

Ashley Faust: You saw the complaints?

Blake Faust: I saw the water tower. Somebody put a lot of work into telling us to go to hell. What do you think they'd say if I said I'd already been there?

Ashley smiled briefly, but there was little in the folders to keep her amused. Sunline Data Services was a Geist subsidiary that had opened eight years earlier, while Blake's body lay in stasis and his spirit wandered the Death Realm. On paper, it was an ordinary data center. Buried in its accounts was a restricted research project that had supposedly been closed before Blake took charge of the company. Victor had found payments still going to it, along with complaints that had never reached anyone outside Sunline.

Ashley Faust: Victor found more. Water shortages, outages, people getting sick. Their security office has been answering the complaints itself.

Blake Faust: That explains why all six reports I got said the problem was resolved.

Ashley Faust: There are more. A lot more.

Blake Faust: Of course there are. Alright. I'm going to talk to the people here before I announce myself at the gate.

Ashley Faust: And eat something. You've been riding since morning.

Blake Faust: I was just about to suggest that. See? We're a very good team.

Ashley Faust: As long as you know when to listen to your wife.

He accepted that with a sheepish grin. His trip into the Underworld had given her plenty of reason to say it. He had brought Johnathan home, freed his father's soul, and survived Eris, but Ashley had still spent that adventure waiting for someone to tell her whether her husband was alive. He had promised to do better. Before ending the call, he told her where he was going and agreed to call again from inside the facility.

Dry Creek stood in a shallow stretch of desert between the highway and a ridge of yellow rock. The buildings were old, the sidewalks cracked, and the afternoon heat had driven most people under the porch roofs. Blake passed a laundromat with a CLOSED UNTIL WATER RETURNS sign in its window. Across the street, an elderly man shook an empty hose at the ground. The data center's cooling towers continued throwing steam into the sky beyond both of them. Blake parked outside the diner and stood looking at those towers for a few seconds before going inside.

A woman behind the counter was trying to keep a refrigerator door shut with one knee while moving milk into a cooler. Her dark hair was pinned up with a pencil. Her nametag read Mara Harker. A girl of about twelve sat nearby with an old phone in both hands. She looked up when Blake came in, recognized him, and quietly turned the screen toward the counter.

Mara Harker: If you want ice, ask now. If you want air conditioning, I can give you directions to another town.

Blake Faust: I'll settle for a burger and whatever's cold.

Mara Harker: Sit down. I'll see what we've got.

He took a stool, leaving his jacket open over the Driver at his waist. Mara noticed the belt, looked more carefully at his face, and stopped reaching for a glass.

Mara Harker: Blake Faust?

Blake Faust: Yep. That's me. I'm here about the data center.

Mara Harker: Took you long enough.

She turned toward the grill before he could answer. Blake let her. Explaining where he had been for ten years wouldn't put water back in her pipes. The girl kept watching him, and when he smiled at her she looked down at the phone again. He had been recognized often since admitting to the world that he was Kamen Rider Faust. Usually there was a question, a photograph, or someone asking if he could lift their car. This was different, and he had a feeling the water supply wasn't the worst of it.

Blake Faust: I'm chasing down projects that were green lit in my absence. You all look like you've been through a lot.

The front door opened behind him. A broad man in a dusty sheriff's uniform carried two bags of ice to the counter, set them down with obvious relief, and gave Blake a long look. His nameplate read Owen Bell. 

Owen Bell: You. Blake Faust. 

Blake Faust: The one and only. 

Owen Bell: Please tell me you're here to close that place.

Blake Faust: I'm here to find out what it's doing. Closing it is definitely an option.

Owen Bell: Good. Which complaints did they send you? Water, power, or the dead people?

Blake Faust: The wa...wait the what?

Blake turned on the stool. Before he could continue, the girl's phone began vibrating against the counter. Its screen stayed black. A man's voice came through the speaker, distant and frightened, asking someone to open a door. Mara put down the plate she was carrying and reached for the phone, but the girl snatched it up.

Mara Harker: Ellie. Give it to me.

Ellie Harker: It's him! Mom, listen!

The diner's lights dimmed. Outside, a man stood in the middle of the road wearing wet maintenance coveralls. Water fell from his sleeves without leaving a mark on the dust. Blake was already off the stool when the man raised his head. He could feel the cold coming from him, and beneath it a familiar pull that made the lens in his Driver tremble.

Ellie Harker: Dad?

Mara caught her daughter's arm before she reached the door. Blake stepped outside, putting himself between the diner and the man. Thin green strands stretched from the man's back toward the data center. His outline flickered each time the distant fans changed pitch, and his fingers shook as he tried to pull at something behind his shoulder.

Blake Faust: Hey. I can see you. What's your name?

Daniel Harker: Daniel. Please, get her away. I can't stop it!



His body folded backward with a crack that sent people on the sidewalk running. Something unfolded from the space behind his shoulders, long armed and insectile, wearing pieces of his outline like a badly fitting coat. Blake caught a glimpse of Daniel still inside it before the creature struck. He ducked beneath a hooked arm, shoved a shopping cart into its legs, and dragged the woman beside it away from the curb. The cart came apart against the diner window. Owen pulled the front door open and waved the people inside while Blake fastened his Driver around his waist and inserted the Rune Lens. 

Faust Driver: IN THE NAME OF FAUST, I FIGHT FOR JUSTICE!

Blake Faust: Henshin!




Emerald light surrounded him and locked into the armor of Kamen Rider Faust. He caught the Wraith's hooked arm against his shoulder and drove a knee into its stomach, forcing it away from the diner. Daniel cried out inside it. Faust stopped before delivering a second blow, and the creature took advantage of his hesitation, swinging him across the hood of a parked truck. He slid off the other side, landed on his feet, and watched the two shapes struggling inside the same body. Daniel was trying to get away from the monster. The Wraith kept pulling him back into itself.

Kamen Rider Faust: Alright. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but either way, you're letting him go.

He backed toward his motorcycle and waited for the Wraith to follow. When it lunged, he rolled the bike between its legs and forced it to step over the front wheel. Its upper body turned, exposing the green cords holding Daniel against its back. Faust caught one in his hand. It burned cold through his gauntlet, but he pulled until it snapped and kicked the creature away from the man inside it. Daniel fell to his knees in the road. The Wraith reached after him, dragging the remaining strands tight.

A silver blade passed between them and cut the strands cleanly. A black armored Rider stepped through the side of the truck as though the metal weren't there, his long mantle settling behind bone white chest and shoulder plates.



Violet eyes shone through a pale, closed mask. A small brass bell hung beneath his scythe's curved blade, and its single clear note made the Wraith retreat. The stranger followed without speaking. One upward slash opened the monster from its stomach to its head, breaking its body into gray vapor before it could grab Daniel again.

Faust moved closer as the newcomer held a hand toward the kneeling man. He didn't know whether he had just met an ally, and he had seen enough weapons used on helpless spirits to be careful.

Kamen Rider Faust: Easy. His family's right there.

Kamen Rider Death: I know. I have been trying to bring him to them.

Daniel looked toward the broken window. Ellie stood behind it with Mara holding her close, both too frightened to move. He began to rise, but a deeper vibration passed through the street. New green threads pulled out of the sand and wound around his chest. The stranger cut two of them. Three more appeared. Faust caught Daniel's arm, felt it lose substance in his hand, and watched him dragged through the road toward the compound. The Rider's outstretched hand remained empty between them.

Kamen Rider Faust: What the hell was that?!

Kamen Rider Death: Hell is exactly what it is, and it's your fault. Your company is taking him back. Again.

The stranger turned toward Faust's belt. Its green lens was answering the signal with a faint pulse. Faust covered it with his hand, disturbed by the rhythm, while the Rider's grip tightened around the scythe.

Kamen Rider Faust: Who are you?

Kamen Rider Death: Kamen Rider Death. I guide the souls trapped in the Death Realm to the places they belong. Your machines have made that impossible here.

Kamen Rider Faust: What? Look...I'm here to stop whatever they're doing.

Kamen Rider Death: Your lens carries the same call. You wear their mark. Why should I believe you?

Kamen Rider Faust: Because I'm Blake Faust, and I didn't ride all the way out here to watch people get hurt!

Death brought the scythe toward his Driver. Faust caught the shaft, turned the blade away from his waist, and shoved him back. Death had aimed to take the belt, but Blake wasn't about to let a stranger cut off the equipment keeping him alive in a fight. He struck at Death's shoulder and found his fist passing through empty air. The Rider reappeared behind him and drove him against the truck. Faust turned with an elbow, caught solid armor this time, and followed with two quick punches that forced Death into the street.

Kamen Rider Faust: You could try asking a question before swinging that thing!

Kamen Rider Death: Then answer one. How long must the dead wait for Geist to stop hurting them?

Kamen Rider Faust: I just got here! Give me a damn chance!



They collided again, scythe and gauntlet throwing sparks across the road. Death shifted through the Death Realm between attacks, always returning from a different direction. Faust watched the bell and listened for the small change in its sound before each movement. He let the next blow turn him, caught the shaft under his arm, and pulled Death close enough to drive a knee into his white breastplate. Both Riders hit the truck hard enough to flatten its remaining tires. Blake kept hold of the weapon, determined to make the man listen before either of them destroyed the whole street.

A scream from inside the diner interrupted them. The phone was speaking in several voices now, all asking for help. Death looked toward the window and stopped pulling against Faust's grip. He touched the violet lens at his belt with two fingers. A pale shimmer spread across the doorway, and the voices faded enough for Mara to take the phone from Ellie.

Kamen Rider Death: Keep them away from the compound. That signal is reaching farther every day.

Kamen Rider Faust: Then tell me how it works!

Kamen Rider Death: Find out what your people built. I will find the souls it has taken.

He stepped backward through the truck and vanished before Faust could stop him. Blake stood holding an empty piece of road between his fists, trying to decide whether he was angrier at Death or at the people who had given him a reason to be here. Owen came out of the diner, inspected the truck, and slowly removed his hat.

Owen Bell: That's mine.

Kamen Rider Faust: I'll replace it.

Owen Bell: Full tank, too.

Kamen Rider Faust: I'll replace that.

Owen Bell: Alright. Now I believe you're rich.

Kamen Rider Faust: Not where it counts. Not right now.

Blake removed his Driver after checking the street. Inside, Mara had brought Ellie into the kitchen, away from the window and the frightened customers. Owen explained that Daniel had worked maintenance at Sunline until an accident at a cooling intake two years earlier. Three months ago, Ellie had begun hearing him through his old phone. Others in town had reported dead relatives calling their names, standing in doorways, or asking to be let inside. Some of those visits ended with an apology and a disappearance. Others ended like the one outside.

Blake Faust: Daniel didn't become that monster. Something caught him and came through with him. I need you to make sure people understand that.

Owen Bell: Can you get him out?

Blake looked toward the kitchen. Ellie had heard the question. He sat at the other end of the small table while Mara stood beside her daughter, waiting for an answer too.

Blake Faust: I'm going to try. But Ellie, your dad really did...pass. It's important that you realize that. I'm so sorry. Freeing him won't bring his body back.

Ellie Harker: He said he couldn't get home. He keeps trying.

Blake Faust: I know. I don't want him trapped there either. I don't know what's going on or why, but I intend to find out.

He waited while she wiped her face on her sleeve. It would have been easy to promise more, and cruel to let her believe it. His father had stood in front of him after Eris fell, close enough to touch, and Blake had still needed to say goodbye. He remembered how peaceful Richard had looked when he finally left. Daniel deserved that chance. So did the people who loved him.

Outside, Blake called Ashley and told her everything. She began arranging emergency support while Victor opened the original research accounts. Blake asked for every record they could find, including the orders carrying his own family's name. He finished the burger Mara had wrapped for him, thanked her, and rode toward Sunline with Owen following in a borrowed maintenance pickup. The sheriff had already decided he wasn't letting the company show Blake only the rooms it wanted him to see.

The guard at the gate recognized Blake immediately. He reached for the visitor register, lost his place halfway through opening it, and stood staring at his own hand until Owen called to him. A green reflection passed across his pupils. Blake glanced toward the nearest transmitter, mounted above the gate beside an ordinary security camera, and saw a small lens turning inside its casing. The guard recovered with an embarrassed apology. Blake asked his name and remembered it.

Site director Martin Foster met them outside the main building. His shirt was spotless, his shoes looked new, and his smile became less convincing when he noticed the sheriff behind Blake. 

Martin Voss: Mr. Faust, this is an unexpected surprise! We're happy to see you! Have you come for a tour of the facilities?

Blake Faust: I'm not here for a tour. A Wraith just attacked the diner with a dead man trapped inside it. It shouldn't be able to do that. None of this should be possible. The Wraith possess people! They don't appear in the wild like that! Why is it connected to your transmitters?

Martin Foster: What? I-I- We have experienced interference with an older research system. We're working to contain it.

Owen Bell: Is that what you call it when my deputies have to pull people out of their own houses?

Blake Faust: Shut the system down!

Foster stopped beside a window overlooking the server hall. Technicians moved between the white cabinets below, several of them walking with the same slow, uncertain steps as the guard. One woman had stopped beside an open panel. She kept looking toward the visitor gallery, waiting for a chance to speak.

Martin Foster: It isn't that simple anymore.

Blake Faust: Alright. Explain it simply.

The woman came through the stairwell door before Foster answered. Her badge read Nina Calder, and she carried a notebook with loose pages tucked between its covers. She handed it to Owen. He recognized her name from a message that had reached his office two days earlier, shortly before her access to outside calls was cut.

Nina Calder: They tried disconnecting the power last month. Four workers stopped breathing. The lights went out, the controls went down, and the thing under the floor kept running.

Martin Foster: You weren't authorized to send anything outside this facility.

Nina Calder: They were dying!

Blake Faust: She has my authorization. Show me what's under the floor.

Nina led them downstairs. Beyond a locked door lay a circular chamber older in design than anything above it. Modern cables had been fastened around bronze supports, and cooling pipes ran through a mounting built for an enormous green lens. Blake recognized the aperture and the rings around it. Geist had adapted technology like this for the Drivers, but this lens was large enough for him to walk through. It turned slowly in its frame, drawing light from somewhere on the other side of its surface.

A screen beside it displayed the name SOUL ARCHIVE. Beneath the name ran a list of people and fragments of speech. Each was attached to a time and an identification number. The recordings stopped and began again when the lens turned. Owen watched one woman's voice struggle through the same sentence three times.

Owen Bell: Who are these people?

Nina Calder: Dead. Some of them for years.

Foster tried to explain before Blake could turn toward him. 

Martin Foster: The original project had been intended to recover knowledge lost when people died. Memories, specialist skills, things never written down. Geist already knew a soul could remember its life. The researchers wanted to read those memories and save them where the living could use them. Imagine being able to recover a scientist's unfinished research. The memories of someone who witnessed an event nobody else survived. This was supposed to be a breakthrough.

Blake Faust: Data Center of the dead!? Are you out of your minds?! Did any of them agree to it?

Foster looked at the screen instead of answering. Nina reached over him and changed the display. The recordings were replaced by a view of the chamber, but the room on the screen was dark and stretched far beyond the walls around them. Hundreds of pale figures stood beneath green threads descending from the lens. Some pulled against them. Others stood with their heads lowered, too tired to try. Daniel was near the front, kneeling with both hands over his ears.

Nina Calder: That isn't a simulation. There's a viewing lens behind the camera. You're looking into the Death Realm.

Blake stepped closer to the enormous aperture. Beyond the reflections of the lights, he could see the same people waiting in the dark. Their prison occupied the space on the other side of the room. There were no bars because the threads did the work, pulling them back whenever they tried to leave. One man crawled toward a break between the figures. The lens brightened, and he was dragged across the floor until he stopped moving.

Blake Faust: This thing is holding them in place?

Nina Calder: Yes. It holds their souls there while the equipment reads their memories. The scan starts again every time the records are incomplete. They can't leave. Some are forgetting their own names.

Owen took off his hat. Blake kept his hands at his sides because he didn't trust himself not to punch Foster. Daniel raised his head on the screen and looked toward the camera, or toward the living room beyond it. His mouth moved. A speaker beside the terminal repeated Ellie's name.

Blake Faust: How does it catch them?

Nina showed them a plan of the transmitters. Ordinary wireless equipment carried the data center's communications, but Geist had added small spirit lenses to it. Those lenses mixed a repeating burst of spirit energy into the Wi-Fi signal. The pattern could be felt in the Death Realm, where it drew wandering souls toward the facility. The first recordings had given the researchers a way to make the lure stronger. Familiar voices and remembered places were sent back through it, promising the lost a way home.

Nina Calder: They followed it because they thought somebody was calling them. Once they reached the lens, it attached a binding. From then on, the system could pull them back wherever they tried to go.

Blake Faust: Even when a Reaper found them.

Nina Calder: A Reaper?

Blake Faust: You lot have been playing with fire, and you're going to get burned! I just met the dude! Came out of nowhere! Left just as quickly! He's here to deal with this place! 

Nina Calder: I didn't know that part until today.

Owen Bell: And you put this in the town's internet?

Nina looked at Foster. He spread his hands, already preparing another explanation, but Owen held up a page from her notebook. Three months earlier, Sunline had installed repeaters on the water tower, the pumping station, and several streets. The service was free. Everyone had been encouraged to use it, and the research department had quietly gained a signal that covered the whole town.

Martin Foster: The equipment was installed to improve coverage.

Nina Calder: For the Archive. The old field wasn't finding enough new memories, so you made it bigger.

Owen Bell: That's when the calls started.

Blake looked again at the figures beyond the lens. Something longer and darker moved between them. A woman shrank away from it, and the thing followed her until its head passed through the edge of the display. More shapes waited behind the prisoners, crowded together in the darkness.

Blake Faust: Wraith.

Nina Calder: They began gathering around the captives. Fear, anger, all of it building up in the same place. The lens treated the Wraith as more subjects and bound them to separate points in the field. We kept reporting unexplained increases in spirit energy. The project reports called it improved output.

Blake watched a hooked limb close around a man's shoulders. He understood what he had seen outside the diner. A frightened human soul was easy prey. The Wraith fastened themselves to the prisoners and followed when the signal dragged them toward the living world. With enough stolen spirit energy, they could form bodies there and attack the people around the transmitters. Daniel hadn't become evil. He had been used to carry something else through.

Owen Bell: So if we stop the signal, the monsters go back?

Blake Faust: It stops more of them coming. The ones already here still have to be dealt with. They can stay as long as they've got enough spirit energy, or someone to possess.

Nina nodded and opened an older recording. During a brief reduction in the field, several Wraith had crowded around the same captive. Their outlines pressed together until a single larger shape filled the corner of the screen. When the bindings separated them again, they tore apart, fighting over what each had taken. Blake watched the recording twice. He had seen what happened when enough Wraith became one creature, and he didn't want anything like that loose above the town.

Blake Faust: Don't release that whole chamber while there are people outside it. We'll need room, and someone on both sides.

Nina Calder: There are more in there now than there were when that was recorded.

She showed him the largest increase in arrivals. Blake recognized the date. It was the day the Underworld had collapsed, when Eris's prisoners and the Wraith held beneath the Death Realm had escaped. He had watched them leave while carrying his father and Johnathan to safety. Some of those souls had reached peace. Others had wandered until another voice called to them, and this machine had been waiting.

His stomach tightened. For a moment he saw Richard among the figures, though he knew his father had already passed on. He had freed people from one prison without knowing another existed. The thought was familiar enough to become an accusation before he caught it. Nina was still speaking, and he made himself listen.

Nina Calder: That increase overloaded the restraints. The lens started pulling harder.

She turned the view toward the ceiling of the other chamber. Several threads passed through it, leading to pale shapes that were only partly formed. One looked like the guard at the front gate. His spirit stood beneath its binding while his living body remained upstairs, still trying to finish the visitor register. Blake could see the connection between the two, stretched thin but unbroken.

Nina Calder: People who work closest to it are being drawn out of their bodies. Some residents are too. They lose time, forget where they are, collapse. Those four workers stopped breathing because cutting the power shut off the controls limiting the lens's pull. The lens itself stayed active. It's feeding on the spirit energy caught in it now.

Blake Faust: If we smash it while they're like this, we cut the way back to their bodies.

Nina Calder: Yes. Turning it on again brought the four workers back. We were lucky.

Owen stepped between Foster and the stairs. Blake didn't need to tell him why. The director looked from one of them to the other, his explanations finally running out.

Martin Foster: I was trying to keep it contained. You can see why a shutdown wasn't possible.

Blake Faust: You could have asked for help. You could have told the people living under those transmitters what was happening. You kept this running because you didn't want anyone finding out what you'd done.

Nina placed the original authorization on the terminal. The project had begun eight years ago, funded through accounts bearing Victor's signature from the years Balaam had controlled him. Blake knew what his brother would feel when he saw those pages. He kept reading until a calibration file opened beneath them and a photograph of his own face filled the screen.

His body lay inside the chamber where Maggie had kept him alive. There was a sensor beside his temple and another against his chest. The notes described the condition of a living subject whose spirit remained separated from its body. Blake stood very still. He remembered his mother telling him how often she had watched that bed, afraid the machinery would stop. While she had been trying to save her son, someone had copied the readings and sent them here.

Nina Calder: The original team used these measurements to tune the lens. They knew your body and spirit could remain apart without either being lost. They wanted to reproduce the connection.

Blake Faust: You have no idea what nightmares you've unleashed.

Martin Foster: It was for the goal of uplifting Geist and-

Blake grabbed Foster by the shirt and slammed him against the wall. The terminal rocked behind them. Owen caught Blake's raised wrist, but for a second Blake barely felt him. He saw Ashley waiting for a man who couldn't remember her, Victor wearing another creature's smile, and his mother sitting beside that bed while strangers made use of what had been done to him. Foster was talking. Blake didn't care what he was saying. He wanted him to be frightened enough to stop hiding behind excuses.

Owen Bell: Blake! Put him down. We've got people to get out.

He let go. Foster stumbled against the wall, coughing, while Blake looked at his own hand. His Driver pulsed beneath his jacket. Across the chamber, the lens answered it and the prisoners lifted their heads.

Blake Faust: Get him upstairs. Take his files, take his keys, and don't let him near the controls. Nina, what can we do safely?

Nina showed Blake the controls. They could change the strength of the pull and choose which memories to read, but the researchers had never built a way to undo the bindings. Closing a subject's file only stopped the scan. The soul remained held by the lens. Blake looked toward Foster, who had gone quiet beside the sheriff, and understood how little the people designing the Archive had cared about what happened to their subjects afterward.

There was still a way to reduce the danger. Nina could disconnect the town repeaters without disturbing the master lens. That would stop the signal from finding more people in those streets, although anyone already bound would remain attached. Death's scythe had cut a binding without harming Daniel. If the same thing could be done for each living person's spirit, they could return those spirits to their bodies and evacuate them. Once no living soul depended on the lens, they could destroy it and free the dead.

Blake Faust: Alright. We stop it spreading, get the living out, and break the thing holding the dead. That's what we're doing.

Nina Calder: The central lens is still filling. If it discharges everything it's collected, the main transmitter will cover the highway without the repeaters. I can slow that down. I can't keep it stable forever.

Blake Faust: Then we'd better get started.

They reached the upper server hall as the sun dropped behind the perimeter wall. Several workers had stopped between the cabinets. One was reaching for a tool with a hand that no longer followed the movement of his arm. Death stood beside the main control panel, his scythe raised. Blake ran between him and the panel before the blade came down.

Blake Faust: Wait! There are living people caught in it. If you break the master lens now, they won't get back into their bodies.

Kamen Rider Death: I have seen them. I have also seen the hundreds beneath this floor. Every hour you keep that lens intact, it takes more from them.

Blake Faust: Nina can cut the repeaters. Help us separate the living first.

Kamen Rider Death: People have promised to fix this before. The souls are still there.

Blake Faust: I'm standing here telling you I'll do it!

Death looked through the window toward the lower terminal. Blake's photograph was still on the screen. The Rider lowered his weapon enough to study it, and Blake thought he had finally understood. Instead, his violet eyes returned to the belt beneath Blake's jacket.

Kamen Rider Death: Your power taught them how to do this.

Blake Faust: I was in a bed! I didn't know any of this existed!

Kamen Rider Death: You know now. Before that? You meddled with the Death Realm many times over. Did you think it was completely unsupervised? Did you think we were unaware of the Pantheon? Legion's motives? Abaddon's motives?! Move.

Blake Faust: Pantheon? Legion...Abaddon?

Blake heard the order and the fear in the workers behind him, and the anger he had barely held downstairs broke loose. He transformed as Death reached past him with the scythe, caught the shaft in both hands, and drove the other Rider through the loading doors. They landed in the cooling yard hard enough to crack the concrete. Faust followed with a punch before Death had fully regained his footing, forcing him away from the doorway. He had made enough room for Nina to move the workers. He kept attacking anyway.

Death blocked a second punch and struck Faust's ribs with the butt of his scythe. Blake felt the blow, but it only made him push harder. He drove Death against a concrete barrier and reached for the Rune Lens. Asher had given him that lens to keep his soul anchored in the Underworld. It had become Reaper Mode, the power that let him reach his father and bring him out. He had needed it against Eris. He needed it now.

Faust Driver: FAUST DRIVER. REAPER MODE.




Green and black armor closed over him. His mantle spread behind his shoulders and a scythe formed in his hands. Kamen Rider Faust Reaper struck Death's weapon with enough force to drive both of them through a loading rail. Metal bent beneath their feet. Death shifted out of the next swing, but Blake turned after him, following the cold at his back and attacking before the violet eyes were fully visible again.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: Ten years! I wasn't sitting in an office signing orders. I was trapped on the other side, trying to remember who I was!

Kamen Rider Death: Stop-

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: NO! Don't tell me to stop!

He brought the scythe down. Death caught it, and the bell struck the side of Blake's weapon with a harsh metallic sound. The Rune Lens flashed. A pulse from the yard transmitter passed through the space between them, and Blake felt something pull at him from inside his armor. He tried to wrench free. The lens resisted, holding his body and soul together as it had been made to do, but the power he was pouring into it had nowhere to go. His own rage came back through the field, stronger than before.

The armor tightened around his chest. Death released the weapons and reached for Blake's shoulder, too late to stop the green light tearing outward. A second shadow spread across the ground beneath the mantle. Blake watched an armored hand emerge from it and close around his scythe. He was thrown backward in his base Faust armor, while the Reaper form remained standing where he had been. The Rune Lens tore free of his Driver and fitted itself into the other figure's belt.

For a moment nobody moved. The new Reaper turned its head toward Blake, its visor split by a thin line of burning green. It wore his armor and held his weapon, but there was nothing of his hesitation in the way it approached. The first swing hit Faust before he had properly raised his guard, sending him across the yard into the barrier. He heard his own voice coming from behind the broken mask.



Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: Get up. You were asleep too long, and the world went to hell because you failed!



Blake rolled aside as the scythe cut through the concrete where his head had been. He struck the double's wrist, followed with a knee, and found the creature turning exactly as he would have turned. It caught his leg and threw him down again. Death stepped between them, hooking the double's weapon and pulling it clear of Blake's chest. Their blades crossed three times before the Reaper drove an elbow into Death's throat and knocked him into a stack of coolant drums.

Kamen Rider Faust: What are you?!

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: You know what I am. You think about me every time you ponder the darkness.

Its scythe divided into two blades. Blake recognized the movement, the way it turned its wrist before the second cut, and still couldn't get away quickly enough. One blade struck his chest plate. The other swept his legs out from under him. He tried to call the Rune Lens back, but all he felt was the double's anger meeting his own. That frightened him more than the attacks. It wasn't a Wraith wearing his memories. It knew exactly what he was thinking because it had come from him.

Nina appeared at the loading door. The double looked toward her, and Blake threw himself against its side before it could strike. The blow meant for her tore a long opening through the wall. Faust drove it back with both fists, furious that his own power had threatened someone he was trying to protect. Green light flared inside the fractured visor. The harder he hit, the stronger its next blow became.

It caught him across the waist and slammed him against the barrier. His Driver sparked. The armor failed, leaving Blake on the concrete with blood running into one eye and no strength left in his legs. Death rose behind the double, but a worker had collapsed beside an open electrical cabinet. The man's spirit was being dragged out through his back. Death turned toward him, set one hand against his chest, and cut the green thread with the other. The spirit fell back into the man's body. He took a breath, and Death pulled him clear of the cabinet.

Blake saw all of it while trying to stand. Even the Rider he had been fighting was saving someone. He was lying in the dirt, beaten by the anger he had brought here. The Reaper stopped in front of him and rested its blade against the ground.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: Ashley waited ten years. Your mother sat beside that bed. Your brother had Balaam inside him. How many people were hurt while you couldn't even remember their names?

Blake Faust: Shut up.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: You say that every night. It never works.

The blade rose. Blake rolled beneath the damaged barrier and crawled into a drainage channel as the scythe struck behind him. He could hear it scraping along the concrete overhead. His fingers kept slipping in the sand. He hated that he was running, hated that part of him wanted the double to be right, because at least blame was something he could understand. He reached the end of the channel and turned, holding his Driver in both hands as though it might stop what was coming.

The yard transmitter went dark. Nina had opened its casing and pulled the lens assembly free while Death kept the fallen worker safe. Owen climbed into the channel and hauled Blake upright. Blake tried to say he could walk, but his knees gave way before he finished. The sheriff put an arm around him and brought him toward the loading doors. Nina stood beside the ruined transmitter, holding its disconnected lens with a pair of insulated gloves.

Nina Calder: The signal was keeping it solid out here. Did that kill it?

Blake Faust: No. I can still feel it.

Death joined them after handing the rescued worker to a deputy. He looked at the empty place in Blake's Driver, then toward the darkened yard.

Kamen Rider Death: The field tried to pull you apart. Your Rune Lens held you together, but you gave the force pushing against it a shape. That anger is yours, Faust. So is the power it took.

Nina Calder: Why did it disappear when I cut the relay? The other Wraith didn't.

Kamen Rider Death: They have been feeding on stolen spirit energy. This thing is drawing on Faust. It needs the amplified signal to keep that separated power solid here. Cutting the relay has sent it back across, not destroyed it.

Blake Faust: Can I get it back?

Kamen Rider Death: If you can face it without feeding it more of the same.

Blake wanted to argue. He wanted Death to admit how much of the anger had been provoked by him. Across the hall, another worker began shaking beside a server rack, and the argument no longer mattered. Blake pushed away from Owen and caught the man before he fell. Death knelt in front of them, studying the thread that stretched from the worker's chest toward the floor. With a careful movement of the scythe, he cut the binding and guided the displaced spirit back into its body.

Blake Faust: That's what we needed you to do. Help us get them out.

Kamen Rider Death: I will help while there is time. If the central lens breaks loose, I will end it.

Nina took them at their word and started giving directions. Once a living person's spirit was fully returned, their own body could hold it steady long enough to get clear of the field. Death insisted they leave immediately, before the lens could begin loosening that bond again. The dead had no body to protect them from its pull. Their freedom would have to wait until the master lens was gone. Owen refused to let Foster leave with the evacuation. He took his keys, placed him in the custody of a deputy, and sent the copied project records ahead of him. Blake watched Foster go without trying to stop the car. He still wanted to hit him. He also knew the people holding him up in the hallway needed his hands more.

Near midnight, Nina found Blake sitting on the loading steps, pressing a towel against his forehead. 

Nina Calder: We've got a few hours if it stays at this rate. Less if those Wraith keep feeding. Death's gone to find the people in town.

Blake Faust: And the thing wearing my armor?

Nina Calder: It appears on the viewing lens sometimes. It's following your signal. Wherever we give it a strong enough path, it'll come back.

Blake looked toward the old pumping station beyond the last houses. There were no workers there now, and its relay had been disconnected before the others. 

Blake Faust: Switch it back on. Direct it over there.

Owen Bell: Faust, don't so this. You're bleeding on the steps.

Blake Faust: They're my steps, technically.

Owen Bell: That's now what I'm talking about, man! I don't pretend to know what's going on here, but I do know fighting that thing is a death sentence!

Blake Faust: Just drive me, please?

The sheriff drove him back to the diner while a county medical crew moved into the community hall. With the repeaters disconnected, the outlying roads were safe enough for evacuees to use. Mara was making food for the people waiting to leave and the deputies still searching the central streets. She pushed Blake into a kitchen chair, called a medic over, and went back to turning burgers before he could apologize for another interruption. He sat still while the cut over his eye was cleaned and closed. Ellie took the chair opposite him, carrying soup and the old phone.

Ellie Harker: Mom says I should stop trying to call him.

Blake Faust: Your mom wants you safe. So do I.

Ellie Harker: What if he thinks I don't want him to come home?

Blake looked at the phone in her hands. The case was worn around the corners, and a family photograph had been tucked behind its clear back. Daniel held Ellie on his shoulders in the picture. Mara stood beside them, laughing at something outside the frame. Ellie couldn't have been more than six. Blake had missed photographs like that in his own family, missed birthdays and holidays and the ordinary afternoons nobody thought to record. He knew how tempting it was to believe one more call might give some of it back.

Blake Faust: He knows you want him home. That's why he keeps trying to reach you. But he wouldn't want you sitting here frightened every time the phone rings.

Ellie Harker: You don't know him.

Blake Faust: You're right. I don't. The first thing he said to me was to get you away from the monster, though. I think that tells me all I need to know. I know what it's like to be in his position. I was like that once. You hang onto the things that matter to you most...those are the last to go. You are his most important treasure, in all the world. He loves you. I know it.

She looked at the photograph for a long time before putting the phone beside her bowl. Blake stayed with her while she ate. He didn't tell her to be brave or pretend it would stop hurting. When she asked whether he had ever lost anyone, he told her about his father and the chance he had been given to say goodbye. He left out Eris, the fighting, and how badly he had wanted Richard to stay. Ellie had enough monsters to think about.

Mara came to take her daughter to the community hall. Before leaving, she rested a hand on Blake's shoulder, carefully avoiding the bruises.

Mara Harker: We all know you're trying your best. A lot of people understood when you became CEO, that you'd have a lot of work ahead of you. Geist is one of the biggest companies in the world. We should've known you'd find us eventually.

Blake Faust: I should have found you sooner.

Mara Harker: Maybe. But you're here now. Help us with what it's doing now.

The kitchen phone rang after they left. Ashley had been trying his watch, but the interference near the center had made it unreliable. He picked up the receiver and leaned against the counter, relieved to hear her even though he knew the first question was going to be about his injuries.

Ashley Faust: I've already been told you need stitches.

Blake Faust: People talk too much.

Ashley Faust: How badly are you hurt?

Blake Faust: I'm standing. It would be better if I wasn't, but I'm standing.

Ashley Faust: Sit down, Blake.

He sat. She told him Victor had confirmed the old accounts and that Maggie was arranging water deliveries and medical transport. None of them had known the Archive was still operating. Foster had buried its expenses inside the commercial center's contracts, kept the same small research team, and reported successful memory recovery as ordinary storage work. 

Blake Faust: He used the readings from my chamber. All that time Mom was trying to keep me alive, they were learning how to do it to other people.

Ashley Faust: I saw. Victor's furious. So am I.

Blake Faust: I nearly broke Foster's jaw. I wanted to. That's the part I don't like.

He told her about the Reaper. Once he started, he couldn't stop at what it had done. He repeated what it had said about her waiting, his mother at the bedside, his brother and father being used. He told her how often those same thoughts came back when he was alone, and how angry he felt whenever somebody talked about that decade as though he had simply been away. Ashley listened without trying to interrupt him with reassurance.

Blake Faust: I thought getting Dad out would settle it. I saved him. He got to go somewhere better. Why am I still so angry?

Ashley Faust: Because something terrible happened to you. Saving your father didn't make that unhappen.

Blake Faust: Everybody needed me. You needed me. I wasn't there.

Ashley Faust: You think I don't know why? I wanted you back every day. I never thought you were choosing to stay gone. I thought you were dead. I thought you died trying to save people. Technically...you did...but you were able to come back to me.

Blake looked down at the Driver on the table. His thumb rested beside the empty mounting where the Rune Lens belonged. Ashley had been the one waiting in the living world. She had trained, searched, and fought when it became the only way to reach him. 

Blake Faust: I keep thinking that if I'd been stronger, if I'd remembered sooner, maybe I could have stopped some of it.

Ashley Faust: Maybe you could have done a hundred different things if you had known things you didn't know. That isn't what happened. You were hurt. You were trapped. You met Johnny. You came back to us. You're a good man, Blake. I had a crush on you as a kid because of that, and I married you because you came even better. When it was all over, you chose to remain a hero. You didn't have to. You chose to.

He closed his eyes. She had said it plainly, and there was nowhere for him to hide from it. He had understood what happened to Victor for the years Balaam controlled him. He had fought his way through the Underworld to tell his father he was loved. When he thought of himself, he still saw an empty place where a better man should have been, someone strong enough to save everyone without needing to be saved. That man had never existed. The one who did exist had survived, and people had been glad to have him home.

Blake Faust: I couldn't come back on my own. If I could have, I would have.

Ashley Faust: I know.

He stayed quiet with her for a while. The diner was nearly empty now.

Blake Faust: I'm going to get my power back. Then I'm finishing this and coming home.

Ashley Faust: Good. Take a day off when you do.

Blake Faust: Just one? I was going to ask for two.

Ashley Faust: Don't negotiate while you're on the clock.

He laughed, carefully, and promised to call when it was over. Outside, Death stood beneath the water tower. Several pale figures waited near him, looking toward a silver opening that disappeared whenever the central lens pulsed. Death had cut their bindings only to see new ones begin forming around them. With the lens still searching for the souls it had marked, he couldn't hold a passage open long enough to guide them away.

Blake stopped beside him. The Reaper's white shoulder plate was split where the double had struck it. There were fresh marks along his scythe, too, from the fight in town.

Blake Faust: I'm going to help you. Believe me. I don't know exactly what you are, but I think I know what you're doing...and who you're doing it for. We're on the same team here. Let me prove that. I'll help you when I get the lens back.

Kamen Rider Death: Get it back soon. Those creatures are feeding the center as they feed themselves.

The souls beside them faded, drawn toward the compound again. Death watched without moving, and Blake understood something he hadn't considered during their fight. The Rider had been trying to stop this long before he got there. Every delay meant another person pulled out of his hands. Blake still wouldn't let him sacrifice the living.

Blake Faust: Is there anyone else doing this work with you?

Kamen Rider Death: There were others.

Blake Faust: And now?

Death rested one hand below the bell. 

Kamen Rider Death: I'm the only one who still answers.

The old pumping station stood beyond the last houses, surrounded by rusted pipes and empty concrete channels. Blake parked beneath a water tank and walked into the open. A small green light came on above the relay cabinet. His Driver answered, and the shadow beneath the tank began to take the shape of a man. Reaper stepped out carrying its scythe across one shoulder. The Rune Lens shone at its waist.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: I knew you'd come back. You can't stand leaving a mistake unfinished.

Blake Faust: You're right about coming back. Wrong about why.

Faust Driver: IN THE NAME OF FAUST, I FIGHT FOR JUSTICE!

Blake Faust: Henshin!

Faust met the first swing with both forearms, turned the blade past his shoulder, and struck the double's wrist. Reaper answered with a knee that drove him against an empty trough. He almost charged straight back. Instead, he waited for the scythe to come around and stepped inside its reach, forcing the double to use its free hand. He knew this fighter. It was quick, aggressive, and willing to take a hit if the next one hurt more. He had fought like that when he thought getting hurt was part of what he owed.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: You left them waiting!

Kamen Rider Faust: I was taken from them! I tried to get back. You remember that part too, don't you?

The double struck him across the chest. Faust stumbled, caught its next cut on the reinforced guard at his wrist, and pushed the blade against the trough. Their armor scraped together as Reaper forced him down. Behind its broken visor he saw Ashley as she had been before the accident, smiling at a man who still believed his whole future was safe. The memory hurt. He let it hurt without turning the feeling into another reason to hate himself.

Kamen Rider Faust Reaper: You should have been stronger.

Kamen Rider Faust: I needed help. Johnathan helped me. Ashley helped me. There's no shame in that! Everyone needs help! WE make each other stronger! LOVE MAKES US STRONGER!

He planted both boots against the double's body and threw it over the trough. Reaper landed hard but rose with its blades already separated. Faust had used that combination himself. He caught the first wrist, ducked the second cut, and drove his shoulder into the double before it could bring its knee up. For the first time, it was the Reaper that hit the ground. Blake followed it, stopped the next slash with the heel of his boot, and struck the aperture at its waist.

The contact pulled him into the memories behind the lens. Empty streets in the Death Realm. Voices calling him by names he couldn't remember. The terrible comfort of giving up because it meant he could stop searching. He had survived those days one at a time. There had been no grand plan, no certainty that somebody was waiting, and no way to know how many years were passing. The younger man he had been had done everything he could with what he had left.

Faust caught the double's arm before it could strike him again. He didn't suddenly feel proud of every decision he had made. He knew there were things he still needed to answer for. But lying helpless in that chamber wasn't one of them. Being unable to rescue himself wasn't one of them. He could forgive himself for surviving something he had never chosen.

Kamen Rider Faust: I lost those years too. Not my years. I was the same age from when I was trapped, but I lost the years of everyone else around me. My mother, my brother, and the woman I love! I'm allowed to be angry about that. But I'm done making myself pay for what they did to me!

The Reaper's visor flickered. It pushed against him, strong enough to make his injured ribs shake, but the next surge from the transmitter no longer made it stronger. Blake wasn't fighting to punish it now. He turned its wrist, forced the scythe aside, and drove one final knee into the belt holding his Rune Lens. The armor cracked around the aperture. Green energy poured out between them, carrying the same fear and fury he had felt in the yard.

He held on. The double tried to pull away, but he put his open hand against its chest and let the power return. He didn't reject the anger or pretend it belonged to somebody else. It was part of what he had endured. It could help him protect the life he had now without being allowed to destroy it.

Kamen Rider Faust: You're me. I know. But we made it out, and we're not staying trapped in there anymore. We do this because we CHOOSE TO! WE'RE A KAMEN RIDER DAMMIT!

The hand struggling against his wrist relaxed. Reaper's scythe broke into light, its mantle folding inward as the armor lost its separate shape. Blake felt the Rune Lens return to his Driver. The force of it nearly brought him to his knees, but he stayed standing while the rest of his power followed. He thought of his father at peace, his brother free, and Ashley waiting for him to come home. He had helped give them a future. He could finally allow himself to have one too.

Green fire spread beneath his armor. The damaged plates opened as black and crimson guards formed over his arms and legs, silver ribs curving across his chest. His helmet sharpened into a horned mask, its eyes burning emerald. A mantle of flame rose from his shoulders, green at its center and gold along the edges. Blake could feel its power without the frantic pull that had accompanied the double. His body and spirit remained firmly together, anchored by the lens and by his own will to stay.

Faust Driver: THIRD STAGE. BURNING REAPER.