After reaching Dhahaeth, Gabriel noted the town’s decay and the common folk’s fear, with talismans against vampires on every door. He stabled his stolen mare Jez, brusquely instructing the groom and revealing his sevenstar tattoo, then entered a crowded tavern named the Perfect Husband. Despite the grim humor of its sign, the place felt warm and lived-in, with décor from urban burlesque halls and a portrait of a green-eyed woman above the bar.

Soaked, starving, and in pain, Gabriel claimed a table by the fire from three young militia men simply by glaring them into leaving. A tavern maid with a Sūdhaemi accent approached; she explained the portrait was of her mother, the tavern’s matron. Irritable, Gabriel ordered food, a room, and strong drink, sneering at the lack of whiskey and settling for vodka.

Amid wary patrons, including refugees from the Ossway, Gabriel prepared his pipe and lit sanctus using a candle. He described the precise technique and the euphoric, near-sacred bliss it brought, defending sanctus as the Silver Order’s means to sate their inherited thirst without surrendering to it. In dialogue with Jean-François in the present frame, he acknowledged the Order’s dependence on blood-based sacrament while rejecting the vampire’s charge of hypocrisy, framing it as necessity.

As the sanctus heightened his senses and mind, memories and guilt crashed in: Justice’s death, the inquisitors he had sacrificed and shot, and the threat pursuing him. Seeking numbness, he drank deeply from the vodka until the liquor blunted the bloodhymn’s edge.

In that haze, someone spoke his name: a woman’s voice from his past recalling his glory as the Black Lion, when he was feared by vampires and celebrated by commoners, even knighted by the Empress. Convinced it was a dream, Gabriel opened his eyes to see a small, sodden, green-eyed woman. When she hugged him and he recognized her scent of leather, parchment, horse, and old blood, he realized she was truly there. He named her: Chloe.