The Sinner Hunting System

Four projection layers in total.

Raphael turned it over in his mind, but the logic kept slipping, something was missing, some piece he hadn’t accounted for.

He thought about the stairwell, which he’d moved through without stopping. The same strange empty base at its center.

He went back and swept the lantern across it.

A massive grey-white statue appeared in the light. A vampire, carved with considerable care and in considerable detail, the face unmistakably Count Jestan’s.

"Vain bastard."

A sound from below. He angled the lantern down.

The Marquess’s wife was on the stairwell landing, wearing a silk nightgown that covered very little, one hand holding a wine glass.

She and the count were talking with the ease of people who had been doing something else together recently.

The count’s clothes were still visibly disarranged, which he was addressing without particular urgency.

"You’re not bad, you know. Better than the Marquess." She swirled her glass and looked at him sideways. "Maybe I married the wrong one."

The count smiled and didn’t answer. His expression said clearly that this had been a single night’s arrangement and nothing more.

The lady clicked her tongue softly.

"Those bounty hunters you mentioned, I’ve been hearing they’re causing trouble. You haven’t paid them yet, have you?"

The count looked entirely unmoved.

"They’re humans. Working for me is the greatest honor they’ll ever have. Why would I pay them?"

The Marquess’s wife reached up and adjusted a strap that had slipped off her shoulder. Her eyes moved over him with a faintly amused expression.

"You’re not worried they’ll get desperate enough to take the risk and go to the Tribunal with what they know?"

The count laughed and shook his head.

"They have no evidence. The Church has very few people who could actually fight me right now, and the Grand Inquisitor has a thousand other things demanding her attention.

Without concrete evidence she isn’t going to make a personal trip out here."

The Marquess’s wife smiled at him with something behind it.

"That’s reassuring. I only ask because I’ve been hearing that there’s something significant happening on the Church’s side. Though I suppose if it’s not pointed at you, it doesn’t matter."

The count’s expression shifted slightly.

"What do you mean by that?"

The projection ended.

Raphael stood there frowning for a moment, then lowered his head and thought.

The text carved into the dining hall threshold was never just a meal schedule.

He closed his eyes and pressed one hand flat against the blank wall, letting the Profiler ability spread the threads of evidence outward across the stone, arranging them, moving them against each other until they began pulling into coherent shape.

The ground floor projection, time uncertain, but clearly preceding the battlefield sequence. A transaction first, then fighting immediately after.

The ground floor scene had candles burning, meaning it was dark outside. The battlefield had blue sky and pale morning light, early enough that the sun hadn’t gone yellow yet.

Two scenes in close succession. Of the number sequence, only 6 and 7 stood as consecutive hours fitting that pattern.

"But where’s the meal? One scene is a father selling his child, the other is a battle. When does anyone eat..."

Something felt wrong. The logic snarled. He stopped and untangled it.

Don’t define feeding by human terms.

Every act of drinking blood was a meal, for a vampire.

He thought back through both scenes carefully, the boy drained at the end of the ground floor sequence, the vampire guards during the battle restoring themselves mid-fight. Both qualified.

Which meant the Saturday double-meal entry referred to those two scenes, connected as closely in time as they were.

Saturday confirmed: 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock.

He could feel himself touching something. He followed the thread.

The third floor projection, the old Marquess, confused and slow, asking what day it was. Tuesday, the count had told him.

And the Marquess had said he’d make the skull cup that night, and had immediately begun moving to do so.

But Saturday is already confirmed as the double-meal day. Tuesday should only be a single meal.

He held very still and thought about the details.

The Marquess moved slowly. His hands weren’t sharp anymore, he’d said so himself.

Making something from a skull wasn’t quick work, it could easily run an hour or two over.

And the ballroom had been deep in the night, the darkness outside complete, which meant the evening was well advanced.

If the hour was close to midnight, crossing into the next calendar day before the second meal was entirely possible.

And in the scene, the count had taken a drink himself, his own meal, in the moment. That was Tuesday night.

The Marquess’s meal, still unfinished, would have happened in the early hours of the following morning.

The only numbers that fit: 11 for Tuesday, 1 for Wednesday.

Tuesday confirmed: 11 o’clock.

Wednesday confirmed: 1 o’clock.

Raphael exhaled slowly. The muscles around his eyes were beginning to ache.

He had spent most of his career gathering intelligence for tactical advantage, and the thinking had always ended in a fight.

This was different, his physical abilities had been suppressed since the moment he stepped through the dining hall threshold, and the castle wasn’t letting him bypass the puzzle with a window and a running start.

He had to work through it the way whoever built this had intended, step by careful step.

Halfway through. Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday still unaccounted for, one of those days without a meal.

He pressed further.

The third floor projection was the hub connecting multiple scenes. Whatever day it fell on would anchor everything downstream.

In that scene, the count had invited the Marquess’s wife for afternoon tea in three days.

And he’d mentioned paying the bounty hunters this Friday, phrasing that implied the payment was some days away.

If the scene were Thursday, he would have said tomorrow. He wouldn’t have said this Friday to mean a day that was already past.

So the third floor projection wasn’t Thursday. And it couldn’t be Friday, that would make this Friday either today or already gone.

Sunday, counting forward three days, landed on Wednesday. But Wednesday was already confirmed.

Which left Monday.

The scene was deep night, windows showing absolute dark. Of the remaining numbers, only 5 fit that hour.

Monday confirmed: 5 o’clock.

He let out a longer breath. The tangle of lines across the wall slowly straightened.

With Monday fixed, the rest followed naturally, multiple threads from the third floor ran through scenes that referenced other times.

Three days forward from Monday landed on Thursday.

Afternoon tea for nobility, in that era: three o’clock or four. Only the number 15 matched.

Thursday confirmed: 15 o’clock.

That left the Marquess’s wife projection and the bounty hunter question. The count had mentioned the Friday payment twice, once in the third floor scene, once in the stairwell scene.

In the stairwell, the Marquess’s wife had asked: you haven’t paid them today, have you?

Today. Which meant the stairwell projection was Friday. The one remaining number was 17.

Friday confirmed: 17 o’clock.

Sunday: no meal.

Raphael opened his eyes. The dense web of reasoning across the wall contracted and settled into a clean sequence.

"Profiler is finally pulling its weight."

He looked at the answer for Sunday and felt something shift slightly in his expression.

"Pity Evelyn isn’t here. She was always faster at this than me."

He stood with it for a moment.

And then, almost despite himself, the dark comedy of it arrived.

The full sequence, read as a story:

Monday night the count hosts his gathering, vampires collecting in the dining hall.

The party runs through to Tuesday deep in the night, the third floor scene.

Old Marquess, slow hands, making plans that will take until early Wednesday morning to complete.

Then Thursday’s unshown afternoon tea.

Then the count and the Marquess’s wife, their single evening together, running into Friday.

They part ways. Friday the count still hasn’t paid his bounty hunters.

Saturday morning: the Tribunal arrives.

And Sunday?

Sunday, Count Jestan doesn’t eat.

Because on Saturday, Clementine left him in approximately half his original number of pieces, and his dining schedule was no longer a concern he’d be managing personally.