Gun In Another World

The sewers beneath Redveil were older than the Church, older than the city's founding, older even than the Empire itself, a web of tunnels, collapsed crypts, and half-buried war chambers that no one dared map because anyone who tried either vanished or went mad from what they found, and yet—here was Kaito, walking through the filth and forgotten with a lamp in one hand and a sealed bullet in the other, like it was just another back alley job, another dirty errand on a clean strategy board, except this time, the job wasn't about killing someone.

It was about lighting a match where no one had dared strike one in a hundred years.

Lilyeth followed a few paces behind, boots soaked to the ankle in gods-knew-what, clutching a charm capsule that pulsed every few seconds, reacting to something underfoot, she didn't complain—because after everything they'd seen in the past week, she knew better, and besides, she could feel it too, the way the tunnel's air thickened the deeper they went, not with rot or magic, but with resistance, like the stone itself remembered how many secrets had been buried inside it.

"You sure the signal came from this deep?" she asked, glancing at the charm again.

Kaito nodded without turning.

"Three seconds after Grelvos fell at the sermon, someone lit a signal rune underground," he said, his voice steady despite the echoes bouncing off the slime-coated walls, "Didn't go through Church channels. Didn't ping any guild networks. Just flared once—like a dying flare asking for fire."

"And you think it's… what? Another Vault cell?"

"No," he said, stopping at a rusted grate covered in old rebel markings, "I think it's someone who wants to build one."

He placed the bullet against the grate.

The rune inside the round flickered.

Then blinked.

A match.

Kaito smiled slightly.

"They're close."

He twisted the bullet in his fingers, cracked the seal, and dropped it through the grate.

It landed with a soft metallic chime.

Nothing happened for three breaths.

Then the wall behind them moved.

Not slid—not collapsed—moved, like it was never stone at all but fabric pretending to be solid, the surface unraveled into paper, the ink dripping upward into nothing, revealing a doorway that hadn't been opened in centuries.

Beyond it?

Voices.

Dozens of them.

But quiet.

Measured.

Not afraid—but waiting.

Kaito stepped through.

What he saw stopped even him for a moment.

It was a network.

Not military.

Not magical.

A literal network—strings tied between broken statues, relic shards arranged in coded clusters, charm notes pinned to old banners, it was like someone had rebuilt a communication grid out of garbage, secrets, and forgotten prayers.

And at the center of it all stood a girl no older than sixteen.

Wearing a cracked Church initiate robe.

With a burned-out relic around her neck.

And eyes that had seen too much.

"You're late," she said.

Kaito raised an eyebrow.

"I wasn't invited."

She snorted.

"You weren't supposed to be."

Behind her, others stood—some kids, some old rebels in ragged coats, a few former clerics who'd cut their holy seals off their chests, one even wore a broken chain from the penitents' collar like a trophy, all of them staring at Kaito not with fear—but recognition.

"You're the myth," one of them said.

"No," the girl corrected, "He's the spark."

Lilyeth stepped beside Kaito, voice low.

"They built this entire cell based on rumors."

"Not rumors," the girl said, walking forward, "Confessions. Every Echo Hollow that dropped? Every priest that cracked? We memorized it. Shared it. Wove it into message chains. The Vault didn't find us. We found each other."

Kaito looked around.

The entire chamber was alive.

Not with magic.

But with resistance.

Not a rebellion.

Not yet.

But something far more dangerous.

Preparation.

The girl held up a satchel.

Inside it—Vault relics.

Not stolen.

Copied.

Replicated.

Hand-forged by amateur rebels trying to imitate his designs.

Most wouldn't work.

Some would misfire.

But that wasn't the point.

Kaito stared at the girl.

"What's your name?"

She straightened her shoulders.

"Mirren."

"You want to join the Vault?"

She shook her head.

"We want to be the Vault."

He held her gaze for a long, heavy moment.

Then handed her a fresh bullet.

Echo Hollow, freshly marked.

"This one's clean. Engraved with a name that hasn't been spoken in forty years. Use it well."

She took it without blinking.

Lilyeth leaned in.

"Are we arming children now?"

"No," Kaito said, his voice low, serious, "We're igniting arsonists who already started collecting matches."

The Vault wasn't just growing anymore.

It was multiplying.

And somewhere deep beneath Redveil, a spark had finally found its kindling.

The new cell didn't have weapons, not really, no blades, no spells, no trained killers—what they had were questions, too many questions, wrapped in broken prayers and sharpened with years of silence, what kind of saint condemns a healer for curing outside the church walls, why does a priest's blessing cost more than a doctor's potion, why are relics only found in noble hands while starving mothers are told to pray harder, these weren't soldiers—they were witnesses, and Kaito knew that in the right hands, testimony was heavier than gunfire.

He moved between the makeshift shrines, studying their setups, small paper traps rigged to pulse when stepped on, carved charm circuits that mimicked true Vault relics but flickered at the edges, a girl no older than ten had built an ammo capsule that triggered a memory loop when dropped in water, it had no accuracy, but the idea was sound, raw, flawed—but promising, Lilyeth examined a prayer disk encoded with half-legible hex scripture and whispered curses under her breath, but even she didn't dismiss it, because every single attempt meant one thing—someone was listening.

"They're not ready to fight," she said, placing the disk down, "But they're ready to learn."

Kaito nodded, eyes scanning the strange board pinned to the central wall, a war map drawn in chalk, not of city streets—but of rumor routes, arrows tracking which echo confessions spread fastest, which taverns repeated which stories, how many days it took for a corrupted priest's name to shift from disbelief to certainty, they weren't fighting with blades, they were fighting with information, and somehow they'd built the beginnings of a communication web that even the Church hadn't sniffed out yet.

"This network," he said slowly, "it's faster than our current relay."

Mirren stepped forward.

"We use coins."

Lilyeth blinked.

"Coins?"

"Old copper temple coins," the girl said, walking to a crate filled with them, each etched with a unique scratch mark or glyph, "Each one's a code packet. We trade them in markets, prayer houses, even drop them into wells—each mark links to a sentence, a location, a time. If someone finds one and knows the key, they know where to be and what to listen for."

Kaito picked one up.

It was light.

Faintly bent.

Barely worth a single meal.

And yet it held an entire memory sequence coded in scratchwork.

He turned to Lilyeth.

"This is faster than burner charms. It doesn't glow. Doesn't ping wards."

"Old tech hiding under new assumptions," she muttered, "That's dangerous."

"That's useful," Kaito corrected.

Rook arrived fifteen minutes later, face tight, carrying a message strip smuggled from the surface by courier.

"A temple's burning," he said, handing over the paper, "Upper Ring. Highglass Parish. Started with a vision burst. One of your Echo Hollows."

Kaito read the note.

The priest hadn't just confessed.

He'd converted, halfway through his own sermon, he'd thrown down his vestments, claimed the Church was lying about relic purity, and offered his entire relic archive to the public.

Within the hour, a crowd burned the temple down—not in hate, but in celebration.

It was already being called a "Reckoning Revival."

Kaito handed the strip to Mirren.

"You started this," he said.

She didn't flinch.

"Then let me finish it."

He motioned for Lilyeth and Rook to follow as he stepped back into the corridor.

They walked in silence until the shadows were thick again.

"She's dangerous," Lilyeth said quietly.

"She's necessary," Kaito replied, "We built the Vault for survival. She's building it for something bigger."

Rook tossed a coin into the sewer stream.

"Think she can hold that fire?"

Kaito didn't answer.

Not yet.

Instead, he opened his coat and slid a new bullet into his launcher—a variant of Echo Hollow, this one layered with an encoded truth spell and laced with bleed-ink from the old record sanctum.

"She doesn't have to hold it," he said at last.

"She just has to spread it."

And behind them, in that forgotten sanctum, Mirren stood before the chalkboard map and rewrote three arrows, marked two new coin paths, and began forging her own bullet round from scrap metal and memory ink.

The Vault wasn't growing anymore.

It was evolving.

By the time they returned to the surface, Redveil wasn't just uneasy—it was boiling, whispers had turned into stories, stories into confessions, confessions into beliefs, and those beliefs were no longer tied to sermons or holy symbols, but to unexplainable events, shifting records, and bullets that made the corrupt weep blood in public squares, the Church responded like it always did—with force, with fire, with more bounty squads patrolling corners, but it was too late to crush what they couldn't define, how do you arrest a movement that doesn't wear a face?

Kaito didn't bother hiding that night.

He walked through the North Market, coat unbuttoned, gun hidden only by disinterest, no bounty hunter moved, no priest dared call for arrest—not because they didn't recognize him, but because they did, and none of them wanted to be the next one to confess in front of a crowd with recording charms in hand, reputation had become his armor, and every step he took was another prayer misdirected.

Rook met him outside the rusted fountain near the market's ruined bell tower, arms crossed, chewing something that looked like street jerky and smelled like betrayal.

"Word's spreading faster than planned," he said without greeting, "Three new Vault copycat cells popped up just this morning, one of them even staged their own fake Echo Hollow confession—used a drunk priest and some kind of alchemy powder, sold tickets to the show."

Kaito raised a brow.

"They're faking miracles now?"

"Yeah," Rook said, "and people believe them."

Lilyeth arrived seconds later, her cloak damp from the back alleys.

"The rebellion network's getting nervous," she added, "They're hearing the rumors too—Vault saints, Gun-Born Prophets, something about the bullets being holy relics of the Old Flame."

Kaito didn't speak for a long time.

Not until a pair of street urchins ran past them giggling, tossing a copper coin back and forth—scratched with a glyph Kaito recognized from Mirren's new network.

She'd sent word already.

The underground cell was operational.

Fully.

And the moment they'd waited for was already rising from beneath their feet.

"Let it spread," Kaito said finally, pulling out a charm capsule and examining its surface, the one he'd marked for this exact escalation, "Let them fake it. Let them steal it. Let them believe it."

Lilyeth frowned.

"You're not worried this'll spiral out of control?"

"This isn't control," he replied, "This is ignition. We're not fighting a war with guns and blades anymore—we're fighting it with narrative. Whoever owns the story, owns the city."

Rook spit out the jerky and nodded toward the bell tower.

"Then you better get ready. Church just posted a new bounty sheet on the wall."

They crossed the square slowly, watching the small crowd gather.

The paper was red.

Not wax.

Not thread-sealed.

Just plain red ink.

At the top, the new title read:

"The Vault Saint – Kill on Sight."

No face.

No proof.

Just a name born from fire and echo.

Someone in the crowd whispered:

"I heard he speaks bullets into being."

Another voice:

"They say he forgives you by making you confess in blood."

A third:

"My cousin saw him—he didn't even aim. Just looked, and the priest fell."

None of it was true.

Not completely.

But none of it was false either.

Kaito turned away, not angry, not proud—just focused.

"Time to change tactics."

Lilyeth crossed her arms.

"More infiltration?"

"No," he said, pulling a new bullet from his inner pocket.

It glowed faintly with a symbol no one had seen before—one not tied to memory or shame or revelation.

This one was crafted from two things:

Hope and rage.

"It's time we gave the people a saint they could shoot back with."

That night, across the city, Vault coins whispered new routes.

Mirren's cell marked their first target—a relic facility smuggling Echo-similar enchantments for the Church's private army.

And Kaito?

He didn't plan to destroy it.

He planned to liberate it, with one round, one truth, and a lie so beautiful it would rewrite the city's entire faith structure before the priests even realized what they'd lost.