Page 169 of Dark Night of the Soul

“But it won’t finish him,” Ludwig continued. “Not unless you destroy what can’t be rebuilt.”

Everything in me stilled. “Like what?”

Ludwig’s gaze stayed on Kincade as he spoke, and when he did, his voice sounded like a man reciting doctrine he hated.

“Burn him until there’s nothing left,” he said. “Take the head. Destroy the brainstem. Ruin the heart and the mind together.”

My stomach turned.

“And the other ways?” I asked quietly, because I could feel there was more. There was always more.

Ludwig exhaled through his nose. “The ways that stick aren’t human.”

I held his gaze now. “Tell me.”

His eyes sharpened. Approval flickering there, brief as a blade flash. Like he respected that I’d asked straight, without flinching.

“Consecrated metal,” he said. “Relic-bound weapons. Rites that poison the healing.”

My skin prickled. My mind immediately leapt to the Brotherhood, to their obsession with holy violence and ancient artifacts and systems that outlived empires.

“And,” Ludwig added, quieter, “names.”

The word hit like a bell inside my chest.

I didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

“What about names?” I asked.

Ludwig’s gaze flicked to me, and for the first time he looked like he wanted to choose his words with surgical precision.

“His immortality has an address,” he said. “A tether. A point the world can grab.”

My throat went dry again. “His true name.”

Ludwig didn’t confirm it out loud. He didn’t need to.

“If someone has it,” he said, “and they know what to do with it… bullets become the least of your problems.”

My pulse thudded in my ears.

“So he can survive this,” I whispered. “He can survive getting shot through the gut.”

“Yes,” Ludwig said.

Relief struck so fast it almost made me dizzy. But the terror didn’t leave. It changed shape.

“Anna,” Ludwig said, and my gaze snapped back to him.

His expression had gone sober again—no flirt, no humor. Just truth.

“The threat isn’t that he can’t die,” he said. “The threat is what happens while he’s down.”

I felt my stomach drop. Containment. Capture. Ritual. Everything the Brotherhood loved.

I looked back at Kincade. At the stillness of him. At the way his chest rose with shallow, stubborn breaths. And the bell in my chest didn’t stop ringing.

Because I wasn’t hearing Ludwig anymore.