Chapter 4: Find the Presidential Seal

No! I’d screwed up again.

I stepped back, watching Gavin warily, weighing my options. But I noticed something different—he still looked fierce, but there was no demonic twist to him. There was even a shred of honor left.

A wild idea came to me: “Today I’ll ride a thousand miles, assassinate Carter, and bring back the President.”

Gavin laughed, then patted the Mustang’s saddle and shoved the reins into my hands. “You guessed right. I’m just a burnt-out shell, but sometimes I can scrape up some honor. So what if I burn again?”

It hit me: the lamp oil burned away everything good in people—kindness, honor, courage, wisdom, faith. Gavin’s honor was so deep he could be used as lamp oil again and again. But how could they keep it up for forty-nine days?

At my feet, I saw a dozen feathered pens scattered by the Seven-Star Lamp. The oil had long run dry—Calvin had thrown himself in the fire over and over, using his own rationality to buy more time.

I started to speak, but Gavin waved me off. “I don’t care who you really are—don’t let it slip, or I’ll lose control too. Now get going.”

I nodded, bowed to Gavin and the strategist’s tent, and mounted the Mustang. Sweeping aside a few possessed fighters, I rode out of the camp. Behind me, Gavin howled at the sky and stepped into the red flames. “Find the Presidential Seal! It’ll keep the Seven-Star Lamp burning forever!”

His shout echoed in my ears. Possessed men chased after me, but a pure candlelight locked them inside the camp.

The Red Mustang surged beneath me, hooves pounding broken asphalt and prairie grass, the last bit of freedom in this land. I glimpsed a weathered sign—“Now Leaving Cedar Ridge”—no one left to welcome anyone home. Gavin’s cry haunted me, the battered heartland echoing with his words: Find the Presidential Seal. Save us all.

The land had sunk—America, a thousand miles of scorched earth. Only when I left the camp did I realize—it wasn’t just Lawson’s army that had gone mad. Townsfolk fought and killed, stacking corpses in mounds. Parents swapped children to eat, boiling them into soup for strangers. Scholars skinned people for parchment, killing a thousand for a single page…

At first, I tried to play hero, but it was pointless—sanity was rare now. If this kept up, there’d be nothing left to save. I closed my eyes and rode, day and night.

[Rule Three: The President’s side is absolutely safe. He is the only hope.]

To find the President, I headed for Washington. But it was a ghost city now—heads made into lanterns hung everywhere. I killed a few of Carter’s men chasing townsfolk, and an old man I saved told me Carter had built the Bronze Eagle Tower in New York and taken the President there.

“Washington’s lost, the country’s lost, the world’s lost…” he muttered, then burst into tears. “Great Teacher! This world can’t be saved!”

Blood streamed from his eyes, his skin split, tentacles writhing out. He became a demon.

“Derek, look up.” The old man grinned. I was forced to look up—a child’s head hung from a beam. “That’s my grandson… Derek, why not join him?”

[Rule Two: When someone becomes possessed, do not refuse any of their requests.]

I gritted my teeth, veins bulging, but couldn’t stop my hands—knife at my own throat. The rules flashed through my mind—none helped now. Suddenly, a yellow notecard in the old man’s arms glowed, burning without flame. The old man screamed and turned to ash. I got control back, staring at the ashes, remembering what he’d said: Great Teacher… Pastor Jacob of the Yellow Scarves? No time to think. I rode for New York.

The trip north was a fever dream—burned-out Waffle Houses, strip malls in ruins, diners with blood on the counters and “God Bless America” signs full of bullet holes. I stopped only to scavenge gas, chewing jerky and cold beans on the interstate. Sometimes I saw eyes in the dark—sometimes human, sometimes not. All the while, the Mustang kept going, breath rising like smoke in the frost of a dying world.