Episode 114: Deterioration
Written By Karl White
We often mistake immortality for invincibility, imagining a life without end to be a life beyond decay. Yet eternity offers no such bargain. While the body may endure unchanged, it remains vulnerable to wounds inflicted by time. In the end, there are fates from which even an Eternal can’t escape. Perhaps the cruelest consequence of living forever is discovering while the body refuses to fail, the mind remains heartbreakingly human.
Despite his Eternal nature, Broderick Zayne's mind was in a slow decline. The disease stole names, memories, and eventually entire stretches of time. Gérard Roux refused to abandon his oldest friend, but even he recognized the truth. Zayne was slipping further from the world around him, and after centuries spent opposing the Dark, he reluctantly stepped away from the fight. Devoting his remaining clarity to expanding the Church of the Seven Angels. Together, he and Roux trained a new generation in the Disciplina Arcani, believing if Zayne could no longer stand on the front lines of the coming war, he could at least prepare those who would.
Before the fall - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Then, through the most unlikely of circumstances, hope returned. The Church established its headquarters on a quiet tract of land in Nebraska, where a small village was built as a sanctuary and training ground. During the construction of a modest chapel in 1963, Zayne lost his footing atop a ladder. The fall would have killed any ordinary man. Bones shattered. His skull struck the earth with tremendous force. Yet as his supernatural physiology repaired his body, something unexpected happened. The fog associated with his dementia lifted. A result of his brain restoring itself.
For the first time in years, Zayne spoke with the same coherence and conviction Roux remembered from their first meeting in 1894. Neither could explain it, but both quietly allowed themselves to believe it was a miracle.
With renewed purpose, Zayne returned to his life's work. Among the Church's most closely guarded relics was a surviving copy of the Book of Amar, wrested from Orem Black and Joseph Frost during the battle at the Grand Hotel Kronenhof in 1932. Before illness overtook him, Zayne was convinced the Seventh Procession held the key to preventing mankind's collapse. His restored mind allowed him to resume his impossible pursuit. But the reprieve proved fleeting.
Unwilling to surrender to the disease, his memory returned to the accident. The fall forced his Eternal body to rebuild what was damaged, even repairing portions of his brain. If injury restored him once, perhaps it could again. His first attempt was cautious. The second, deliberate. By the third, Zayne’s only question was how hard he needed to hurt himself...and each time, the miracle returned.
The third attempt - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
For awhile, he was himself again. Thoughts sharp, memories aligned, he returned to his work convinced he was racing against time itself. Yet every restoration carried a price. The clarity never lasted as long as the one before. The disease always returned, reclaiming more than it had before.
Determined to outrun his failing mind, Zayne devoted every lucid moment to deciphering the Seventh Procession. To him it could be a dagger in the heart of the Dark’s masterplan. He’d fill journals, map out what he could, laboring to keep pieces organized. But the intervals between sharp moments grew increasingly perilous, as the greater the injury he inflicted upon himself, the more violently his mind struggled to rebuild. And the result was deterioration.
At first, the changes were subtle. Hearing footsteps echoing through empty halls. Answering voices that weren’t there. The hallucinations were hard to separate from reality. Entire days vanished from his memory, only to return in contradicting fragments. More troubling still, Zayne found himself losing the ability to distinguish between events that really happened and those existing only within the crumbling architecture of his own head.
The Dark, ever patient, recognized an opportunity. If Broderick Zayne had begun questioning his own senses, it no longer mattered whether the next voice he heard belonged to memory, madness...or something else entirely.
Like many times through history, malevolence enters frame when an opening presents itself. Appearing as the Mother Spirit to the Wolf Tribe. Or as a guided voice as Orem Black hunting his destiny. And as Zayne knelt in prayer during one of his increasingly fragile moments, a radiant figure appeared before him. Bathed in warm light, wearing the face of his mother, it spoke with quiet tenderness, appealing to the deepest longing he still carried.
An “Angel” appears to Zayne - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
ANGEL: You’re seeking an answer to the end.
ZAYNE: And I’ve nearly found it...Your face? I know it.
ANGEL: I’m what you hold dear. A messenger from the Almighty, come to bathe in your knowledge. Tell me what you know of the Redeemer, the Nexus of Life who will stand among the combatants...Where all roads lead.
ZAYNE: If Fate aligns, they’ll be what stops the Absolution.
ANGEL: You know a name, don’t you?
ZAYNE: I’ve yet to piece it all together, but I’m close.
ANGEL: Tell me. For it is the will of God. He’s watching you.
Even his splintered mind could tell something wasn’t right...
ZAYNE: Long ago. Death told me there were no angels...and God had abandoned us. And if those things are both true, then who are you?
Before the figure answered, it vanished. For one precious moment, Zayne’s memory held. But he feared what he would’ve divulged if it hadn’t. The man who dedicated his life to exposing what was hiding beyond the light, could no longer trust the evidence of his own senses. He had to come clean, confessing all to Gérard Roux.
The truth devastated him. For years, his closest companion had secretly been injuring his own mind in desperate attempts to reclaim it. Every injury restored Zayne for a time, only to leave more decay than before, opening the door to demonic influences. Roux pleaded with him to stop, but Zayne refused. To abandon the work, was to abandon mankind itself.
Roux walks away - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
For Roux, the choice became impossible. He’d spent so long looking out for Zayne only to find he couldn’t protect him from himself. With great sorrow, the ancient Crusader gathered his belongings and walked away, ending a partnership that endured for generations. But it had to be done.
The Church never recovered. Most departed with Roux as he returned to the Vatican. A dedicated few stayed, convinced Zayne stood on the verge of uncovering something profound. But as his condition worsened, paranoia replaced certainty. He’d lash out at those around him, mistaking them for demons. And so, he was left all alone, living on the ranch in the isolated Nebraska Plains, the homestead failing around him. Only the work remained.
On a sweltering summer night in 1984, after exhaustively tracing genealogies and birth records, Zayne finally uncovered the true lineage of the child through whom the final answers would one day emerge. With the last reserves of his failing mind, he committed his discovery to a single letter. Mailing the post to a name he’d encountered long ago, fighting the same war. Entrusting the secret knowledge to someone he believed capable of protecting it.
Zayne understood one terrible truth...The Dark could never be allowed to learn what he’d found. But with his own mind compromised, he didn’t trust what he’d reveal if someone else appeared to him.
That evening, he prepared a simple cup of tea on the stove, allowing himself to think only of his mother as he quietly drifted to sleep.
Shortly after midnight, gas leaking from the unattended stove ignited. An explosion destroyed the house. Fire raced through the abandoned village, consuming everything, including the little church Zayne built with his own hands.
Vanishing in the flames - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
The Eternal one made no attempt to flee. Instead, remaining inside with the Book of Amar, allowing both himself and the cursed tome to vanish together beneath the flames.
Weeks later, a weathered envelope crossed the Himalayas before arriving at a secluded monastery in Tibet. Without a word Heng Shao accepted the correspondence, carrying it through silent corridors to a windowless chamber, where he placed it into the waiting hands of Renmaru Okayama.
TO BE CONTINUED…