[Searching Across Searched Area...]

I circled the cathedral, letting my search radius pulse outward. Surely I’d find at least a few spirits with a literal, murderous, corrupt church right beside me.

Shouldn’t take long for—

[Multiple Eligible Entities for Capture]

"What...?"

[Available Entities: 3,746]

"W-What...!? This many spirits!?"

I couldn’t even suppress the disbelieving laugh that escaped me. Even when I’d used it before, it had never shown me anything like this. But that raised a question.

What kind of spirits?

The dead kind? Or the natural kind?

Considering the church... I had a feeling the answer might be a mix of both.

The cathedral’s shadows seemed to pulse in response to the number hanging in my vision, a tally of potential that felt more like an accusation.

3,746.

That wasn’t a handful of restless ghosts or wandering natural spirits. That was an army. And it was sitting right beneath the church’s nose, or perhaps within Nyx’s cathedral herself...

I stopped circling and stood still in the center of the aisle, letting my magic settle into a low, steady thrum. The search spell continued its work, feeding me fragments of information with each pulse.

[Scanning...]

[Category: Restless Dead – 2,891]

[Category: Natural Spirits – 821]

[Category: Unclassified – 34]

Restless dead. Nearly three thousand of them.

The church hadn’t just been preparing for a ritual. They’d been creating the fuel for one. Bodies piled beneath the cathedral, maybe, or souls trapped in the foundations, their deaths written off as sacrifices to a god who wasn’t listening.

But it was too early to make theories; I needed to investigate.

"What have they been doing down there?"

The amulet against my chest burned hot, hungry, responding to the presence of so many potential acquisitions. The hydra’s minds stirred in the back of my skull, whispering possibilities, calculations, strategies for claiming as many as possible before the signal came. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

I needed to move.

[Darkfire Step]

The cathedral’s interior blurred, reformed. I stood at the edge of a staircase by the corner, narrow and steep, descending into darkness that smelled of old blood and older fear.

No guards. No barriers. No warnings.

The church had gotten complacent.

Or they simply didn’t think anyone would be foolish enough to walk into an abandoned cathedral alone.

The staircase opened into a chamber that made me stop breathing.

Bodies.

Not corpses, not exactly. They were preserved, embalmed, and laid out on stone slabs in rows that stretched beyond the torchlight’s reach. Men. Women. Children. Some wearing pilgrim’s garb, others in the simple clothes of the Holy City’s poor.

All of them had the same wound.

A single cut, precise and surgical, across the inside of their left wrist.

"These don’t look like the kind of sacrifices Nyx would want. I don’t think she even accepts human sacrifice..."

One thought began to take shape in my mind.

The church wasn’t just planning a massacre; they were planning to frame Nyx’s church too, planting bodies beneath her cathedral. If I had to guess, they meant to reveal everything here once the ritual was complete.

It was a way to avoid the backlash of the unbinding by blaming Nyx’s followers for corrupting it.

And if I had to guess, I had a feeling the other cathedrals of the Holy Pantheon Church had bodies planted in them too.

The weight of the chamber pressed against me, thick and suffocating. Three thousand bodies. Maybe more. All of them drained, preserved, arranged like offerings on an altar that stretched for what felt like miles.

I walked between the rows, my footsteps echoing off the stone floor. The torchlight flickered, casting dancing shadows across the faces of the dead. Some looked peaceful. Some looked terrified. Some looked like they’d simply closed their eyes and never opened them again.

[Dark Manipulation]

My shadows slipped across the floor, weaving between the stone slabs, searching for anything I might have missed. Traps. Wards. Magical signatures that shouldn’t be there.

Nothing.

The church had been thorough. No evidence of their involvement beyond the bodies themselves. No lingering spells that could be traced back to their priests. Just the dead, lying in neat rows, waiting to be discovered by someone who would draw the wrong conclusion.

"They really thought of everything, didn’t they?"

The shadows at my feet rippled, tasting the stone, the air, the lingering residue of whatever magic had put these people in their eternal sleep. Three thousand bodies. Three thousand potential catalysts for a war between gods.

The church wasn’t just cleansing the continent. They were ensuring that when the dust settled, they’d have someone else to blame.

Clever.

Despicable, but clever.

[Command Hydra]

One of the hydra’s minds detached from the collective, sinking into the shadows beneath the nearest slab. It would map the chamber, count the bodies, and search for anything the church might have left behind.

The rest of us had work to do.

And by that, I mean use the restless dead for my own power.

The church was cruel, yes, but I was definitely no better than them. And besides, I’m sure Evelina would also approve of this decision.

As long as the rest don’t know about this, we’ll be fine.

[Capture]

I cast the spell, and it didn’t even show a progress bar. The system panel appeared immediately, asking whether I wanted to kill it or form a contract with it.

Obviously, I planned to form a contract with each one, using the great contract the succubus had given me. They were already dead anyway, and I was sure they’d appreciate me using their souls to take revenge.

Willing or not.

"Can’t expect an assassin to always be moral, huh?" I snickered.

[Contract Established: 1/3,746]

The system panel blinked once, then again, the number ticking upward with each passing second. The hydra’s minds worked in parallel, processing contracts in batches, their calculations burning through the restless dead like fire through dry grass.

[Contract Established: 47/3,746]

[Contract Established: 203/3,746]

[Contract Established: 891/3,746]

The shadows beneath the stone slabs writhed, tendrils of darkness curling around the preserved bodies like funeral shrouds come to life. Each contract sent a pulse of energy through the amulet against my chest, warmth spreading across my skin that had nothing to do with temperature.

The dead were waking.

Not physically. Their bodies remained still, preserved, lifeless. But their souls, what was left of them, stirred in response to the contract’s call. Fragments of memory bled through the connection, too fast and too fragmented to fully process.

A woman, young, singing to her child before the church came. A man, old, his hands callused from years of labor, reaching for a weapon he didn’t have. A child, no more than seven, asking why the priests looked so angry.

I pushed the memories aside, focusing on the contracts.

[Contract Established: 1,502/3,746]

The chamber seemed larger now, the torchlight brighter, the weight of the dead pressing against my consciousness like a physical force. Three thousand souls, all of them wronged by the same church, all of them hungry for something I could give them.

Revenge.

"Careful, Arden."

Nyx’s voice echoed through the chamber, soft and amused. She didn’t appear, but I could feel her presence in the shadows, watching, evaluating.

"You could have told me you were going to get framed."

"I was busy... besides, I knew you’d find this place eventually."

"Quite carefree for a goddess."

"Still don’t want to be my champion, child?"

"Nope."