"J-Jayden...?"

The Grand Cleric’s voice cracked as golden tears slipped down her blood-streaked cheeks. Her broken body lay sprawled across the cathedral roof, one hand reaching weakly toward the figure standing over her.

"I thought you had died... the council told me..."

"They lied, Grand Cleric."

Jayden’s voice was flat, emptied of anything that might have resembled pity. He looked down at the woman who had once been his superior, his mentor, perhaps even something close to a mother, and felt nothing.

"You told them to lie."

"W-What? I-I didn’t..."

Her voice faltered again, and her golden eyes widened with something that looked disturbingly like genuine confusion.

Evelina narrowed her eyes and reached out with her mind, brushing the surface of the Grand Cleric’s thoughts and sifting through layers of pain and fading divine light.

There was nothing.

No deception. No buried malice. No hidden knowledge of what the council had truly intended.

And the deeper Evelina searched, the clearer it became that the emptiness she found was real. The Grand Cleric hadn’t known. She had been used just as thoroughly as the pilgrims who had filled the cathedral pews.

"Lies!"

Jayden’s roar tore through the grey air as his sword rose and came down in the same motion, the blade already descending toward the Grand Cleric’s chest, his face twisted with the fury of someone who had been waiting for this moment for far too long.

CLANG!

My hand closed around the blade.

Steel bit into flesh, and blood welled between my fingers before dripping onto the Grand Cleric’s white robe in thin red lines.

Jayden froze. His sword hung suspended just inches from its target as he stared first at my bleeding hand, then at my face.

"I don’t know what’s going on," I said, keeping my voice calm despite the blood running down my wrist. "But judging by Evelina’s expression, there’s more happening here than we thought."

"Unhand my sword, Cael."

Jayden’s voice had gone quiet. Not calm, quiet in the way that made it dangerous.

"Not yet."

My blood continued to drip, some of it running onto the Grand Cleric’s cheek. She flinched at the warmth, her golden eyes darting between the two men standing over her, then toward Evelina, who remained a few paces away with her arms crossed and her expression unreadable.

"You don’t understand," Jayden said, and now his voice was beginning to crack. "She has to die. She has to—"

"She isn’t resisting," Evelina cut in. "Look at her."

Jayden did.

The Grand Cleric lay broken on the stone, her halo gone, her wings reduced to tatters, her white robe soaked through with gold and red. She wasn’t casting spells. She wasn’t reaching for magic. She wasn’t even trying to drag herself away.

She was crying.

Quietly, helplessly, tears slipping down her bloodied face, her lips moving around words that might have been prayers or might have been pleas. Her gaze stayed fixed on Jayden, on the sword still hanging above her, on the blood still trailing from my hand.

"I raised you," she whispered. "Elion’s blessed child, I would never harm you... w-what’s going on?"

"Blessed child?" Jayden frowned, thrown off balance for the first time.

"You didn’t know you were Elion’s chosen!?"

Evelina stared at him, her expression hovering somewhere between disbelief and something almost absurd. It was not a look I ever expected to see on her face—genuine, unguarded confusion, the kind that stripped away all her usual poise and made her look almost ordinary.

Jayden blinked. "Elion’s... what?"

"You said you knew you had special blood," I said. "How did you not put that together?"

"T-That wasn’t enough proof!"

"Enough..."

The Grand Cleric coughed, her skin growing paler as blood continued to spread across the cold stone beneath her. Her magic, already weakened by Evelina’s assault, flickered faintly around her like the last glow of a dying ember, too weak now to heal even herself.

"The church told me you died during a mission." Her voice had become little more than a whisper, each word dragged out with effort. "My child... please... tell me what’s happening."

Jayden stared at her, his empty hands trembling at his sides.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

The grey tide had completely receded from the cathedral roof, leaving behind only scattered patches of ash that stirred in the wind. Below us, the Holy City was slowly waking again, color returning to the streets and sound finding its way back into the squares.

The ritual was over.

But it did not feel like victory.

Jayden’s sword slipped from his hand and clattered against the stone. His hands were shaking.

"They ambushed me," he said at last, each word sounding as though it had been dragged up from somewhere deep and raw. "While I was out in Berian, an inquisitor came after me wearing an artifact that only the High Council could have authorized."

The Grand Cleric parted her lips, but no sound came out.

"An artifact that only you could have allowed to be used." Jayden let out a laugh that held nothing of joy. "I was left trapped in a hole in the ground, forced to crawl my way back out while my magic was weakened, and the only reason I survived was because machines patrolling the area found me first."

"I didn’t know." The Grand Cleric’s voice broke again. "Child, I swear to you—before Elion himself—I didn’t know."

"You’re the Grand Cleric. How could you not know?"

She closed her eyes, and more golden tears slipped down her bloodied cheeks.

"Because I trusted them," she said. "The council. My advisors. The priests I had served beside for forty years. I believed they were faithful. I believed they followed Elion’s will. I believed..."

She opened her eyes again and looked up at Jayden, and there was nothing left in her expression but grief, so deep and heavy it seemed to swallow even the grey light around them.

"I thought I was doing good."

Beside me, Evelina shifted, her wings drawing in tighter against her back. The succubus influence had nearly faded by then; her hair was almost entirely white again, and the claws at her fingertips had already shrunk back into ordinary nails.

"She’s telling the truth," Evelina said quietly. "I was in her head. She didn’t know."

Jayden’s legs gave way beneath him.

He dropped to his knees on the bloodied stone, his palms pressing flat against the roof, his head bowed low as his shoulders shook. No sound came from him. Only that trembling.

I let go of the sword and allowed it to fall.

The Grand Cleric lifted one trembling hand and rested her fingers against his bowed head.

"I’m sorry," she whispered. "I’m so sorry, my child."

"Stop calling me that."

"You are Elion’s chosen. You have been since the day you were born. The light in you... I felt it the first time I held you, when you were small and frightened and didn’t understand why the shadows whispered to you."

Jayden slowly raised his head.

His eyes were red, his face wet, but when he spoke, his voice had steadied.

"The council tried to kill me. They’ve been hunting me for months. How do I know you weren’t part of it?"

"Because I was hunting you too."

The Grand Cleric’s hand fell back to the stone.

"But I was hunting whoever had taken you. Whoever was hurting you. I thought you’d been kidnapped—captured by enemies of the church. I never imagined..."

Her voice trailed away, and her gaze drifted past Jayden, past Evelina, past me, toward the cathedral below, where the grey tide had left behind only ash and silence.

"They’re all dead," she said softly. "Aren’t they?"

"The High Council is still fighting," Evelina said. "Marcellus and Julius are dealing with them. But the pilgrims..."

She left the sentence unfinished.

The Grand Cleric closed her eyes once more.

We remained on the roof for a while after that, with no one saying anything. The wind moved through the ash, and below us the Holy City slowly returned to color.

Evelina’s wings had vanished completely by then, her transformation fully faded, leaving her looking pale, drained, and somehow smaller than before.

Jayden had not moved from where he knelt.

"The Grand Priest," he said eventually. "Did he know?"

"I don’t know," the Grand Cleric whispered.

"Then I’ll ask him myself."

He rose to his feet.

His sword remained where it had fallen. He made no move to pick it up.

"The council—" Evelina began.

"Are mine."

Jayden walked toward the edge of the roof without looking back, neither at the Grand Cleric, nor at Evelina, nor at me. He simply kept walking, his footsteps soundless on the bloodied stone, until he reached the edge and stepped off.

The wind stirred in the space he left behind.

He was gone.

The Grand Cleric let out a long, unsteady breath.

"What will happen to me?" she asked.

I looked at Evelina.

Evelina looked back at the Grand Cleric.

"We haven’t decided yet," I said.