Era awoke to silence. A pressurised, padded quiet that hung over her like a burial shroud.
Then the pain came, rolling in slow, deliberate waves. A low, pulsing ache that bloomed from her skull and curled around her limbs.
Her head throbbed. Her eyes burned. Her limbs cramped and spasmed with stiffness.
Cold sweat clung to her skin, chilling her down to the bone.
These were the pains of the living.
She was alive.
Her eyes opened to shadow. The room was dim, lit only by a semi-circle of iron-wrought candles suspended by chains above her. They hovered silently like sentries in vigil. Beyond their glow, only darkness stretched- no doors, no windows, no end.
Just stone and shadow.
She was upright, back against a wall of uneven blocks slick with moisture- sweat, blood, she couldn't tell. Her arms were bound behind her by rough, rusted metal cuffs that scraped at her wrists. Her legs curled in front of her, and her boots were gone.
The air was damp. The scent of mildew and old metal coated her throat. Every breath was short and stolen. She shifted, the chain groaned and her wrists flared with pain.
'Where was she? What was she doing here? What happened?' A torrent of questions swirled in her mind. Ransacking her recollection, she organised her memories - the chapel, the corpse, the vicar, the head, the scream.... then nothing.
The nightmare stopped there.
'Perhaps-' Any trail of thought was cut short by the faint patter of footsteps. A tall figure emerged from the darkness.
"Where the hell am I? Who are you?" Era rasped out, her voice so weak it was barely a whisper.
The figure snapped her fingers, the sound bouncing off the walls.
Light burst from the air, spreading in soft pulses. The oppressive darkness retreated to the corners, revealing an expansive stone chamber carved from grey slabs. In the centre stood a single object : a large, round mirror mounted upright, its surface black as obsidian and perfectly still.
Era blinked against the sudden brightness, her vision adjusting. The figure stepped into clearer view.
A tall woman, dressed in black from collar to heel, as if in mourning. Her face was expressionless, not cold but blank, a canvas deliberately left unpainted. Yet her melancholy eyes, a watery viridian green, were the only part of her that betrayed anything at all.
"This is the Chamber of Records," the woman spoke softly.
Era squinted at the empty walls. "I don't see any books" she commented dryly.
The women simply snapped her fingers once more.
From the cracks between the bricks, a black liquid began to seep.
The walls were weeping.
The fluid ebbed down the wall in viscous threads, crawling over the floor and pooling at Era's feet. The inky tendrils wormed over her exposed skin, burning it with its icy touch.
Era squirmed, it wasn't the temperature which bothered her. The liquid was alive, whispering and rippling against her in a language she couldn't understand. It slithered away from her, climbing the feet of the mirror until it spread across its surface.
The liquid rippled, and then it began to play.
The chapel. The corpse. The nuns. The ooze. The chanting.
"This," the woman said quietly, "is the moment you died." The memory played in silence- until the moment Era's knife pierced Peter's throat.
Then it stopped.
"What happened next. Show me. What happened?!" Era blubbered haphazardly.
"What happens next isn't the point," the woman snapped, her voice wobbling "What matters is what you did."
Era stared at the darkened mirror, the image of her own trembling hand burning behind her eyes. "What does that mean? Where am I? What the hell was that?" Her voice cracked, thick with confusion. "Why show me this? What was I even looking at?"
The woman didn't answer right away. She walked slowly toward the mirror, the black hem of her coat trailing soundlessly across the floor.
"You're in heaven" she stated simply.
"What?" Era spluttered. This wasn't making any sense.
She was dead? This was heaven? The brochures certainly weren't very accurate, there wasn't a fluffy cloud or golden gate in sight.
A breath, not quite a sigh.
"H.V.N, not heaven. As i'm sure you're beginning to realise, the world is far stranger than you realised. Since the dawn of humanity, there have been those among us with extraordinary gifts," as she spoke the mirror behind her hummed to life displaying a barrage of moments- battlefields torn apart by inhuman might, a woman turning fire to ash with a whisper, a boy stopping a chariot mid-charge.
" These people are the blessed, chosen by the Gods and bestowed with their breath manifest: ichor."
Swirling blue energy blossomed across the mirror's surface. Era's breath caught.
That colour. Hadn't the corpse been that colour?
"But where there is light, there is shadow. Powerful families have sought to monopolise this for themselves, creating a syndicate which operates above the laws of man. They have toiled to find a way of harnessing the God's powers for themselves- and they've succeeded."
Images surged forward: the Fountain of Youth, alchemical diagrams, masked figures gathered around a ritual table.
"What you witnessed was a ritual. A ritual whereby they drain the ichor of a blessed to grant longer life and health. These people are the Illuminati, and H.V.N was created to be their adversary."
Era's mind reeled. Her thoughts caught in loops, slipping between disbelief and dawning comprehension. Because what she'd seen, it had happened.
It wasn't a dream.
'Gods, heroes, magic, secret cults — all the ingredients of a cheap paperback.'
And yet, the facts didn't care how absurd they sounded. The world she thought she knew was crumbling in the mirror's glow.
"A prophet," the woman said, "a chosen among the blessed, was meant to lead this resistance."
Era's voice cracked. "Why are you telling me this? Why me?"
The woman scoffed. For the first time, something broke in her. A tear slid silently down her cheek, catching the light.
"Because you killed him."
Era froze. Her limbs locked. "Who?"
The mirror pulsed- and his face appeared.
Was that... The Vicar?
"He wasn't just a priest. He was one of ours. Undercover. A prophet, blessed by Thalos, god of victory. He was our last hope. The one foretold in the Oracle of Ruin. He was going to stop them. Save us all. Until you put a knife through his throat."
Era stared at the mirror, her throat tight, her chest hollow.
"Only he could've stopped what's coming," the woman said.
A long silence.
"You didn't just kill a man," she whispered. "You kickstarted the apocalypse."
Era's mind caved in on itself. Her lungs burned. Her body refused to move.
Her voice finally broke the silence.
"...Shit."