LOCATION: DIVINE ORDER — OBSERVATION SPIRE, HIGH ALTAR OF ASCENT
The sky beyond the stained-glass dome burned gold and crimson, as if the heavens themselves were bleeding light.
Halix stood in silence—tall, robed in white etched with divine glyphs, though none dared call her holy anymore. The spire's chamber was silent save for the ticking of celestial instruments—devices that mapped sin, soul, and system alike.
Then the door opened.
Verrick Thorne entered, cloaked, composed, and already bracing.
"He survived," Halix said, voice cold enough to quiet fire.
Verrick bowed his head, but not in shame. "He shouldn't have."
Halix turned slowly, one pale brow raised.
"You activated the Creed kill squad. Without waiting."
Verrick didn't blink. "Because he's changing. That system—it's not theirs anymore. And it's not ours."
"He is becoming something," Halix murmured, fingers clasped behind her back. "But what that is… still remains mine to shape."
There was silence for a moment—long, brittle.
Then she continued.
"The glyph hadn't entered its final phase. Your move forced Lucan into evolution too soon."
Verrick stepped closer, voice low. "And if we'd waited, he might've reached the point where no glyph could control him."
Halix's jaw tightened.
She turned to face the massive mural of the Rite etched on the spire wall. Divine Order saints bathed in white fire, casting shadows on chained sinners below.
"Do you know what happens when a glyph of that design activates prematurely?" she asked.
Verrick said nothing.
Halix whispered, "It broadcasts before it kills."
She turned her eyes to his.
"If he had died with it intact… nothing would be traced. But now… now he might see the truth."
A pause. Heavy. Then Verrick spoke.
"So what do we do?"
Halix's smile was faint. Cold. Reverent.
"We wait. If Lucan survives what's coming next… then we'll know the glyph wasn't a leash."
Verrick's eyes flickered, just for a moment. Doubt, or something deeper.
But he said nothing.
Because he was her blade.
And blades don't speak.
---
LOCATION: ASHVALE — WHISPERVAULT SANCTUM, AELIRA'S PRIVATE CHAMBER
Candles flickered against stone walls, their flames bending toward her as if begging for mercy.
Aelira Varn knelt at the center of a circle drawn in ash and silver thread. Robes loose. Hair damp with sweat. Eyes shut. Breath shallow.
She'd meditated like this a thousand times before.
But tonight, the stillness betrayed her.
Her fingers hovered above the torn fabric folded before her—Lucan's old robe, the one he'd worn the day she'd "saved" him. The day Rivenna arrived. The day she'd obeyed Halix.
Her hands tingled.
There was glyph residue still embedded in the threads. Not active—but echoing.
"A surveillance marker," Halix had said at the time. "Nothing more."
But Aelira had studied glyphwork under Whispermasters who'd been exiled for complexity. She knew how threads sang when soaked in divine intent.
And this glyph didn't hum like a watcher.
It bled.
She raised her palm, muttered a forbidden incantation—words that hadn't been heard since the Choir Purge.
The room darkened.
The air stilled.
And then—revelation.
Light burst from the cloth, forming a spectral glyph in the air.
Aelira stared, pupils shrinking. The glyph wasn't static. It pulsed. Evolved. It wasn't bound to observe.
It was meant to activate.
And in its echoes… she saw glimpses.
Lucan's body writhing in the Rite. His scream as the glyph burned beneath his chest. Her own hand, fingers trembling, pressing the mark into his skin under Halix's command.
It hadn't just watched him.
It was built to burn out his soul—on command. A kill switch. A final chain.
Aelira stumbled back, hand clamping over her mouth.
"What have I done?" she whispered, as the glyph dissolved in a hiss of regret and ash.
He had trusted her. Fought for her. Loved her—before everything twisted under the Rite's weight. And she had marked him with death like he was just another pawn.
This wasn't loyalty.
This was damnation.
And she had carved it herself.
Her gaze trembled on the fading glyph—now just ash and memory.
She had told herself it was mercy. Surveillance. A way to protect him… from himself. From what he was becoming.
But now?
It was a blade she never meant to wield—one pressed too close to a heart that had once beat for her.
---
LOCATION: HOLLOW CREED — VEILED HALL, INNER CHAMBERS – NIGHT
The Veiled Hall whispered. Not with voices, but with secrets too old to name. Stone walls breathed shadows. The table at the center—a blackened disc of silent judgment—reflected nothing.
Verrick Thorne stood before it, hands behind his back, as three loyal Creed operatives waited. Faces hidden beneath half-masks. Eyes sharp. Tongues still.
"Lucan Malryk returned," Verrick said quietly. "Alone. The relic is gone. The mission... collapsed."
A rustle of confusion. Controlled. Measured.
"He claims it was empty. That no threat was found."
He stepped into the flickering light, letting the silence stretch like tension on a wire.
"And yet three of our finest are dead. Two are unaccounted for. No report. No explanation."
His tone never rose. But it curled. Like a noose.
"I don't believe in coincidence. I believe in corruption."
One of the loyalists spoke, hesitant. "Are you suggesting Lucan sabotaged the mission?"
"I'm suggesting Lucan Malryk is no longer acting in alignment with the Creed. His power grows. His allegiance fades."
He circled them slowly, hands still folded, voice calm.
"What he brought back from the Rite may be rotting him. Or worse... awakening something else."
A beat.
"We need to begin whispering the truth—softly, carefully. That he is unstable. That he may be dangerous."
Another masked loyalist spoke. "To what end?"
"A Council Review," Verrick said simply. "Let the Creed decide what he is. And whether he still belongs."
Then he turned, half-shadowed.
"And if he doesn't?"
"We end the threat. Quietly."
A pause.
"This time, no ambush. No expendables."
"This time, we send someone... he won't see coming."
A loyalist frowned. "Who could get close?"
Verrick didn't answer.
Not yet.
His gaze drifted toward the far end of the hall, where the veil of shadow parted like breath on glass.
A figure stepped forward.
Quiet.
Hooded.
But unmistakably Creed.
Jareth Solen.
He moved like someone who knew where every bone in a body broke easiest. But his eyes—those hadn't changed. Not entirely.
Lucan had once called him brother-in-blades. They'd bled on the same dirt, whispered oaths in the same dark, once trained beneath the same ruthless blade-masters.
Jareth had been the first to offer Lucan a hand when the others still saw him as an outsider.
And now?
His hand remained steady.
His smile was clinical.
Verrick's voice sliced the silence:
"Everyone has a weakness. Even Lucan."