"The world trembles not for heroes, but for those who love what the heavens forbid."
........
The cathedral bled light.
Golden beams fell through fractured stained glass, spilling across the marble floor in shapes that once told stories—saints, swords, salvation.
Now those shapes were fractured.
Reversed.
And at the center of it all, Saint Caelus stood beneath the statue of the God-King, fists clenched tight around the hilt of his reliquary blade.
His voice echoed off the arches like thunder rolling through a storm-wracked gorge.
"The Scarlet Blade has turned."
Gasps rippled through the tribunal.
Some crossed themselves. Others looked to the ceiling, half-expecting it to crack open.
Caelus didn't stop.
"I saw her face in the augur flame. Iris of the Vow. Kneeling at the feet of the one we were promised would bring the undoing."
A woman in ivory robes stepped forward, hands trembling around a scroll.
"The augur may be unclear. The Throne-Born prophecy—"
"Is active," Caelus snapped. "Seven demon hearts will bind to him. The Blade was just the first. He seduced her."
He stepped down from the dais, heavy boots ringing against the stone.
"He must be contained. Not killed. Not yet. If we strike too soon—he fractures. And the world burns in every direction."
Silence followed.
Until a voice—cool, steady, precise—cut through the air.
"Then you require a chain."
All eyes turned.
Knight-Lieutenant Caelia stepped forward, clad in half-armor and ceremonial whites, silver runes etched across her gauntlets.
Her expression was unreadable, her eyes sharp.
She dropped to one knee and removed her helm.
Her face was unscarred.
Calm.
Like it had never flinched before a blade.
"I volunteer."
Caelus studied her.
"Do you understand what you'll be walking into?"
"A nest of demons. A heretic prophet. A world not yet broken."
"And if you fail?"
"Then I will break before he does."
The other priests murmured.
Caelus's eyes narrowed.
"You will not kill him. Not unless commanded."
"I will bind him. In faith, in steel, in word."
"If binding fails?"
"Then I will die beside him. But he will not walk free."
Caelus stepped forward, drew his sword, and gently touched the tip to her shoulder.
"Then go, Chain of Light."
"And pray you do not fall as she did."
________
The ruin looked like the bones of a church, half-eaten by moss and time.
Ivy poured from the steeple like the bones of old gods had grown moss. And yet… something in it still pulsed.
Rein stepped through the shattered threshold first, ducking beneath a low-hanging beam etched with half-burnt ward runes.
The moment he entered, the air thickened.
Like breath held.
Like judgement waiting.
Zeraka didn't cross immediately.
She paused at the edge, claws twitching, tail low.
Her nose wrinkled.
"It stinks of divinity. The stale kind. Like hymns left out in the sun."
Valaithe followed with a lazy whistle, trailing her fingers along the doorway's scorched frame.
"Still standing after all this time. Even the heavens know how to build prisons."
Rein pressed his hand to the altar stone.
Warm.
Not from sun.
But from memory.
Behind him, the girls filtered in—reluctantly, then all at once.
Even Zeraka, after a soft, throaty snarl, stepped inside.
Her body tensed the moment her boots hit sacred ground.
"Burns," she growled, her skin sizzled.
"Like my bones are being judged."
Valaithe leaned against the crumbling pulpit, watching Zeraka with the half-lidded gaze of a panther watching another predator limp.
"You mean shamed."
"I mean violated."
Iris walked slowly past them both, fingers brushing along a decayed pew as she murmured under her breath. She wasn't flinching. She wasn't resisting.
She was humming.
A quiet, broken tune that didn't belong to any god Rein had ever heard of.
"I grew up in places like this," she said softly. "But cleaner. Whiter. Emptier."
"They said the light would strip lies from our marrow."
She looked up at the crumbling ceiling.
"It never did."
Rein found an old stone hearth and began clearing it of twigs, bones, and old ash.
The act steadied him.
It made things normal again—smoke, stone, fire, warmth.
Elaris appeared beside him in silence.
She knelt and handed him flint without a word, then helped clear the debris, her fingers moving swiftly, efficiently.
Their hands touched once—only for a second—but her breath caught.
She didn't move away.
Just worked faster.
Zeraka settled near the fire after a while, jaw set, shoulders rigid.
She unstrapped her claws and tossed them aside, then crossed her arms and muttered curses in the tongue of beasts.
Rein looked at her.
"You okay?"
"No."
"Want to leave?"
"No."
"Want me to sit closer?"
"…Not yet."
Valaithe sauntered over while the fire caught, sat on Rein's left, and curled into his side like she belonged there.
Her breath warmed his ear.
"Even sanctity can't suffocate this much chemistry."
He smirked.
She ran a single finger down his arm, then drew a soft spiral in his palm with her nail.
"You burn the same in every light, you know that?"
"I don't."
"You will."
Later, they all sat close.
The ruin no longer felt sacred—just old.
Zeraka's head eventually dropped to Rein's thigh, her claws tapping the floor with restless irritation as she grumbled something about holy headaches.
But when Rein ran a slow hand through her hair, she stilled.
Didn't purr.
But didn't stop him.
Valaithe was behind him, spine pressed to his back, humming a tune out of rhythm with Iris's.
Elaris leaned against the wall, eyes closed, sword across her knees—but her blade never pointed away from Rein.
Always outward.
Like she'd kill the world if it coughed too close.
Iris sat alone across the fire, shadow cast long behind her, face unreadable.
And still—
Watching.
They didn't speak much that night.
But their silence wasn't absence.
It was filling.
Wrapping.
A warmth built in the space between their breaths.
A kind of quiet that only forms around people who know each other's weight by feel.
And Rein—
He let himself rest.
Surrounded not by warriors.
But by women who could kill him.
And would kill for him.
And outside, in the dead forest,
the holy wind shifted.
Something divine approached.
Armored.
Unbroken.
Something still untouched.