The cell door creaked softly as it opened—not the measured march of a guard or the heavy step of command, but the careful tread of someone who did not belong in chains and silence.
Sister Evadine stepped through, robes brushing the floor, a medical satchel slung at her hip. Her dark hair was pinned neatly, though loose strands had fallen from hours of tending to the wounded. The light from the corridor caught the corner of her face, tired but unwavering.
"You're still awake," she said, voice quiet but unafraid.
Caelin didn't move from the bench. His arms rested on his knees, head bowed beneath the lion-engraved breastplate that now lay on the floor beside him. Freshly cleaned, polished by someone's reverence—or perhaps guilt.
"I don't sleep much," he murmured.
"I've noticed." She approached with measured steps. "You always look like you're listening for something. Like there's still a battle just outside the wall."
"There usually is."
She knelt beside the armor and ran a gloved hand across the Lion of Judah. "The crest suits you more than the chains ever did."
Caelin didn't answer. The silence between them stretched, but it was not cold.
Evadine stood and opened her satchel. "I came to check the wounds again. You didn't exactly keep still after I patched you up."
He glanced at her. "You make a habit of visiting prisoners?"
"Only the ones everyone else avoids."
He smirked faintly. "Lucky me."
"No," she replied. "Lucky me. Between you and the war priests, I've had more heresy shouted at me than prayers."
She knelt again and lifted the cloth wrapping on his side, revealing the brutal scar left by Baal's sword—a jagged, unnatural tear across his ribs, where burning steel and infernal will had pierced through his armor and flesh alike. It hadn't healed cleanly. Nothing born of Tartarus ever did.
Her fingers hovered for a moment. "Does it still hurt?"
"Always."
"Then you're still alive."
She began cleaning the wound gently, her touch clinical, careful not to disturb the silence too much.
"Why keep coming back?" he asked, voice low.
She didn't look up. "Because you don't belong down here."
Caelin frowned. "I'm Forsaken."
"And yet," she said, dabbing a salve into the wound, "you still fight harder than half the Templari who aren't."
For a moment, he didn't reply. Then he spoke again.
"They say faith is a sword."
She tied off the bandage.
"Faith is also a wound."
She stood and looked down at him with something between pity and resolve. "I'll come back tomorrow. Try not to bleed out before then."
She turned and walked toward the door. Just before it closed behind her, she paused.
"Oh, and Caelin?" she said over her shoulder.
He looked up.
"Next time, ask for help before you tear open the stitches."
The door clicked shut, leaving him alone again.
But this time, not entirely empty.
The silence returned like a weight. Caelin sat alone again, the hum of the Sanctum Caligar's distant systems pulsing faintly through the floor beneath him. The cell was dim, lit only by the flickering light above the door, casting long shadows across the walls. His armor sat propped against the stone, the lion on the breastplate gleaming faintly in the dark.
I want you to resurrect them, Vaelus had said. I want you to lead them.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, fingers laced tight. The words echoed, louder in solitude than when first spoken.
Lead the Forsaken.
The 333 knights cast out.
The condemned.
His jaw tightened. He could still feel Baal's blade. Still hear the screaming of minor demons drowning in holy fire. Still see the charred remains of the Pontifex's body being carried off in gold-draped silence.
He had survived. Again. But that didn't make him worthy. Survival wasn't redemption.
He remembered the faces of the other Forsaken—scarred, hollow-eyed, brutal men and women carved from loss and failure. Many had once worn the same white tabards, had once taken the same vows. He'd seen what the centuries had done to them. What banishment and abandonment had twisted into their hearts.
What would they see in him?
A killer? A martyr? A liar?
He gripped his hands tighter. His nails bit into his palms.
He remembered Maeria's face, smiling as she worked the garden. The way she spoke of hope, no matter the situation. The way her screams echoed off cathedral stone as the flames took her.
He'd sworn vengeance that day. But the Church didn't need vengeance. It needed vision. And leadership. He wasn't sure he had either.Three redemptions. One complete. Two remain.
And now—now they wanted him to lead others who had been told they'd never be redeemed. He wasn't even certain he believed in his own salvation.
Was this faith?
Or just inertia?
He bowed his head.
"God," he whispered hoarsely into the darkness, "is this what You want?"
No answer came. Only the cell's quiet hum.
Only the cold breath of metal and stone.
And in that quiet, the weight pressed heavier still.
Days later, the door hissed open again.
Caelin didn't look up right away. He knew the pattern of her footsteps now—measured, but not timid. No armor. Just the soft rustle of robes and the gentle clinking of vials and bandages in her satchel.
Sister Evadine. She paused in the doorway, as she always did, waiting for his acknowledgment.
"I'm not bleeding anymore," he said quietly. "You don't have to keep coming."
She stepped in anyway. "I know."
She set the satchel down beside the bench and pulled over the stool. She looked at him longer than usual before speaking.
"I spoke with Commander Vaelus."
That made him glance her way.
"I asked him why you were still in a cell after everything," she continued, hands folded in her lap. "And he told me what he asked of you. About the Forsaken."
Caelin leaned back against the wall, expression unreadable.
"I'm not a leader," he muttered.
She tilted her head. "You led Behemoth."
"That thing followed blood and instinct."
"You leapt into the vault. Faced down the Pontifex's captors. Slayed demons barehanded. Saved the Holy Father only for him to die freeing us. That wasn't instinct." She paused. "That was command."
Caelin turned away.
"I'm not clean," he said. "Not holy. Not righteous. I'm just the last thing the demons didn't kill."
Evadine's voice softened. "And yet everyone who survived did so because you stood."
He didn't answer.
"I saw the symbol," she said after a moment. "On your breastplate. The Lion of Judah. That wasn't there when you first arrived, was it?"
"No."
She let that sit for a moment.
"I think you already know what you're going to do," she said gently. "You're just afraid of what it might cost."
He finally turned back to her.
"I was Forsaken for failing my house," he said. "Now I'm supposed to make one? Out of broken men and shattered vows?"
She smiled, small and sad.
"God has a habit of using broken things."
They sat in silence for a while, the kind that didn't press or prod. Just shared space.
When she rose to leave, she hesitated near the door.
"I hope," she said, "that if you do build this house… it remembers what it feels like to be cast out. And chooses not to cast others aside."
Then she was gone and once again, the cell grew quiet. But the silence no longer felt like a weight. It felt like a question waiting to be answered.
A few hours go by, the cell door unsealed once more. This time, but the presence was different.
Not quiet like Evadine. Not authoritative like Vaelus. Measured. Scholarly. Intentional.
The man who entered wore a long black coat marked with silver rings along the cuffs and a stylized quill-shaped brooch at the neck. His face was thin, his eyes sharper than his tone. He carried a data-slab and a reliquary seal at his hip. A Codex Keeper.
Caelin sat forward slightly.
"Knight Caelin," the man said without greeting. "I am Arch-Keeper Malric. You interacted directly with Specimen 0011-A." He paused, tapping a key on his slab. "Designated Behemoth."
Caelin didn't respond.
"I've been tasked with updating the Codex of Non-Terran Entities. This includes behavior, combat potential, and sentient deviations. You were the only knight in direct contact with the specimen during the incident on the Sanctum Caligar."
Caelin nodded once. "What do you want to know?"
Malric didn't sit. "Begin with its first appearance. How did it behave?"
Caelin thought back to the great piles of demon corpses. The slow, lumbering silhouette in the blood-lit halls.
"Like a storm already passed. It didn't roar. It didn't boast. It moved like it was fulfilling a task it had waited years to resume."
Malric's fingers flew over the slab. "Was it intelligent?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"It knew where I was going. It followed, not like a beast following prey—but like a soldier marching toward the same target. It didn't question. It didn't panic. When we reached the broken elevator, it offered me a way down. Didn't say a word."
"Did it disobey? Show signs of aggression toward the faithful?"
"No. It never attacked me. Not even when the demons bled on its skin and filled the vault."
Malric raised an eyebrow. "You don't seem afraid of it."
"I'm not."
"That's dangerous."
Caelin's voice was steady. "So is misunderstanding what it is."
Malric paused at that. "How was it wounded?"
"Mid-level demons carved into it. Claws, blades. Baal himself struck it."
"Did it bleed?"
Caelin nodded. "Black, tar-thick blood. It kept moving."
"Did it seem to feel pain?"
"Yes," Caelin said. "But it never acknowledged it. Like pain wasn't something that concerned it."
Malric considered him a moment. "What do you think it is?"
Caelin looked up.
"A prisoner. Used and forgotten. But loyal, in its own way. Maybe more loyal than most of the living."
Malric typed a final note, then shut the slab.
"Its chamber has been resealed. Per the Pontifex's old order, its name remains Behemoth, and its record will be updated accordingly."
He turned to leave, but stopped just before the door.
"We've studied thousands of creatures," he said. "But that one… that one was never meant to be caged. If you ever go near it again—pray it still remembers your face."
Then he left. The door sealed behind him, and Caelin was alone once more. But this time, with a strange flicker of respect for the thing beneath the ship.
The cell door clanked open again, with time seemingly blurred between every visit. The door echoed softly down the stone-lined corridor. Caelin didn't look up at first. He assumed it was a guard bringing the usual rations or perhaps Sister Evadine checking on his wounds again. But the silence lingered—not the quiet professionalism of the medica, nor the heavy, armored footfalls of the Pope's guard.
This was different. Lighter steps. Hesitant.
Caelin raised his eyes.
A young man stood there. Seventeen, barely. The same boy he had pulled from the corpse-mounds of Caligo IX. He looked better now—fed, cleaned, healed. No longer pale and sunken from blood loss and trauma. But his eyes… they still bore the haunted look of someone who had seen too much and understood too little.
"Do you remember me?" the boy asked.
Caelin nodded slowly. "I pulled you from the ruin."
The boy stepped inside. The guards didn't stop him. Someone had allowed this visit.
"I wanted to see you," he said, voice low. "To thank you. They told me what you did. What you've done since. What you gave up."
Caelin said nothing at first. He studied the boy—now a survivor, now alive. But something gnawed at the edges of his mind, the unease he felt when they spoke of how the demons boarded the Sanctum Caligar.
It was through him.
"You were the door," Caelin said at last, his voice a whisper edged with iron. "They came through you."
The boy's face went pale again, not out of fear—but understanding. "They told me," he said. "The Confessors. I didn't know. I swear, I didn't feel them. They said… they were dormant. Latched onto my soul after the fall of Caligo. I carried them all this way. Like a coffin."
Caelin stood slowly. His wounds still burned beneath the wrappings. The Lion of Judah gleamed faintly on his breastplate, now set aside beside the bunk.
The boy's voice trembled. "If you hadn't killed Karaziel… if you hadn't—"
"Karaziel was already dead," Caelin interrupted. "This was… aftermath."
The boy swallowed hard. "Do you hate me?"
Caelin stepped closer, eyes locked on the boy's. "No."
The boy blinked, surprised.
"I hate the thing that used you," Caelin continued. "Just as I hate every lie it whispered, every life it stole through your breath. But you… You are not the sin. You were the vessel."
Silence fell. The boy looked down at his hands.
"I don't know what to do now," he said. "I don't know who I am."
Caelin's voice was steady. "Then find out. And be better than what they tried to make you."
The guards called from outside, signaling the end of the visit. The boy turned to go, then paused at the doorway.
"I don't remember your name," he said.
"I do," Caelin replied. "That's enough for now."
The cell door hadn't fully settled shut when it opened again. The echo of the boy's steps down the corridor was swallowed by the heavier, firmer tread of someone with rank—and purpose.
Commander Vaelus entered, his cloak bearing the seal of Templari High Command, his brow creased in a shadowed blend of contemplation and decision. He looked toward the chair where the boy had sat moments earlier, then to Caelin.
"You've spoken with him," Vaelus said flatly.
Caelin nodded once. "He's no longer a child. And no longer clean."
Vaelus stepped closer, arms behind his back. "No. He's been marked by what he carried. The ecclesiarchy debated whether to excommunicate him or burn him outright."
Caelin's jaw tightened. "They would execute a boy for what the demons did with his body?"
"They've done worse," Vaelus replied, without pride or defensiveness. "But the decision was deferred. You see, technically… he's Forsaken now. Contaminated. Branded."
Caelin felt the cold weight of recognition settle in his gut.
Vaelus looked at him. "Unless."
The word hung in the air like the drop of a guillotine.
"Unless," Vaelus repeated, "you accept the mantle I offered. If you choose to lead, Caelin—if you form a House from the 333 Forsaken—you can claim him as one of your own. Protect him under your crest. Give him a banner to stand beneath."
Caelin turned slightly, casting his gaze down at the armor resting beside the bunk. The breastplate gleamed even in the cell's dimness, and the golden Lion of Judah glared back at him—silent, expectant.
Vaelus continued, stepping toward the cell door. "I'm not asking for your answer now. You've been weighed by more than any knight should bear. But time waits for no one. If you delay too long… the decision will be made for you. For the boy. For the others."
He unlocked the door, paused in the threshold.
"They say you're already a legend," he added, looking back. "But legends fade. Houses endure."
Then he left.
As if the visitors lately had t been enough, The cell door opened without warning.
Sister Evadine stepped in, her face pale, lips drawn in a thin line. She carried a satchel at her side—not for medicine this time—but she didn't sit. Not at first.
"You heard?" she asked softly.
Caelin, seated on the bench with one arm resting across his knee, gave a nod. "Vaelus came. Told me."
Evadine exhaled through her nose, walking over to the wall before leaning against it. "I sat in on the boy's trial."
Caelin looked up. "You?"
"I requested it," she said. "After what you did for him. After what he's been through."
Her eyes met his. "They brought him in wearing chains. The Inquisitor called him a vessel of corruption, a seedbed of Tartarus. Claimed the demons used him to pierce our sanctum and nearly slay the Pontifex himself. No one in the chamber would deny it."
She paused.
"But the boy stood upright. His hands trembled, but he didn't plead. He said he didn't remember anything after Caligo IX. That the last thing he saw before the blackness was you, lifting him up from the rubble."
Caelin's gaze lowered, and a faint shadow crossed his face. "He was barely breathing."
"He remembered that," Evadine said. "That someone pulled him from death. He thought you were an angel at first. That you'd come to take him to judgment."
Caelin's voice was low. "Poor soul."
She nodded. "They debated for hours. Some wanted him purified in flame. Others said his youth was grounds for mercy. Then someone—one of the Cardinals—asked if he was marked. If he had a crest."
Caelin's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
Evadine continued. "The answer was no. So the court ruled him Forsaken. Stripped his name. Branded his neck. They marched him back to the cells hours ago."
Silence hung between them like a shroud.
"You don't have to take him in," she said, her voice more careful now. "But I saw his eyes when they cast the sentence. He's hanging on by a thread. Like you were once."
Caelin stared down at his open hands—scarred, calloused, and soaked with too much blood to remember.
"He's not you," she added gently. "But he might survive… if someone like you teaches him how."
She stood.
Then, softer still, "Think about it, Caelin."
And she left, the door hissing shut behind her.
The trial of the boy from Caligo IX had been swift, brutal in its formality. The Confessors had deemed the corruption too close to the soul, too dangerous to ignore.
He had not been offered cleansing, only condemnation. The brand was applied without ceremony. Another Forsaken.
Caelin sat alone in the aftermath, the stone beneath him cold, the silence suffocating. The weight of his armor leaned against the wall, the golden Lion of Judah catching what little light flickered from the overhead lumen.
He hadn't seen the boy again—not since he was brought to his cell, eyes hollow, skin pale with the lingering stain of demonic touch. But he remembered the way the boy had looked at him.
Not with reverence, not with fear, but with a fragile, desperate hope. Hope that maybe survival didn't have to mean exile. He thought of the 333 others. The outcasts. The monsters. The discarded weapons.
He had been one of them. Still was. Maybe…maybe that was the point.
He slowly stood, wincing as healing wounds tugged against his skin. He looked down at his hands—scarred, calloused, bloody beneath the bandages. These hands had destroyed demons, held dying brothers, buried love.
These hands could build. He looked at the armor. Not for himself, that time had passed, but for those who had no one.
"I'll build it," he said under his breath. "If not for me… then for them."
He reached for the Lion-marked breastplate and began to suit up.
Behind him, the cell door—unlocked for days now—was waiting for him to walk through it.