She rode a white horse, its hooves coated in gold-dust ash, and wore armor inlaid with scripture. Her blade was long, curved, and constantly weeping light.
They called her High Inquisitor Virelle, Flame of the Second Church.
She was neither young nor old—her features chiseled, cold, and unreadable. Her voice, when she spoke, was like winter steel on stone.
"I come not to punish," she said as she entered the palace of Velmire. "But to purify."
No one applauded.
Ashen watched from the servant's gallery, robed in plain linens, face lowered, hands folded.
Yet when her eyes swept the room, they paused. Just a second. No more.
But it was enough.
She sensed something.
He hadn't masked himself well enough.
Tahlon stepped forward.
"My lady Inquisitor," he said, voice steady, "we welcome you. But I assure you—the flames in the chapel were no act of heresy. They were born of old wood and poor guards. Nothing more."
Virelle did not respond immediately. She studied him.
"There is no heresy more dangerous than belief misaligned," she said.
Her gaze flicked to the crowd. "And no flame more damning than one lit by love for a false idol."
Ashen smiled faintly.
She didn't know.
But she suspected.
That night, Ashen slipped into the hidden chamber below the chapel—the hollowed crypt once used for midnight offerings.
Lira was already waiting.
She had drawn a new sigil in chalk and dried blood across the stones. More advanced this time. She didn't speak. But her hands trembled slightly.
"She saw me," Ashen said simply.
Lira lowered her eyes.
"She carries a relic," he added. "A living scripture embedded in her heart. It whispers divine truth. That's how she'll find us."
He knelt beside her, placing his palm on the sigil.
"We'll need a stronger mask."
They began the ritual.
Not a grand rite. Just a displacement echo—a subtle heretical trick to redirect divine attention. Instead of seeking Ashen's soul, the divine sight would be led to an innocent peasant in the outer slums. A scapegoat.
The energy twisted. The chamber grew heavy.
A dead voice whispered from the wall:
"Who must suffer in your place?"
Ashen did not hesitate.
"His name is Jorun. He beats his wife. He drinks away his rations. Let him burn."
🔸 You have performed a Soul Displacement Ritual
🔹 + Echo Rank: Stable (C – Apostate)
🔹 + Corruption: 16.1%
🔹 + Divine Infamy: 8 (Still Localized)
🔹 + Mask Applied: Virelle's Awareness Misguided
🔹 Innocent Soul Burned: +1 Sin Fragment
🔹 Relic Fragment Acquired: "Eye of the Guilty"
The next dawn, the bells rang for judgment.
A peasant was found screaming, his eyes turned to flame, confessing to false miracles, crying out for gods to forgive him. Virelle watched him burn without blinking.
And Ashen stood nearby, unseen.
Later that day, Corren met Ashen in the empty pews of the temple ruins.
"She knows it wasn't him," the old priest said quietly.
"She can't prove it."
Corren snorted. "You think this is victory?"
Ashen looked up at the fractured sunbeam falling through the broken dome.
"This is war."
That night, Tahlon held his first public sermon.
Hundreds gathered.
He stood atop the old shrine steps, arms outstretched—not as a prince, but as something new.
A voice of ash, he called himself.
"We kneel before thrones that do not bleed," he told the crowd. "But I bled. I suffered. And I returned."
Some wept.
Some cheered.
Some prayed—to him.
Far above the city, Inquisitor Virelle stood alone in a watchtower.
She stared into the dark with her sword unsheathed.
She did not know who the enemy was yet.
But she knew this:
He was smiling.