The sanctuary opens up around us, breathtaking in a way that almost makes me forget for a second what I actually came here to do — vaulted ceilings stretching impossibly high, stained glass throwing fractured gold and crimson light across rows of seated believers, incense curling thick in the air like the whole building’s built to make you feel small.
We’re seated in the VIP section without question, the church guard from the gate clearly having spread word fast about the "honored guests" who paid a hundred times the fee without blinking.
At the altar, an old priest stands robed in white and gold, hands raised, voice carrying in some ceremonial chant that the crowd murmurs back in unison, practiced, reverent. Behind him, bishops and paladins flank a heavy curtain, and scattered through the front rows are wealthy pilgrims dressed finer than anyone else in the room, clearly paying premium for proximity to whatever’s behind that fabric.
Then the chant peaks, and the curtain draws back.
Light floods the sanctuary — golden flame, bright and impossibly pure, coiling and shifting behind a barrier of shimmering runes, and within it, unmistakable even through the glow, the shape of the Phoenix. Every believer in the room drops instantly, foreheads to the floor, a wave of bodies folding down in perfect unison like the motion’s been drilled into them since birth.
Bishops kneel. Paladins kneel. Even the wealthy pilgrims up front, dignity apparently worth less than proximity to divinity.
I stay standing.
Viperess doesn’t move either, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Frostine stays upright too, cool and composed, watching the display with something like clinical detachment instead of awe.
Seraphina wavers — I catch the half-second where her knees actually bend, old instinct or old fear kicking in despite herself — before she catches it, straightens back up, and steps in closer beside me instead, chin lifted.
"Sorry," she mutters, mostly to herself. "Not today."
Around us, the only four people left standing in a sanctuary full of thousands, all eyes eventually start drifting toward the group that didn’t bow.
The golden flame behind the barrier flickers, shifts — and for just a second, I swear it turns toward us.
The moment stretches, and something shifts in the air — a pull, subtle at first, then unmistakable. I feel it drag against my chest, thin threads of something vital being siphoned out of me, out of everyone kneeling around us, drawn toward that golden barrier like the whole room’s being quietly bled.
Viperess stiffens beside me. "Master. Our mana. Something is drawing it out — slow, but constant."
I glance around at the kneeling crowd, and now that I’m looking for it, I see the toll on them too — pale faces, trembling shoulders, a few elderly pilgrims swaying like they’re barely staying upright. Nobody protests. Nobody even seems to notice, too deep in whatever practiced devotion keeps them bowing through it.
"They’re not just worshipping her," I mutter. "They’re feeding off her too."
Phoenix POV
She watched the crowd from behind the barrier, gold flame curling restless around her, and felt nothing but bitterness where reverence was supposed to sit.
They called this a blessing. A cleansing rite, they told the pilgrims, a sacred communion granted to the faithful. In truth it was theft dressed up in incense and gold thread — the bishops draining the life force of everyone kneeling below, funneling it through her captive form to extend their own years, their own power, wrapped so tightly in ceremony that the very people being drained thanked them for it afterward.
She hated them. Hated the priest’s calm, practiced voice. Hated the bishops standing untouched at the edges while the poor and the desperate knelt and paid with pieces of their own life just to feel close to something divine. She had wished, more times than she could count trapped behind these runes, that someone — anyone — would walk in and simply tear the altar down.
Then her eyes caught them.
Four figures standing amid a sea of bowed heads. Not kneeling. Not swaying, not drained-pale like the rest.
Watching her.
Something in her chest, dulled by centuries of captivity, stirred faint at the sight.
The priest’s voice rose behind her, oblivious, continuing the chant that would finalize tonight’s extraction.
"Continue the prayer," he murmured toward her, low enough only she could hear, threading command through practiced gentleness. "Finish it."
She did not move to obey.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, her golden eyes stayed fixed instead on the one still standing at the back who hadn’t bowed at all.
Something in me just moves before I even finish thinking it through — that stare from behind the barrier catching something loose in my chest, and next thing I know I’m vaulting clean over the VIP railing, dropping straight down from the balcony toward the center of the sanctuary.
I hit the ground hard, boots cracking stone on impact, my C-rank frame absorbing what would’ve shattered my legs a day ago without even a stumble. Dust kicks up around me in a small ring, and the whole sanctuary flinches at the sound — thousands of bowed heads snapping up at once, the chant breaking mid-syllable.
The extraction stutters. I feel the pull on my own mana falter, then stop entirely, like my sudden presence in the center of the room threw off whatever rhythm they had going.
The old priest turns first, face draining of color the second he sees me standing there, uninvited, in the one spot in this entire cathedral reserved for nobody but him.
Then the bishop steps forward from the side — older, heavier robes, real authority in his bearing compared to the priest’s — and his expression twists fast from confusion into something uglier, hotter.
"Who are you," he demands, voice cracking through the stunned silence, "to interrupt a sacred rite? Do you have any idea what you’ve just—"
He catches himself, jaw tightening, anger boiling visible now beneath the composed exterior. "Guards. Get him out. Now."
Behind him, still bound in golden flame behind the shimmering barrier, the Phoenix watches me without blinking, without moving, gaze steady and burning and — for the first time since the curtain parted — not entirely hopeless.