The stone was cold beneath her bare feet, ancient runes singing faintly with dormant power the moment her weight settled onto them.
“Whenever you’re ready, Lady Caelia,” Malachi said, folding his hands with poorly disguised anticipation.
“The Council awaits.”
Ren closed her eyes and felt the relic’s power begin to stir — slow at first, a gentle pressure against her chest, curious rather than hostile.
Then it sharpened, driving deeper, hunting for something specific beneath the surface layer of her borrowed skin.
It’s looking for my soul.
The pressure built fast, faster than she’d braced for, ancient magic pressing insistent fingers against the careful mask Caelia’s stolen face provided, searching for the seam where a dead thief’s soul didn’t quite fit the body it now wore.
Ren gasped as the sensation sharpened into something closer to pain, her fabricated aura beginning to fray at the edges under the relic’s relentless probing.
Murmurs rippled through the assembled Council as faint cracks of light — wrong light, not the pure white-gold a Saintess should produce, but something tangled with darker, grayer threads — began to bleed visibly through her skin.
“Something’s wrong,” a Council member whispered, loud enough to carry.
“Her aura,” another added, voice tight with alarm.
“It’s fracturing—”
Ren’s knees buckled as the relic’s power drove deeper still, and she felt something in her chest begin to genuinely tear — not metaphorically, but real, physical agony as five years of buried memory and a stolen body’s fragile divinity strained against each other, threatening to rip apart entirely under the Altar’s ancient scrutiny.
Across the cathedral, she heard Lucan’s voice cut through the growing murmur, sharp with barely contained panic.
“Stop this. Now.”
“The examination isn’t complete, Grand Inquisitor,” Malachi said, though something in his voice had sharpened toward genuine excitement, sensing victory close at hand.
“Let the Altar finish its work.”
Ren’s vision blurred, gray light bleeding faster now from every point where the relic’s power made contact with her skin, and she felt the fragile disguise she’d worn for three weeks beginning to shatter apart entirely, one thread at a time, in front of the entire Holy Council.
I can’t stop it.
It’s too strong.
She heard Lucan move before she fully processed what he intended — a rush of footsteps, the scrape of a blade drawn fast, and then dark ash magic erupted violently across the cathedral floor, a corrosive black wave crashing directly into the Altar of Truth with enough force to shatter marble.
“Grand Inquisitor!” Malachi’s shocked voice rose above the sudden chaos.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
“The relic is malfunctioning.” Lucan’s voice carried cold and absolute across the cathedral, even as his dark magic tore deeper into the ancient stone, corruption spreading through century-old runes faster than any priest present could hope to counter.
“Endangering a Council-sanctioned candidate. I’m terminating the examination before it causes irreversible harm.”
“You have no authority to interfere with Council procedure—”
“I have every authority when a candidate’s life is at risk.” Lucan’s dark magic surged harder, and the ancient relic began to crack, black fissures spreading rapid across white stone, ancient runes flaring one final, desperate burst of light before the entire Altar shattered outward in a violent detonation of black flame.
Screams erupted through the cathedral as priests and Council members alike scrambled back from the blast, smoke and debris filling the air where the relic had stood only seconds before.
Ren felt the pressure on her chest release all at once, the gray light bleeding from her skin snuffing out as suddenly as it had begun, leaving her gasping, disoriented, barely upright.
Lucan reached her before the smoke had even fully cleared, sweeping her up into his arms without hesitation, dark magic still curling protective and dangerous around them both.
“I have you,” he murmured against her hair, already moving fast toward the cathedral’s side exit.
“I have you.”
“Lucan—” Her voice came out weak, still trembling from the relic’s assault.
“Not now.” His grip tightened, carrying her through choking black smoke while chaos erupted behind them — priests shouting, Council members demanding explanation, Malachi’s furious voice rising above it all, though his words were lost in the confusion.
“We need to get you somewhere safe. Now.”
They burst through the side passage into a narrow corridor, and Lucan didn’t slow his pace until they’d put considerable distance between themselves and the wreckage of the Grand Cathedral, finally stopping in a small alcove shadowed enough to offer temporary shelter.
“Are you hurt?” His eyes raked over her with frantic urgency, hands cupping her face, checking for injury with a desperation that would have looked absurd on anyone else, on the composed Grand Inquisitor everyone else in the Empire feared.
“You destroyed the Altar of Truth. In front of the entire Holy Council.”
“Yes.”
“Lucan, that relic is centuries old. Its irreplaceable.”
“I don’t care.” His voice had gone rough, fierce, utterly without regret.
“It was tearing you apart, Caelia. I watched your aura fracturing in real time, watched you nearly collapse from the strain, and I made a choice.” His thumb brushed her cheekbone, and she realized with a jolt that his hand was trembling.
“I chose you. Over the relic, over the church, over five years of careful reputation as the Empire’s most devoted Inquisitor. I’d choose you again, without hesitation, every single time.”
“Malachi will use this against you. Against both of us.”
“Let him try.” Something dark and fierce settled behind his eyes.
“I just committed treason against my own church in front of the entire Holy Council to protect you. Whatever comes next, I’ve already made my position clear. There’s no pretending otherwise now.”
Ren studied his face — resolute, unrepentant, utterly certain despite the enormity of what he’d just done — and felt something in her chest tighten with a mixture of fear and fierce, unexpected gratitude.
“You destroyed centuries of church history for me,” she said quietly.
“I’d have destroyed considerably more.” He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing finally beginning to steady now that the immediate danger had passed.
“The relic was going to expose you. I couldn’t allow that. Everything else is simply consequence, and I’ll face it however I need to.”
Distant shouting still echoed from the direction of the cathedral, Council members and priests undoubtedly organizing some official response to the chaos Lucan had unleashed.
Ren knew, with cold certainty, that whatever fragile secrecy they’d maintained until this moment had just been shattered as thoroughly as the ancient stone Altar itself.
“What happens now?” she asked.
Lucan pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes, and something resolute settled across his features — not fear, though she suspected fear lived somewhere beneath the surface, but determination absolute and unwavering.
“Now,” he said quietly, “we stop pretending we can hide what we are to each other, and start preparing for the fact that Malachi is going to come at us with everything the church has left to throw.”
Behind them, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the corridor — Inquisitorial guards, likely, sent to investigate the chaos, or perhaps Malachi himself, already moving to capitalize on the damage done.
Lucan’s grip on her tightened instinctively, dark magic curling protective around them both once more, and Ren found herself, for the first time since waking in this stolen body, genuinely uncertain whether the danger closing in around them could still be survived at all.