The mailed foot slammed down on his chest, driving the air from his lungs with a sickening wheeze. Night stared up at a narrow slice of smoke-choked sky framed by the grimacing, sunburned face of a Saracen warrior. The man’s scimitar was raised high, its edge notched and dark with old blood. Night knew this moment. He had lived this moment. He had died in this moment, years ago, on the dusty plain before the walls of Yarusalem.
Night’s body moved before his mind could protest, a reflex honed in a hundred tourneys and a dozen real battles. His left hand shot up, not to block the descending blade, but to grab the man’s wrist. The impact jarred his shoulder, but he held. With a grunt born of pure survival instinct, he twisted his own body, using the attacker’s momentum against him. The Saracen stumbled, off-balance, and Night drove his right fist, still clad in its worn leather gauntlet, into the man’s throat. There was a wet crackle. The scimitar fell into the dirt as the warrior collapsed, clawing at his neck, his eyes wide with surprise.
Night rolled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs like a caged beast. The din of battle rushed into his ears—the clash of steel, the screams of horses and men, the deep-throated chants of crusaders and defenders alike. He knew the smell: blood, dust, smoke, and the faint, sickly-sweet odour of decaying flesh caught in the summer heat. He knew the banner fluttering atop the distant siege tower. He was back. He was on the exact field, in the exact skirmish, where a blade had found the gap beneath his arm lifetimes ago. A cold terror, deeper than any fear of death, seeped into his bones.
A soft hum, like a choir of distant bees, cut through the cacophony. Mere paces away, the air shimmered and tore. A disc of rippling, silver-blue light, thin as a coin and wide as a cartwheel, spun into existence a foot above the churned earth. From its surface, which reflected the chaos of the battle in a distorted, dream-like tableau, ▣Sarhea stepped out. tall and slender, clad in form-fitting cloth that seemed woven from shadow. With a casual flick of her wrist, the shining disc compacted, shrivelling into a circle of light that settled above her head with its cool, technological glow.
▣Solomon followed, dressed in rich robes of purple and white that were impossibly clean amidst the gore, carried a sceptre topped with a complex, geometric knot of serpentine wires. His beard was long and grey, his face a landscape of wisdom and absolute authority.
Silence seemed to pool around the newcomers, the battle flowing around them like a river around stones. ▣Sarhea surveyed the carnage with dispassionate eyes, then turned her gaze directly to Night.
“Integration successful. Temporal re-anchoring complete. Cognitive dissonance expected. Stabilize.”
Night could only stare, his hand on the hilt of his own sword. He remembered the portal now. He remembered stepping into its light after years in a grey, silent afterlife of empty halls and whispering voices. He had been told he would serve a new purpose. He had not understood.
“The battlefield is your cover,” ▣Sarhea continued, as if swatting a fly. “Your historical knowledge is your weapon. You died here. Now you are reborn here through the blood of your Pope.”
The sheer, impossible scale of it crashed down on Night. She was asking him to betray everything he had ever fought for. He had taken the Cross. He had vowed to liberate those wrought with injustice. Now these… beings… who wielded the power of gods, wanted him to ensure its destruction and murder the Vicar of Christ.
▣Sarhea sighed. “You are a thread pulled from the tapestry of time.. Your vows were to a destiny that has been invalidated. The timeline is sick. This event,” she gestured to the burning city, “is a festering wound. We are the surgeons. You are the scalpel."
▣Sarhea took a step closer. Her steps made no sound. She pointed towards the main encampment. The air before her fingertips shimmered, and a window, like a sheet of clear ice, appeared.
“That is the thread,” ▣Sarhea said softly. “The you that was. We can let it play out. He dies on this field, today, from a knife. Or,” she closed her hand, and the window vanished, “you can act. You can change the weave. You live. The city falls, yes, but on a schedule that leads to a stable, healthier future. A future we have seen.”
It was a devil’s bargain, wrapped in the language of angels. Night looked at his gloves, still streaked with the dust and blood of his rebirth. He thought of the pope's honest face, of his laughter. He thought of the cold, silent halls of the afterlife, and the terrifying, vibrant brutality of life. He was a soldier. His purpose was to follow orders. This was now his command.
Night clenched his gauntleted fist around the hilt of Solar in defiance, the leather creaking in protest. Around them, the battlefield exhaled the dust of a thousand conflicts, the air tasting of dry blood and powdered limestone.
▣Sarhea, her coat dusted with ochre sand, spat onto the parched earth. “Sentiment is a rust that weakens the strongest steel." Her red eyes held no room for debate as they scanned the distant, broken walls of the citadel-city.
Across from them, ▣Solomon adjusted the drape of his royal purple cloak, flicking a scorpion from the embroidered hem with a casual, dismissive flick of his fingers. His armour was polished ceremonial gold, useless against a real strike but dazzling in the desert sun.
Night turned his head slowly, the movement a series of precise, oiled clicks. The view through his narrow sightline was of a world segmented into fragments: ▣Solomon’s wide, bearded face, ▣Sarhea’s tense shoulders, the bleached bones of a dead horse half-buried in the dunes.
He remembered being chained to a post. the mud beneath his bare feet, the jeers of the crowd, the cold iron around his throat.
The pope paid the silver himself. "A soul is not a commodity.’ He had no guards with him. Just an old man hidden under robes, standing in the filth of the slaver’s square.
Night remembered the armoury deep beneath the ground, cool and smelling of oiled metal and old stone. The pope, his hands surprisingly steady for their age, had helped him buckle the breastplate. “This is not to cage you,” the old man had murmured, his fingers working the leather straps. “This is to make you a sanctuary others can run behind. You will be a wall.” The memory was so vivid Night could almost smell the beeswax candles that had burned in the sconces.
▣Solomon sighed, a sound of understanding. “He dressed you in armour and gave you a sword. A classic parable of redemption. Very stirring. But the man he was, and the man he is to be, are two different creatures. The ▣Pontiff preaches a heresy that could unravel the very fabric of our kingdom. His mercy has become a weapon against the throne.”
▣Sarhea pointed with her chin toward the citadel. “He’s taken refuge in the Cathedral of the Dunes, within the city. He’s not a fool. He has his own watchers. Getting to him will require… finesse.”
“Finesse,” ▣Solomon chuckled. “A polite word for a great deal of bloodshed. My forces will create a diversion at the main gate—a glorious, bloody spectacle. You, Sir Knight, will use your… unique familiarity with his habits. You know where he prays when he is afraid. You know where he would go to feel safe.”
Night felt a coldness seeping through his layers of padding and mail. He felt like his loyalty was being strung into an instrument of its own betrayal. He looked to the small garden atop the cathedral’s central spire.
“Perfect,” ▣Solomon purred. “A secluded, defensible location with a single approach.
His purpose. That was what the pope had given him, after the armour, after the sword. A quiet evening in the great library, the smell of parchment and incense thick in the air. “Your strength is a gift, but directionless power is a curse,” the pope had said, tracing a circle on a map. “I give you a purpose: to be the shield for those who cannot shield themselves. Not for my sake, but for theirs.” That purpose had been his compass, his true north, for eternity.
▣Sarhea studied him, her gaze sharp enough to flay. “We meet at the postern gate by the old well when the moon reaches its zenith". Without another word, she turned and melted into the sun-bleached sand, her form becoming one with the horizon.
▣Solomon lingered a moment longer. He placed a hand, heavy with jewelled rings, on Night’s pauldron. “History is written by the victors, my friend. Be the author of your next chapter, not a footnote in his.” Then he too departed, his purple cloak a bruise against the pale sand.
Night was alone with the whispering wind and the ghosts of his past. He stood motionless as the sun bled out over the dunes, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to claw at the base of the distant cathedral spire.
He saw not a target, but a silhouette against a stained-glass window, a hand raised in benediction. He heard not the heresies of an enemy, but a voice, gentle but firm, saying, “Never let them tell you your life is only worth what you can carry.”
When twilight finally swallowed the desert, Night moved. He did not head for the postern gate. Instead, he began a wide, circling approach toward the cathedral, using the cover of collapsed aqueducts and abandoned merchant stalls. The armour that had once felt so loud and clumsy now moved with him in silent, practised harmony. Every scar on the metal, every dent, told a story of protection, not aggression.
Reaching the base of the colossal central spire was like approaching a mountain carved by giants. The diversion continued its thunderous roar from the city’s main gates—the crash of a battering ram, the screams of men, the bright, terrible flashes of ▣Solomon's magic. The cacophony was a perfect veil for his clunky ascent.
He found the hidden route he remembered from a long-ago guard rotation—a series of ornamental carvings and masonry seams that formed a treacherous ladder. His fingers, sheathed in steel, found purchase in the stone rose petals and saints’ folds. He climbed through the chaos, the sounds of distant violence a dull echo against the spire’s stone. His world narrowed to handhold and foothold, the strain in his muscles, the dry scrape of gauntlet on rock.
He pulled himself over the final parapet and into the Cloister of the Midnight Moon. It was a small, square garden, a miracle of irrigation and faith in this barren place. Olive trees in large terracotta pots whispered in the night breeze. A trickling fountain murmured at its centre. And there, kneeling before a simple stone altar, was a figure in white robes.
The pope’s back was to him. He was alone, as Night knew he would be. The old man’s head was bowed, his hands clasped in prayer. He did not turn at the sound of armoured boots on the flagstones.
Night drew Solar. The sound was a single, clear note in the quiet garden, the sound of a promise being broken. He took a step forward, then another, closing the distance.
“I felt the disturbance in the city,” the pope said, his voice calm, without fear. He still did not turn. "I wondered which blade would be sent for my heart. I suppose it is only fitting it would be yours.”
Night stopped, the point of his sword hovering a few feet from the old man’s back. The white robes were the same, a little more worn at the hem. The scent of myrrh and old parchment was the same. The memory of the slaver’s square flooded him, so potent it made his head swim. The weight of the chains falling away were now coming back.
The pope finally turned. His face seemed etched with new lines of care, but his eyes were the same: deep, tired, and impossibly kind. “I preach that no soul is a commodity. I preach that redemption is not a transaction for power. The apostate finds that doctrine… inconvenient.” He looked at the sword, then up into the darkness of his former knight’s visor.
Night’s arm began to tremble. The purpose the pope had given him roared in his ears: *to be the shield for those who cannot shield themselves*. This man, here, kneeling and unarmed, was the very embodiment of that ideal. Killing him would not be fulfilling a purpose; it would be annihilating it. It would make every act of protection that followed a hollow joke.
The pope watched him struggle. He saw the tremor in the sword. “They told you it was a test of loyalty,” he said softly. “But they misunderstand loyalty’s source. True loyalty is not to a throne or a decree. It is to the truth you carry in here.” He tapped his own chest, over his heart. “They gave you an order. I gave you a purpose. Which one does your soul answer to?
Night reversed his grip on Solar. In one swift, decisive motion, he drove the point deep into a crack between two flagstones at the pope’s feet. The metal quivered, a silver sapling planted in stone.
As if summoned by the words, a clash of steel and a shout echoed from the stairwell access across the garden. ▣Sarhea appeared first, her axe already bloodied, its engraved hold smeared with gore. ▣Solomon followed, his golden armour dented and scratched, his royal cloak torn.
The full moon bled through the stained-glass window, casting a kaleidoscope of fractured light across ▣Sarhea's ring. Her breath, a faint plume in the chilly, incense-laden air, was the only sign she was alive and not another marble statue in the long gallery.
The target, the old man in white, sat with his head bowed in prayer before the altar, his murmurs the only sound besides the distant, echoing footfalls of empty corridors.
“They said you would come,” the old man said, his voice soft but carrying. He did not turn.
“They are often correct,” ▣Sarhea replied. Her voice was a low, modulated contralto, stripped of any identifiable accent. She stepped forward, her boots silent on the ancient mosaic floor. A scene of Saint Michael vanquishing the devil fractured under her tread. “Do you pray for your soul, or for mine?”
The pope finally turned. His face was a topography of wrinkles, but his eyes, a startling, clear blue, held no fear. They held a profound, weary curiosity. “I pray for understanding. My council speaks of dimensional breaches and simulacra. They did not tell me you would look so… sad.”
▣Sarhea halted a few paces from the altar. The observation was a vulnerability she had not anticipated. She compartmentalised it. “Sadness is irrelevant. I am a resolution.”
“You’ve come for the seal” the pope said, his voice a dry, papery thing that filled the small space. “...but it is not here. You’ve wasted your violence. You’ve wasted your journey.”
▣Sahrea took another step, closing the short distance. The air smelled of incense and old stone, and something else—the sharp, coppery scent of the blood she’d spilt over multiple eternities. “Men lie more easily than stone, Your Holiness. The walls of your archives told a different story. They whispered of a stolen relic, hidden not in a vault, but on the person of its protection. A final safeguard.”
A faint smile touched the pope's thin lips. “Archives can be misinterpreted. Legends grow in the dark like mould. The seal you seek is a myth given weight by desperate men.”
“Desperate men don’t carve floor mosaics showing its journey from Yaru'salema to Roma,” Sahrea countered. She was now only paces from him. The light from the high window fell across his white robes, making them gleam. “They don’t code ledgers detailing its weight, its dimensions. They don’t hide a copy of the Map̄teḥa Šəlomo in a false bible with your personal seal on it.”
The pope’s flinty eyes flickered. The mention of the grimoire, the key itself, was a step too far. “A scholarly curiosity,” he said, but the confidence in his voice had fissured.
“A curiosity that just happens to mention the seal is not a signet ring or a clay impression, but a talisman," ▣Sahrea pressed, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “A talisman worn close to the heart, to ward off the very demons it was forged to command.”
The pope spread his hands, a gesture of empty benediction. “You see this humble chapel. You see my person. Do I look like a man who possesses the key to the unseen world? I have my faith, my sacraments. I have no need of such trinkets.”
▣Sahrea’s gaze was relentless, a hunter’s gaze. She did not look at his face now, but at the space around him. The way his robes fell. The lack of any bulge at his waist or in his sleeves. Her eyes travelled upward, past the simple silver pectoral cross that hung over his breast.
And then she saw it. It was not hidden. It was in plain sight, a brazen act of misdirection so simple it was genius. Nestled just below the base of his throat, partly obscured by the fold of his white linen amice and the stark white of his rochet, was a chain. It was fine, almost silvery, but with a dull, leaden undertone. And hanging from it, lying against the stark white of his vestments, was a pendant.
It was not large, perhaps the size of a broad thumbnail. It was made of a metal so dark it seemed to swallow the chapel’s dim light rather than reflect it. Set with precise edges, each point tipped with a tiny, perfect cabochon of onyx. In the very centre was a minuscule, intricate seal, an engraving so fine it looked like a whisper in the metal.
It had been invisible against the white because it was the opposite of a jewel; it was an absence, a pocket of void given form. It did not glitter. It simply was.
“The Seal is mine to guard,” the pope’s voice boomed, amplified by the empty halls.
“You trespass on holy ground!”
A sudden wave of force, visible as rippling white light, erupted outward. Sarhea planted her feet and crossed her arms, her ring flaring with violet energy that absorbed the blow in a shower of dark sparks.
Night raised Solar, the blade igniting with a fierce, concentrated daylight that burned away the moon-bathed haze. He charged, a golden streak against the grey ruins. The pope watched, unmoved. As Night brought the sword down in a blinding overhead strike, the pope simply raised his right hand and began murmuring invisible words hidden deep beneath his breath. The searing light of Solar met the platinum gauntlet of an invisible barrier. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, the pope deflected the blade, the force of the parry nearly wrenching Night’s arm from its socket.
▣Sarhea saw the opening. While the pope’s attention was on Night’s dazzling assault, she moved. Not with a charge, but with a silent, gliding step. The ring of dark energy unwound from her brow, its substance shifting from light to something heavier, more tangible. It became a chain of twilight, links forged from swallowed fire. ▣Sarhea lashed out with the chain. It wrapped around his arm first, then his torso, binding with a sound like a closing vault.
He strained against the binds, his holy light flaring in protest against her dark energy. The two forces hissed and spat where they met, a storm of violet and white. “You cannot hold me,” the pope gritted out, his amplified voice now strained.
“This talisman isn’t order. It’s a cage. You’re not protecting souls, you’re guarding their prison bars.” She gestured with her chin toward the seal. “Look at it. Really look. Can’t you feel the anguish in its light? The loneliness?”
The pope’s struggles slowed. His head turned slightly, following her gaze to the intricate, beautiful, terrible seal. For the first time, his certainty seemed to falter. The light around him flickered. “I… was given a sacred duty,” he said, his voice quieter, the amplification fading. “To safeguard the passage, the balance.”
“Whose balance?” ▣Solomon asked, stepping forward, his hands now still at his sides. You are a guardian spirit, like the ones I command. You were meant to serve souls, not this… architecture.” He pointed a finger at the seal. “That thing is a tool of control. It doesn’t balance; it enslaves.”
▣Sarhea tightened the chain, not to hurt, but to emphasise her point. “Join us,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “Your duty shouldn’t be to a lock, but to the people trapped behind it. Be a protector again, not a warden.”
A long silence stretched over the battlefield. The sounds of distant combat seemed to fade. The pope stood, bound in ▣Sarhea’s dark chain, his own light dimming. He looked from ▣Solomon’s earnest face to Night, who stood ready but no longer hostile, to ▣Sarhea, whose expression held not victory, but a fierce, determined hope. He looked once more at the broken piece of Firmament, its perfect, mechanical rotation now seeming cold and empty.
“I have… been... a fool,” the pope whispered. “I will help you...”
The moment he spoke the words, the seal flashed with a violent, panicked light. A beam of punitive energy lanced out and inwards, targeting the pope. The system had registered his betrayal.
His skin began to crack, white light leaking from the fissures. He was unravelling, his code rejecting his choice. ▣Sarhea felt her chain strain, trying to hold his form together. ▣Solomon began chanting, not a summoning, but a binding, a song of stabilisation, trying to anchor the pope’s disintegrating spirit, sweat beading on his forehead.
The pope looked at ▣Sarhea, his form flickering like a bad transmission.
“Free...”
Then his body dissolved not into nothingness, but into a torrent of pure, chaotic data—ones and zeros, shards of holy light and snippets of forgotten prayers. The stream spiralled upward, not toward the seal, but away from it, as if seeking escape. Then, as suddenly as it erupted, they condensed.
Where the ▣Pontiff had stood now hovered a small, pulsing orb of distorted reality. It was like a glitch given physical form, a sphere of staticky, impossible colours that hurt the eyes to look at. It emitted a low, dissonant hum that seemed to vibrate the very code of the world around them. The stone became grass at their feet, then pixelated and regrew in the wrong shade of green. A nearby stone wall briefly displayed a texture of running water.
The orb floated gently into ▣Sarhea’s waiting hand. It was cool and warm at the same time, and it made her own ring’s energy buzz in sympathy. system message [GUARDIAN PROTOCOL: VICARIUS. STATUS: CORRUPTED. AWARD: [ERROR]. ITEM GENERATED: ORB OF PARADOX.]
▣Sarhea closed her fingers around it. The world seemed to stutter for a heartbeat. “This… this can disrupt the source,” she said, understanding flooding her.
Night sheathed Solar.
Before ▣Sarhea could move, the ▣Pontiff, now seeming agitated, pulsed faster.
Reinforcements, with blank, glowing eyes, began phasing into the courtyard from points of light.
“We are out of time. ▣Solomon said, his voice urgent.
▣Sarhea nodded. With her free hand, she reached into the air and tore. It was not a violent motion, but a precise one, like parting a curtain. A vertical slit of impenetrable blackness appeared beside her, edges crackling with the same violet energy as her ring. It was their passage out of bounds to the neutral ground.
Night didn’t hesitate, pushing through the dark opening. ▣Solomon backed toward it, still facing the incoming fighters, his hands raised in a warding gesture. ▣Sarhea took one last look at the altar, at the prison it represented, and then she stepped backwards into the portal, clutching the ▣Pontiff to her chest.