I finish the last of my bread and pull my hand away from Cecilia's grip, though part of me wants to leave it there. That thought alone makes something uncomfortable twist in my chest.
"I need to report to Caldera," I say, standing. My body protests ribs aching, shoulder throbbing but I push through it. "New orders so i need briefed as soon as possible"
Cecilia's face falls slightly, but she nods. "Of course. I should get back to coordinating the relief efforts anyway." She stands too, brushing crumbs from her dusty Inquisitor robes. "I'm in charge of civilian aid distribution for this sector as well as making sure chaos does not spread amongst the remaining civilian population."
"Congratulations," I say
"It's a start." Her smile is small but genuine. "Maybe one day I'll have enough influence to actually change things. Make the Church into what it should be instead of what it is."
There's that idealism again. That belief that the system can be reformed from within. I just nod not trusting myself to respond without a snide comment.
"I'll find you later?" she asks, and there's something vulnerable in her voice. "We still need to talk. About... everything."
"Yeah," I say. "Later."
She reaches up and touches my cheek. Her hand is warm. Soft. I find myself leaning into the touch before I can stop myself.
"See you soon, Ayato," she whispers. "I really did miss you."
Then she's gone, weaving through the soldiers and civilians with practiced efficiency, already barking orders at a group of Inquisitors who were standing around chatting.
I watch her go, my cheek still tingling where she touched it.
Then I turn and head toward the command post that Lucain told me to report to via our bond.
The building Caldera commandeered is one of the few structures still standing a squat, stone administrative building that probably served as a tax office or courthouse before the Federation took Oakhaven. It's damaged, sure. The roof is partially collapsed and most windows are blown out. But the walls are intact and that's more than can be said for ninety percent of the city.
I walk slowly, my body still protesting every movement. The sun beats down, warm and bright. Around me, soldiers and Inquisitors go about their tasks clearing rubble, tending wounded, distributing food and water to hollow-eyed civilians.
But I barely see them.
My mind is already turning over what just happened. Cecilia. Her embrace. Her tears. Her smile. The way she held my hand like I was something precious.
It felt... right. Natural. Like we'd done it a thousand times before.
But we haven't.
I barely know her.
The thought catches me off guard, cutting through the warm haze of emotions I've been feeling since she crashed into me. I slow my pace, navigating around a pile of rubble, my mind starting to analyze our relationship.
I think back, trying to reconstruct the timeline.
It was in Lont. The square. That fucking square where everything changed.
My first kill.
The memory hits me like a physical blow, and I have to stop walking for a moment. That day, I'd wandered into the merchant district.
The voices in my head still new then, still strange and terrifying had started whispering. Telling me things. Showing me things.
That fucking man's fear. His guilt. The blood on his hands.
He'd killed his brother. Murdered him over a debt. And the guilt was eating him alive.
And I'd... I'd judged him.
I don't even remember deciding to do it. One moment I was listening to the voices, and the next my power was active. The Fearmonger was flooding through me. My hand was moving.
He'd collapsed. Just... collapsed. His heart stopped. Terror-induced cardiac arrest.
My first actual kill on another human. And it had been an accident. A loss of control.
I force myself to start walking again, my mind replaying that moment with new eyes. New suspicion.
She'd been with a group of Inquisitors on patrol. They'd heard the commotion and come to investigate they were kneeling at my feet the entire time and once the man died they sprung into action.
And when I'd stammered out an explanation that the man had killed his brother, that I'd just... reacted she'd smiled. Actually smiled. Like I'd done something praiseworthy.
"Then you have done the Crown and the Divine a great service, my Lord," she'd said. "Murdering filth like him has no place in this world."
She'd defended me. Immediately and completely. Told the other Inquisitors it was handled. Dispersed the crowd. Made the problem disappear.
But now...
Now I'm wondering why Why would an Inquisitor immediately defend someone who'd just killed a man in public? Even if the man was a murderer and I am an Elite, there are proper channels. An Elites power has never given them the power to slaughter citizens of the Empire with impunity. A group of civilians watch me pass, whispering. I ignore them, my mind churning. Then I went to Count Ashlands, which was a decent amount of time away from where I first met her. But the one day Cain gave me an Howard off to enjoy some free time, she was there. And she had invited herself to hang out with us which even made the other inquisitors with her look at her in shock.
I should have been suspicious then and there but I wasn't. I was embarrassed and flustered instead. And she was always friendly. Always warm. Always making me feel like I mattered. Always flirting with me.
I'm passing the remains of what used to be a market square now. Stalls crushed and scattered. Bodies covered with tarps. The smell of death in the air.
My mind is racing now, connecting dots I should have seen months ago. And then I sought her out out the Garrison, a complete breach of any type of power. Why? Why did I trust her so completely?
I grew up in the outskirts. You don't survive there by trusting people, especially not authority figures. The Inquisitors were feared in the outskirts they're the ones who come to root out heresy, who take people away for questioning, who enforce the Church's will with ruthless efficiency.
But Instead of relying on my years of experience and my deep rooted hate for the Church and the Empire, I sought her out. Actively. Deliberately.
My face burns remembering the night I showed up at her door. Gods, what was I thinking? Why would I do something so foolish, instead of working through my problems alone the way I'd handled every other crisis in my life I found Cecilia's quarters. Knocked on her door in the middle of the night and she'd opened it in her nightclothes. Hair down. Sleep-tousled. And she'd just... let me in. No questions or confusion. Just stepped aside and welcomed me into her private space.
We'd talked for hours. I'd told her everything my doubts about the gods, my fears about becoming a weapon, my guilt over losing control my anger at my parents being executed I told her things I hadn't told anyone.. And then we'd fallen asleep. Together.
My chest tightens thinking about it. About how right it felt. How natural.
But it wasn't natural. Nothing about that was natural.
What kind of Inquisitor lets a strange Elite into her room at midnight? What kind of person—let alone a member of a strict religious order—falls asleep with someone they barely know?
Someone who's trying to get close to me. Someone who's cultivating a connection. Someone with an agenda.
I pass an Inquisitor helping an injured civilian. He sees me and bows deeply. "Blessed be, Child of Light."
I nod stiffly and keep walking.
With her, all my normal caution evaporated. And that has never been me, I'll bitch and moan but I really am disciplined and focused on my goals. I don't let personal feelings interfere with things I need and want to do. I sneer replaying the worst of that time.
When Cain had launched an air bullet one of his compressed wind attacks and I had barely dodged it. He was mad I had missed his training and in the middle of that fight, I'd forgotten. Forgotten that Cecilia had insisted on escorting me back to the castle. And his power went past me and It had hit the carriage where Cecilia was.
The memory is burned into my mind. The splintering wood. The screaming horses. The sickening crunch of impact.
And my reaction.
The Fearmonger had exploded. Rage like nothing I'd ever felt consumed me completely. Vision going greyscale. The world narrowing to one target: Cain. The threat. The one who'd hurt her.
I'd attacked with everything I had. No thought. No strategy. Just pure, animalistic fury.
I stop walking again. Have to. Because the realization is hitting me like a physical blow.
My reaction to her being hurt was... disproportionate.
I barely knew her. We'd talked, yes. Spent time together but not enough time for that much hate and anger to be ignited at her being harmed.
And yet I'd tried to kill Cain. One of the empire's most decorated Elites. My teacher. My mentor.
Tried to kill him because he'd accidentally hit a carriage that happened to have Cecilia in it.
That's not normal. That's not a rational response to someone being in danger.
That's... that's the kind of response you'd have if someone threatened the most important person in your life. Your family. Your bonded partner. Someone you couldn't live without.
Not someone you'd known for a few weeks.
My hands are shaking now. I clench them into fists.
And Cecilia... Cecilia had climbed out of that destroyed carriage.
I remember it so clearly. She'd been bleeding cut on her forehead, a broken arm. Her robes torn. But she'd been walking. Talking. Running under her own power.
An unawakened human. Hit directly by an Elite's air bullet. An attack that had killed two horses instantly and splintered reinforced wood.
She should have been dead.
At minimum, she should have been critically injured broken spine, crushed organs, internal bleeding.
But she'd walked over to me and asked me to stop.
And the rage had vanished. Just like that. The Fearmonger receded. The world bled back into color.
Because she told me to. Because she said everything was okay.
My heart is pounding now. Hard enough that it hurts my broken ribs.
How did she survive that? How does an unawakened Inquisitor walk away from a direct hit that killed horses and destroyed a reinforced carriage? I never even asked her. Never thought to consider it. Just assumed that the carriage absorbed most of the impact. That she'd braced at just the right moment.
But that doesn't make sense. Luck doesn't explain surviving that kind of impact. Physics doesn't work that way.
Then she'd appeared during the deployment tests. With high-ranking military officials, the reason that the church had a right and the federations attack also necessitated their oversight to determine if students should be deployed early.
At the time, I'd thought it was odd that a junior Inquisitor would be escorting such important people. But I'd been focused on the tests and my Shadow dance.
And when I'd seen her across the training field... I'd felt nothing.
That's what I keep coming back to. That's the detail that doesn't fit.
I saw her. Recognized her immediately. And felt nothing. No pull. No magnetic attraction. No overwhelming need to be near her.
My emotions toward her were completely flat. Neutral. Gone.
Why?
A markless soldier steps aside to let me pass, snapping to attention. I barely notice.
What was different at the Academy? What changed between Count Ashland's castle—where I couldn't stay away from her—and the Academy—where I didn't care at all?
I run through it in my head. Timeline. Context. Circumstances.
When the deployment tests happened, my Fearmonger was completely controlled and active. My emotions were dampened a side effect of keeping the mark contained.
And I felt nothing for Cecilia.
But now...
I'm not actively channeling my power and my emotions have returned to me although they are still slightly dimmed. But even with my emotions not being as violate as they once were suddenly I can't stop thinking about Cecilia. Can't get her smile out of my head. I feel this overwhelming pull to be near her, to trust her, to believe everything she says. To kiss her.
My breath catches.
The pattern is there. Clear as day.
When my Fearmonger is controlled and my emotions are suppressed: nothing. Complete indifference to Cecilia.
When my Fearmonger is active and my emotions are elevated: overwhelming attraction. Absolute trust. The need to believe in her affection for me to want her.
I'm at the command post now. The guards are saluting. One of them is reaching for the door.
But I stop. Just stop, right there on the threshold, one hand gripping the doorframe.
My mind is working overtime. Putting it all together.
Always supportive Cecilia. Always understanding Cecilia. Always encouraging my violent side calling it righteous, calling it divine service while pushing me to embrace the fact being a three mark bearer makes me a symbol.
My heart skips a beat. Actually skips. I feel it stutter in my chest, and suddenly I can't breathe properly as the conclusion shifts into place.
Oh gods.
Oh gods.
The only explanation is that she's awakened. But that's impossible. If she's Awakened, that means she's breaking one of the empire's most fundamental laws.
Inquisitors cannot be Elites. It's forbidden
The reasoning is simple: Inquisitors hold too much power already. They're the Church's enforcers, the ones who root out heresy and maintain religious order. Giving them supernatural abilities on top of that institutional authority would make them unstoppable. Unaccountable.
It's the same reason Elites can't be nobles or involve themselves in noble political factions. The empire learned long ago that concentrating too much power in single individuals leads to tyranny and undermines the Royal family.
So the laws were made. Clear. Absolute. Unbreakable.
If an Inquisitor who was young when they joined or when they were recruited Awakens they are required to renounce their position immediately and they must join the military as an Elite.
Which means she's committing what would be considered heresy. Treason. A crime so severe that discovery would mean execution.
Unless...
Unless she has protection. Unless someone high up in the Church knows what she is and is covering for her. Using her.
My hands are shaking. Not just from rage now. From the sheer magnitude of what I'm realizing. But what would her power be? Something like emotional manipulation, the thought crystallizes in my mind with sudden, terrible clarity.
This isn't just personal manipulation. This is a conspiracy. An Awakened Inquisitor secretly wielding powers that let her manipulate emotions, and she's been turned loose on me specifically.
Why?
Because I'm the Child of Light. Because I'm a symbol. Because I have three marks and I'm being held up as proof of divine favor.
She's been sent to control me. To shape me. To make me into whatever the Church—or whatever faction within the Church is protecting her—wants me to be.
Every conversation. Every touch. Every moment of trust.
All of it orchestrated. Calculated. Designed to make me compliant.
The anger is a living thing now, cold and sharp in my chest.
She dared, the voices whisper. She dared to think she could own us. Control us. Make us her puppet.
"Sir?" The guard's voice is distant. Worried. "Sir, you need to sit down. You look—"
"I'm fine," I snap, and my voice comes out with an edge that makes both guards take a step back.
I force myself to breathe.
I need information. Need to understand the full scope of this. Need to figure out who else is involved, how deep this conspiracy goes, what they want from me.
And then...
Then I'll deal with Cecilia.
"LT Daath?" A voice calls from inside the building. "The Colonel is waiting."
"Coming," I say coldly.