The lights descended along the road that fell toward the bay.
There were not many of them, and yet they advanced together around an enormous torch shaped like a cross.
Three tongues of blue and gold fire burned upon it, one on each arm and another at the tip, thrashing against the coastal wind as if they did not merely light the way, but kept the darkness that follows the night at bay.
Mercer watched them from the beach.
"Were we expecting visitors?"
The Inquisitor looked away from the forest. Then he sighed and began walking toward those torches.
"Given our noisy... landing, it is no surprise that the villagers of Urdiales have mobilized. If I remember correctly," the Inquisitor replied, searching his memory for the name of the nearest village.
The cross emerged first from the slope.
It was made of black iron and old copper, with a gas tank fastened to its base. The rest of the small procession walked beneath its shelter.
Most of them did not look like soldiers.
They wore thick clothing made of dark wool, hardened leather, and sturdy scraps of cloth. Small metal plates had been sewn over their chests, and their boots, reinforced with iron caps, sank heavily into the sand.
Their coats were lined with animal fur and patched with straps, double stitching, and pockets for filters, knives, and cartridges.
At the sight of that enormous red figure approaching, more than one of them wanted to run.
No one did.
"Father..." muttered the broad man walking beside the old man. "I don't like this."
The old man took a step forward, away from the cross and his two guards.
"No one likes this, Cael."
The Inquisitor took another step.
As he approached the cross, its flames leaned toward him with a force too aggressive to be nothing more than a shift in the air.
Before his figure of more than two meters, the old man swallowed.
"Your Eminence."
The Inquisitor watched him without answering at once. He did not know his name, so he addressed him by the rank he could read in his overburdened cassock.
"High Priest..."
"Sacristan," the old man completed, kneeling with effort. "The shepherd chosen by the bishopric to guide and protect the flock of Urdiales."
The Inquisitor observed him for a moment.
Then he inclined his head, barely.
"Rise, Sacristan. I have not come to humiliate you before your flock."
The old man took a second to obey.
Not out of pride, but because his knees did not answer him the first time.
There was no trace left of the lively old man who, only a few hours earlier, had tried to use his position to convince a young ranger that the kingdom's "pesetas" would serve just as well as Sacred Metal for the freshly hunted piece.
Before the Inquisitor, he seemed to have aged several decades at once.
When he stood again, he kept his head lowered.
"Thank you, Your Eminence."
Choosing each word with care, the old man continued.
"I would not dare question your presence. Nor that of the men who accompany you. But, as priest of the village, I am obliged to ask..."
The men behind him swallowed.
They were all waiting for the question.
And they feared the answer.
"What is one of the seven Inquisitors of the Regnum doing in this lost bay, at the foot of our small village?"
The Inquisitor did not seem offended.
If anything, he seemed to have expected that question from the beginning.
And, knowing that someone else would be listening, he used the priest's question as an opportunity to inform him.
"I am here by order of the King of New Constantinople."
The name passed through the procession like a cold current.
There was no one on that beach, perhaps no one on the entire continent, who did not know that city.
It was not merely a distant capital.
It was the wall that had protected Europe for centuries.
"The eastern front is in a... compromised state," the Inquisitor continued. "The outer lines have given way. Most of the Bunker-Castle have fallen. And the monolithic city of Ankara is about to breach the Regnum's final defensive line."
The Sacristan went pale.
He had not known things were that bad.
Even some Brittanic soldiers stopped pretending they were not listening, surprised to hear it directly from one of the Church's principal figures.
"For that reason... The King Baldwin VI, using the divine authority granted by His Holiness the Pope, has invoked his right to call a Crusade."
The beach fell silent.
"And all the kingdoms of the Regnum are bound to answer."
Cael looked toward his own people, as if he had understood far too quickly where this was going.
That very day, they had risked their lives to complete the quota that kept them away from the Southern Front.
And yet, after the arrival of that Inquisitor, none of it seemed enough.
Cael took an involuntary step forward.
"What does that mean?"
Sacristan tried to stop him.
"Cael!"
"No!" the miner shouted.
The High priest even tried to order his guards to restrain him by force, but stopped when he caught the Inquisitor's gesture.
Let him speak.
"We meet our quotas," Cael said, his voice breaking with rage and helplessness. "We tear ourselves apart to meet them. And now you come here to tell us we have to abandon our homes and die defending the eastern front?"
Those words did not sit well with the men and women who had just left their own homes behind beneath the beige uniform of the Brittanic Crown.
The crimson mask turned toward Cael, and the miner froze.
The anger slowly vanished from his face, replaced by the fear of a man who had just remembered whom he had raised his voice against. It stole the strength from his legs and made his knees sink into the sand.
As if kneeling were the natural, unconscious response.
The Inquisitor did not raise his wounded voice.
"I am not here to recruit miners," He did not need to. "The Kingdom of Hispania already holds an open front in Andalusia and is exempt from joining any Crusade."
Cael swallowed.
"Then..." he murmured, looking at the hundreds of soldiers. "Why are you all here?"
As the Inquisitor spoke, a Brittanic soldier carrying a radio pack approached Mercer. His earpiece, strapped beneath his helmet, crackled with distant voices.
The soldier leaned toward the general and spoke to him in a low voice.
When he finished, Mercer approached the Inquisitor and informed him in a few words.
The crimson figure merely nodded.
Mercer drew the wide-barreled weapon fastened to the harness beneath his arm, aimed at the night sky, and fired.
The flare rose with a dry whistle.
For an instant, green smoke hung suspended above the bay.
Then it burst into a flame of the same color.
"I am here to recruit one person," the Inquisitor said.
No one answered.
They were all distracted by the movement within the mist.
The first barge emerged from the fog.
Then another.
And another.
Several dozen dark silhouettes entered the bay, low, broad, loaded with men, vehicles, and sealed crates.
Cael stared at them, unable to believe that all of that deployment was for...
"One... person?"
The Inquisitor turned his mask toward the dark line of the forest.
Toward the same place from which the crimson shot had come.
"Captain-Engineer Kean."
His broken voice crossed the beach and sank between the trees.
"Founder of the Fourth Mechanical Division of Constantinople."
The effect was immediate.
Mercer stopped looking at the mist.
Cael frowned in confusion, unable to understand the weight of the title that had changed the air on the beach.
But for the Brittanic soldiers, and for Sacristan himself, who did understand...
They froze, following the Inquisitor's gaze toward the forest.
Searching for the owner of a title written in blood across the military history of not only the Regnum, but humanity itself.
The creator of one of the greatest and most tragic weapons against the corruption.
Even at the center of the bay, the S.A.S. stopped.
Father Toll left the saw motionless over the Omega's open skull. One of the nuns, her hands buried up to the elbows in charred flesh, raised her head. For one second, those butchers of nightmares stopped seeming indifferent.
The Inquisitor did not turn his mask away from the same spot in the forest.
"How long do you intend to keep hiding... old friend?"
As if he had been aware of his presence from the beginning.
Cael did not know that title.
Nor that name.
But he recognized the orange light that shone behind the undergrowth.
The light of a hunched figure who allowed himself to be seen among the trees.
And then shook something beside him.
A few seconds later, Cael's eyes widened as he recognized the familiar emerald glow rising, reluctantly, beside that figure.
Them the two figures stepped out of the forest darkness.
The first was short and hunched, with an orange light glowing over the visor of his helmet.
The second walked one step behind him, straighter, a rifle held in both hands and the emerald visor still burning beneath the hood of his mantle.
When they reached the Inquisitor, the orange light went out.
The old man did not kneel.
Nor did he lower his head.
He simply raised both hands to the side clasps of his helmet and removed it.
Beneath it was an old face, full of scars that crossed weathered skin, and eyes that were still alive, though sunk in the dark circles of someone who had gone decades without a full night's sleep.
His arched back made him seem shorter, weaker, like camouflage that broke apart when seen up close.
Because of the broad shoulders still visible beneath the mantle. The thick neck revealed when he removed the helmet. The muscles still firm beneath wrinkled skin.
The man behin him did not remove his own.
For a moment, no one spoke.
The wind from the bay stirred the green mantles and the Inquisitor's crimson cloak.
Then, something changed beneath the red mask. Not enough for anyone to see. Only enough for the old man to hear.
"Alfie... it is good to see you."
The figure behind "Alfie" turned his head, and with it, his helmet.
It was the first time he had heard the name of the guarded man who had taught him to hunt, to shoot, to wield a sword, and practically everything else he could remember.
"Tch..." The old Forest-ranger did not miss that gesture from his disciple.
And he complained about it to the culprit. "You have only just arrived, and you are already running your mouth."
The Inquisitor's broken warmth was not returned by Alfie.
Not after hearing that name and remembering the misfortunes bound to it.
"What are you doing here?"
"I already said it. I am here by order of the King of.."
"Cut the act."
The atmosphere tightened at once.
That lack of decorum before an Inquisitor was not well received. Not by the Brittanic soldiers, nor by the aide who straightened behind her lord with the rigidity of a wolf on the prowl.
But Alfie did not even spare them a glance.
He kept looking directly into the sharp slits of the crimson mask.
"Tell me why you are really here."
The barges ran aground against the sand one after another.
The roar of diesel engines covered the beach, blending with the Inquisitor's broken voice until it became something only those closest to him could hear.
"The Brotherhood needs you."
The old man did not react.
He had expected that.
But not what came next.
"Project María... is showing signs of awakening."
For the first time, the old man looked away.
Just enough to glance at the person behind him.
Before turning back to the Inquisitor, his pupils tightened and a cold sweat running down his back.
"T-that is impossible."
"You yourself said it could happen."
The Inquisitor did not say it as a reproach.
He said it as if he were handing one of his own theories back to him, decades after Alfie had spat them out like poison.
"I said many things so the idiots at Central would stop playing with things they did not understand."
The Inquisitor did not yield.
"The Sages agree."
The old man let out a dry laugh, humorless and heavy with contempt.
"The Sages gave me permission to focus on reviving the Guardians."
"Too much time has passed. You are needed elsewhere."
The Inquisitor barely turned his mask toward the young man with the emerald visor.
"It is time you allowed the next generation to repair what you could not."
The engines gradually began to lower their revolutions.
The roar diminished.
And with it, more ears began to catch fragments of the conversation.
"So all this verbiage about Constantinople, the Crusade..." Alfie narrowed his eyes. "Was it just cover to recruit me again?"
"I wish it were."
The Inquisitor lowered his gaze toward the person behind Alfie.
"Besides... you are not the one the King is looking for."
The young man went still.
The crimson mask inclined slightly toward him.
"Ashliath Kean."
The name crossed the beach with uncomfortable precision.
The figure beneath the green mantle raised one hand to his helmet and switched off the visor.
The emerald light died, revealing tired green eyes through the helmet's horizontal slit.
"Do you accept King Baldwin's call for aid, and will you return home to implement your master's advancements in the defense of the Eastern Front?"
The question did not sound like an order, though it carried the weight of one.
Among the Brittanic soldiers, curious glances passed over the future comrade beneath the mantle, the one an Inquisitor had come to recruit personally.
Among the villagers of Urdales, the reaction was different.
Cael clenched his fists.
Because he understood that without that young man... every return home would become far more dangerous, for him and for his men.
Before answering the call of a city where he had been born, and which he did not remember, Ashe turned his gaze toward the only family he had.
He expected an order.
A sign.
Something.
But the old man gave him nothing.
Only contained rage, and a silent warning Ashe could not decipher.
Then he looked back at the Inquisitor.
After a moment, the young Forest-ranger had the decorum to kneel before the Inquisitor and remove his helmet before answering.
The wind from the bay shook the short, unkempt mane of gray hair that had given him his name.
Many of the soldiers were surprised to see how young he was. Seventeen, perhaps even younger at first glance, if not for the scars and the look in his eyes.
They were green, tired, and almost lifeless, framed by dark circles less deep than his master's, but just as present, like an inheritance.
The young woman in the beret who accompanied the Inquisitor, and his own assitance, watched him for a couple of seconds longer than necessary, correcting the image they had formed beneath that helmet.
And when he spoke, his voice came out firm.
"I refuse."