The cobblestones of Sunspine Avenue gleamed beneath the morning sun, slick with powdered gold and flower ash. Bells rang from the seven towers of the capital, their harmony sharp and slow, like a warning spoken sweetly. The capital of Kurosei had scrubbed its skin clean for the rite—every banner starched, every statue polished, every peasant forced from the boulevard to make way for the Celestial Procession.
Zeyr Vol watched the preparations from the shadowed colonnade of an abandoned bathhouse, his breath masked with crushed mint leaves and ashroot, his eyes veiled in an illusion spell made from candle soot and snake oil. It did not hide him from blades or suspicion, but it bent awareness—people forgot him the moment they looked away.
He did not move. He had not blinked in four minutes.
And then he heard it: the sound of a thousand feet striking stone in perfect synchrony.
The procession had begun.
He stepped forward into the light.
Dozens of armored priest-knights in radiant steel advanced like a wave of statues. Their armor shimmered not with polish but with actual enchantment—each plate inscribed with mirrored runes that reflected not images but virtues: mercy, faith, sacrifice. Behind them came the Veiled Inquisitors, cowled figures bearing rods made from petrified sunwood. They beat them on the ground in rhythm, sending out pulses of spiritual coercion that made the devout fall to their knees as they passed.
Zeyr did not kneel.
He stood still as the parade curved toward the steps of the Sanctum of Light Reborn, a massive structure built from pale bone, salt bricks, and mirrorglass. Its dome shimmered like a captive sun. Thousands crowded the plaza below it, chanting, crying, and throwing petals in the air like offerings. Pilgrims had slit their palms open in ritual devotion, staining silk sleeves crimson in hopes of being seen.
They would be disappointed.
Only one being would command true attention today.
She emerged from the Sanctum gates as if gliding—not walking, but floating an inch above the stone.
Aeryn.
No title. No surname. Not anymore.
She was simply Aeryn, the empire's resurrected saint, the Moonflower Bride, the Light That Washed the Plague. Her name was spoken in prayers, in executions, in victory scrolls burned as incense.
Zeyr watched her without breathing.
She wore robes not of cloth, but of woven light—threads of sunrise and hymns pulled tight into an armor that flowed like water. Her hair was no longer black, but white-gold, and her eyes had turned silver. Her bare feet touched nothing. She smiled, slowly, beatifically, as if seeing some radiant realm far away from this one.
He knew that smile.
He had kissed it once, long ago, in the belly of a temple too ruined to remember.
He had pressed poison into her lips with his own, just to see if she would resist.
She hadn't.
But the woman before him now was not her.
She was something else.
Something built.
As she descended the sanctum steps, her hands lifted to greet the crowd. A wave of golden light washed from her palms, passing harmlessly through the people. But Zeyr—though distant—felt the burn in his marrow. It was not light. It was refinement. A spiritual purge. It sought out corruption and singed it.
His body flinched.
The ashes of ten noblemen and three bishops clung to his scales. The pain bloomed, small but sharp, like guilt turned into fire.
He dropped behind the column and inhaled once, steadying himself.
Then he moved.
Through alleys. Over walls. Past a fruit vendor who did not see him. He cut through the Blind Quarter, where plague victims begged with brass bowls and prayer cloths. He walked along roofs of paper-tiled market houses, feet silent. The closer he got to the Sanctum, the less he trusted his disguise. The divine magic radiating from Aeryn made illusions waver. Already, his breath began to fog visibly with each exhale—something was trying to reveal him.
Still, he reached the outer wall.
From here, he could see everything.
Aeryn now stood in the plaza center, before a vast crowd of nobles, priests, and chosen commoners. She held a chalice filled with glowing nectar—liquid sunlight harvested during the eclipse season. This was the core of the ritual.
The rite of Graced Remembrance.
Zeyr knew it intimately. He had copied its steps once for the court. A shaman-king from the coast had begged him to translate it to cure madness. The king died screaming the same night. Zeyr had thought the ritual was buried.
He had been wrong.
Aeryn's voice rang out—not her voice, exactly, but something fuller. Harmonized. Like many versions of her speaking at once. The magic laced into her resurrected flesh had made her into a vessel for divine concordance.
"We remember the sacrifices," she intoned.
"We remember the blood that fed the tree."
Zeyr flinched. That line had not been in the original.
She continued, lifting the chalice above her head.
"We remember the heretic. The betrayer. The green flame that tried to blacken our light."
The crowd murmured. Some spat. Some wept.
Zeyr went still.
"They teach them to hate me," he whispered. "Through her mouth."
He stared at her face. She didn't blink. Her smile didn't change. She turned to the four cardinal directions, casting drops of nectar in each, then began to lower the chalice to the mouth of a waiting child—one of the new imperial acolytes.
The ritual would end in a symbolic consumption: the passing of divine memory into a pure soul.
But Zeyr was already moving.
Down the wall. Through the interior of a shuttered tallowhouse. Across the cloth vendor's carts. He moved like a fever dream. Not rushing—but flowing. His breath slowed. His blood thickened, focusing in his limbs. The toxins in his stomach awoke like snakes in a warming den.
He reached the side corridor of the Sanctum—an unguarded auxiliary passage meant for processional exits.
A single monk guarded it. Elderly. Blind in one eye. Zeyr touched him lightly on the forearm.
"Do you still dream of the violet shore?" he asked.
The monk blinked. Confused.
"Yesss…" he said, voice dry with memory.
"Then sleep beneath it."
Zeyr kissed the monk's brow.
The man sighed once—and sat down, peacefully asleep before he touched the ground.
Zeyr entered the corridor, passed into the Sanctum's interior, and pressed himself against a lattice window that opened into the main plaza. From here, he could see Aeryn again. She was kneeling now, laying hands upon the child's head.
The child glowed.
But Aeryn trembled.
Only slightly. A flicker, like a string plucked too tightly.
Zeyr's eyes narrowed.
Her lips moved. Not the ritual lines. Different. Smaller. Personal.
He focused.
The child blinked in surprise.
Zeyr tilted his head.
She was speaking to him.
To the child?
No—through the child.
Aeryn's hand trembled more.
Her fingers spasmed—then clenched.
The light faltered.
It was not obvious. Most would think it part of the performance.
But Zeyr saw it for what it was.
Resonance loss.
A sign of internal struggle in divine vessels. The host soul was fighting its bonds.
Zeyr pressed a hand to the window, claws digging faint lines into the frame.
"She's still in there," he whispered.
Aeryn looked up.
Directly at him.
She should not have been able to see him.
But for a moment—one heartbeat, two—her gaze locked to the exact lattice he stood behind. Her smile cracked.
Not faltered—cracked.
Just a millimeter. A tilt. A softening.
Her eyes flickered. Silver went cloudy.
Then the priests swarmed her.
She collapsed.
The child screamed.
Clerics rushed forward. The crowd gasped. Bells rang in disarray. Horns sounded emergency chords.
Zeyr vanished down the corridor.
He did not flee—he retreated. Calm. Fluid. Every step precise.
But something had changed.
He had come to confirm that she was gone.
Now he knew she was still alive.
Buried. Buried beneath layers of light and obedience and holy rot.
He had only one thought as he stepped into the underworld street tunnels and disappeared.
I can still reach her.
Even if it meant poisoning heaven itself to do it.
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