The cobbled streets of lower Prada were quiet, shrouded in thick evening mist. Lanterns flickered dimly, casting long, dancing shadows across cracked stone walls. Henry and Emilia walked side by side, their footsteps echoing softly. Neither of them spoke, but the silence between them was not awkward—it was calming, almost fragile.
A small chapel stood at the end of the street, barely intact, its bell tower broken and ivy covering much of its face. A cracked plaque read only: Sanctuary. No full name. No denomination.
Emilia hesitated. "You're sure this is the place?"
Henry nodded. "He told me to come here if I was ready."
"Who?"
Henry paused. "...I don't know his name."
Emilia gave him a look. "That's not creepy at all."
Inside, the chapel smelled of old incense and wet stone. Candles burned in a half-circle near the altar. Standing in the center of that quiet flame was the same man Henry had seen in dreams, visions, ruins—the one with silver hair, draped in midnight-blue robes lined with fading starlight patterns. His eyes, hollow yet kind, met Henry's with knowing stillness.
Emilia hung back instinctively.
Henry approached and knelt, pulling from his coat a velvet pouch. With deliberate care, he opened it and placed three blackened Ritual Tokens upon the cold stone floor.
The Priest looking person looked down at them, and for a moment, everything was still.
"You've carried these far," the man said softly, voice neither old nor young. "Long enough for them to stain your bones."
"I'm ready," Henry answered.
The man nodded once and raised his hand. The air shimmered, thickened. A strange warmth rolled over the room. From the stone beneath the tokens, a sprout erupted—slowly, unnaturally—like time had been folded around it. The sprout turned to a slender stalk, then a tree, then a single fruit as black as space and pulsing with soft, amber veins.
It hovered before Henry like a question.
"This is the seed of perception," the man said. "To climb Route –4: The Peer, you must eat not to gain power, but to shed it. What remains will be... you."
Henry reached forward, plucked the fruit, and sat beside Emilia on the broken pew.
"What just happened?" she whispered.
"He's preparing me to advance."
"To what?"
Henry glanced at her. "Something I might not fully come back from."
Emilia looked toward the silent man standing by the altar. "Who is he?"
Henry shrugged. "A guide. Maybe more. I've never asked. Usually I forget to ask."
She folded her arms. "I'm from the southern sub division of Ceferin. We'd be burned alive for summoning trees out of rock."
Henry smirked. "Guess it's a good thing you met me instead."
She rolled her eyes, but there was warmth in her voice. "Still not sure if that's a blessing or a curse."
Henry closed his eyes, feeling the pulse of the fruit in his palm.
The chapel had fallen silent.
Only the flicker of dying candles remained, casting strange shadows on the stone floor. Henry sat motionless, the black fruit of perception resting in his open palm, pulsing like a faint heartbeat.
Father Vain moved toward the altar with unnerving calm. He reached into his robe and pulled out a thin sheet of pale paper, almost transparent. With an ink that shimmered like oil on water, he began to write.
The symbols were unreadable, shifting as Henry tried to look at them. Letters from a language that didn't belong to this world. Letters that remembered something older than sound.
"What is this?" Henry asked, voice barely a whisper.
"Your prayer," Father Vain said, "and your descent."
He handed Henry the page.
Henry stared at it.
The symbols crawled across the paper like living things.
"Read it aloud," Vain said. "Fuse the fruit. Speak with no fear."
Henry took a breath.
And began to recite.
As the first word left his lips, the paper lifted from his hand, floating between his face and the ceiling.
As the second word pronounced, the walls around him started to shrink.
By the third, the air cracked like brittle glass.
In the glimpse,
Reality shattered.
Like a mirror struck dead center, everything fragmented. The chapel, the candles, Father Vain, even his own body gone.
He stood in a vast black void.
No ground.
No sound.
No stars.
And no breath.
He reached for his throat but didn't suffocate.
He screamed, but no sound came. Not even in his own skull.
Then, the darkness twisted.
Shapes took form—not with eyes, but with awareness. Creatures with skin made of weeping stone. Towers of flesh, spiraling into themselves. Wings of forgotten alphabets. A massive ringed eye blinked open before him, wider than the sky.
After that,
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A sound.
A heartbeat.
Thunderous.
It wasn't his.
He turned.
And saw the Earth.
It hung in the void behind him, spinning slowly, a third of his size, like a blue marble against the void. But it bled red rivers flowing across the continents, as if veins were opening inside the planet.
The heartbeat again.
Coming from Earth.
He couldn't look away.
But the Earth blinked.
The Earth had an eye.
Before he could react, the void snapped again. He fell backward, through screams, not voices but colors that shouted. Gravity twisted, folding into angles that couldn't exist.
He landed.
In a ruined city. Skies crimson. Buildings melted sideways. People frozen mid-scream, glass embedded in their skin like scales. A clock tower stood above, ticking backward. Children walked in reverse, eyes empty. He saw himself in a window, bleeding from the mouth, smiling.
He ran.
Everywhere, visions surged:
A man with fire for veins cradling a headless infant.
A sky where stars were being harvested by black tendrils.
A god, nailed upside down to an invisible wall, laughing until it coughed universes.
A river of people, all with Henry's face, drowning in black tar.
He dropped to his knees.
Pain rippled through his chest.
The fruit.
It was inside him now. He could feel it, rooting into his spine, crawling through his nerves, whispering.
Then a voice.
"You saw what sleeps beneath. You saw what breathes through time. And now, you carry it."
Henry opened his eyes.
He was back.
The chapel returned though dimmer, older somehow. Father Vain stood still, unmoved.
Henry gasped, breath returning all at once.
"What… was that?" he croaked.
"The price of perception," Vain said. "You are Peer now, Henry Ford. Your senses walk ahead of your body. The fruit has shown you a sliver of what is to come."
Henry looked at his hands. They shimmered faintly, vibrating.
"Will.... the apocalypse happen? Is it true?!"
Vain didn't answer. He silently leaned back.
The air in the chapel felt cooler now, as if the stone walls themselves were catching their breath from the ritual. Faint golden light seeped through the broken stained glass, casting patterns of fractured saints and ruined divinity onto the floor.
Henry stood silently beside Emilia, still shaking slightly from what he had just witnessed in the void.
His body felt… different.
Stronger. His heartbeat had stabilized. His breath came easier. His bones didn't ache like before, and even the lingering wound on his shoulder had sealed itself as if time reversed over it.
But the questions clawed inside him.
He turned to the priest robed in celestial white. The one he only knew as Father.
"What were those things?" Henry asked. "The Earth was crying… people with my face drowning… What are miracles really?"
Father Vain sat slowly on the cracked steps near the altar. He folded his hands, staring into the candlelight.
"You want truth?" he asked. "Then listen well, both of you."
Emilia, arms crossed and brow furrowed, said nothing, but her eyes watched carefully.
Father began.
"Miracles are not what the world thinks they are. They're not gifts. Not divine kindness. Not holy proof."
He looked directly at Henry.
"They are curses disguised as blessings."
Henry blinked. "But… they heal people. Bring the dead back. There are songs in the sky that cure sorrow…"
Father Vain nodded. "Yes. That's how they trick us."
He stood and began pacing slowly.
"Miracles manipulate the perception of mortals. They rewrite memories, twist truth, and implant certainty. When someone sees a golden rain heal a dying soldier, they don't question it—they rejoice. They believe they were saved. But they do not remember the cost."
He raised a finger.
"Miracle: The Hand of Endless Mercy."
A flicker of light danced in the air beside him.
"False Blessing: It heals all sickness."
"True Horror: It turns the healed body into a porous sponge, quietly draining energy from the host until there's nothing left but a smiling husk. That energy goes somewhere else."
Emilia stepped forward. "That's… insane."
"No," Father said, "that's survival. Miracles exist on a plane of high-order physics, where they cannot help but consume lower beings like us. To them, consuming us is like breathing air. They don't hate us. They don't even see us."
He gestured again.
"Miracle: Song of the Golden Choir."
A faint melody echoed for a second. Soft, nostalgic, heartwarming.
"False Blessing: Calms entire cities, ends riots, cures sadness."
"True Horror: Everyone who hears it has their memories edited. They believe things are better now even if their children are missing, or they were lobotomized in their sleep. The peace is false. The obedience is real."
He turned, eyes darker now.
"One more."
"Miracle: The Mother's Prayer."
"False Blessing: Brings back a loved one from the dead."
"True Horror: The body is revived, yes, but the soul inside is a fragment of the miracle itself. The person remembers almost everything, but serves a higher will. A living spy. A seed. Sometimes, the family never even notices."
Emilia was pale now.
Henry's hands trembled again.
"But they feed on fear, right?" he asked.
"No," Father said softly. "That's the worst part."
He looked up at the old stone ceiling.
"They thrive on love. On prayer. On gratitude. They draw power from hope. They weaponize our joy. When you thank them, they grow. When you call it a blessing, they open more doors."
Silence fell over the chapel.
Emilia muttered, "But they feel so… divine."
"They feel like what you want divinity to be," Father said. "But they are not gods. They are born from cosmic erosion tears in existence from long before stars had names. Time broke somewhere, and out of that broken law, Miracles were born."
Henry looked at the altar, the mirror-framed Staff of Revolution resting behind it.
"So what do they want?"
Father Vain's voice turned flat.
"They want to fold all sentient life into themselves. Not to kill. But to absorb. To become an endless sea of awareness. A unity of thought. A single, eternal being made of every mind that ever believed in them."
Emilia stared at him, horror in her breath. "A world with no individuals?"
"No dreams. No rebellion. No you. No me," Father said.
Henry lowered his eyes.
"And now I carry part of them inside me. So, those were all the miracles which were trying to absorb or corrupt me?"
Father nodded. "That is the price to become a Miracle Invoker. But you're not theirs yet, Henry. That's what the Miracle Invoker means. We first declare war, then confront them. You see the lie. And now, you must walk through it without falling."
Father Vain remained seated on the cold stone step, but his gaze had shifted from Henry to Emilia. There was something curious in his stare, like he was observing a half-finished painting and trying to understand what was missing.
He folded his fingers together, slow and thoughtful.
"She's different," he finally murmured.
Henry raised a brow. "You mean Emilia?"
Father nodded slightly. "She is not part of our flock… yet. But she carries something weighty."
Emilia shifted uncomfortably, arms still crossed. "If you're trying to convert me to your Church, it won't work. I already have my own beliefs."
The Father chuckled faintly. "Belief is a seed, child. It merely depends on where you let it bloom."
He stood and walked to the altar. Behind it, nestled inside a wooden chest bound in silver chains, he drew forth a weathered tome edges burnt, spine cracked, ink faded in places like smoke had kissed it.
"This," he said, holding it carefully, "is the Book of Haza. The cornerstone of our teachings. It carries the origins of Routes –5 to –3. It speaks of fate, design, sacrifice, and the meaning of the Path."
Henry leaned forward. "Only –5 to –3?"
"Yes," Father replied. "It is incomplete."
He ran his fingers gently across a jagged tear in the pages. "Seven years ago… something entered this city—unseen, unheard. It stole pages from the book. Not burned. Not torn. Erased. Gone like they never existed. Even the ink's memory won't recall them."
Emilia frowned. "Why would something steal just parts of a holy book?"
"Because some truths," Father said, "are dangerous even to the Miracles themselves."
He closed the book softly.
Henry asked, "And what do the Tanhzils believe?"
"We are followers of the God of Fate," he said. "Every Route of every path has its own Origin. Our life's sorrow, joy, flaw… becomes the first step. And the book reveals these roots. But only for the paths it still remembers. But I can't show this you now. I left the incantation pot in the Hazaya. It is needed to give proof that the person opening it is a Tanhzil or not."
Then his gaze slowly returned to Emilia.
"And what Path do you walk, child?"
She paused. "Charmer Path. Route –4."
Father stilled. His eyes locked on her like a blade poised mid-air.
"And your Role?" he asked quietly.
"…Fury."
A silence wrapped the chapel like frost.
Father Vain's face didn't change. No raised brow. No twitch of muscle.
But something behind his eyes dimmed.
He turned away.
"Fury," he whispered, so faint Henry almost missed it.
A crackle from the candle interrupted them. Henry stepped forward.
"Is something wrong?"
The Father didn't answer at first.
Then he said simply, "It is… rare. Very rare. Fury is not a Role often allowed to live long. Its presence speaks of chaos rising from love."
Henry looked at Emilia, who now seemed uncertain.
"I'll watch over her," Henry said quietly.
Father Vain nodded once.
"You'll need to. Now that you've ascended to Route –4, your responsibilities have only begun. The more you grow, the more you draw their attention."
Outside, the bells of Hazaya rang again.
Twice this time. Both dull. Both heavy.