Silence returned to the catacombs only briefly.
The chambers Noctis had stripped did not collapse into stillness so much as recalibrate around absence. Where sanctified pressure had once pressed outward in steady resistance, there was now an uneven vacuum, a subtle imbalance in the architecture of belief itself. Wards that had depended on layered reinforcement dimmed and stabilized at lower thresholds. Chains that had burned with consecrated light sagged against the stone, their purpose unresolved but no longer actively asserted.
Within his blood storage, bone accumulated in ordered mass.
The skeletal remains of bishops and archbishops lay compacted within contained reserve, stripped of animation but structurally preserved. Relics once saturated with prayer rested inert beside them, gold dulled, silver darkened, enchantments bled dry and cataloged implicitly through the Grid. Nothing taken was wasted. Nothing extracted was unaccounted for.
Noctis stood at the center of the chamber where the last archbishop had fallen, the dust of sanctified remains clinging faintly to his armor and cloak. His spirals brightened as the pressure within him shifted, responding to the accumulation of structured faith now integrated into his system.
The Blood Grid unfolded without prompting.
Crimson latticework expanded outward from his core, branching veins pulsing as new pathways stabilized. Some lines flared brightly, newly reinforced by extraction. Others glowed faintly, incomplete, indicating processes that had begun but not yet matured. The Grid was not static. It was actively reorganizing around the material he had consumed.
He examined the changes deliberately.
Fragments of doctrine had begun to coalesce where before there had only been resistance. The binding mechanics of prayer, once external pressure, had been partially inverted and absorbed. This did not grant him dominion over faith, but it allowed him to recognize its structure instinctively, to anticipate resistance before it manifested.
The Grid reflected this shift clearly.
A fragmentary hymn-binding pattern had formed, incomplete but functional enough to register. It was not yet capable of independent deployment, but it demonstrated the principle: faith could be constrained, slowed, or redirected when approached as structure rather than ideology.
Resistance to sanctification had also increased measurably.
Holy wards no longer pressed against his aura with the same efficiency. Radiant suppression lost cohesion more quickly when sustained pressure was applied. This was not immunity, but it was durability — the difference between being repelled and being delayed.
Most significant was the emergence of a new vein.
It branched outward from his core lattice in pale, coiling lines that had not existed before. Unlike bloodline or dominion veins, this one did not assert control. It consumed, assimilated, and repurposed. The Grid marked it as a process rather than a skill, an evolutionary path that would deepen with further exposure.
Faith-based essence was no longer foreign.
It was becoming material.
Noctis let the lattice fade gradually, his spirals dimming back to a steady glow as the Grid locked the changes into place. The headache behind his eyes persisted, deeper now, but it remained within tolerable parameters. He adjusted his breathing, allowing the Grid to finish settling before moving again.
The catacombs had provided efficiently.
But they had not yet been exhausted.
Ahead, the deeper doors waited.
These were not sealed with the pragmatic urgency used for bishops or archbishops. They had been built with permanence in mind. Gold bands reinforced the stone, their surfaces etched with scripture layered so densely that individual prayers overlapped into continuous patterns. The inscriptions pulsed faintly even now, centuries after their creators had died, sustained by accumulated belief rather than maintenance.
Each line carried rhythm.
Not sound, but repetition. Faith stacked upon faith until the stone itself responded as living structure.
Noctis approached without haste.
When he placed his hand against the seal, sanctification surged immediately, reacting to proximity rather than intrusion. The pressure was heavier than before, deep enough that the floor beneath his boots vibrated faintly as the inscriptions asserted coherence.
He unraveled them deliberately.
His spirals flared crimson as his aura pressed inward, isolating each prayer strand and separating it from the lattice that gave it collective strength. The resistance was sharper here, hissing audibly as words lost cohesion and intent collapsed into inert residue.
The glow dimmed in stages.
The gold bands cracked as sanctification failed, their surfaces dulling as the binding prayers died. Stone groaned as the doors finally gave way, opening inward with grinding reluctance that echoed down the passage behind him.
Beyond lay a vast hall.
The scale of the chamber exceeded anything he had encountered so far. Coffins lined the walls in ordered succession, each larger than those above, each sealed with gold-inlaid stone and draped in remnants of red silk that had once denoted rank. Crosses hammered into the stone bore marks of repeated consecration, their surfaces scarred by ritual reinforcement over generations.
The air was dense enough to resist breath.
This was not merely a burial vault. It was a repository of authority.
Cardinals.
The first coffin responded as he entered.
Gold bands split under internal pressure, sanctification asserting cohesion as the lid slid aside. A skeletal figure rose, taller and more elaborate than the archbishops before it. Scripture carved into its bones glowed steadily, the inscriptions deeper and more numerous, their sanctification integrated into structure rather than applied after death.
A staff assembled itself in the cardinal's grip, gold and iron twisting together as residual essence coalesced into weaponized form.
The chamber brightened sharply as the relic activated.
Noctis did not pause.
He advanced through the light, allowing his aura to absorb and destabilize the radiance rather than deflect it. The sanctified energy resisted more strongly here, pressing inward with coordinated intent, but the Grid adapted under load, redirecting pressure across his spirals to prevent overload.
He seized the staff and applied focused dominion.
The weapon's enchantments collapsed under sustained pressure, their lattice failing as the binding prayers lost cohesion. The glow dimmed, turning ruddy before extinguishing entirely. He discarded the inert shaft and drove his palm into the cardinal's skull, applying pressure directly to the core of sanctified identity.
Extraction followed immediately.
This essence was heavier than anything he had consumed so far. Faith here was not residue but foundation, bound to role and authority rather than belief alone. The Grid strained as it separated structured soul matter, spectral cohesion, and blood trace from the remains.
The cardinal sagged as the light left its bones.
Before it struck the floor, Noctis redirected the remains into storage, preserving structural integrity for later forging.
More coffins responded.
One split, then another, then several at once. Cardinals rose in overlapping sequence, each bearing relics shaped for command rather than ceremony. Censers ignited with pale flame. Blades etched to sever the unclean hummed as sanctification surged through the hall.
Noctis moved into them without hesitation.
Relics were torn from skeletal hands and stripped of enchantment in moments. Gold dulled. Silver darkened. Prayer-etched cloth withered into inert fabric as sanctification collapsed. Each item was transferred into storage as soon as resistance failed, cataloged alongside bone and blood.
The strain increased steadily.
Each extraction forced recalibration as faith-based essence settled unevenly within the Grid. Noctis moderated intake carefully, allowing pauses where necessary to prevent destabilization. The headache deepened, sharpening into persistent pressure, but his movements remained controlled.
The ground shook as heavier coffins burst open at the far end of the hall.
These were not cardinals.
Their remains were darker, marked with iron brands fused directly into bone. Armor lay bound to their skeletons as though grown rather than worn, and their eye sockets burned with wrathful cohesion rather than sanctification.
Inquisitors.
They charged immediately.
Their speed exceeded that of the clergy before them, driven by fragmented soul cores conditioned for pursuit rather than denial. Relic-blades flared as they closed distance, movements aggressive and unrestrained.
Noctis met them head-on.
His aura expanded sharply, crushing the sanctified momentum that propelled them forward. Each clash stripped cohesion from their forms, spectral remnants torn free and absorbed before resistance could reorganize. Bones remained intact, pulled into storage as soon as animation failed.
The inquisitors fell in rapid succession.
Their weapons dulled and snapped as enchantments collapsed. Armor lost cohesion and fell away as inert mass. The hall filled with the sound of bone settling and metal striking stone.
As the last of them fell, the remaining inquisitors raised their voices.
The sound that emerged was not hymn or chant, but invocation — a directive embedded deep enough to survive fragmentation. The prayer did not spread outward.
It reached upward.
The sanctification in the chamber spiked violently as the invocation completed, tearing through the layered wards above and forcing response from something that had not yet been engaged.
Noctis's spirals flared as he cut down the final speaker, but the process had already been completed.
Light tore open the space above the hall.
Three figures descended.
Their forms were defined by radiance rather than flesh, wings of fire extending outward as their presence asserted itself against the stone. Each step carried weight sufficient to crack marble, each gaze pressed downward with judgment encoded into existence rather than belief.
They did not speak.
They did not need to.
Noctis straightened as they landed, blood still dripping from his hands, his spirals burning brighter than at any point since he had entered the catacombs.
This extraction had crossed a threshold.
The work had escalated beyond containment and into confrontation with the mechanisms that enforced faith itself.
And the catacombs were no longer quiet.
The presence of the three descending entities altered the chamber before any overt action occurred.
Sanctification intensified sharply, not as a flare or surge, but as a reassertion of baseline authority. The air compressed, pressing downward with uniform force, as though the space itself were being reminded of an older hierarchy. Wards that had dimmed during the earlier extractions brightened again, not fully restored but reinforced enough to regain coherence. The stone beneath Noctis's feet vibrated faintly as layers of consecration aligned themselves around the intruders' arrival.
These were not summoned constructs.
They were responses.
Noctis did not shift his stance immediately. He observed.
Each entity maintained a stable form defined by radiant cohesion rather than anatomy. Their wings were not appendages for flight so much as manifestations of sustained output, sheets of structured energy extending outward to regulate presence. The light they emitted was not indiscriminate; it resolved into precise gradients that pushed against shadow, essence, and corrupted sanctification with targeted pressure.
They did not acknowledge the dead.
Their attention fixed on Noctis alone.
The pressure against his aura increased incrementally, testing rather than striking. The Grid reacted at once, redistributing load across his spirals to prevent collapse. Faith-based suppression pressed inward, attempting to isolate his dominion from the surrounding space. The resistance he had gained from prior extraction reduced the immediate effect, but the pressure remained substantial.
This was not an attack.
It was assessment.
The first entity moved.
Its descent was controlled and deliberate, feet touching stone without sound as radiant force dispersed evenly through the floor. Where it stood, sanctification deepened, reinforcing the area as an anchor point. The other two adjusted their positions in response, forming a loose triangular containment around Noctis without fully enclosing him.
The configuration was intentional.
They were restricting space, not advancing.
Noctis responded by compressing his aura inward again, narrowing its outward pressure to avoid escalation while maintaining integrity. The Faith-Eater Vein pulsed faintly within the Grid, reacting to proximity rather than activation. It did not yet assert function, but its presence altered how incoming sanctification was processed.
Faith was no longer purely suppressive.
It was becoming material input.
The first angel extended a hand.
Radiant filaments coalesced from the surrounding light, forming a binding structure that reached toward Noctis without accelerating. The filaments were not chains or cords. They were rule-sets, layered directives designed to overwrite local dominion by reasserting higher authority.
Noctis allowed contact.
The filaments brushed against his aura and tightened, attempting to lock him into a defined state. The pressure intensified sharply, driving pain through his spirals as the Grid absorbed and analyzed the structure. Faith Resistance mitigated some of the effect, but the binding still anchored itself partially, slowing movement and constricting output.
He did not break it immediately.
Instead, he drew inward.
The Faith-Eater Vein responded.
It did not consume the binding outright. It examined it, isolating the structure that gave the directive coherence. Faith here was not belief-driven but rule-driven, a codified hierarchy enforced through repetition and proximity to source.
Noctis applied pressure selectively.
The binding destabilized where it contacted his aura, filaments fraying as their internal hierarchy conflicted with his dominion. The radiant structure dimmed and lost cohesion, retracting back toward its origin point as the directive collapsed.
The first entity adjusted.
Its output shifted, increasing intensity while narrowing focus. The surrounding sanctification surged again, pressing inward more aggressively now that assessment had concluded.
The second entity advanced.
It moved faster than the first, closing distance in a controlled burst that carried significant force. Where it stepped, the stone cracked as radiant pressure displaced mass. Its wings flared, not to strike but to stabilize its momentum and reinforce its presence against Noctis's aura.
This time, contact was direct.
Radiant force collided with dominion, producing a sharp compression that drove Noctis back half a step. The pain behind his eyes spiked abruptly as the Grid absorbed the impact, spirals flaring unevenly before stabilizing.
He countered immediately.
Rather than striking at the entity itself, he applied focused extraction to the sanctification anchoring its presence. The Faith-Eater Vein activated partially, drawing in structured faith from the immediate area and disrupting the reinforcement that allowed the entity to maintain optimal output.
The effect was subtle but measurable.
The entity's radiance flickered momentarily as the extracted sanctification settled unevenly within Noctis's Grid. It adjusted its stance at once, redistributing output to compensate, but the interruption had already occurred.
The third entity moved.
It did not advance directly. Instead, it elevated slightly, wings spreading wider as it projected radiant suppression across the chamber. The light intensified uniformly, attempting to compress Noctis's aura from all sides and force a collapse inward.
This was coordinated.
Noctis responded by expanding laterally rather than vertically, pushing his aura outward in a controlled ring that met the suppression head-on. The pressure was immense, forcing rapid recalibration as faith-based output pressed against dominion at multiple points simultaneously.
The Grid strained.
The Faith-Eater Vein brightened as it absorbed additional structured faith, but the intake increased instability rather than relieving it. Noctis moderated draw immediately, narrowing extraction to avoid overload.
The confrontation settled into equilibrium.
Neither side escalated further in that moment. The angels maintained containment, their radiance steady but constrained. Noctis held position, aura compressed but intact, spirals burning with controlled intensity.
The chamber itself began to respond.
Sanctification embedded in the stone reacted unpredictably under competing pressures. Wards flickered, some reinforcing containment while others destabilized and dimmed. Hairline fractures spread across the marble floor as layered intent conflicted, producing stress the architecture had not been designed to manage.
Noctis assessed quickly.
Prolonged engagement here would be costly.
The Faith-Eater Vein was active but immature, capable of disrupting and absorbing faith-based structures only at limited scale. Continued exposure would accelerate its development, but the strain on his Grid would increase proportionally. The angels were not expending themselves inefficiently. Their output was measured, sustained, and supported by the sanctification of the chamber itself.
This was not a battle meant to be won quickly.
Noctis adjusted his approach.
Rather than contesting containment directly, he shifted focus downward, extending extraction into the sanctified architecture beneath the angels' anchor points. The stone resisted immediately, but the pressure forced micro-failures in the layered wards supporting the entities' positions.
The effect propagated slowly.
One anchor point dimmed slightly as sanctification was drawn away, forcing the corresponding entity to compensate by increasing output elsewhere. The redistribution created imbalance across the containment formation.
Noctis pressed into that imbalance.
He advanced a single step, applying targeted pressure against the weakened sector. The containment shifted, not breaking but tightening unevenly as the angels adjusted positions to compensate.
The chamber shook again, this time more violently.
Above ground, the disturbance registered faintly.
In Twilight, priests paused mid-drill as sanctified instruments resonated unexpectedly. Wards along the city's outer structures flickered once, then stabilized. Alyndra felt the shift immediately, a tightening in the air that suggested distant strain rather than imminent threat.
She ordered drills halted and sent a runner to Veyra without explanation.
Below, Noctis continued to work.
The angels responded to the architectural destabilization by increasing output, their radiance intensifying to reinforce failing sanctification. This created additional material for the Faith-Eater Vein to process, accelerating its activity but pushing the Grid closer to overload.
Noctis moderated again.
This confrontation would not resolve through brute dominance or immediate extraction. It required repositioning, reduction of support, and controlled attrition.
He began to move laterally, circling the chamber while maintaining pressure on the weakened anchor. The angels tracked his movement precisely, containment shifting to follow without breaking formation.
The process continued.
Pressure mounted. Sanctification strained. The Faith-Eater Vein pulsed brighter, edging closer to a threshold it had not yet crossed.
And the chamber had not yet reached failure.
The balance in the chamber did not collapse all at once.
It shifted in increments so small they would have been imperceptible to anything less attuned than Noctis's internal spirit. Where his aura had once pressed outward as a unified presence, it now behaved like a living system under stress, tightening in some regions while thinning in others, reacting to pressure rather than asserting dominance blindly.
The angels maintained their formation.
Their radiance remained steady, but the subtle changes in output betrayed adjustment. They were compensating—redistributing sanctified force as the structure beneath them weakened. The chamber's stone groaned again, this time with a deeper resonance, as layered prayer embedded in the architecture strained against extraction occurring not only above it, but within it.
Noctis continued moving laterally, step by measured step.
Each shift forced the angels to respond, their containment pattern tightening unevenly as anchor points lost cohesion. Where sanctification had once flowed freely through the stone, it now encountered resistance—absence where faith had been drawn away and replaced by hollow pressure.
The pain behind Noctis's eyes deepened into something sharper.
It was no longer a simple ache from overuse. It was feedback. His internal spirit was processing structured faith at a rate it had not been shaped for, assimilating doctrine, authority, and judgment into something closer to raw essence. The Faith-Eater Vein—now less a conceptual pathway and more a reflexive process—pulsed in time with his heartbeat, drawing in fragments of sanctification whenever pressure peaked.
This was dangerous.
Not because the faith resisted him, but because it fit too easily.
Structured belief slid into his aura like liquid poured into a mold that had always existed but never been filled. The sensation was unsettling, not intoxicating, but clarifying. He could feel how faith worked now—not as devotion, but as hierarchy enforced through repetition and reinforcement.
The angels felt the change.
The first entity shifted position again, increasing output through its wings as radiant pressure intensified along Noctis's left flank. The light pressed inward sharply, attempting to compress his aura and force a kneeling posture—a symbolic enforcement encoded directly into the sanctification.
Noctis did not kneel.
He anchored himself instead, driving his presence downward into the stone. The aura that pressed into the chamber floor did not dominate it. It occupied it, displacing sanctified resonance with his own pressure. The effect was immediate. Hairline fractures spread outward from his boots, and the sanctification embedded in the stone sputtered unevenly.
The angel's output faltered.
Not fully. Not yet. But enough to confirm what Noctis had already begun to suspect.
They were not self-sustaining.
Their presence depended on the sanctified infrastructure of the catacombs—on prayers layered into stone, on authority preserved through ritual continuity. Every fragment of faith he stripped from the chamber weakened the environment that supported them.
This was not a battle of force.
It was erosion.
The second entity advanced again, this time closing distance with greater speed. Its radiance sharpened, condensing into defined vectors rather than diffuse pressure. Where it moved, light carved through shadow with surgical precision, attempting to sever Noctis's aura from the space around him.
Noctis met it halfway.
He raised his arm and allowed the radiant edge to make contact, absorbing the impact directly into his internal spirit. The pain was immediate and intense, tearing through his spirals as sanctification tried to overwrite the structure of his presence. His vision blurred momentarily as judgment pressed inward, demanding compliance.
He rejected it.
The Faith-Eater process surged reflexively, drawing in the structured intent embedded in the attack. The radiant edge destabilized, its coherence failing as the sanctified rule-set lost hierarchy. Light scattered into fragmented residue, which his aura absorbed unevenly before he forced it into containment.
The backlash hit hard.
Noctis staggered one step backward, breath forced from his lungs as his internal spirit struggled to stabilize. Blood ran freely now, dripping from his nose and mouth, spattering the marble floor. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and re-centered himself, compressing his aura to regain equilibrium.
The angels did not pursue immediately.
They reassessed.
Their formation shifted again, tightening into a more aggressive containment that sacrificed lateral coverage for vertical suppression. Radiance intensified overhead, pressing downward with the combined weight of all three entities.
The pressure was immense.
Noctis felt it drive him closer to the floor, not physically, but existentially—his presence forced into a narrower band of space as sanctified authority attempted to define him. The pain sharpened into something almost crystalline, each pulse of pressure resonating through his internal spirit like a struck bell.
He could not allow this to continue.
Noctis changed tactics.
Rather than continuing to draw faith passively, he inverted the process. He let his aura expand sharply for a fraction of a second, not outward, but inward—collapsing pressure into his core and forcing his internal spirit to absorb a surge of structured sanctification all at once.
The effect was violent.
The Faith-Eater process flared uncontrolled, ripping doctrine, hierarchy, and residual judgment into his aura faster than his spirit could fully stabilize. The chamber shook as sanctification across the hall dimmed abruptly, entire sections of warding collapsing at once.
The angels reacted instantly.
Their radiance spiked, wings flaring as they attempted to compensate for the sudden loss of support. The containment formation fractured under the strain, each entity forced to re-anchor independently as the shared sanctified lattice failed.
This was the opening.
Noctis surged forward despite the pain, driving himself toward the nearest entity while its output recalibrated. He did not strike at its form. He drove his aura into the space beneath it, ripping sanctification out of the stone and collapsing the anchor point entirely.
The angel dropped.
Not falling, but descending abruptly as its support vanished. Its wings flared wide to arrest momentum, radiance blazing as it struggled to stabilize in open space without the chamber's reinforcement.
Noctis did not give it time.
He closed the distance and seized the entity by the torso, his aura wrapping tightly around radiant form. The contact was catastrophic. Sanctification and dominion collided directly, producing a shockwave that cracked marble and sent fragments skittering across the floor.
The angel screamed.
Not in sound, but in resonance—a violent disruption of harmonic structure as its sanctified coherence fractured. Light tore free in blinding arcs, which Noctis absorbed in bursts, forcing the Faith-Eater process to stabilize even as his internal spirit screamed under the strain.
He did not destroy it.
He drained it.
Layer by layer, he stripped structured faith from the entity, tearing authority away from form until the radiance dimmed and coherence failed. What remained collapsed inward, no longer an angelic presence but a dense mass of inert sanctified residue that his aura struggled to contain.
Noctis released it.
The remains shattered against the floor, dispersing into fragments of light that faded quickly, leaving behind nothing but scorched stone and a sudden, terrifying absence.
The remaining two angels recoiled.
Their formation broke entirely now, radiance surging unpredictably as they pulled back to reassess. The sanctified pressure in the chamber dropped sharply, replaced by instability and echoing resonance from failed wards.
Noctis stood amid the damage, breathing heavily, blood running freely, his aura flaring unevenly as his internal spirit fought to contain what it had taken.
The Faith-Eater process had crossed another threshold.
He could feel it clearly now—not as a new power, but as a change in how his presence interacted with belief. Faith no longer pressed against him as an external force alone. It responded to him, destabilizing in his proximity as hierarchy failed to assert itself.
This had consequences.
Above the cathedral, distant wards flared violently before stabilizing. In Twilight, bells rang once—uncommanded, unbidden—as sanctified instruments reacted to a disruption they could not interpret.
Below, Noctis steadied himself and turned toward the remaining entities.
The confrontation was no longer balanced.
And the catacombs had not finished responding.