The river gate wore the lighthouse's white bar like a sash. Our Chorus Lattice hummed along the lamps; the air had the patient feel of a city that intends to see morning.
Boots struck cadence on stone—another army's rhythm, bright and clipped. Banners of gold-white enamel entered the square: Holy Empire Sanctifiers, helms rimmed in false haloes, tabards stitched with a sun that refused to warm.
They looked at our ears before they looked at our faces.
"Elf filth on an Abbey road," one said, gentle as a sneer. "This lane is under Imperial protection."
Aurelia's shield found my back by a measured inch. "Eyes front," she told them.
A knight with a mask like a chapel door tilted his head, as if scenting bread he didn't intend to buy. "Hmm," he said, voice dry and curious. "Another annoying Healer." His visor turned so the darkness inside looked precisely at me. "Eliminate them."
The haloes around their helms didn't ring—they absorbed. Light went into them and came out… obedient to something else.
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 12,940 / 13,180 MP: 8,210 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 31% Oathbond: Linked (84%) │
│ Buffs: Chorus Lattice (active), Etiquette Canticle (soft) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,312 / 12,460 │
│ Allies: Dawnwardens (4) in reserve (reflectors) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
SYSTEM: Sanctifier Cohort (Holy Empire — Dark-tainted)
Units: 8 Sun-Imperial Knights, 1 Absolver-Canon, 1 Mask of Orthodoxy (Commander)
Traits: Anointed Silence (interrupts casts), Null Benediction (pierces % Aegis), Indulgence (resists civility), Backline Injunction (clause versus healers' shadows)
Commander (Mask): Unseen Decree (suppresses detection), Domine Mandate (orders override lesser auras)
The Mask was a hole in my senses—no weight, no breath, just geometry in church clothes.
"Imperial road?" Aurelia said, voice level. "No. Our ward is active."
I lifted Lysithea a hair. "Last chance to be courteous."
"Absolve," murmured the canon—and my breath caught mid-Mend as if pinched. The Anointed Silence spiked down the lane; every syllable in the air tripped.
They came hard.
Two knights low, two high; one feinted a shoulder check and spear-turned it blade-close. Close quarters insisted. Spells died half-born. I moved through the stutter—Bellguard a tap against a notched guard; Aegis +12% banked in the small mercy that timings grant. Aurelia ate angles with her rim, turning edges by degrees and not giving noise to Foreclose.
"Back-clauses!" she snapped.
"Divorce filed," I breathed between teeth—Counter-Signature circle around our boots, the clause plain: My shadow is not my consent. The first Injunction for my heels completed to me then died under the cut.
The Mask took no lane. He appeared in the wrong corner of my eye, stepping between notes—Unseen Decree—and pinched another Mend to ash. I felt the ragged edge where a heal should have finished and Annotation snapped down of its own good habit, re-writing the last knit as pre-edited.
We gave up distance; took elbow and breath instead. Aurelia's boot stomped a spear haft; my shoulder slid under an elbow; Lysithea hummed as a scalpel in a room full of hammers.
The canon's Absolve rolled again—spell interruption like being told to stop singing in your own chapel. I refused the air and cut a Sunline along a lamp's glass.
"Peal Weave—under."
The tone ran the Chorus beneath his Silence; my Tricant rode that—Smite to the hinge of a knee, Mend to the bruise already forming in Aurelia's forearm, Thread to bind a cracked cobble lip we'd soon have to push off.
"Status," Aurelia clipped.
┌──────────── BATTLE OVERLAY ───────────┐
│ Oathbond: 77% (under interrupt pressure) │
│ Aegis Hymn: 18% │
│ Debuff pressure: Anointed Silence ↑ │
│ Hostiles: 10 (Mask + Canon + 8 Knights) │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Mask arrived where he hadn't been, gaze a bland curiosity that made edges behave like servants. His blade kissed my collarbone—Null Benediction slid under Aegis and wrote pain with bureaucratic neatness.
Air left. We dodged in ugly, necessary ways—hip to brick, plate to edge, heel over heel. Suture Screen caught three javelins and then failed on the fourth; Reprise pecked at braids of false halo until they shed sparks like lies.
We were losing the polite parts of the fight.
"Name it," Aurelia said, eyes flat gold. "Name their wrong."
Names are law.
"Hospitium Radiant," I said, voice ragged, sword tip drawing the clause in light: Emergency aid is sanctuary; no force may impede it. I Counter-Signed the Suture Bridge beneath our boots and sent the sentence along the Chorus.
New Technique (Built): Hospitium Radiant — Counter-Signature + Suture Bridge + Chorus Lattice.
Within the corridor: heals become charity (immune to Levy/Indulgence), first Absolve per target fails, Interrupts weakened. Civilians inside gain Regen (low).
The canon blinked as his next Absolve found no purchase and slid off truth. A knight's blade hesitated half a breath at the corridor's lip—enough.
"Now," Aurelia said.
She shouldered in—close quarters, her kind of grace—rim kissing blade base, elbow finding mail seam, boot turning an ankle. I Tricant-threaded her frame—Mend to biceps and hip as she dug, Smite shaving plate where Null Benediction hid, Thread binding a lamppost crack so our Chorus wouldn't choke.
The Mask hated being named out loud; he stepped to step on my word. "Another elf who thinks light is law," he murmured behind steel. "Let us correct the record."
He vanished from my sense, reappeared where he wanted to, blade already mid-argument. Quadrature feints folded into a single intent: stop the healer's mouth.
I gave him a mouthful of glass.
"Amen Break." I touched Lysithea to a Dawnwarden shield boss; Prism Mercy split down mirrored ribs into silent sub-lines that desynchronized his false halo—like tapping a hymn into an instrument tuned to lies. The halo flickered. Bellguard met the exact hinge; Aegis +24% arrived.
Technique (Built): Amen Break — Prism Mercy off mirrored surfaces to desync Null Benediction / false haloes; reduces Anointed Silence efficacy; opens parry windows "where none should."
"Finish the captain, I'll fix his choir," Caelion called from the line without looking—white shields presenting in Halo Phalanx, mirrors catching and returning my Amen in a neat, silent grid. Dawnwardens moved like a wheel taught by a better cart.
We still bled. Dodges ate breath. Interrupts snipped syllables. Close grips traded bruises where words couldn't go. HP ticked down in tidy, ugly numbers.
┌──────────── CRITICAL TICK ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 6,220 / 13,180 │
│ Aurelia — HP: 7,010 / 12,460 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 9% (low) │
│ Oathbond: 68% (climbing) │
└───────────────────────────────────────┘
The Mask slid for my throat; Aurelia arrived as shield and verdict. "With me," she said, low.
"With you," I answered, and opened White Mercy—partial as a pressure front along the Hospitium rails. The Mercy didn't boom; it filled the inches we needed—made footing honest, made breath easier than fear insisted. Reprise bolts leapt fat out of overheal and pecked the canon's false stole, unraveling his next Absolve into cloth.
"Break his Indulgence," Aurelia said, eyes on the Mask.
I set a Bond Mirror in the polished breast of his cuirass—the tiniest Annotation caret where his last interrupted heal should have lived. It reflected us back at him as a cadence he could not skullcap; for a heartbeat, our Oathbond stood inside his visor, true.
He flinched.
That was all a paladin needs.
"Together."
Her Sunlit Verdict ripped straight through Domine Mandate; my seam rode a hair aside and wrote the liability column of that order. Amen Break pinged off three shields, hummingbird-fast. The Mask's halo stuttered; Null Benediction fell a fraction behind the blade that needed it. Bellguard kissed the neck; Aegis overflowed.
"White Mercy—Release!"
Not a burst—the right push. Kind, irresistible pressure where steel met shadow. False haloes cracked like sugar shells. The Mask ceased to be unsensed and became merely a man who had made bad agreements. He went down hard, blade clanging honest on honest stone.
The canon tried a final Absolve with a scream wrapped around it. Hospitium read the shape and returned it unsigned. Aurelia's rim made the argument shorter. The last two knights cut for my sash in messy hatred of elves and were corrected by Civility they did not deserve: Daze at the corridor's lip; Shame making their boots inaccurate.
Then—quiet. The kind that is shaped like a city refusing to be a sermon you didn't ask for.
We held the corridor and waited for the habit of wrong to try to return. It didn't.
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Hostiles: Sanctifier Cohort routed │
│ Fallen (stabilized/purged): 7 │
│ Commander (Mask): down; corruption shed│
│ Dispelled: Null Benediction nodes (3) │
│ HP — Eirion: 9,980 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 9,410 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 5,960 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 14% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 88% │
│ New: Hospitium Radiant; Amen Break │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Sanctifiers who could breathe did, shakily. Up close, the wrong aura peeled like soot from their haloes when we touched them with Sunline and Thread. Not absolution—extraction. What remained were soldiers with shame on their faces and mouths that could form sorry if given a day and clean water.
The Mask lay looking at the night he could finally see. "Elves," he rasped, no venom left in the word. "Annoying."
"Working," Aurelia corrected, breath fogging. She didn't put her shield down until she was satisfied that nothing on him wanted the wrong noon anymore.
The Dawnwardens reset mirrors; the Halo Phalanx stood down. Caelion, helm tucked under arm, kept the Etiquette Canticle soft around us and did not gild the moment with anything that would make my sister's eye twitch.
The System laid its careful coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Vesperfall — Imperial Incident │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Noonless Sanctifiers repelled │
│ Corruption signatures logged │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +31,000 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +180 │
│ ▸ Relic: Fractured Halo Fillet │
│ ▸ Skills: Hospitium Radiant, Amen Break (unlocked) │
│ ▸ Mastery: Bellguard +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We did the small right things. Thread out of wrists where zeal had learned to be cruelty. Mend into ribs that had learned to take orders badly. A Sunline bow on the river gate with a clause no empire could argue: No one denies air under alarm.
"Status," Aurelia said.
┌──────────── FIELD CHECK ───────────┐
│ Eirion — bruised ribs (stable) │
│ Aurelia — contused forearm (stable)│
│ Corridor integrity: 100% │
│ Civilians: calm; regen holding │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
The Mask sat up with our help, visor off, a human face under iron. He looked at my sword like a student looking at a chalk line that explains a hard problem. "What did you do to our blessing?"
"Called it what it was," I said. "A tax."
He winced. "We were told the elves had no law but pretty tricks."
Aurelia's look would have sharpened swords. "You were told wrong."
He nodded once, small and honest. "Then we will learn."
"Do," Aurelia said. "Quietly."
We set off again, stitching commas behind us. The corridor held; the lamps liked their job. Somewhere, a baker risked a second loaf. The lighthouse drew a fuller breath and held it.
At the gatepost, I touched the glass with two fingers. "Hospitium," I told it softly, and left the word there like bread on a doorstep.
Aurelia slid back into the exact inch at my spine. "Still guarding my six?" I asked, because a line's strength lives in light words as much as steel.
"In a city where blessings have teeth?" she said, not unkind. "Especially."
We walked on, close-quarters bruises settling into lessons, our law written in light and tone through streets that had decided to prefer morning.