The pilgrimage tram descends into Tarsis Theta — a zone marked cleansed, but too clean. Too perfect. Elias walks through a shrine that feels scrubbed of history, where incense hangs like a weapon and purity seals cover the very walls. The people are gone or silent. And behind the holy songs, something hums… hungry.
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The tram coasted into the docking port with a velvet hum.
Not screeching like the hive trains Elias had heard screaming through the under-levels. Not groaning like a machine that wanted to die. No — this one was quiet. Graceful.
Artificial.
The doors peeled open with a sigh of incense and compressed air.
Father Serek stepped out first.
His guards followed, gold-trimmed and silent.
Elias stepped out last.
The first thing he noticed was the smell.
It hit him like a wall — not just strong, but concentrated. Burning myrrh, sulfur, blessed oils, and something sweet, like candied rot. The air shimmered faintly, heavy with smoke.
His rebreather cut out the worst of it, but the scent still crawled through.
The second thing he noticed: the walls.
Every inch of the station was covered in purity seals — thousands of them. Parchment upon parchment, wax over wax, prayers written in looping High Gothic, some still bleeding red ink. A sanctified avalanche of paper.
It looked like a crime scene dressed for mass.
Serek turned to Elias, gesturing to the architecture like a proud host.
"Behold the Emperor's mercy. What once festered now stands cleansed."
Elias said nothing.
His eyes were on the walls.
Specifically: the sections where the parchment was too thick.
Covering… something.
Too deliberate.
Too perfect.
The procession moved forward.
As they stepped deeper into the shrine district, Elias passed what was left of the population.
At first, he didn't notice them — because they didn't move.
They sat in pews. On stairs. By fountains that no longer ran.
Staring forward.
Hands folded.
Mouths shut.
No sound.
No interaction.
Just breathing statues in robes.
One of them, a child maybe ten years old, looked at Elias.
Her eyes didn't blink.
Didn't focus.
He turned to Serek.
"What happened to them?"
Serek didn't slow his step.
"Scars of Chaos don't always show in blood."
"That's not an answer."
Serek finally looked at him. "They were touched. Not possessed. Not corrupted. Just… touched."
"And?"
"They remembered."
Elias frowned.
The priest continued.
"We cleansed the source. Burned the altars. Purged the heretics. But memory… memory lingers."
He spread his arms to the motionless citizens.
"These are souls in recovery. They must be reminded. Daily. Hourly. That they are safe. That they are clean."
He smiled.
"That is why we sing."
And then Elias heard it.
Not loudly.
Just beneath the breath of smoke and the clink of metal boots.
A choir.
But not real.
Vox-amplified, artificial.
Layered harmonies echoing from every corner of the chapel-district — voices singing the same three verses, looped perfectly. Too perfectly.
Pitched high. Too high for comfort.
He turned a corner and froze.
A statue of Saint Kallis the Martyred stood before them — a three-meter marble giant, one arm raised in victory, the other missing. Blood-stained robe. Gold leaf crown.
But the blood stains weren't paint.
They were real.
Still wet.
And behind the statue, barely visible under a peeling edge of a purity seal—
A chaos spiral, etched into the wall. Sloppy. Incomplete.
But there.
Elias turned.
Serek was watching him.
Still smiling.
"Sanctification," the priest said gently, "is not a single act. It is a lifestyle."
Elias felt his chakra stir — not as a skill, but as a warning.
The System didn't ping.
But something in his spine itched.
Tightened.
"Not right," it seemed to say. "None of this is right."
He walked forward, slowly, past the pews of silent survivors, past another altar, past two more servo-skulls.
And as he did, he saw another wall — freshly scrubbed.
Bleached.
But someone had tried to scrape it.
Faint marks remained, just beneath the white.
He leaned close.
Carved into the stone, barely readable—
"They only burn the loud ones."
Elias straightened.
Serek's voice came from behind him.
"Some things must be cut out before they rot the rest."
Elias turned.
The priest was smiling again.
But his eyes weren't.
[END OF PART 2]