The city burned like a funeral pyre.
The once-golden domes of Acre had turned black with smoke, and the air was thick with the cries of men dying in the name of God. The Crusaders fought with desperate valor, their tabards torn, their banners trampled beneath Saracen feet. The great walls, thought impenetrable, now gaped open like a wound.
Among the chaos strode Sir Alaric of Thorne, a knight of the Templar Order, his silver cross gleaming beneath the soot that covered his armor. His sword, Sanctis Gloria, dripped with blood — friend and foe alike. The Saracens pressed in from every side, their scimitars flashing like crescent moons.
Alaric's faith was his fortress.
Even as his brothers fell one by one, he whispered the psalms beneath his breath.
Even as the enemy surrounded him, he did not yield.
For he believed that to die in the service of the Lord was not defeat — but passage.
But fate had other plans.
As a catapult stone shattered the nearby chapel, Alaric stumbled through a haze of dust and fire. He saw the altar — the last sanctified ground in Acre — and upon it, the Silver Cross, an ancient relic said to contain the blood of a saint.
"Forgive me, O Lord," he gasped, falling to his knees before it.
And then—
A red light split the heavens.
The moon itself turned crimson, and a voice not of this world spoke inside his mind:
> "Your war is not yet done, Crusader."