Night fell inside the cathedral like black silk sliding over a blade.
Candles burned low.
The wounded slept—or pretended to.
Cecilia never left the central nave; she moved from cot to cot, giving pieces of herself away until her shadow looked thinner than paper.
Zero sat on the steps of the high altar.
Knees drawn to chest.
Chin resting on them.
Harmless. Forgotten. Perfect camouflage.
He watched her the way a dying star watches the last planet it will ever burn.
Memory rose uninvited.
Seven hundred years ago.
Another life.
Another cathedral, almost identical.
She had found him the same way: half-dead, soaked in blood that wasn't his, branded F-rank trash.
She knelt exactly like tonight, palm glowing, voice soft.
Are you afraid of dying, little shadow?
He had answered truthfully, young and stupid, love still tasting like salvation.
Yes. But I'm more afraid of living without you.
She had laughed, bright and terrible, kissed his forehead like absolving sin.
Three years later, she kissed the same spot with lips coated in divine poison—while the spear went through his heart.
The memory tasted like rust and lilies.
Zero closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, Cecilia stood before him.
She held a chipped porcelain cup, steaming with something that smelled of honey and penance.
"Drink. You haven't eaten since yesterday."
He took the cup with both hands, careful, as if it might bite.
Thank you.
She sat beside him on the cold step.
The hem of her white cloak brushed his bare ankle.
Silence stretched.
Thick enough to drown in.
Finally, her voice, barely above the candle-crackle:
"You aren't afraid of me."
Zero tilted his head.
Should I be?
"Most people are. The Saintess Order… we carry too much death under the mercy. They think it rubs off."
He sipped the tea.
It tasted like the last morning of his old life.
I've carried worse things, he murmured.
Cecilia studied his profile.
"Where did you come from, Zero? Before the Crucible took you."
He let the question hang.
Candles flickered twice.
A place that doesn't exist anymore.
A mother who sang off-key.
A little sister afraid of thunder.
One day the sky tore open and I fell through.
When I looked back, the hole had closed.
Three days ago. Or seven hundred years. Time is strange when you're the only one who remembers.
Cecilia's fingers tightened on her knees.
You speak like someone much older.
He smiled.
Small.
Tired.
Ancient.
Some nights feel longer than centuries.
She reached out without thinking.
Tucked a strand of black hair behind his ear.
The moment her fingertips brushed his skin, both froze.
A jolt. Not static. Not pain.
Something deeper.
Recognition without memory.
Cecilia's breath trembled.
Why does touching you feel like… coming home from a war I don't remember fighting?
Zero turned his head slowly.
Faces inches apart.
Because some wounds are shaped like people, he whispered.
And some people are shaped like wounds.
Her eyes—snow melting over steel—searched him.
Say it again.
"Say what?"
My name. The way you said it earlier. Like it hurt you to speak it.
He leaned in. Foreheads nearly touching.
Her pulse thundered in his ears like war drums.
"Zero," she breathed.
Just Zero.
Her hand rose, trembling, and settled over his heart.
Beneath the thin robe, beneath the fake brand, the real circle of void pulsed once—hungry, possessive, furious.
For one impossible second, her palm glowed faintly, as if trying to heal a wound that had never stopped bleeding.
Zero let her feel it.
The abyss staring back.
Then he pulled away first.
Gentle. Cruel.
I'm tired, he murmured.
May I sleep here tonight? The floor is warm near the candles.
Cecilia looked like someone waking from a dream she didn't want to leave.
Of course. Always.
She stood.
Cloak whispering over stone, and walked three steps before stopping.
Zero.
Yes?
If you ever remember the war… tell me. I think I fought in it too.
She left him alone beneath the hollow eyes of the First Saintess.
Zero waited until her footsteps faded.
Then he pressed his hand over the place she had touched.
His shadow coiled up the altar like smoke, wrapping around the statue's throat.
Quiet, he warned it.
The shadow hissed—but obeyed.
He curled on the cold stone among dying candles.
For the first time in two lifetimes, he let himself dream while awake.
Dream of the day she would learn his real name.
Dream of the exact expression she would wear when the lilies finally choked her lungs.
Dream of the boy she saved orchestrating every petal.
Across the city, iron spires burned with candlelight.
The Order of the Iron Requiem.
Where the Saintesses absorbed pain to give mercy, the Requiem inflicted pain to forge strength.
Their creed: Suffering is the only honest god.
Their symbol: a broken crown dripping blood.
A boy—no, a young man—stood on a balcony of black glass.
Hair the color of fresh blood. Eyes made of winter.
Brand visible on his throat: [Crown of the First King] S-rank.
Flaw: [Must never kneel, or the crown will devour him].
His name: Cain.
In the old timeline, one of the Six Heroes behind Cecilia when she killed the Shadow Sovereign.
In this timeline, six months early.
Cain smiled at the distant cathedral.
Slow. Sharp.
A new Saintess Candidate. A miracle F-rank who had walked out of the outer district unscathed.
Interesting.
He turned to the knight behind him.
Prepare the invitation. The Requiem Games begin in nine days. I want the pretty trash and his lily-scented keeper in the front row.
The knight bowed.
And if the Saintess Order refuses?
Cain laughed. Soft. Lethal.
Then we remind them what happens when mercy forgets to fear pain.
Far below, in the cathedral of lilies and old blood, Zero slept on cold stone.
In his dream, Cecilia stood over him, spear raised again.
This time, he smiled.
Opened his arms.
This time, she hesitated.
In the waking world, a single white petal drifted from nowhere.
Landed on his lips.
He tasted it.
Soon.