The darkness in the crypt was no longer a threat; it was a shroud.
Geneviève lay against the sarcophagus, eyes closed, listening to her own ragged breath. The pain in her side was a constant fire, and every muscle in her body trembled from the superhuman effort she had just exerted. She had won. But she felt hollowed out, like a wineskin overturned into the sand.
Then, the scent changed. The dust of centuries and the acrid ozone of demonic magic vanished, replaced by the fresh fragrance of water lilies and rainwater. A thin, luminescent mist began to rise from the cracked stone floor.
Geneviève opened her eyes. The crypt was no longer dark. It was bathed in a moonlight that came from no opening. And before her, standing atop the ashes where a Demon Prince had been but a moment before, stood the Lady.
This was no evanescent vision like the one in the forest years ago. This time, the Goddess was solid, present, majestic. She wore robes that seemed woven from the foam of waterfalls, and her eyes were as deep as mountain lakes. In her hands, she held the Grail. Not a cup of wood or gold, but a chalice of pure light that pulsed to the heartbeat of Bretonnia.
Geneviève tried to rise to her knees, but her legs did not respond. A groan of pain escaped her bloodied lips.
"Remain down, my daughter," the Lady said. Her voice was more than just sound; it was a vibration that stilled frayed nerves. "You have bent the knee enough times today."
The Goddess approached, her bare feet never touching the foul dust. She leaned over Geneviève, ignoring the blood and mud that coated the warrior's shattered armour. She placed a cool hand upon the feverish brow of the knight.
"You fought in the mud to protect my garden," the Lady whispered. "You wore a mask of iron to speak a truth that men did not wish to hear. You looked into the eyes of the abyss and did not flinch."
The Lady brought the Grail to Geneviève's lips. "You drank of my strength in the forest, when you were but a frightened child. Now, drink of my essence as my champion."
Geneviève drank. It was not water. It was liquid life. It was the midday sun and the cool of the night. It was the strength of the mountains and the speed of the river. As the liquid flowed down her throat, the wound in her side closed instantly, leaving only a silver scar. Broken bones knitted back together. The exhaustion of months evaporated, replaced by a vitality that felt inexhaustible.
Her eyes, grey as stone, changed. The iris filled with a blue light—the same light that glowed within the Grail (Grail Vow).
"Welcome among my Chosen, Sir Gilles," the Lady said, using her war name with infinite sweetness. "You are no longer a knight errant in search of a purpose. You are the purpose. You are my shield against the Long Night."
The light began to intensify, becoming blinding. "Now go," the Goddess concluded, her figure beginning to dissolve into mist. "The world above needs to see that the light has triumphed. But remember: the Grail does not make you immortal. It only makes you... necessary."
The light faded. Geneviève found herself alone in the darkness of the crypt. But it was no longer the same crypt, and she was no longer the same woman. She stood up. Her Gromril armour, though dented and torn at the side, no longer weighed upon her. She felt light, powerful, connected to every living thing for miles around.
She looked at the ground. Her helm lay in the dust, deformed by the demon's grip. She picked it up. The visor was twisted, one of the eye-slits nearly crushed shut. She hesitated for a second. She could walk out with her face uncovered. She could show everyone who the hero who saved them truly was. The Lady had accepted her.
But then she thought of Tancred. She thought of the common soldiers. She thought of a kingdom built upon fragile traditions. If they knew a peasant woman was their savior, the social order would collapse before they could even rebuild the walls. Bretonnia needed a symbol, not a revolution. Not yet.
With a sigh that was half resignation and half determination, Geneviève lowered the mangled helm over her head. Clang.
The world returned to a narrow, dark slit. She took up her sword, Vespers' Light, which now shone with a constant, cold light of its own, and headed toward the mountain of rubble leading to the surface.
Geneviève emerged from the hole in the cathedral floor like a spectre rising from the underworld. She was covered in stone dust, purple demon blood, and soot. Her armour was a wreck. Her helm was a mask of tortured metal.
The nave of the cathedral was open to the sky, the roof having collapsed. The grey light of late afternoon filtered through the scorched beams. The roar of battle had ceased. There was only the crackle of dying fires and the moans of the wounded.
Geneviève stopped atop the heap of rubble, sword in hand, looking down. The square in front of the cathedral was filled with people. They were the survivors.
She saw Duke Tancred, sitting on a step, his head in his hands, his sword Couronne snapped in two. She saw Tristan, bandaging the head of a Carcassonne militiaman. She saw hundreds of soldiers from the relief army and city defenders, huddled together, filthy, exhausted, with the hollow eyes of those who have seen too much.
When they saw her emerge, silence fell over the square. No one cheered. No one cried "Victory." They were too tired, too traumatised for joy.
Every eye was fixed on the black and silver figure standing upon the ruins. They felt the aura emanating from her. It was no longer just the presence of a formidable warrior. It was something sacred, something that made one want to weep and kneel at the same time. Their eyes saw the blue light filtering through the twisted slits of her helm.
Tancred rose slowly, like a man of a hundred years. He looked at the knight he had hired as a mercenary months before, and saw what he had become. The Duke said nothing. He simply placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head in a deep, reverent salute—one he had never granted any mortal, not even the King.
One after another, the soldiers, the nobles, and the peasants did the same. A wave of silent respect in a city that still smouldered. Geneviève stood motionless, a statue of blessed iron, receiving the homage of an army she had saved from annihilation. She had won the war. But looking at the shattered faces of the survivors, she knew that peace was still very far away.
The silence that followed the closing of the portal was not empty; it was dense, heavy, almost viscous. It was the silence of those holding their breath for fear that, by exhaling, the nightmare might begin anew. The cathedral square of Carcassonne, once an architectural jewel of white marble and blue slate, was now an amphitheatre of destruction. The facades of buildings had been torn away like flayed skin, revealing domestic interiors still furnished—an obscene contrast between the normalcy of daily life and the apocalypse that had just unfolded. At the centre of it all, the mountain of debris from which Geneviève had emerged still smoked, emitting plumes of grey vapour that tasted of sulfur and scorched sanctity.
Geneviève descended slowly from the heap of stones. Every movement was accompanied by the rhythmic, metallic clink of her Gromril armour. Despite the miraculous healing wrought by the Grail, the plate still bore the devastating marks of the struggle: her right flank was torn open, the plates bent inward like tin foil crumpled by a giant hand, and her helm... her helm was a grotesque mask. The left side of the visor had been crushed against her cheekbone, and the eye-slit was reduced to an irregular fissure from which flowed, haunting and beautiful, a trail of ethereal blue light—a residue of the Lady's power still coursing through her veins like liquid light.
As her boots touched the flagstones of the square, the crowd of survivors instinctively drew back, creating a circle of respect and fear around her. They did not look at her as one looks at a comrade-in-arms; they looked at her as one looks at a sacred relic that has suddenly fallen from the altar and taken life.
The first to break the stillness was Duke Tancred of Quenelles. The old lion, who had led charges for forty years, suddenly looked like a very old man. His golden armor was coated in a layer of greasy soot; demon blood had dried upon his ermine cloak, rendering it stiff and dark. He approached Geneviève with a slight limp, dragging his left leg, yet he kept his back straight with an effort of will that was moving in its dignity.
In his right hand, he still clutched the hilt of the Blade of Couronne. The ancestral sword, forged centuries ago, was snapped at mid-length, shattered against the hide of a Bloodletter of Khorne. Tancred stopped three paces from Geneviève. He looked at her intact and luminous sword, Vespers' Light, and then at the stump of his own.
"Sir Gilles," the Duke said, his voice a hoarse rasp, as if he had swallowed glass and smoke. "In all my years... in all the chronicles I read in my father's library... I have never seen the like." Tancred shook his head, a slow gesture of disbelief. "You walked through the fire. You looked upon the Herald of Ruin and snuffed him out as one snuffs a candle with two fingers. Tell me, knight... are you still a man? Or has the Lady taken you for her own and left us only the iron shell?"
Geneviève sheathed her sword. The movement produced a clean, final sound. She placed a hand to her chest, touching the symbol of the Roe Deer and the Three Nails, which was nearly erased by scorch marks. "I am here, Your Grace," she replied in her gravelly voice, now tinged with a deeper, almost harmonic resonance. "The iron is still warm. The heart still beats. The Lady... the Lady has merely sharpened the edge."
Tancred let the piece of his broken sword fall to the ground. The clatter was pathetic in the silence. "Sharpened the edge," the Duke repeated, with a bitter, weary smile. "You have shattered the world, Gilles. My army... what remains of it... saw you shine with a light that does not belong to this earth. How can I, a simple Duke, give you orders now? How can I ask you to march in formation when you carry the power of a Living Saint?"
Geneviève took a step forward, closing the physical and symbolic distance between them. "You are the Duke of Quenelles, Tancred. You are the one who did not hesitate to charge into hell to save a city that was not your own. Light serves to burn monsters, but it was your will that held the line. I do not need you to worship me. I need you to give me water and a place for my horse."
Tancred stared at her for a long time, trying to pierce the darkness of the deformed visor to see the man—or the woman—beneath it. Then, he nodded slowly, tears carving furrows through the filth on his face.
"Water," he murmured. "Yes. And wine. And everything else Carcassonne still has to offer. You are the saviour of this realm, whether you wish it or not."
As Tancred moved away to bark orders at the surviving sergeants, a smaller figure made his way through the rubble. It was Tristan. The Duke's young nephew, who only days before had dreamed of epic songs and ladies' ribbons, was unrecognisable. He had lost his helm. His blond hair was matted with blood and ash. He had a makeshift bandage around his left arm, and his eyes were wide, staring into the void, trembling with a post-traumatic shock that no song could ever describe.
Tristan stopped before Geneviève. He was visibly shaking, not from the cold, but from the adrenaline leaving his body, making way for the horror. "Sir Gilles..." the boy began, but his voice broke in his throat. "Did you see... did you see what they were doing? The red demons... they were laughing. They laughed while they tore the arms from Sir Baldrick. He was screaming, and they just laughed."
The boy began to weep, dry, convulsive sobs that shook his thin frame. "It's not like in the stories. There is no glory. There is only the stench. The stench of a slaughterhouse. Why did no one tell us? Why didn't my uncle tell me?"
Geneviève felt a pang of painful compassion. Tristan was the mirror of what she had been at Parron, the day her village burned. Innocence is not lost gradually; it is ripped away in an instant, leaving a scar that never heals. Ignoring the residual pain in her own body, Geneviève reached out her armoured arms and gripped the boy's shoulders, holding him firmly to anchor him to reality.
"Look at me, Tristan," she commanded, her voice stern but not cruel. "Look at me." The boy raised his gaze, staring at the blue light within the slit of the helm. "Your uncle did not tell you because he hoped you would never have to see it," Geneviève said. "The stories lie because the truth is too ugly to be sung. But glory does not lie in being fearless, or in fine clothes, or in tournaments. The glory is that you are here."
Geneviève shook the boy gently. "You are standing. You held your sword. You saw hell spit upon the world, and you did not run. Sir Baldrick is dead, yes. And his death is foul. But because of him, and because of you, there are a thousand people in this city who are still breathing tonight. That is the only glory that exists: the breath of those you saved."
Tristan sniffled, wiping his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, smearing more blood across his face. "Do you think it will ever end, Sir Gilles? This... darkness?"
"The darkness never ends, Tristan," Geneviève replied, letting go of the boy's shoulders. "But neither do we. Now go to the chirurgeons. Have that arm bandaged. Tomorrow you will need your strength to bury the dead."
As evening fell over Carcassonne, tinting the ruins with a melancholy red, a mounted messenger wearing the King's colors arrived in the square, struggling through the ranks of the wounded. The messenger's horse was lathered in foam, a sign he had ridden without pause. The man dismounted and ran toward Duke Tancred and Geneviève, who were examining a map spread over an overturned wine barrel.
"Your Grace! Sir Gilles!" the messenger gasped, kneeling. "I bring urgent dispatches from Couronne. King Louen... the King is on the march."
Tancred looked up, surprised. "The King? Here?"
"Yes, my Lord. Your reports from Quenelles... and the light. The court astrologers saw the magical storm from hundreds of leagues away. The King is coming with the entire Royal Army. He will be here within two days."
Geneviève stood motionless. The King was coming. Louen Leoncoeur. The greatest Living Grail Knight (until this moment). The one who had sensed her secret at court. If the King saw what she had become... if he saw the aura of the Grail upon a nameless "mercenary"... the consequences would be unpredictable. He might exalt her as a saint or condemn her as a heretic for usurping power reserved for male nobility.
"Fine," Tancred said, straightening up. "The King shall see what we paid to keep his kingdom intact. He shall see that while he rode, we died."
Geneviève turned toward the mountains, toward the east, where the night was rising. "Do not relax too much, Duke," she said. "The King brings reinforcements, but he also brings politics. And I... I am weary of politics."
Tancred looked at her, noting how the blue light in her eyes seemed to pulse in harmony with the first stars. "What will you do, Gilles? When the King arrives, he will want to see you. He will want to give you the kiss of brotherhood. He will want to make you a Duke, or a Marquis."
Geneviève laughed, a low, metallic sound devoid of humor. "I do not want lands, Tancred. I told you that in Couronne. I only want the work finished. And I suspect Be'lakor has not finished playing his pawns."
She turned toward Duraz, her horse, who was drinking from a half-destroyed fountain, the water flowing clear despite everything. "Prepare your men for the King's arrival, Duke. Make them look like heroes, not victims. I... I am going to pray. I need to ask the Lady how long I must carry this light before it consumes me."
Geneviève walked away toward the roofless nave of the cathedral, seeking the shadow—a living paradox: a light-bringer seeking the dark to find peace. As she walked, she felt the eyes of the soldiers on her back. Gaze of adoration. Do not look at me, she thought with infinite weariness. Look at your hands. They are the ones who will rebuild all of this. I am only the fire that clears the field.
Night fell over Carcassonne, a night without demons, but full of ghosts. And in the silence, Geneviève felt that her true trial had not been killing the monster, but would be surviving having become a legend.