The two days preceding the arrival of King Louen Leoncoeur were not days of rest, but of feverish activity. Carcassonne was a wounded hive. Under the pragmatic direction of Duke Tancred, the survivors had transformed themselves into masons and carpenters. Rubble was cleared by hand, roofs propped up with makeshift beams, and funeral pyres burned day and night outside the walls, sending columns of black smoke toward a sky that, by the grace of the Lady, had returned to its natural azure.
But for Sir Gilles, rest was impossible. The power of the Grail now coursing through her veins acted like a constant tuning fork. Geneviève felt the residual presence of Chaos not as a scent or a sight, but as an itch beneath her skin—a sharp dissonance that prevented her from standing still. Though the portal was closed and the Demon Prince banished, the valley was still infected. There were small pockets of distorted reality, mutated beasts hiding in caves, and corrupted flora trying to take root in the poisoned soil.
"I cannot stay here watching the lime dry, Duke," Sir Gilles told Tancred the morning after the victory. Her metallic voice echoed in the improvised council hall among the ruins of the keep. "The city is safe, but the fields are still screaming."
Tancred, who was signing grain requisition orders with a trembling hand, nodded without looking up. "Go, Gilles. Take whom you will. Do what you do best. But return before the King arrives. I need my champion at my right hand when Leoncoeur crosses the gate."
Geneviève gathered a patrol of thirty men. She did not choose the highest-ranking nobles, but those who had shown the steadiest minds during the siege: Tristan, a few veteran sergeants from Quenelles, and a handful of Carcassonne archers who knew every inch of the territory.
They rode out of the city, plunging into the devastated countryside. What they found was a botanical nightmare. The famous vineyards of Carcassonne, the pride of the duchy, had been touched by the Warp. The vines were not withered; they had become fleshy, pulsing, a purplish hue, and their thorns had lengthened like talons. As the patrol advanced along a hillside path, a sergeant pointed toward an isolated farmhouse. "There, my Lord! Look!"
A pack of Chaos Hounds—deformed beasts with red scales and twin heads—was trying to batter down the cellar door where a peasant family was likely hiding.
Geneviève did not give the order to charge. She simply did it. Duraz leapt forward, his hooves leaving prints of blue fire upon the sickly grass. "For the Lady!" the men shouted behind her, spurring their horses to keep pace with that black and silver comet.
The clash was brief, brutal, and one-sided. Sir Gilles was a storm of purification. Geneviève no longer fought as a mere expert warrior; she fought as an extension of divine will. When Vespers' Light struck a Chaos Hound, the beast did not simply die; it was consumed. Corrupted flesh sizzled and dissolved into grey ash upon contact with the blessed blade.
A Hound larger than the others lunged for Tristan's throat. The boy raised his shield too late. But Geneviève was already there. With a fluid movement of her wrist, she intercepted the beast mid-air. She did not use the edge. She used the aura. She extended her open left hand toward the monster. A flash of white light exploded from her palm. The Hound yelped in terror and was hurled backwards as if struck by an invisible ram, crashing against a stone wall with shattered bones.
After clearing the farmhouse and saving the family (who threw themselves at Sir Gilles' feet, kissing her metal boots stained with ichor and calling her "The Iron Angel"), the patrol stopped to water the horses at a stream. Geneviève had to purify it by dipping the tip of her sword into the water to make it run clear once more.
The soldiers stood at a distance, speaking in low voices as they watched their commander. Geneviève, remaining in the saddle apart from them, felt their words carried by the wind. "...did you see how he glows? It isn't normal." "He's a Grail Knight, you idiot. They've drunk from the Chalice." "No, it's more. I've seen Grail Knights in Couronne. They are noble, haughty. Sir Gilles... he is frightening. It's as if the iron itself has a soul."
Tristan approached, carrying a skin of water. "My Lord," the boy said, offering the skin. "You must drink. Even saints grow thirsty."
Geneviève hesitated. She could not remove the helm. Not here, not before thirty men. "I am not thirsty, Tristan," the gravelly voice replied, filtered through the deformed visor. "The blessing sustains me."
Tristan lowered the waterskin, his gaze worried. "Everyone says you have been touched by the Lady, Sir Gilles. They say you have become a sacred weapon. But... do you still remember who you were before? When we spoke of songs and glory?"
Geneviève looked at the boy through the luminous slit. "I remember everything, Tristan. I remember the fear. I remember the cold. And it is precisely because I remember that I must do this. Chaos does not forget. And as long as there is a single seed of that weed in this field, I cannot go back to being... just a man."
She turned toward the dark thicket. "Mount up. I have felt another presence to the east. We must burn it out before sunset."
For two days, Sir Gilles' patrol was the nightmare of every corrupted creature within twenty leagues. They destroyed nests of Furies, burned mutated groves, and brought down a Chaos Giant that wandered dazed through the valleys. Wherever they passed, the earth seemed to breathe again, freed from the poison.
At sunset on the second day, as they returned toward Carcassonne, they saw the change. Upon the high road coming from the northwest, a forest of spears had appeared. These were not the broken, desperate spears of Tancred's army. They were thousands—straight, perfect, with pennants fluttering in the wind. Myriads of banners waved: the Rampant Lion of Louen, the blazons of all the Great Dukes of the realm, the insignias of the Wizard Guilds.
The Royal Army had arrived. It was a magnificent sight—a river of polished steel, gold, and silk pouring into the valley. But for Geneviève, the sight brought a new kind of anxiety. Down there, among those perfect ranks, stood the established order. There were the laws that forbade women from touching a sword; there were the dogmas that could condemn her to the stake as a witch, despite her having saved the kingdom.
"There he is," Tristan whispered, pointing with reverence toward the royal pavilion being rapidly erected outside the walls. "King Louen. The Lionheart."
Geneviève tightened her grip on Duraz's reins. The sacred stone of Vespers' Light pulsed at her side, warm and reassuring. "Let us go to meet him," Sir Gilles said, straightening her aching back within thearmourr. "We have nothing to be ashamed of. We did the dirty work so that theiarmouror could remain clean."
The patrol re-entered the city through the main gate. As she rode between two wings of the crowd—on one side, the exhausted and wounded citizens of Carcassonne who looked at her with love; on the other, the newcomers of the Royal Army who looked at her with curiosity and haughtiness—Geneviève understood that the battle against the demons had been the easy part. Now began the clash between the truth of the blood and the lie of the crown. Sir Gilles had to present himself to the King. And Geneviève had to pray that the Iron Mask was thick enough to hide the face of a peasant girl who had become a goddess of war.
The night before the Grand Ceremony, Carcassonne did not sleep. The air was electric, charged with an expectation that surpassed even that of the battle. The victory against Chaos had saved their bodies, but the arrival of the King and the promise of the hero's revelation had captured their minds. In every corner of the city and the royal camp, a single name bounced from mouth to mouth: Sir Gilles.
In the lower quarters, where houses had been unroofed by demons and people slept beneath the stars, Mother Elene, a laundress who had lost two sons during the siege, stirred a root soup in a communal cauldron. Around her, children with large, dirty eyes listened as if to an oracle.
"He is not a man like your fathers were," Elene whispered, pointing toward the dark cathedral where the knight was said to rest. "I saw Duke Tancred bleed. I saw the nobles weep. But him? Not he."
"Is he an angel, Nana?" asked a little girl clutching a rag doll missing an arm.
"Perhaps more, little one. When he passed near my tent, the pain in my back vanished. And the milk from Jaques's cow, which had turned sour from fear, became sweet again."
An old man, blind in one eye, spat on the ground. "They say the King wants to make him a Baron. A Baron! Pah! They should make him Pope. Barons take taxes. He... he gave us life. He doesn't eat, he doesn't drink, he never takes off that iron face. Do you know why?" The children drew closer. "Because beneath it, there is no flesh," the old man said with certainty. "There is only light. If he took off that helm, we would all go blind."
In the royal army camp, the hammer beat rhythmically against the anvil. Master Lambert, the RoyArmourerrer, was examining a piece of metal brought to him by one of Tristan's squires: one of the side plates of Sir Gillarmourrmor, which had broken off during the final clash and required repair for the ceremony.
Lambert, a man who knew metal better than his own wife, turned the piece of black Gromril over in his callous hands, frowning. "Pass me the file, boy," he grunted to his apprentice.
"Is it strange, Master?" the boy asked, fascinated by the metal that seemed to absorb the torchlight.
"It isn't just strange. It's impossible," Lambert murmured. "Look at the curvature. Look at how the plate was shaped to fit the flank." The smith traced the line with his thumb. "Armour is of Dwarven make—ancient, precious as a castle. But the modifications... the internal straps..." Lambert shook his head. "Whoever wears this is not a giant like the stories say. I have forged breastplates for the King, for the Duke of Bastonne. Men with chests like wine barrels. But this knight..." He measured the imaginary width of the waist based on the curve. "They are slender. Too slender for a warrior who rends demons with bare hands. And yet, the metal reeks of magic and ancient blood. Whoever is in there, lad, has a strength that does not come from muscle. It is as if they have dressed a ghost in the heaviest steel in the world."
In the cellar of a half-collapsed inn, the soldiers of Tancred's army and those newly arrived with the King drank together. The atmosphere was tense. The veterans of the siege had the hollow gaze of survivors, while the newcomers were loud and full of bravado.
"I heard he killed the demon with a single blow!" shouted a young knight errant of the royal army, slamming his flagon on the table. "Tomorrow I shall ask to be his squire. I shall learn his technique!"
A sergeant from Carcassonne, with a bandage covering half his face and his arm in a sling, laughed bitterly. "Technique?" the veteran croaked. "You think this is a tournament, boy? You think Sir Gilles 'duels'?" The sergeant stood, swaying slightly. "I was on the walls when he arrived. He didn't fight. He erased. When he passes, the air turns cold and then scalding. I have seen hard men, convicted murderers, weep just by being near him."
He stepped toward the young knight, invading his personal space. "Do not ask to be his squire. Pray you never have to go where he goes. Because Sir Gilles does not go toward glory. He goes toward death, and death flees from him in terror. He is not a man you would wish to invite to dinner."
Up on the hill, in the luxury of silk tents, the Dukes and Counts sipped fine wine brought from Couronne, far from the stench of the lower city. The Duke of Parravon, a man known for his arrogance, argued with the Count of Gisoreux.
"Who is this Gilles, after all?" Parravon asked, adjusting his lace collar. "No one knows his house. No one saw his heraldry until three months ago. And now the King wants to make him a Peer of the Realm?"
"A bastard, no doubt," Gisoreux replied, bored. "Likely the illegitimate son of some frontier knight. Tancred protects him, so he must be useful."
"Useful is one thing. Giving him a title that belongs to us by right of blood is another," Parravon hissed. "If he takes off that helm tomorrow and I see the face of a peasant or a foreigner, I will make my voice heard. Grail or no Grail, there are rules. We cannot allow every lucky mercenary to sit at our table."
"They say the King is convinced he is a Saint," Gisoreux chuckled.
"The King is a romantic. I am a politician. We shall see tomorrow if his face is as noble as his sword. I bet ten crowns he is hideous—disfigured by leprosy or some curse. Why else hide?"
While the city buzzed with conjecture, Geneviève sat alone atop the highest bell tower left standing. Her legs dangled into the void, hundreds of feet above the city lights. She had removed the deformed helm and held it in her lap. The cold night air caressed her face, drying her sweat. Her short, ash-blonde hair stirred in the wind.
She heard the voices. Thanks to the senses of the Grail, she heard everything. She felt the blind faith of the poor, and it weighed on her like a boulder. She felt the technical curiosity of the smith, and she smiled sadly at his intuition. She felt the terrified respect of the soldiers, and she was grateful for it. And she felt the contempt of the nobles, and it made her clench her fists.
"Tomorrow," she whispered to the wind. Tomorrow, they would want a hero. Tomorrow they would have a woman. A peasant girl from Parron who had dared to touch the sacred. She knew that King Louen was a man of honour, but she also knew that Bretonnia was a kingdom of men, made by men, for men.
She took the helm and looked at the crooked slit from which a faint residual glow still emanated. "Lady," she prayed silently. "I do not ask to be accepted. I only ask not to be burned before I have finished my work."
She put the helm back on. Clang. The woman vanished. The myth returned. Sir Gilles stood and descended into the shadows, ready for the final act of the play.