"I’ll give you two some time alone. I’ll deal with everyone else outside."

"W-What do you...?"

Jayden never got to finish. Shadows slipped over his eyes, stealing his vision for one brief, disorienting instant before vanishing just as suddenly.

And when his sight returned, the chamber had gone silent.

He was alone with the High Priest.

The crowd, the inquisitors, even I was gone, as though none of us had ever been there at all.

"I’m sure you’d want your revenge to be personal. Enjoy yourself."

My whisper brushed against his mind. Jayden smiled, cold and sharp. He would have enjoyed killing the others too, but being left alone with the High Priest was enough.

More than enough.

***

Outside the perception bubble, confusion gave way to chaos.

"Where’s the High Priest!?"

"Where’s Jayden!?"

The inquisitors and guards shouted over one another, turning in circles as their targets seemed to vanish into thin air. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

But they hadn’t gone anywhere.

I’d simply used the False Hydra to strip the two of them from everyone’s perception. They were still there, standing in the same place, fighting in the same space, only now completely unseen.

And just to make sure no one interfered...

A hundred souls appeared in a silent ring around the invisible battle, their spectral forms visible only to me. Anyone who wandered too close would find their path blocked.

Permanently.

I turned toward the rest of the cathedral, the bewildered guards, the terrified pilgrims, the priests who were only just beginning to understand that something had gone terribly wrong.

"So... I should apologize in advance."

My shadows spilled across the marble floor, reaching toward the pews like dark fingers.

"Most of you haven’t done anything wrong. You were just unfortunate enough to be here when it happened."

The marble darkened beneath my feet as the shadows spread, gathering between the pews and climbing the pillars. Pilgrims shrank back against the walls, against one another, against anything solid that might protect them from the darkness creeping closer.

One priest broke from the line of inquisitors, his gold robes billowing as he ran toward the altar, toward the doors, toward anywhere but here.

[Shadow Tendril]

He dropped before he made it far, his body collapsing at the foot of a pillar. Blood spread across the white stone, vivid and jarring against the marble.

That was when the inquisitors finally moved.

Not toward me. Not yet. Instead, they formed a defensive ring around the altar, golden shields raised and swords leveled outward.

They were far better equipped than the inquisitors I’d faced before, but even then, they were hardly a real threat. Judging by the way they hesitated, they seemed to know that too, watching me carefully and searching for some weakness before making a move.

I had killed two pilgrims and one priest. Nothing more.

For the moment, the balance still favored me.

"You don’t have to do this," one of the inquisitors called. She was a woman, her voice controlled despite the tremor running through the hand that held her sword. "Whatever Jayden told you, whatever he promised—"

"He didn’t promise me anything."

"Then why? Why are you doing this?"

I looked past her, beyond the shields and blades, toward the empty stretch of space where Jayden and the High Priest were trying to kill each other.

No one else could see their battle, but I could still feel it through the souls I’d bound, the clash of ice and divine power, the raw hunger of a man who had been hunted like an animal finally turning on those who hunted him.

"Because you’re ruining my love life."

[The Sea That Devours Light]

It was time to find out what something like [Shadow Domain] and [Black Threnody] could become when fueled by the combined output of three thousand souls and a False Hydra.

Credit where it was due, the archmage had inspired this one.

I raised my hand.

Grey seeped from my fingers like smoke drifting through water, slow and silent and impossible to resist. It spread over the marble floor in curling tendrils, wound itself around the pillars in spiraling coils, and dripped from the ceiling in soft, noiseless drops.

The pilgrims in the front rows noticed first.

A woman in a blue dress opened her mouth to scream, and the grey slipped down her throat. Her eyes widened, then dulled. The color left her skin in stages, fading from pink to porcelain to ash. Her brown hair lost its warmth too, paling until it looked like old snow.

Then she stopped moving.

The grey spread faster after that.

It rolled across the pews in quiet waves, swallowing row after row of the faithful. A father reaching for his daughter. A priest lifting his arms in prayer. A child clutching a small wooden charm shaped like Elion’s sunburst.

They were all caught exactly as they were, frozen between one breath and the next, their faces suspended somewhere between fear and confusion, as though they had become figures trapped inside a photograph no one would ever see.

The inquisitors tried to resist.

Golden light flared from raised hands, barriers snapping into existence, purifying flames rushing toward the advancing grey. The spells met the tide and disappeared.

There was no explosion, no visible struggle, only a quiet and perfect erasure, as though the magic had never existed in the first place.

One of the inquisitors, younger than the rest, broke formation and ran.

He only made it three steps.

The grey caught him mid-stride. His sprint collapsed into a desperate sprawl, arms flailing, legs kicking uselessly at the air. It wrapped around him like a shroud, and when it passed, he remained hanging there in the posture of a fall, frozen in place, his golden armor dulled to the color of tarnished silver.

Then the rest of the cathedral followed.

The stained-glass windows dimmed, their rich blues and reds draining away into charcoal and bone. The golden sunburst above the altar guttered and died, reduced to a pale smear of grey upon grey.

Even the torches, the ones that had burned for centuries without fuel, flickered once and went dark.

And then silence settled over everything.

Not the quiet of a held breath, nor the hush of a sleeping room. It was the silence of something that had never known sound at all. The silence of a tomb.

Jayden stood within a pocket of color at the edge of the grey tide, his sword raised, his breath misting in the cold air. The grey touched the edge of his boots like water meeting a shoreline, but went no farther.

The High Priest stood in a second pocket of color some fifty feet away, his jeweled mitre still bright, the sunburst atop his staff still burning. His ancient face had gone pale, but his grip never wavered.

I had no intention of disturbing them.

And me?

I stood at the center of it all, one hand still raised, shadows gathered around my feet like a living carpet. The grey could not touch me. It couldn’t. I was its source, its anchor, the eye of this particular storm.

"Extend radius."

The words left my mouth as a whisper, but the shadows heard them.

And answered.

The grey surged outward.

It crashed against the cathedral walls and kept going, seeping through stone and mortar like water through a sieve. It flooded the side corridors where Marcellus, Evelina, and Julius had slipped through moments earlier, using the confusion caused by my spell as cover to push deeper into the church.

None of them looked back.

They couldn’t afford to.

Marcellus took the lead, light magic flickering around his fingers like a second skin and pushing the grey back just enough to let them see. Evelina stayed close behind, the ring on her finger pulsing faintly as her crimson eyes moved through every shadow in search of danger. Julius brought up the rear with his sword already drawn, his jaw tight.

"The higher-ups will be in the sanctum," Marcellus said under his breath. "Past the nave, through the Chapter house, then down the eastern corridor."

"How do you know that?" Julius asked.

"Because that’s where I’d go if I wanted to conduct a secret ritual away from prying eyes."

Evelina gave a quiet snort. "You’re not a priest."

"I’m not completely ignorant, either."

The grey pressed against their small pocket of safety, patient and hungry, but never broke through. Above them, beyond the stone ceiling, they could feel the weight of my spell spreading farther and farther, swallowing the cathedral whole.

"He’s buying us time," Evelina said. "Let’s not waste it."

Julius gave her a sharp look. "If this is what him buying time looks like, I don’t want to see what happens when he decides to start killing."