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“And heard you tell me not to return?” he asked, low and bitter.
“Well,” I said coolly, keeping my spine straight and my chin up, “you’re here now. Glowing like a fallen star. Back to haunt the ruins.”
He stepped forward, shadows wrapping around his frame. “I’m not here to haunt you. I’m here because something is stirring beneath the floorboards of this place.” His eyes locked onto mine. “And you’re standing in the middle of it. Too close to the fire. Again.”
“Funny. You always seem to show up when I’m about to burn.”
His jaw twitched. “Then maybe this time…I’m here to stop it.”
The silence between us grew sharp.
I hated how my body betrayed me, how my fingers twitched as if they remembered being held. How my chest ached as if it had forgotten how to stay empty when he was near.
Before I could say something I’d regret, a polite but awkward cough shattered the tension like fine glass. Remiel and I both turned, the shadows stretching between us.
One jester from earlier, the one with the skull-topped staff, stood a few feet away. His posture was stiff, his motley colors strangely muted by the flickering firelight. His eyes, visible behind the slits of his mask, flicked nervously between Remiel and me. “Um,” he said, his voice slightly cracking, “Miss Flame…Lord V is awaiting your presence. I’ve been sent to escort you.”
He delivered those words like a death sentence.
Remiel didn’t even blink, his golden eyes still fixed on me. “I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are!” I snapped, stepping forward. The hem of my crimson gown swept over the stone floor like a blade.
His expression didn’t shift, not even a twitch of an eyelid. “You know this is pointless, right?” he said, his voice calm and infuriatingly reasonable, as he stepped to my side, ready to follow. “I am going with you. Huff and puff all you want, Lady Flame.”
The poor jester visibly paled under his face paint, caught between a celestial command and what he likely perceived as demonic fury. Without another word, he turned and stiffly gestured for us to follow, clearly deciding that survival was the wiser course than attempting to argue with either of us. “This way, please.”
I didn’t look at Remiel again as we followed. I didn’t need to. I could feel him beside me, the unyielding presence of iron and barely suppressed fire, as we trailed the jester back into the cathedral’s skeletal, shadowed belly.
But instead of descending deeper into the Undermarket as I had expected, the jester turned sharply and slipped through an archway half hidden by shadows and a thick carpet of ancient dust.
A narrow spiral staircase, carved from the same dark stones as the cathedral, wound upward into an oppressive darkness. As we climbed, the air changed. It grew thinner and colder. The scent of old stones and forgotten incense clung to the steps. Dust, as thick as grave shrouds, carpeted the edges of the stairs, disturbed only by our passage. Our footsteps echoed in the confined space, the sound climbing ahead of us.
“This doesn’t lead deeper,” I muttered, my words laced with suspicion.
“No,” the jester said, his voice still tight. He did not turn his head. “Lord V prefers…higher perspectives when discussing personal matters.”
Of course, he did. Theatrics were always a part of Valden’s arsenal.
“Coward’s vantage,” Remiel muttered behind me, low and disgusted.
I didn’t smile. But the sentiment resonated.
We climbed higher, the air sharpening with each turn. Slivers of fractured stained glass, remnants of some long-shattered glory, pierced the gloom at irregular intervals, casting bloodred and indigo light across the crumbling walls. Scenes of saints, martyrs, and winged warriors were depicted on those broken mosaics. Their faces were cracked, and their halos were shattered.
Wings, depicted in a hundred different forms, were everywhere, and none of them were intact. Every single one was broken, snapped, or torn.
It felt deliberate, like a warning.
The jester finally paused before a pair of heavy wrought-iron doors, their surfaces twisted in intricate knots of thorns and broken unholy sigils. He pushed them open with a protesting groan of ancient rusty metal.
A rooftop stretched before us like a battlefield. The air up here was bitingly cold. Up here, the wind cut sharper, whipping wisps of my hair across my face. The sky above was a vast velvet void, pierced by glittering stars. The cathedral’s fractured spires, half devoured by time and neglect, arched around us. Statues of saints, their features worn, lined the terrace, their shattered wings at their feet like broken oaths.
At the far edge of the rooftop, framed by the jagged ruins of the world, stood Valden.
He looked as if he had been born from the very bones of the cathedral—so unmoving and inevitable. His black coat, exquisitely tailored, stirred in the chill wind, its embroidered veins of gold catching the fractured starlight. A cut-crystal goblet, filled with a liquid too dark to be wine, dangled from his fingers.
Chains, delicate and silver, glinted from his mask like the relics of a more brutal war. The wind worried about them until they chimed like brittle bells. With unhurried and deliberate motions, he unlatched the mask’s fastenings, and it slipped free, falling away as if the night itself had shed a pretense.
