Chapter 36: Shadows and Silhouettes
Silent Departure
The chapel gates swallowed sunlight. Against moss-eaten stone, a carriage waited like a beetle in resin. Inside, Annette's nails carved crescents into her palms, blood seeping into the velvet of her cloak.
"How much longer must I humor this farce?" The driver yanked the curtain aside, his nose ring glinting like a shackle. "Even fallen saints ought to know when to stop praying."
She knew where they were taking her—a border outpost where "penitent" monks traded scripture for cruelty. Women there lasted a season, maybe two, before the marshes claimed them.
"Contract with me," she whispered, desperation lacquering her voice. "Any demon. Any price."
The man threw back his head, laughter rattling his throat. "Oh, sweet poison! You reek of ambition gone rancid. Even my kind won't gnaw on spoiled meat."
As the carriage lurched forward, Annette glimpsed her replacement through the window—a girl with honey-blonde curls and eyes like glacial fractures. Laughter bubbled around the new saint, bright and unburdened.
This was the Church's true masterpiece.
Annette pressed a trembling hand to her chest, where vows once nested. Let their precious saint burn. Let every throne they build crumble.
The wheels sang her requiem: clatter-clatter, never-matter.
Gilded Thresholds
Tasiya found the gift basket perched on her windowsill—a nest of lavender sachets and candied violets. Nathaniel hovered by the bookshelf, tracing the spine of Demon Taxonomies Vol. III.
"Sigrid left it," he said. "Claims she wants 'harmonious relations.'"
The card bore loopy script and a doodled daisy. Tasiya tucked it into her grimoire, beside pressed poppies from the summer riots.
"Kunji wants a rematch with you." She tested the weight of a dagger from the basket—too ornamental, its hilt studded with faux rubies. "After the trials."
Nathaniel's reflection smiled in the windowpane. "He's earned the right to be humbled."
She closed the distance between them, boots silent on the rug he'd bargained from a Silk Road merchant. "And when do I repay your debts?"
The question hung like unsheathed steel.
Earlier, during sparring, Kunji had pinned her wrist to the mat. "Your body betrays you," he'd said, sweat dripping onto her collarbone. "You flinch from kills that haven't been swung."
Now, Nathaniel's gloves creaked as he gripped the bookshelf. "There's no ledger between us."
"Then make one." She slammed her palm against the doorframe, close enough to feel his breath hitch. "Itemize every ribbon, every meal, every midnight you spent stitching my wounds. Let me see what I owe."
He reached for her—aborted the motion when she stepped back.
"Or admit you want no repayment at all."
The lock clicked with finality.
Trials by Sunlight
Autumn had bled the maples raw. On the tournament field, apprentices compared blades and rumors:
"Third District's overrun—they say a Hierarch-class demon's skinning paladins alive—"
"My cousin saw a caravan of coffins heading north—"
Tasiya unrolled her bracket. The prize sums glared up at her: 3,000 gold for first place. Barely enough to cover Nathaniel's latest "indulgences"—the pearl-stitched gambeson, the jade hairpin now lost in the training yard mud.
A whirlwind in lace collided with her. "Tasiya! I've read all your match records!" Sigrid beamed, wrists swaddled in linen. Up close, her perfume smelled of apricot pits and something medicinal. "Would you show me your footwork later? I've heard it's divine!"
The bandages shifted, revealing scar tissue too precise for accidents.
"Another time," Tasiya said.
Vanessa intercepted her near the armory, cheeks flushed. "They're not telling us everything. The seniors who left for Third District—none have returned." She gripped Tasiya's sleeve, voice dropping to a moth's wing tremor. "If you win today… you'll be next on their draft list."
Threads to Sever, Threads to Keep
Nathaniel watched from the clocktower as Tasiya stepped onto the dueling platform. Her braid swung like a pendulum, silver threads catching the sun—a contrast to Kunji's oiled warhammer.
Flinch, he willed silently. Lose. Stay.
But her blade met Kunji's strike with a banshee's wail, sparks arcing like miniature supernovas. The crowd roared. Sigrid clapped with calculated delight, bandages loosening to reveal sigils burned into her pulse points.
Annette's laughter echoed in his skull, venomous and prophetic.
We're all someone's stepping stone.
Chapter 37: The Weight of Crowns
Thresholds of Light
The Saint Corps thrived on hierarchies forged in blood. "All-Round" evaluations were rare, reserved for those who could lead charges into hellfire—a title Vanessa now feared Tasiya might inherit too soon.
"Wait for the Church's orders," Tasiya said, squinting at the distant wooden villages below the training cliffs. "If they're sending novices to the frontlines, it means we've already lost."
Vanessa's grip tightened on her spear. Survival had always been her compass, yet here stood this girl who measured strength not by kills but by how many could live.
The wind carried the scent of bruised grass as students swarmed the sparring fields. Today's evaluators—stiff-necked priests unfamiliar with the Corps' feral rhythm—struggled to contain the chaos.
Tasiya's iron cross gleamed dully as she claimed her assigned quadrant. Opponents fell like wheat: some yielding to her reputation, others to the chain-wrapped relic's whispered threat. By midmorning, she sat idle, drawn instead to the crowd encircling Kunji and Sigrid.
A Saint's Gambit
Sigrid's weapon drew sneers—a crystal-tipped staff better suited for altars than battle. Kunji twirled his serrated wheels, shadows coiling around his ankles like loyal hounds.
"Go easy on the glassware!" someone jeered.
"Wouldn't dare," Kunji shot back, already blurring into motion.
The clash silenced the field.
Sigrid's staff met his strike not with steel's shriek, but a hymn—a resonance that flattened grass and marrow alike. Light erupted from her, raw and purifying, as students clutched their ears. Above, demons descended in a storm of wings, their hunger for divinity overriding discipline.
"Divine Resonance!" a priest croaked, knees buckling.
Redthorn's whip cracked uselessly against the gale. Her glare found Nathaniel hovering apart, silver hair whipping like a battle standard. Interesting, her smirk said. Your precious contractor isn't the chosen one after all.
Marks That Bind
Tasiya tracked Nathaniel's gaze to Sigrid's exposed wrists—twin cruciform wounds oozing gold-tinged blood. The crowd knelt as one, even demons bowing to this living reliquary.
Yamo materialized beside her, reeking of anxiety. "You're… not affected?"
"By what?"
"The clarity." He flexed his hands as if testing new tendons. "Like my thoughts are whetted blades."
She studied Sigrid's trembling grip. Divine light, yet no surge in physicality—a buffer for minds, not bodies. Useful for commanders, fatal for frontline fighters.
Yamo misread her silence. "Look, about Nathaniel…"
"He knew." Her chain rattled as she hoisted the cross. "You warned him about Annette's scheme."
"Wait, you're not—"
"Congratulations," she cut in. "You'll make a fascinating king."
His sputtered protest drowned in the adulation storm.
Eclipse
Kunji emerged victorious but hollow, his shadows frayed by holy light. Sigrid's defeat changed nothing—the crowd now kissed her bloodied bandages, their fervor a living tide.
Tasiya walked.
Past the groveling masses. Past Nathaniel, still dissecting Sigrid's stigmata with a scholar's detachment. Her cross carved furrows in the earth, each deeper than the last.
Yamo's warning echoed. "Guard your contract."
But contracts, she realized, were cages with gilded bars. The true shackles lay in watching him study another's wounds with that razor focus once reserved for her scars.
Let the demons clamor for divinity.
She'd carve her own path—through flesh, through bone, through the lie that any soul could be "chosen."
Chapter 38: The Weight of Wings
Frayed Edges
The air tasted metallic, like unshed tears. Tasiya turned abruptly, her boots crushing gravel as she strode from the training grounds. Behind her, whispers swirled like autumn leaves—Did you see Nathaniel's eyes when the Saintess entered?—but she refused to let them take root.
Redthorn materialized in her path, the demoness's scarlet gaze dissecting her with surgical precision. "Running from your own trial?" Her tail lashed, carving furrows in the earth.
"The arena reeks of desperation," Tasiya replied flatly. "I'll fight better after resting."
A snort. "Rest? Or hide?" Before Tasiya could retort, calloused fingers closed around her wrist. Wind screamed as Redthorn vaulted them both onto a crumbling bell tower, its stones weeping ivy.
Whispers in the Dark
The garden below sprawled like a forgotten prayer—pale lilies choking beneath yew trees, their petals trembling in the half-light. Redthorn paced, her horns glinting like drawn daggers.
"Nathaniel's bound himself to every Saintess-born since the First Covenant." Her voice roughened, as though reciting a hated liturgy. "Their blood fuels his power. Their deaths… renew him."
Tasiya traced the iron cross at her hip. "And now the Saintess wants him back."
"Back?" Redthorn's laughter cracked like whipstock. "Child, you were never his to keep. That mark on your neck?" She leaned close, sulfur and rose oil clashing. "A placeholder. A whim."
The words should've drawn blood. Yet Tasiya felt only a curious hollow—the same void that yawned when she'd first lifted a blade. So this is how vows die, she mused, watching a lily collapse under its own weight.
Ledgers and Lies
Her room smelled of bergamot and betrayal.
Nathaniel's ledger lay splayed on the desk, its pages defaced with crimson annotations:
Velvet remnants repurposed from curtains: 0 coins
Wild mushrooms foraged (demon-assisted): 0 coins
Hours spent drafting this farce: Priceless
Tasiya's thumb smudged the ink. How many nights had he hunched here, fabricating this charade of debt? The numbers she'd painstakingly copied now danced in mocking spirals—a ledger of absolution written in a language she'd never been taught.
Her trunk swallowed three uniforms, a whetstone, and the bone-hilted dagger Kunji had gifted during their first spar. Let Nathaniel keep the lace and ledgers. Let him play patron to the Saintess.
The Unseen Blade
Kunji's grin faltered when she stepped into the arena.
"You look…" He circled, twin kamas gleaming. "Different."
Lightning split the clouds. Tasiya lunged.
The cross whipped forward—not her usual overhead smash, but a serpent's strike. Kunji blocked on instinct, muscles bunching to shove the weapon wide.
Too slow.
Golden light erupted from the cross's core. Kunji's pupils shrank to pinpricks as the blow hurled him backward, grass scorching where he skidded.
"Since when—" He spat dirt, rolling clear of her next swing. "—do you channel their tricks?"
Tasiya didn't answer. Let him think it was the Saintess's influence. Let them all mistake borrowed light for true fire.
High above, ravens wheeled like shards of night. One broke formation, diving toward the bell tower where a silver-haired figure stood watch.
Nathaniel's hands whitened on the parapet. Across the field, the Saintess's laughter chimed with the purity of poisoned bells.
Chapter 39: Chains and Crossroads
Serpent's Dance
The chain coiled like a steel viper, its metallic hiss splitting the air. Tasiya's wrists flexed, veins taut beneath sweat-slicked skin, as the massive cross swung in lethal arcs. Across the field, Armo's jaw hung slack—this was the girl he'd once dismissed as merely "promising"?
Kunji danced backward, his scythe-like lunji whistling. Shadows pooled at his feet, then erupted in a storm of thrown blades. But Tasiya's chain snapped forward, not to block, but to entangle. Metal shrieked as their weapons locked, sparks raining onto trampled clover.
"Yield," she growled, the cross's weight trembling in her grip.
He grinned, amber eyes glinting. "Make me."
Wind roared to life. Grass flattened as if bowing to a sovereign. Kunji's shadows frayed at the edges, devoured by the light seeping from Tasiya's pores. For a heartbeat, her irises blazed white—
Then he dropped his weapon.
"Enough," Kunji laughed, raising empty hands. "I'd rather keep my ribs intact."
The crowd erupted. Armo blinked, dazed. "I… didn't even see the final move."
Fractured Feathers
Nathaniel materialized as the cheers died, a water flask clutched like a peace offering. "Your arms—"
"Don't." Tasiya wrenched the cross from the earth, its tip grazing his palm. Blood welled, black and iridescent.
Armo dragged him aside, voice hushed. "You're chasing two rabbits, demon. Neither ends well."
Above, stormclouds brewed. Tasiya watched a ladybug crawl across her knuckles—its wings the exact red of Sigrid's hair ribbons. Hypocrite, she thought. You wanted answers, but the truth cuts worse than blades.
When the prize gold hit her palm, it stung like betrayal.
Ledger of Loss
Her dorm smelled of ink and absinthe. Tasiya stacked coins over crumpled receipts:
Pearl gambeson: 1,200 crowns
Jade hairpin (lost): 350
Silk rug (singed): 800
The numbers bled together. Nathaniel's laughter echoed from the hall—bright, false, practiced.
She slammed the ledger shut.
Thorned Sanctuary
Blaire's office reeked of bergamot and regret. The demonology professor adjusted his cravat, sweat staining his collar. "You're throwing away a brilliant future!"
"Brilliance burns," Tasiya said, suitcase denting the rug. "Transfer me to the Contemplative Order. Or chain me to archives. Anything but…"
Him.
Her.
The hollow where my heart trusted.
Blaire's pen snapped. "They'll say you're running."
"Let them." She turned, the door's groan punctuating her exit. "I've outgrown cages draped in velvet."
Ephemera
At the stables, a barn cat nuzzled her boot. Tasiya hesitated, then tucked a silver coin beneath its straw nest.
Some debts even saints couldn't quantify.