Celeste walked inside.
The doors closed behind her with a sound far too soft for something so final.
For a moment, she simply stood there.
The main prayer hall of Luminarch Cathedral stretched ahead of her like a world made for giants.
It was not large.
Large was too small a word.
It went on for what felt like a mile, an endless golden nave lined with rows upon rows of polished seats that vanished into distance. The pews swept downward on either side of a raised central walkway, making the path Celeste stood upon feel less like a floor and more like a bridge suspended above a sea of worshippers.
A wedding path.
A coronation path.
The road the Pontifex walked when the whole Church was meant to look up and remember its place.
If you sat below, you had no choice but to tilt your head.
No choice but to look up.
Celeste swallowed.
The walkway itself was a marvel. Beneath her boots, jewels had been set into the pale stone in spiralling patterns of fire, stars, and open wings. Rubies burned like little captured suns. Moonstones shimmered beneath gold-threaded glass. Sapphires glittered in river-like seams, leading the eye forward.
Up ahead, at the far end of the impossible hall, stood two colossal statues.
Fatherflame.
Motherlight.
They towered above the altar, their hands lifted toward one another, their faces carved in expressions of sorrowful mercy. Fatherflame’s crown was a halo of golden fire. Motherlight’s veil spilled down around her shoulders in frozen crystal, catching every beam of light until she seemed to glow from within.
Above them, crystal lanterns climbed for a mile upward into the cathedral ceiling.
Not a chandelier.
A sky.
Thousands of hanging prisms filled the vertical darkness, each one holding a tiny flame of white-gold mana. The lights stretched so high that Celeste could not see where they ended. They shimmered like stars trapped indoors, bathing everything in sacred brilliance.
All around the hall stood golden statues of saints.
Saints with swords.
Saints with scrolls.
Saints holding wounded children.
Saints kneeling before flames.
Saints pointing accusingly toward invisible corruption.
Celeste had never been very good at thinking of herself as poor.
She had grown up in a mansion.
Technically.
There had been high ceilings, polished floors, and rooms large enough to echo if you spoke too loudly. But the Astallan home had never felt rich in the way this place did. Her life there had been made of simple things—old jumpers, familiar books, hand-me-down notebooks, plain meals, and little comforts that meant more because they were hers.
Then the Knights had taught her how to make do with even less.
How to patch uniforms.
Stretch supplies.
Reuse broken things until they became useful again.
How to treat a cracked mug like treasure because it still held tea.
But here—
surrounded by gold and silk and jewels beneath her dusty boots—
she felt it.
Absolutely.
Painfully.
She looked down at her uniform.
Scuffed.
Mana-stained at the hem.
Still faintly marked from smoke and zombie dust.
Her hat suddenly felt childish.
Her glasses felt too big.
Her paws felt too visible.
On the lower seating levels, several Pureblood parishioners watched her pass. They were dressed in pale silks and formal mourning colours, their faces half-hidden behind embroidered fans. Their eyes followed her over the tops of them.
Not openly hostile.
That would have been easier.
This was worse.
Whispering.
Measuring.
Hiding their mouths as though even breathing the same air required discretion.
Celeste kept walking.
Maven Eldritch glided at her side, soundless as a shadow with wings folded neatly behind her.
Tamsin walked ahead.
Diana remained behind them.
Then Celeste noticed the others.
Paladins at the side exits.
Acolytes at the upper doors.
Two robed inquisitorial clerks behind her.
Another pair near the altar.
They had arranged themselves so quietly she had not seen it happen.
Front.
Back.
Left.
Right.
No clear way out.
Her heart began to hammer.
There was no escape now.
Celeste tried one more time to make the situation normal.
It was a doomed effort.
But she tried.
“So,” she said awkwardly, clasping her hands together in front of her. “Maven Eldritch. That’s a very nice name.”
Maven looked at her.
“Thank you. I chose none of it.”
Celeste blinked.
“Oh.”
A tiny pause.
“That’s… efficient.”
Maven’s smile remained exactly the same.
“I was abandoned on the steps of the Church as a baby.”
Celeste’s ears lifted in immediate sympathy.
“Oh, I’m sorry—”
“No need. I survived. Very inconsiderate of me, apparently.”
Celeste did not know what to do with that.
So, naturally, her mouth kept going.
“Did you always want to be an Inquisitor?”
Maven tilted her head as though the question had been placed on a table for dissection.
“No. My favourite pastime as a child was opening things up to see how they worked.”
Celeste brightened slightly.
“Oh! Like gadgets?”
Maven’s pale eyes narrowed with faint interest.
Celeste continued, encouraged despite every signal in the room suggesting she should not be.
“Arcade is very good with gadgets. He built this little rotating sugar-pressure stabiliser once that looked like a toaster with legs, except it wasn’t for toast. It used three misaligned mana coils to create a counter-pulse inside unstable candy crystal, so when the crystal tried to expand, the device sort of… convinced it to fold inward instead?”
She frowned thoughtfully.
“It did explode, but only because Topsy put a sausage roll in the calibration chamber, which technically means the design was sound and the snack was the problem.”
For the first time, Maven’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
“Interesting.”
Celeste smiled, relieved.
“Right? So you like tools as well?”
Maven’s smile returned.
“More like instruments.”
Celeste nodded too quickly.
“Oh, instruments are nice too. Mezzo has a guitar, and sometimes he plays battle music, though one time he tried to rhyme cathedral with ‘need a brawl’, which I don’t think counts as a proper rhyme even if he insists it’s art—”
“Not musical instruments.”
Celeste stopped.
Maven stepped closer.
“The kind that get people to talk.”
The air seemed to cool by several degrees.
Celeste understood.
Very slowly.
Her mouth shut.
Maven watched that happen with quiet satisfaction.
“Wonderful,” she said. “You do learn.”
Celeste’s hands tightened around the strap of her bag.
“Are you sure Silver can’t come with me?”
Maven’s eyes flicked toward her.
Celeste rushed on.
“I know we’re not exactly… getting along right now, but he’s a noble. And important. And very good with rules and rooms where people are trying to frighten other people politely.”
No one answered.
Celeste looked to Tamsin.
“Does Lady Umbranox know about this?”
Still nothing.
Diana’s face tightened.
Tamsin did not look away, but he did not answer either.
Maven merely smiled.
Celeste’s stomach dropped.
“Oh,” she said softly.
That was when she stopped trying to make it easier.
She took half a step back.
Not much.
Not enough to run.
Just enough to show she had finally realised this was not a conversation she could charm her way through.
One of the clerks behind her shifted.
A firm hand pressed between her shoulders and shoved her forward.
Not hard enough to hurt.
Hard enough to make the point.
Celeste stumbled one step.
Her ears flattened.
The warmth drained from her face.
Maven stopped before the statue of Motherlight.
The great crystal figure gazed down at them with calm, blind mercy.
Tamsin turned.
For all his soft robes and holy composure, his voice had changed. It was flatter now. Tired around the edges. The voice of someone who had seen too many bad things and no longer wasted words dressing them kindly.
“When Motherlight was corrupted by mana,” he said, “the first sin was not violence.”
Celeste looked up at him.
“It was not ambition.”
His eyes held hers.
“It was a lie.”
The hall seemed to deepen around the word.
Tamsin glanced briefly toward Maven, then back to Celeste.
“That is what the Inquisition was made for.”
His voice remained steady.
“To draw out the lie.”
“To expose the truth.”
“To cut away what hides in the wound.”
He looked up at Motherlight’s enormous face.
“Only then can light enter.”
A pause.
“Only then can corruption heal.”
Celeste nodded.
Or tried to.
Her body obeyed in a tiny, stiff motion, but her heart was going a million miles an hour.
“Yes,” she said faintly. “That… that makes sense.”
It did not make sense.
Or maybe it did, and that was worse.
Tamsin turned his head slightly.
“Theft,” he said, “is the second sin.”
Celeste blinked.
“And we believe something very valuable was taken from the Church.”
“Oh,” Celeste said quickly, because nerves had grabbed hold of her mouth before thought could intervene. “Yes, things have been taken, absolutely, we know that, and we’ve been looking into it because there are records missing and some of the Godiad files are very odd, and Arcade thinks some of the dates are wrong, but Arcade always thinks dates are wrong because technically he says calendars are just society agreeing to be incorrect together, which is probably not helpful right now—”
“Celeste.”
Tamsin’s voice cut through the ramble.
Not harsh.
But final.
She stopped at once.
Her ears dipped.
“Sorry.”
Tamsin stepped closer.
“We know where it is.”
Celeste’s breath caught.
The lights above seemed suddenly too bright.
Tamsin’s gaze did not move from her face.
“The question,” he said, “is why it is inside you.”
Celeste held her breath.
For one terrible second, there was no sound at all.
Not the murmuring clergy.
Not the distant city.
Not even her own heartbeat.
Then Maven smiled.
“Oh, there it is.”
Celeste’s eyes flicked to her.
Maven watched her with bright, clinical interest.
“That lovely little moment where the body understands before the mind finishes pretending.”
Celeste’s voice came out thin.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course not,” Maven said. “That would make this quick.”
She stepped in front of Celeste, hands folded neatly at her waist.
“Godiad was kind enough to let us know about your little scans during your last visit.”
Celeste went still.
Maven tilted her head.
“How generous of them. Very civic-minded. Deeply suspicious, naturally, but still generous.”
Tamsin’s expression remained unreadable.
Maven continued.
“And we would very much like to get to the bottom of this.”
Celeste swallowed.
“Oh,” she said, trying very hard to sound normal and failing immediately. “I’d like to as well. It’s a really funny mystery, actually. Not funny like amusing, obviously, because it might be very serious and there’s probably a crime involved, but funny like strange, and I do like mysteries when they aren’t trying to kill anyone, though they usually are, lately, which is becoming a bit of a pattern—”
Maven reached out.
One clawed finger touched beneath Celeste’s chin.
Gently.
Precisely.
She lifted Celeste’s face until their eyes met.
Maven smiled.
“Oh, it will be funny.”
Her voice softened into something almost kind.
“Just not for you.”
