The Light
A suffocating silence still ruled the Great Gardenia.
At its center stood Mr. Sunday.
Slowly, deliberately, he raised one hand high into the air. Resting in his grasp was a teleportation stone—one of the highest expressions of applied sorcery. Even at their peak, the arcane minarets of Sindris could produce fewer than five such stones in an entire year.
The crimson crystal pulsed once.
Then it shattered.
Arcane sigils unfurled in midair, interlocking into a vast magic circle. Light erupted—brilliant, absolute, devouring the arena until form and distance ceased to exist. For a heartbeat, for perhaps an eternity, the world was only white.
When the light receded, Mr. Sunday was no longer alone.
Five figures now sat beside him at the heart of the arena, bound and kneeling. Their faces and bodies were completely concealed beneath black robes. Heavy chains coiled around their limbs, anchoring them to the stone floor, and thick cloths were tied across their mouths to rob them of speech.
They did not struggle.
They trembled.
Mr. Sunday stepped forward and reached for two of them.
With a single motion, he pulled back their hoods.
Gasps rippled through the audience.
Two children were revealed—both with unmistakable red eyes.
When Mr. Sunday removed the cloths gagging their mouths, the children broke instantly. They cried out in terror, voices cracking and overlapping as they begged to be released, begged to be returned to their parents, begged simply to live.
Mr. Sunday turned toward the masked audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said calmly, “commit this image to your memory. Look at them. Look into their eyes. Listen to the sincerity of their fear.”
His gaze hardened.
“For they are nothing more than two helpless Mistari children, pleading for mercy. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Behind the masks, the spectators saw only children - Ordinary children.
Then Mr. Sunday continued.
“Now,” he said softly, “witness what your gods once showed to the eyes of the crusaders of the Night of Absolution.”
One of the robed figures stirred. He rose to his feet, and the audience noticed something. Unlike the others, this man was not bound. He reached up, slowly, and removed his hood and robe.
A shockwave of recognition tore through the stands.
The man was famous.
Revered.
Sanctified.
A living pillar of the Seltis Pantheon.
His hair, fully ashen, spilled to his shoulders. His tall frame stooped with age, his posture bent not from weakness but from years of bearing ritual and authority. His face was deeply lined, his skin mottled—patches of pallor and darkness marred it unevenly, marked by vitiligo and hyperpigmentation. Though sixty by years, he looked closer to eighty, as though time itself had punished him for what he knew.
He spoke.
“Salutations to all who dwell in heaven and on earth, and all that exists between them.”
His voice was hoarse, yet unwavering.
“I am Fabio—Proxy of Light, and Primarch of Ruala. You may know me better as Pope Innocentius I of Helden.”
A pause.
“I am the one who baptized Asmar and Randia. The one who welcomed them into the embrace of the Goddess of Light.”
His eyes flicked briefly toward Mr. Sunday.
“…And tonight,” he said, “I shall fulfill my part.”
Then Fabio began to recite a prayer. Not one read from scripture, but one carved into memory. A prayer he had spoken countless times before.
“By the Majesty of the Eight,The moment the final words left his lips, the world fractured. Through the eyeholes of their masks, the spectators’ vision twisted violently.may glory belongs only to the Light.
Hear the plea of Your children,
who kneel before destiny and all that You have ordained.
On this night,
we set aside our names,
we veil our souls in sacred darkness,
and borrow Your will
so we may walk without doubt or hesitation.
Absolve our hands,
and all that must stain them,
Lead us to those who stray,
lead us to those who are tainted,
lead us to those who lurks in sin,
and those who turn their backs on the Light.
If blood must shed,
Let it be the ink
that rewrites the order of the world.
Let it be the price
paid for Your everlasting decree.
And when dawn finally comes,
remember us not as sinners,
but as the faithful who walked beneath Your Light."
The two Mistari children were no longer children.
Where trembling little figures had knelt now stood grotesque, malformed entities—shapes too wrong to name, bodies warped beyond human proportion. Their cries no longer sounded like words; to the audience, they were nothing but shrill roars and animal shrieks, stripped of all meaning.
A collective horror seized the crowd.
Spines went rigid.
Breaths caught halfway to the lungs.
An icy dread crawled down their backs, sinking past skin and bone, burrowing into marrow and memory alike. Some collapsed into their seats, legs failing them entirely. Others sobbed without restraint, voices breaking beneath their masks. A few lost control of their bodies altogether—dignity abandoned in the face of terror too sudden, too absolute to withstand.
This was what the Night of Absolution had always looked like.
And for the first time, it was being shown again. Not to crusaders, but to everyone.
“We fought the men of the Mistari by day, and hunted their helpless families by night. Elders. Women. Children. Infants. All of them, without exception." Fabio said, his voice carrying through the deadened air, heavy as ash.
"And when dawn came, sacred flame erased their shapes, just as rain washes blood from stone—leaving nothing behind but clean ground and cleaner consciences.”
As the truth settled, the holy baptismal enchantments bound to the masks finished their task. One by one, the magic faded. The masks cracked, crumbled, and fell apart into shimmering fragments, freeing every face and baring every pair of eyes within Great Gardenia unhindered once more.
Before the crowd had fully recovered from the flood of truth forced upon them, before their thoughts could even settle into fear or denial, Mr. Sunday produced a grail.
The vessel was old, its surface darkened by age and ritual use, carved with symbols that would make scholars reopen the manuscripts of old. Without hesitation, he drew a blade across his own wrist. Blood flowed freely, thick and dark, filling the cup until it brimmed. The scent of iron spread through the arena, sharp enough to sting the nose.
At the same time, he pulled back the remaining hoods from the last two captives.
One was a Mistari youth, barely past adolescence, his face still carrying traces of childhood despite the tension hardening his features. The other was a large, powerfully built adult man, his presence heavy even while bound. The left side of his face was ruined by an old burn—flesh twisted, scarred, and discolored, a wound that told of fire not easily forgotten.
“Dear friends,” Mr. Sunday said calmly, standing before the Mistari boy as though addressing a classroom rather than an execution ground, “will you introduce yourselves to us?”
The boy refused. His eyes burned with hatred as he stared at the man in the cat mask, his jaw clenched so tightly it trembled. Seconds passed. The silence grew thick.
Mr. Sunday’s patience ended. He raised his sword and placed the edge lightly against the boy’s throat.
“There is no point in wasting my time,” he said flatly. “If you refuse, I still have two others.”
The boy’s gaze flicked instinctively toward the two small children bound nearby. Fear cracked through his defiance. His teeth ground together in frustration, his chest heaving, before he finally spoke.
“My name is Eliyah, son of Eliachim,” he said, voice shaking but clear. “I am a Mistari. My home was Szechia—before we fled.”
Mr. Sunday lowered his blade and returned it to its sheath, then turned to the larger man. The scarred man had been staring at the ground until now. Slowly, he lifted his head, eyes drifting upward as if searching the heavens for something long absent, before finally fixing his gaze on the crowd—still bound by Dictum, still unable to speak.
“I am Godfrey de Gremont,” he said quietly. “Former Godwarden of the goddess Iuneth, the Solace. I… have forsaken her, as much as she has forsaken me.”
Mr. Sunday stepped back to the center of the arena and raised the grail high for all to see.
“Within my blood,” he declared, “flows the true factor of Mistus. This factor will never fail to react to power of the same essence.”
He lowered the cup and approached Eliyah once more, pressing it into the boy’s trembling hands.
“Drink only a little,” Mr. Sunday said. “If you wish to live.”
Eliyah hesitated, then took a small sip.
The reaction was immediate.
He gagged, choking as pain tore through him. His body convulsed violently, muscles swelling beneath his skin, veins standing out like cords. With a raw cry, he tore free of his restraints as if they were nothing, yet the strength overwhelmed him. His eyes flared into a brighter, more violent red as he dropped to all fours, fighting to retain control.
He slammed his fist into the arena floor.
Stone shattered outward in a massive fracture spanning nearly three meters—an impossible display of power for a boy who moments earlier could not even break free from simple rope knots.
After several agonizing seconds, his body gave out. Eliyah collapsed, unconscious, his form slowly shrinking back to normal, skin flushed and raw as if burned from within.
“Mistari inherit the power of Mistus,” Mr. Sunday announced loudly, ensuring no one missed the lesson. “My factor amplifies that power beyond what their bodies can endure. Do not worry—I did not kill him. He is merely unconscious.”
Then he turned and offered the grail to Godfrey.
The large man hesitated. Fear and doubt warred openly across his scarred face.
“Conviction, my friend,” Mr. Sunday whispered.
Godfrey closed his eyes and drank deeply. Blood coated his lips and ran down his chin as he swallowed the entire mouthful.
Nothing happened.
No surge. No transformation. No divine response.
Exactly as Mr. Sunday had anticipated.
“Godfrey is not a Mistari,” Mr. Sunday explained, his tone almost instructional, “and he no longer holds faith in any of the Seltis Pantheon. He is unaffected by higher power. As you can see—nothing happened.”
Fabio stood calmly, utterly unmoving. The old man said nothing at first. He merely closed his eyes, breathing once—slow, deliberate—as the blood-filled grail was lifted before him.
Then he spoke.
“I am a proxy of the Goddess of Light,” Fabio said, his voice steady, carrying neither pride nor fear. “Divinity flows within my vein. There is no spell that can enslave my mind, and no poison that can scour my flesh.”
A pause followed. Not hesitation—resolve.
.
.
.
“And I…” Fabio continued, his voice lowering as he accepted the cup from Mr. Sunday, “will face my own truth.”
Mr. Sunday stepped back several paces, deliberately clearing the stage and surrendering the moment entirely to him.
When Fabio drank the blood, something profoundly unexpected occurred.
At first, his body reacted much like Eliyah’s had—muscles tightening, breath hitching, veins standing sharply beneath his skin. Yet unlike the boy, Fabio remained upright, forcing his body into stillness through sheer will. But as the seconds stretched on, the transformation did not subside. It deepened.
His features began to shift.
The lines of age softened. His face, then his hair, slowly transformed into that of a young woman—radiant, with long golden hair gleaming like the first light of dawn. Fabio groaned, his voice cracking and warping as it changed, slipping into a register not his own.
And when he finally lifted his head and opened his eyes to scream in unbearable agony, the truth became undeniable.
Both of his eyes were crimson red.
At that instant, Randia—watching everything unfold before him—was struck by an overwhelming pain in his chest. It felt as though something unseen had seized his heart and was trying to tear it violently from his body. This was not fear. Not shock.
It was recognition of something utterly alien.
Something even Randia had never witnessed, nor endured.
Half-conscious now, Fabio’s body seemed overtaken by another will. His hands came together instinctively, fingers interlacing in the posture of prayer taught within churches. His knees struck the ground. His face turned upward, eyes fixed on the heavens.
Then—
A pillar of light descended from the sky.
It did not burn. It did not explode.
It erased.
Fabio was disintegrated completely—no body, no ash, no sound, not even the scent of ozone or smoke. He vanished as though the light itself had denied his existence.
In the silence that followed, the Dictum broke.
The oppressive force binding the crowd evaporated, as if the pillar of light had purified every trace of magic within the arena. Breath returned to lungs. Muscles unlocked. Somewhere above, the sound of wings could be heard—the mounts of Rosmayne’s sky knights circling overhead.
“M–Mama, look!”
A child pointed upward.
The words echoed through the Great Gardenia, which had only just awakened from its enforced silence. People looked to the sky in unison. Even Mr. Sunday followed their gaze.
Then he began to clap.
Slowly at first. Once. Twice. The sound rang out far too clearly in the hollowed silence of the arena.
“Magnificent,” Mr. Sunday said, his voice light, almost reverent. “Truly. Even I did not foresee that outcome.”
He lowered his hands and turned back to the crowd, a smile curving beneath the mask—one that carried neither comfort nor warmth.
“Now then,” he continued, spreading his arms as though welcoming old friends, “please, return to your seats, honored guests. The performance is not yet finished.”
His gaze swept across the Great Gardenia, lingering on faces still pale with horror, with awe, with dawning understanding.
“And neither,” he added softly, “is the truth.”