The seminary’s towers scattered like broken teeth against the smog-streaked sky, their cobbled domes choked by ivy that whispered every echo of sound that they manage to grasp. The groups huddled around a sputtering fire fed by splintered pews, their faces gaunt but resolute. Melissa poked the flames with a rusted gear, her voice cutting through the crackle.

  “Those towers need to come down. One by one. The Apostates’ muscle can handle the heavy lifting once we map the weak points.”

  Veyra crouched at the fire’s edge, her crow-feather cloak swallowing the light. She gestured upward, talon-like nails tracing the Void’s unseen currents. “They are yours to command. Thy will be done.”

  Devon materialized beside them, his form solid but tinged with static at the edges. He flexed his hands, studying the calluses as if reassuring himself of their tangibility. “This’ll be our command post. Priorities first—food banks, engineer’s lodge, storage. We’ll organize guilds to manage supplies. Tents for now, but it won’t be long” He accepted a wooden bowl of pemmican from Claire, chewing slowly. The act seemed deliberate, a ritual to anchor him to flesh. “Pemmican was a really good call by the Sewer Queen, I never really got her name though.” He said, chewing while staring off into the distance. “No one really knows her name, she’s been there since before my birth, our birth, I guess, rumor holds that she has ruled the Sewers for more than a century.” Claire replied while staring into the fire.

  Georg stared into the flames, Lara’s ribbon coiled around his finger. “I’ll take a team to clear the bramble choking the eastern quadrant.” His gaze flicked to Elara, who sat apart sharpening a salvaged dagger. “You know siege layouts. Your eyes could spot structural flaws.”

  Elara nodded, her Void-scarred hands steady. “The Monarch’s architects favored symmetry. Their weakness is repetition.”

  Lyza who was sipping tea hurriedly said ,” Roza and me will come as well, we’ve been through scout missions, and we were once Urban Guerilla. We will have a few set of skills that are indisposable.”

  Roza smiled and just nodded to the plan.

  The bramble was dense, growing as freely as it could, without a knife or a sword it would’ve been impossible to traverse without getting injured.

  Elara’s dagger paused mid-swing as Georg hacked at a bramble thicket with unnatural ferocity. Thorns bit his arms, blood mingling with sweat.

  "You’ll bleed out before the Monarch finds us," she said quietly.

  Georg wheeled, blade raised. "You’d know his methods best, wouldn’t you?"

  Elara didn’t flinch. "I tracked rebels through worse than thorns. Poisoned wells. Starved villages. Each time, the Monarch’s voice whispered ‘For order.’" She snapped a brittle vine. "It never sounded like mine."

  Georg’s grip tightened. "And my daughter’s screams? Did they sound like yours?"

  For a heartbeat, the Void-scars on Elara’s neck pulsed. "No. They sounded like my sister’s."

  The admission hung between them, sharp as the dagger she offered him handle-first. Georg stared, then returned to cutting.

  Lyla and Roza silently followed to their sides, they were making progress albeit, with careful consideration took more time than they initially thought. “ Isn’t it weird that none of these long stems have a stalk?” Lyla curiously asked. “Maybe we haven’t found the source.” Elara answered while hacking mid-sentence. “But these would make good firewood when dried, or something else, we will figure something out.

  Lapen sat cross-legged nearby, Lissa drowsing against his shoulder. The girl’s silver-veined fingers clutched a half-eaten pemmican cake. “These aren’t bad,” she mumbled, nibbling the edge.

  “Handy, but they’ll choke you dry without water,” Lapen said, tugging her purifier mask higher. “Eat slower.”

  Lissa’s head lolled against Lapen’s shoulder, her breath evening out. He studied her silver-veined hands, recalling their mother’s fingers—same slender shape, same stubborn grip on hope. She’d have hated the pemmican too, he thought bitterly. A memory surfaced: their mother humming as she kneaded dough in their cramped flat, flour dusting her lashes. The smell of burnt bread, the Inquisition’s boots on the stairs—

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  Lissa stirred, jarring him back. “You’re squeezing my hand,” she mumbled.

  He loosened his grip. “Sorry. Bad dreams.”

  Night draped the seminary in a silence heavier than the smog. Night watches were selected by pulling lots, everyone took turns. The rest retired to their tents, the tent in which everyone slept in was a big tent which fit all of them. They each padding made from synthetic leather with pillows, to their side was a makeshift space to put their personal inventory in. Armor was something rarely taken off, and yet, during these late nights, no one had them on. Everyone slept soundly for the first time, their minds and bodies aching from the long and arduous journey out of Heaven’s Reform and through the Greylands. They have seen horrors inside the metropolis and yet, the Greylands also haunted them still - the mystery of why the lands lost their colors, why they were so desolate was on everyone’s minds but no one talked openly about it. And in the early morning, Lapen broke the silence of the night and yelped in distress.

  “She’s gone! Lissa’s gone!”

  The camp erupted. Boots scuffed stone as rebels fanned out with lumen-moss torches. Georg and Elara scoured the bramble-thick paths, thorns snagging their coats. Natalie scaled a crumbling spire, glaive glinting as she scanned the wastes. Devon melted into the shadows, static prickling his senses.

  Melissa found the girl’s trail first—a scrap of cloth snagged on a rusted nail. “Here! Into the ruins!”

  They descended into the seminary’s underbelly, The chamber hummed faintly, a vibration that prickled Devon’s static-laced skin. Natalie’s torch flickered as if the air itself resisted light. Melissa kicked aside a shattered censer, its hollow clang echoing like a choked scream. “Smells like a Seraphim’s tomb,” she muttered.

  “Worse,” Devon said, crouching to touch the floor. The stone wept a thin, oily residue. “This isn’t simple petrification.”

  Lissa stood motionless in a vaulted chamber, torchlight dancing across three stone figures frozen mid-motion. The first knelt with arms outstretched, palms upturned in supplication. The second clutched its face, fingers gouged into eye sockets. The third pressed its forehead to the floor, spine curved like a broken bow.

  “Lissa!” Lapen lunged forward, but Devon held him back.

  “Don’t touch her.”

  The girl’s eyes were milky white, reflecting unseen horrors. Her lips moved soundlessly until she crumpled.

  Melissa caught her before she hit the ground. “Cold as a drone’s heart. Get her to the fire!”

  Lissa stirred at dawn, her breath fogging in the chill. The rebels crowded around, their exhaustion edged with dread.

  “What happened?” Lapen gripped her hand, her skin still clammy.

  “I woke in the ruins… The statues—they were people once. Apostates.” Her voice trembled. “Five hundred years ago. The Monarch’s angels came… sucked the color from the land. Turned them to stone for defiance.” She hesitated, then whispered, “But I saw birds too. Trees. Not just ash.”

  Veyra edged closer, her crow-feather cloak rustling. “The Apostates of the First Purge. Their names were scrubbed, but the Void remembers.” Her milky eye fixed on Lissa. “You walked its memory, child. Saw what the Monarch buried.”

  Devon’s void-eye narrowed. “Memories aren’t gifts. They’re weapons, they’re scars.”

  Lissa shivered. “The trees felt real.”

  “So were the statues,” Elara said quietly.

  Georg stiffened. “Visions lie.”

  “Or remember,” Elara said softly, her gaze on the cracked ceiling. “The Monarch purges dissent, makes a show of it in gruesome tone. Statues make convenient warnings.”

  Claire knelt, brushing dirt from Lissa’s hair. “No more nighttime strolls. Understood?”

  The girl nodded, but her eyes lingered on the ruins’ entrance.

  Devon materialized by the fire, tossing a chunk of moss into the flames. “We’ll seal the lower chambers. No sense tempting curiosity.”

  Melissa snorted. “Seal it? That’s where the best salvage’ll be.”

  “Salvage can wait.” Claire stood, buckling her knife belt. “Today we clear the east quadrant. Georg—take point. Elara, watch his flank.”

  As the group dispersed, Lapen lingered by Lissa. “You really saw trees?”

  She smiled faintly. “Green. Like the rumors.”

  Above them, a lone shadowmoth circled before darting into the smog.

  Alone in the seminary’s bell tower, Devon unraveled.

  Static cascaded from his fingertips, corroding the stone where he gripped it. Visions flickered—Lissa’s green trees replaced by the gallows’ creaking ropes, Elara’s dagger morphing into Murdoch’s bone-mask. He’d lied about the chambers. The Void thrummed there, hungry and familiar.

  "You’re a door now," the Inquisitor’s voice slithered through his mind. "And doors swing both ways."

  Devon’s void-eye pulsed. Below, Natalie sparred with Gonov, their laughter sharp. He’d bury the rot festering beneath them. Even if it gnawed him hollow.

  “I have to find a way to understand the Void better.” He whispered to himself, then he wrote a note which he stamped on the command post’s table.

  “Keep true. Our journey is only starting. I will be gone for a while, the Void calls to me as it calls to all of you. I will be back, I don’t know when.”