"It's just - not a few bells ago - we all agreed that going to chat to Soar's Supreme Being was not a card we wanted to play yet," Latham said, almost sprinting to keep up with Lowe. "What did that fucking spider say to you that has changed your mind?"

  Lowe didn’t pause as he bounded up the stairs outside the Celestial Temple two at a time. So much so that Latham, despite all the insane advantages of his Class, was struggling to keep up.

  Grackle Nuroon had shown Lowe exactly what he needed and, of course, no more. He’d provided just enough access to the puzzle pieces to lure him into doing something stupid, but nowhere near enough to actually be anything approaching helpful. It hardly needed any of Lowe’s 200 points in Intelligence to know that had certainly been the Director’s intention. Nuroon wasn’t the type to let slights go, and what Lowe had done to him during his investigation into the deaths of those Curators was more than just some little irritation.

  In fact, the more he thought of it, the whole ‘I’ll do you a solid, but then you’ll owe me a favour thing,’ was just so much bollocks. Sharing that memory with him had been Nuroon’s way of achieving revenge. It was clear that he thought that putting Lowe on the trail of whatever had been locked in the Vault six years ago was going to get Lowe killed.

  It was pretty damn transparent, but that didn’t mean he was going to back away. That had never been in Lowe’s nature. And he supposed the Director was counting on that too.

  Lowe reached the top of the steps, and two giant Temple Warders moved in unison, each stepping forward with all sorts of self-importance to block his path. They were imposing figures. Well, of course they were.. They were Temple Warders. Both were Level ?? and were clad in heavy ceremonial armour. While neither of them was quite built on Latham’s scale, any of them on their worse day would be more than enough to turn Lowe into a frothy meat paste.

  "Oy! Hang on, twat!" one of them said, extending a hand toward Lowe’s shoulder in what was probably intended to be a an entirely unreasonable deterrent. Seeing the movement, Latham put on a final burst of speed to try to intervene; however, the second the man’s gauntlet made contact with the Inspector, Lowe’s manacle screamed, and the Warder’s entire body jerked as if struck by an invisible force. Then his feet left the ground for the briefest moment—just long enough for gravity to remember its job and reassert itself with vigour—before he went crashing backward, the Warder’s heavy form bouncing once, twice, and then rolling down the temple steps in a mess of polished metal and curses.

  "Fucking hell, little man! What did you do?!"

  The other Warder didn’t fuck around, manifesting a huge halberd in their hand and activated some sort of offensive Skill as he prepared to enforce all sorts of divine authority. Because that’s what the Warders were, after all. The enforcers of the gods’ will. And on the grounds of the Temple, when someone had been stupid enough to hurt one of their own? Well, that mandate to act was pretty much absolute.

  Or at least, it should have been . . .

  Lowe stared up at the second Warder as the silver inlays across the Temple’s doors gleamed brighter, casting long, unnatural shadows across the stairway, forming the shape of a fist. Then, the sky overhead, clear just a moment ago, seemed to deepen into the colour of a vicious bruise. Clouds unfurled from nowhere like blood spilling endlessly into water. And then, into all that silence, came a voice.

  He shall pass.

  Well, not a voice. It was the memory of a voice having spoken. And a pretty fucking memorable one. The remaining Warder stiffened, his knuckles whitening around his halberd. Lowe assumed that another message must have been delivered, for his mind only, because - casting the filthiest of glares Lowe’s way, he shuffled aside and then went down the steps to help his fallen comrade.

  Latham muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath that Lowe chose to ignore as he kept moving forward, through the open gates and into the Celestial Temple itself. It appeared that Arkola was not against the idea of Lowe stopping by with his question to ask, which was . . . interesting. Lowe’s mind paused on that for a moment. Was it? It was terrifying, certainly. But interesting? Maybe.

  Battling with an impending sense of doom, Lowe continued through the Celestial Temple’s lobby - he actually hadn’t been back here since the conclusion of the Gianna d’Avec case and certainly hadn’t missed it - and while his steps may have been steady, his thoughts were anything but. Then a portal stone loomed ahead of him, the one keyed to the First Floor.

  And up to Arkola.

  The last time he had ventured there, quite a number of people had died for the mistakes he had made. And not just those who had deserved it—though they had died too—but others with no culpability at all. Innocent people who’d been caught in the undertow of his choices. People had died because of what he had thought. Because of all his cleverness. Was he just about to cause the same thing again?

  Lowe had thought he’d had it all figured out back then. He’d convinced himself - despite the chaos unfolding around him - that he might actually have been the one in control. That the pieces were moving where he wanted and that he had outmaneuvered everyone. After everything that had happened in the year following his Classtration, he’d been delighted, hadn’t he, that he was still able to play the game with the kind of balls that made men into legends.

  But in the end, what had all that confidence earned him?

  Blood everywhere. Arebella held hostage. And a dead ex-best friend.

  A man who had betrayed him in ways apparently Lowe still didn’t completely understand.

  The portal stone keyed to the First Floor was ahead of him, nestling in its pedestal. A ball of ancient mana waiting for him. Offering passage? Leading to a fresh disaster.

  Lowe’s steps began to slow as he approached it. Just because Arkola had extended the invitation—pop up and see me if you're stuck—didn’t mean he had to respond, did it? Certainly, a sane man absolutely wouldn’t go anywhere near this. What was it that Rook had said? "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport."

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  He wasn’t wrong, was he? The gods didn’t care anything about them. Powerful things rarely did. They moved their pieces. Made their plays. Laughed at the ruins they left behind. And Lowe was about to walk right into the hands of the biggest player on the board. Again.

  But the difference between this and last time was simple. Last time, he’d thought he had some measure of control. This time, he thought he knew better. The Warden. The Mayor. The Director. The God. All these powerful people trying to direct where Lowe should be looking. He was fucked, wasn’t he?

  “For fuck’s sake, little man!” Latham said. “Just wait up for a moment.”

  Lowe looked back and gave a sad little smile. “Look, we both know I need to do this. We’re nowhere and people are trying to kill us. This could be our best chance to get something approaching answers.”

  Latham caught Lowe by the arm. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to pull him back. Lowe’s manacle immediately reacted and its response clearly hit Latham like an invisible tidal wave. The Pressure crashed against him, but the Temple Warder held on to Lowe’s arm, his stance widening as he resisted being thrown away. Lowe dismissed any thought of using the active aspect of the Skill on his friend, but the passive one continued to push back against the Temple Warder. No matter what might have been Lowe’s intention, though, the Shattered Grasp would not be restrained.

  Deep grooves began etching into the stone beneath their feet. Thin at first. Then deeper. Then wider. With horror, Lowe watched as the clash between two massive opposing forces dragged down into the very foundations of the Temple floor. He thought that was some sort of metaphor for his life just there . . .

  A whole host of people suddenly stopped to watched. Temple scribes, worshippers, and even a few off-duty Warders froze where they stood, conversations stalling mid-word. The spectacle of two powerful, contradictory forces warring in real-time was not something anyone saw often. Well, not for long, anyway. But it certainly wasn’t something anyone wanted to see right in front of them.

  Latham clearly couldn’t believe what was happening either, his grip locked tighter on the Inspector’s arm even as the passive power at Lowe’s wrist doubled up and tried to throw him away. For one appalling moment, he was tempted to press the Pressure at Latham. To spiral him away and force him to let go. But Lowe dismissed that thought.

  “Latham, you need to let go. I can’t control the power here. It’s going to . . .”

  "Don’t tell me what it’s going to do. You need to think about what’s about to happen here, little man. I mean, really think."

  Lowe clenched his jaw. His own muscles ached under the push-pull strain - Roll with the Punches repairing all sorts of damage - as the relic fought to break free from his control. It wanted to push the Warder away. To utterly obliterate him. But Latham wasn’t for moving. Somehow, he seemed to have anchored himself to the Temple floor, and was more than holding his own in the struggle. Even so, Lowe recognised that he was pushing up against the full force of the Temple Warder’s will - a will forged to hold the line when gods themselves pressed against it. What the fuck did he have on his wrist here?

  He took a deep breath, trying to find a way to end the confrontation with both of them still in one piece. "I am thinking about it, Latham. But I need to know what’s happening now and, more importantly, I need more of a handle on what happened back then. Unless I go up there and ask Arkola, I’m never going to find out how the Temple is mixed up with the Black Knight. And, more important than that, why!" Lowe said. “This is the only way we’re ever going to find out what’s going on. I can’t waste the opportunity.”

  The forces warring between them tightened. "Says you, little man!”

  “Says me.”

  “Lowe, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t think you understand what you’re potentially walking into. If you ask a god for a favour, there’s going to be no way of wriggling free from that. And that goes triple. Quadruple with Arkola."

  The floor beneath them cracked and a long fissure split the stone where their feet dug in. The Pressure spiked and then, all at once, it broke. Latham’s grip snapped open, his hand recoiling as if burned. He took a sharp step back, his boots grinding against the now-ruined temple floor. He looked down at his hand, utterly amazed. “Lowe, listen to me. Really listen. It’s the first thing they tell you on day one, when you sign up to be a Warder. Every Temple has its gods, every god has its Avatar, and every single one of them is a fucking nightmare in their own way. They are not people. They are not saints. They are not mentors or oracles or kind, guiding hands to help us stand tall in this veil of tears. They are power wrapped in the idea of a person, and the moment you start thinking otherwise, you are already lost. If Arkola is the one who slipped you that -” he gestured at the manacle- “then nothing good is intended.”

  As Lowe said nothing, Latham pressed on. “You do not want this kind of help, nor this sort of attention if you can avoid it. You think you’re going up there to have a conversation? You’re not. You think a discussion with Arkola is just going to be another lead? It’s not. It’s a summons. A god - especially this god - doesn’t just invite you up there for a fucking chat! It doesn’t care if you’re confused, or stuck, or looking for answers. It wants something. And if Arkola wants something from you, then you are already a piece on the board, whether you like it or not. So, no matter what else, if you are planning to ask it for help . . .”

  Still, Lowe didn’t speak.

  “I don’t pretend to understand the shit you got tangled up in back before I met you, but I know this. You don’t get to come back from Arkola doing you a solid the same. You won’t be the same. Every Warder knows it. Every Priest who’s had so much as a glimpse of the First Floor knows it. You go up there, and ask for help and you are seen. And once you are seen—really seen—you do not get to step back into your life like nothing changed. You don’t get to be some bastard Inspector scuffing his boots through the underbelly of Soar, solving his cases, keeping his head down. You will not get to be Lowe anymore. Do you understand me?”

  “Mate, this is all a bit much. I’ve been up there before!” Lowe said.

  “No. Not like this. There’s being in Arkola’s presence and then there’s being in Arkola’s presence. And don’t patronise me by telling me you don’t understand the difference. So, before you step through that portal, you need to ask yourself one question—do you really want Arkola to see you?”

  Lowe met Latham’s gaze. “I think,” he said, “it’s too late for that. We need answers.”

  Then he pulled free and stepped into the light.

  And let the portal take him.