The scent of incense choked the air, thick and cloying, layered over the faint trace of scorched silver and dried blood. It clung to Orien Thorne's lungs like guilt, making every breath feel like a confession.
He knelt in the center of the Inviolus Hall, his wrists bound by radiant chains. They hummed faintly, living sigils crawling across their length, pulsing with the divine pact of the Order. Every few moments, they adjusted, tightening slightly as if feeding on his resistance.
Above him, braziers burned with holy flame, their golden hue a known sign of Angelic authority. The flames bent unnaturally toward the judges, as if bowing in deference.
And across the room, she stood.
A girl no older than eight. Shackled. Bruised. Her shoulders hunched under the weight of the crowd's hatred.
Orien's mind burned with memory. The night he found her, limp in the gutter, her face bloody from a fall. Her sobs had been quiet, as if she'd already learned no one would listen.
He had listened.
He carried her home through the freezing rain, wrapping her in his cloak, wiping mud from her cheeks. He offered food. Safety. Warmth she hadn't known in years.
"Orien Thorne."
The High Priest's voice boomed, laced with a pact born echo, a ripple in the air like a second voice layered beneath his own. "Do you deny shielding a devil touched child?"
Orien stared up at him, unflinching.
"She was hurt," he said. "Bleeding. She didn't ask for whatever mark you think she bears. She needed help."
The Priest raised his hand.
A burning halo formed behind his head, thin, elegant, and cold. An angelic signifier. The crowd gasped in reverence.
"You question the sacred judgment of the Pact?" The Priest's voice thundered now, enhanced by divine resonance. The chains around Orien blazed hotter in response.
"She cried in her sleep!" Orien shouted, pushing himself upright despite the searing pain in his arms. "She asked if she'd ever be loved! What kind of sacred truth lets that happen?"
A low, sharp crack echoed behind him. One of the Judges had activated a minor divine decree. A white glyph shimmered above their hand, projecting a barrier of silence over the gallery as murmurs began to rise. The air hissed as angelic energy reacted to dissent.
The girl shivered, her lip trembling. She tried to take a step back, but a spark of demonic energy surged from the chains at her ankles, tethering her in place. A suppression seal glowed faintly on her back, flickering like a flame in the wind.
A warning mark.
"She has the taint," the Priest said. "We've seen the flicker in her soul. She must be cleansed."
The axe was dragged out, a grim, black weapon etched with both angelic and demonic runes, a 'neutral' blade used in faith trials. The steel shimmered with faint red veins, a demon pact embedded in the blade to ensure the soul's judgment was balanced.
"Your silence will prove your loyalty. Show your purity by letting justice be done."
Orien stared. His fists clenched until his nails dug into his palms.
"No."
The chains ignited with golden light. He howled but stood again, fighting through it.
"I held her when she cried!" he snarled. "I bandaged her wounds! She told me she wanted to see flowers again! And for one..ONE DAMN NIGHT! She slept without screaming!"
The axe stopped moving. So did the whispers of the hall.
A pulse of golden light from the Priest's hand forced him back to the floor, an angelic compulsion meant to subdue the impure. His teeth ground together as his muscles spasmed under the pressure. He grunted through the pain.
Still, he forced his head up.
"Take me. Burn me. Just...leave her be."
For a heartbeat, the courtroom stilled. Even the flames of the sacred braziers seemed to pause.
Then, a voice from the crowd:
"Cut her head off."
The girl's mother, her expression blank, unmoved. A subtle glow curled at her throat, a minor pact glyph keeping her mind calm, emotionless. An angelic serenity seal.
The axe lifted.
"You bastards!" Orien screamed through the Inviolus's walls. "She is an innocent child, you fuckers!"
No one listened.
"K..kind Mister…"
A sweet, subtle whisper came from her.
The girl turned her head slowly, tears streaming down her face.
And then, she smiled.
"Thank you," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "For showing me how it feels to be loved."
The axe came down.
The girl's body remained still, unnaturally quiet. Her blood slowly pooled beneath her, soaking into the pale stone floor of the Inviolus. No one moved to clean it.
Orien knelt there, shackled, still staring. His mouth hung slightly open, as if words were caught between his throat and soul. But nothing came out.
He felt numb.
Not in his body. The pain from the radiant chains still flared across his muscles, and the branded glyph on his collarbone sizzled where it had seared his flesh. No, the numbness was deeper. Somewhere unreachable.
"Mark the heretic," the High Priest commanded.
Two guards approached, not ordinary ones, but Palebinders. Their faces were covered with thin veils woven from angel hair threads, a mark of those who enforced divine punishment without question. One carried a brand, shaped like a hollow eye, glowing with heat.
Orien didn't resist as they pulled back his robes and pressed the brand to his skin.
The smell of burning flesh joined the incense in the air. Someone gagged in the gallery. Orien didn't flinch.
"By the decree of the Inviolable One," the Priest intoned, "Orien Thorne is sentenced to eternal isolation in the Hollow Deep. He shall have no name, no visitation, no light. His sin shall echo only in darkness."
The audience was silent. Not in reverence. Not in rage.
Just silence. Like he was already forgotten.
The last thing Orien saw as the guards dragged him down the stairs was the girl's body being covered by a white shroud, not a burial cloth, but one woven with repelling wards. Her soul, they believed, didn't deserve to pass on.
At that moment, something sinister grew inside Orien's heart.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the heavens from the sky.
Instead, he let them pull him downward, past stone and torchlight, into the Hollow Deep, the prison carved into the bowels of the continent. A place where angels did not watch.
And where demons whispered through the walls.