The procession ended with the tolling of the cathedral's deepest bell—low, resonant, like the heartbeat of something ancient and sleeping. The crowd dispersed slowly, pilgrims murmuring prayers as they drifted back toward the lower districts. Elias and Elara stayed at the plaza's edge until the last white-robed figures vanished around corners, until only the scent of incense and wax lingered in the air.
Elias could not stop shaking.
Not from cold. Not from hunger. From the moment Lucian's eyes had met his—gold flashing behind hazel like lightning behind clouds—something had uncoiled inside him. Abaddon had gone unnaturally still afterward, as though listening to a distant storm.
Elara tugged his sleeve. "We need to move. Standing here like a statue is asking for a patrol to notice."
Elias nodded mechanically and followed her into the narrow service alley behind the chapel. They did not speak until they reached the same shadowed alcove from the night before.
He sank against the wall, knees drawn up.
"He saw me," Elias whispered.
Elara crouched in front of him, studying his face. "You're pale. Worse than yesterday."
"He looked right at me. And… smiled."
Elara's expression tightened. "Lucifer?"
"I don't know. It was just a second. But Abaddon called him 'little brother.' Like they know each other. Like they hate each other."
Elara sat back on her heels. "Then it's true. The saint isn't just blessed. He's possessed. Same as us."
Elias pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I thought maybe Abaddon was lying. Exaggerating. But that look… it wasn't a boy's look."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Elara said quietly, "We can still leave. Tonight. Through the aqueduct. Head north, into the wilds. There are places even the Church doesn't go."
Elias lowered his hands. "And then what? Hide forever? Wait for more inquisitors? Wait for him—" he tapped his chest "—to decide I'm no longer useful and let me die?"
Elara looked away. "Better than becoming another burned body on a stake."
Before Elias could answer, footsteps echoed in the alley—soft, deliberate, unhurried.
They both froze.
A slim figure stepped into the faint moonlight at the mouth of the alcove.
Silver hair. White linen robe. No guards. No priests. Just Lucian Vale, alone.
He looked smaller up close—fragile, almost breakable. His bare feet were clean despite the city streets. His hands hung loose at his sides. His face held the same gentle, open expression he had worn on the cathedral steps.
But his eyes were different now.
Calm. Knowing. And very, very old.
Elias scrambled to his feet. Elara rose more slowly, hand drifting toward the knife hidden under her cloak.
Lucian raised both palms in a universal gesture of peace.
"I come alone," he said. His voice was the same soft boyish tone from the prayer, yet it carried an undercurrent of something deeper—resonance, like wind through cathedral arches. "No one knows I am here. No one will come."
Elara did not move her hand from the knife. "Why should we believe that?"
"Because if I wished you harm, you would already be bound in golden chains and on your way to the deepest cells beneath the cathedral." Lucian's gaze shifted to Elias. "And because I wanted to see you. Truly see you. Not from across a plaza."
Elias's throat felt tight. "You're… him. Aren't you?"
Lucian tilted his head. A small, almost sad smile touched his lips.
"I am Lucian Vale. Raised in these halls since I was three. Taught the prayers. Given the finest robes. Told every day that I am blessed. That I am proof of the Lord's favor." He paused. "I am also the vessel through which He speaks when the need is great. When the people require a miracle. When doubt must be burned away."
He took one careful step forward.
Elias felt the sigil flare—not painfully, but in recognition.
Lucian stopped. "And you… are the one we have waited for. The one who broke the oldest seal."
Abaddon spoke then—not through Elias's mouth, but inside his skull, low and venomous.
Careful, pretender. Do not reach too far.
Lucian's smile did not waver, but his eyes flickered gold again.
"I have not come to fight," he said aloud. "Not yet. I have come to teach."
Elias stared. "Teach?"
"You are new to this. Raw. Untrained. Your power spills like blood from an open wound—wild, wasteful, dangerous to yourself most of all." Lucian gestured toward Elias's bandaged arm, the black veins faintly visible beneath the torn cloth. "Let me show you how to contain it. How to speak the prayers that calm the storm inside. How to walk among them without being seen for what you are."
Elara stepped between them. "Why would you help him? You serve the Church. You serve… Him."
Lucian looked at her—really looked—and something like pity crossed his features.
"Because we are the same, you and I and he. Marked. Hunted. Hiding behind masks of flesh. Because if the Church discovers him before he learns control, they will burn him on the plaza steps while the crowd chants for his soul. And because…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Because my Lord is curious. He wishes to see what becomes of the World-Eater's chosen vessel when given a chance to choose differently."
Elias felt Abaddon coil tighter inside him, furious and amused in equal measure.
Lucian extended one hand, palm up.
"I will not force you. But if you come with me—tonight, quietly—I can teach you the litanies. The breathing patterns. The ways to push the darkness down when it rises. You will not be free. None of us are free. But you will be… safer."
Elias looked at the offered hand.
Then at Elara.
She shook her head minutely. Don't.
But Elias felt the exhaustion in every bone. The hunger. The fear that had not left him since the obelisk. And beneath it all, the cold certainty that running would only delay the inevitable.
He stepped forward.
Lucian's fingers closed gently around his wrist—not hard, not threatening. Warm. Almost comforting.
Elara hissed, "Eli—"
"I have to know," Elias said. "I have to understand what this is. What I am."
Lucian nodded once.
"Then come."
He led Elias out of the alcove, back toward the cathedral's side entrance—a small arched door almost hidden behind ivy. Elara followed at a distance, knife now drawn, eyes scanning every shadow.
Inside, the corridor was cool marble lit by a single row of hanging oil lamps. No guards. No priests. As though the building itself had cleared a path.
Lucian spoke softly as they walked.
"The first prayer is the simplest. Repeat after me."
He stopped beneath a stained-glass window depicting an angel with wings of white fire.
"Lord of Light," Lucian began, "shield me from shadow. Lord of Light, burn away the unclean. Lord of Light, let Thy peace fill what was broken."
Elias repeated the words. They tasted bitter on his tongue—words he had spoken a thousand times in village services, now heavy with irony.
But as he spoke them, the sigil on his chest cooled. The black veins retreated a fraction. The constant pressure of Abaddon's presence eased, if only slightly.
Lucian watched him with that same gentle, unreadable expression.
"Again," he said.
They repeated it three times.
By the third, Elias felt something shift inside him—not peace, exactly, but space. A small, fragile space where his own thoughts could breathe without Abaddon's voice drowning them.
Lucian released his wrist.
"You will stay here tonight. In the lower guest cells. No chains. No locks. You may leave whenever you wish. But if you stay… I will teach you more tomorrow."
Elias looked back at Elara. She stood at the corridor's end, knife still in hand, face unreadable.
"I'll be fine," he told her. "Go. Before someone sees you."
Elara hesitated, then nodded once—sharp, reluctant.
"If you're not out by dawn," she said, "I'm coming back in. And I won't be polite about it."
She vanished into the shadows.
Lucian turned to Elias.
"Come," he said again. "There is a bed. Food. Rest. Tomorrow we begin in earnest."
As they walked deeper into the cathedral's quiet heart, Abaddon finally spoke—soft, amused, dangerous.
Well played, little brother. You give him scraps of control so he thinks he can master me.
But we both know the truth.
Every prayer he learns is another thread I will use to strangle his false god when the time comes.
Elias did not answer.
He was too tired.
And somewhere in the golden halls above, a beautiful fallen angel smiled wider.
The saint had brought the heretic inside the walls.
And the game had just grown far more intimate.
End of Chapter 5