The Church of Kastiel stood at Sacrifice Square. Valeria didn't have to pass that way—there was at least one shorter route to the Hierarchy District. But she had time and she was curious, and curiosity was the only luxury she allowed herself without guilt. So she turned into the Avenue of Martyrs and walked along the square.
The Church of Kastiel was older than the Church of Erynis by perhaps two hundred years. It showed in the construction—lower, wider, with a facade of dark brown stone instead of black marble, with window arches thicker and more squat. There were no decorations over the entrance. Only a symbol carved into the stone: an open hand with a wound in the center. An open hand held upward, like something that offers, not something that takes.
People were kneeling on the steps before the church. Fourteen, maybe sixteen followers—men and women of various ages, in simple robes of raw linen. They knelt on the stone steps without cushions, arms outspread, faces turned toward the sky. On their backs, marks were visible—along the spine, across the shoulder blades, down the arms. Old, yellowed ones and new, darker ones, still fresh.
Two Kastiel clerics moved among them with long, narrow leather straps. Every so often, one of the followers would utter a short sentence—a confession, a formula, something—and the cleric would raise the strap. The kneeling ones did not scream. It was more unsettling than if they had.
Valeria stood by the wall across the street and watched for a moment. The followers of Kastiel understood something most people choose not to understand—that pain purifies. That the Ether which destroys a mutated priest's body does so because the body is a vessel too weak for what tries to pass through it. A reinforced body, a body that knows pain and has survived, a body that has been tempered—such a body filters better, longer, cleaner. The flagellants of Kastiel lived shorter lives than the executioners of Erynis. But they filtered Ether for years without mutation. Their statistics were better.
Valeria turned and moved on.
Halfway down the Avenue of Martyrs, someone stopped her by a fountain.
"Executioner."
Valeria slowed but did not stop. She turned her head. The man leaning against the fountain wall was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a dark gray coat without any visible symbols. But his eyes moved like the eyes of someone constantly counting exits, entrances, and the gaps between people. Valeria knew that look. She had it herself.
"Aurelion Executioner," he said. He wasn't asking. He was stating a fact.
"Erynis," Valeria replied.
"I was waiting for someone from your lot." The man straightened from the wall. He was a head taller than Valeria. "Last night, at the East Gate. Someone opened a rift. The third this month in this district."
Valeria watched him.
"This is Erynis territory," the man said. "That is why I am telling you—we are not acting alone."
A long silence followed.
"Do you know yet who is opening them?" Valeria asked.
"We don't." The man took a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "My observations from the last three weeks. Six incidents, four locations." He nodded toward the Church of Kastiel behind them. "They have theirs, too. They don't want to share information. You probably don't want to either."
"We'll see," Valeria said, taking the paper.
The man nodded, pushed off the wall, and headed in the opposite direction. He didn't give a name. She didn't ask. Valeria slipped the paper into the inner pocket of her cloak and continued.
Six incidents in three weeks in a single district. It wasn't a coincidence, and it wasn't just one street mage with vials hidden in a bag. Something was happening beneath the surface. Something that none of the three Churches saw in its entirety—because each looked only at its own territory.
Valeria reached the end of the avenue and turned toward the Hierarchy District. To the east, the sky was beginning to turn gray at the horizon. The Hall of the Three Thrones was waiting.
The courtyard before the Hierarchy Building was large and empty at this hour. Paved with white stone, with rows of columns along three walls. At the top of each column, an eternal flame burned in a stone bowl—pure Ether, filtered through generations of priests, stable and cold, without smoke, without crackling.
Valeria approached the main doors. The guard—one of the Fathers of the Church in heavy crimson robes, tongueless, with the hollow symbol of Erynis on his chest—opened the doors before she even reached them. He did not look at her face.
Inside, the corridor was high and narrow, with walls of black stone polished to a mirror finish. Valeria saw her reflection in it—six paces to the side, slightly distorted, a bit brighter than reality. Like a shadow that had gone the wrong way.
She walked down the corridor without a guide. She knew the way—every executioner learned the topography of the Hierarchy Building in their first year of service, in case the need for a quick exit ever arose. Or a quick entry.
The Hall of the Three Thrones was at the end of the east wing. She stopped before the doors. Through them, she could hear voices. Three voices, speaking simultaneously, intertwining. She couldn't distinguish the words—the doors were too thick. But she could distinguish the tone. A calm exchange, perhaps even polite. But tense, like those strings at practice—before the cut, not after.
Valeria straightened her back. She entered.
The room was circular, with a low ceiling and three chairs arranged in a triangle at its center. Each chair represented a different Church: black with a carved eye for Erynis, gray with a scale for Aurelion, and brown with an open hand for Kastiel. They were all occupied.
In the black chair sat a woman Valeria did not recognize. She was tall, perhaps sixty years old, with a face as cold as a cathedral's facade. She wore the unadorned robes of the hierarchy—an Inquisitor, or perhaps someone higher.
In the gray chair sat the man from the fountain. He watched Valeria with a face devoid of expression.
In the brown chair sat a cleric of Kastiel. He was younger than the others, perhaps thirty-five, with a scar running along his jawline. Traces of old burns were visible on his hands between his fingers.
On a fourth chair—devoid of any symbol, placed to the side and slightly lower than the other three—sat nothing. It waited for Valeria.
The woman in the black chair looked at her.
"Sit," she said. Her voice was calm and absolute, a command rather than an invitation. "We have a problem to discuss that no single Church can handle alone".
Valeria approached the fourth chair and sat.
The man from Aurelion took a folded paper from his pocket—the same one he had given Valeria at the fountain—and placed it on his knees.
"Let us begin," he said.