The padins guided us without ceremony.

  They moved with the same practiced economy as the servants, as if both kinds of bodies existed for the same purpose: to keep the institution upright, clean, and uninterrupted. Their boots made no sound on the polished stone. Their hands never strayed far from their sword hilts, though no one had ever drawn steel inside the Grand Cathedral.

  Or at least, no one who was alive to admit to it.

  We passed through a side corridor that smelled less of incense and more of wax and cold draft. The Cathedral's grandeur faded by degrees, like a painted backdrop removed one panel at a time. The walls here were still carved, still gilded in pces, but the gold was thinner. The stone was patched where it had cracked, repaired by craftsmen whose work would never be admired.

  At the end of the corridor, a door waited. Bronze-bound like the main gates, but smaller, the kind of heavy that existed to remind us that permission mattered here.

  One of the padins knocked. Another pushed it open.

  Halbrecht's office was on the other side.

  It was rge. That was the first impression. Not warm, not impressive. Simply rge, with proportions chosen to make visitors aware of their own size. The ceiling rose high above, painted with a fresh mural whose figures were technically competent and spiritually vacant. Saints drifted upward in orderly ranks, their expressions uniformly pcid, their hands uniformly lifted.

  Nothing in the room showed wear.

  The bookshelves were filled, but the spines were uncreased. The desk dominated the space, polished so thoroughly it reflected the light from the tall windows in clean, uninterrupted pnes. The chairs were arranged neatly for dispy, not comfort.

  It felt more like a showroom than a workpce.

  Halbrecht entered ahead of us and moved directly behind the desk. The padins halted just inside the threshold.

  "That will be all," Halbrecht said, already reaching for a stack of papers.

  The padins did not move.

  Halbrecht didn't look up. "I will call for you if required," he added. "Wait outside."

  There was a pause, short but tangible.

  Then the padins stepped back into the corridor. The door shut behind them with a solid, muffled sound that left the room suddenly too quiet.

  Halbrecht remained standing.

  He adjusted the pcement of an inkpot. Shifted a ledger. Smoothed a bnk page as if preparing to write, though he did not pick up the quill.

  "You will excuse the state of things," he said, aligning the papers into a neat stack. "The Duke has been persistent of te. He seems to believe repetition improves persuasion."

  Neither of us responded.

  Lumiere stood several paces away, her posture composed, hands folded loosely before her. She did not ask to sit.

  "Thank you for indulging this conversation," Halbrecht said at st. "I find it preferable to speak pinly when possible."

  "Pinness is welcome," Lumiere replied.

  Halbrecht gnced at her, then at me, weighing something invisible. His red eyes lingered longer on me than courtesy required.

  "You will forgive me if I dispense with pretense," he said. "What you requested from the Synod is not what you intend to do."

  Lumiere's posture tightened. "We came here to perform maintenance on the seal."

  He moved around the desk, not toward us but to the side, positioning himself where the windowlight cut across his face at an angle.

  "But is that truly your objective?" he asked.

  The silence stretched.

  Lumiere met his gaze. "What do you believe our objective is, Bishop?"

  Halbrecht smiled faintly. "If I had to guess... the Mountain Guardian."

  The words nded without force, which somehow made them heavier.

  Lumiere inhaled once, controlled. "Are you accusing us of heresy?"

  "It's simply observation," Halbrecht corrected.

  He folded his arms loosely. "You have a Hero whose mind is fractured. And a Saintess who understands that the Synod would never authorize pagan communion, no matter how politely it was framed."

  His eyes flicked to me.

  "And you, Sister," he continued, "are the variable that makes the fiction possible."

  Lumiere's voice was measured. "How did you arrive at this conclusion?"

  Halbrecht's expression brightened, just slightly.

  "I pay attention," he said. "I note what questions are asked and which ones are avoided. I note which histories you emphasized and which you left untouched. And I understand the Church well enough to know what it will never permit."

  He tilted his head. "Communing with guardian spirits is an inheritance the Church tolerates only because it cannot erase it. The trials persist because they predate doctrine. But to openly endorse them? To align salvation with rites older than the Synod itself?"

  He shook his head. "No amount of precedent would suffice. And no amount of rhetoric would justify risking the seal for one man's memory."

  Lumiere held his gaze. "That's conjecture. You're assuming much."

  "I assume necessity," Halbrecht said smoothly. "And necessity has habits."

  He waited, clearly expecting some acknowledgment.

  We did not give it to him.

  Instead, I stepped closer to the desk.

  Halbrecht's eyes tracked the movement.

  A letter y near the corner of the desk, partly obscured by a ledger. The wax seal was dark, impressed with a bird in mid-flight, its wings angur and sharp.

  I had seen that seal before.

  I looked at it, then at the stack of papers beneath it. The top page bore a familiar crest printed in bck ink, elegant and unmistakable.

  "You're very proud of your reasoning," I said. "But you didn't deduce anything."

  Halbrecht turned toward me.

  "You were told," I said ftly.

  The air shifted.

  Lumiere's gaze dropped to the desk. I saw understanding settle into her expression, followed by something cooler.

  "You've been corresponding with the Crown Prince," I whispered.

  Halbrecht's mouth twitched.

  I recognized the instinct. To prop up foreknowledge and pretend it was brilliance.

  I had been the same way.

  For a moment, he said nothing. Then he nodded once.

  "Yes," he said. "I have."

  Lumiere's voice was quiet. "For what reason?"

  Halbrecht exhaled and leaned back against the edge of the desk, folding his arms.

  "Because the Synod is incapable of action," he said. "And because His Highness understands that stagnation is a form of decay."

  His eyes sharpened. "They sit in comfort and call it faith. They drain vilges to fund pageantry and call it devotion. Even now, with the Demon Lord no longer just myth, they will not move unless it threatens their coffers."

  He gestured vaguely toward the cathedral beyond the walls. "The Church is not poor because the Goddess withholds favor. It is poor because the men who cim to serve her spend freely and think slowly."

  Lumiere listened without interruption.

  Halbrecht's voice softened, just a fraction. "I do not fault you for deceiving them."

  Her brows rose slightly.

  "You had to," he continued. "They would never have approved your true purpose. And I imagine navigating their inertia has cost you more patience than it should."

  His gaze held hers. "You are constrained by conscience. They are constrained by compcency."

  I felt something shift in Lumiere then. Not agreement. Recognition.

  I saw the hook for what it was. Sympathy offered like absolution. A promise of shared frustration, of being understood by someone inside the machine. Halbrecht wanted her to step closer, just enough to blur the line between cooperation and alignment.

  I had warned her about it. About men who would happily turn shared enemies into shared values. Lumiere did not look at me, but she did not take the step either.

  "And Corveaux?" she asked.

  Halbrecht's lips curved faintly. "His Highness is strong. He hates weakness. He hates institutions that mistake permanence for virtue."

  He rapped his fingers on his desk.

  "He understands that the Church must be made effective," Halbrecht said. "We understand each other."

  I almost ughed.

  In the game, Halbrecht had always been loud about strength. About purity. About "the Church's sword", and protecting the flock from the wolves who threatened it.

  He preached Danzig not as a martyr but as a weapon. The unyielding body. The will that would not break. He praised obedience only insofar as it produced force, revered sacrifice only when it proved endurance. What the First Men had given up interested him less than what they had been capable of holding. In his sermons, their virtue was not faith, but hardness. The ability to stand, to strike, to survive. Anything softer he treated as corrosion.

  He had also clung, in those scripts, to Corveaux. Though it was usually one-sided.

  Corveaux rarely gave him the time of day. Not unless he needed a bishop as a mouthpiece, a scapegoat, or a knife pointed at someone else's throat.

  Now, he had a room dressed like authority and a desk littered with the Crown Prince's emblem. He was pying at proximity to power the way he pyed at holiness.

  Halbrecht turned his attention back to me.

  "That said," he continued, "I do not intend to involve myself directly."

  Lumiere nodded. "We never expected you to."

  Halbrecht smiled thinly. "You misunderstand. I am not declining out of caution. I am declining because association has a cost."

  His gaze traveled over me, deliberate and appraising.

  "I understand the Crown Prince is attempting to remake your image, Sister," he said. "A harmless survivor. Undone by circumstance rather than shaped by it. Soft..." His gaze lingered. "As a woman should be."

  I frowned. My hands returned to my side.

  The corners of his mouth turned up. "I had spoken once about skepticism. Prudence. About the danger of those who return from corrupted pces. If I now appear too aligned with you, it undermines my credibility."

  He did not say the word.

  Witch.

  "I cannot afford inconsistency in this matter," he finished.

  Lumiere inclined her head. "Then do not appear aligned."

  Halbrecht considered her for a moment, then shook his head.

  "No," he said. "The High Synod's expectations still matter." He straightened. "I will not accompany you. But I will assign four of my most capable padins to your detail."

  Lumiere's gaze sharpened. "For protection?"

  "For legitimacy," Halbrecht replied. "Their presence signals sanction. Their testimony controls narrative. Whatever you recover, or fail to recover, the Church will be able to say it was informed."

  I felt my jaw tighten. "And if something goes wrong?"

  Halbrecht smiled. "Then they will bear witness to that end as well."

  Lumiere studied him for a long moment.

  Then she nodded. "Very well."

  Halbrecht rexed, satisfied.

  He reached for the letter with the crow seal and slid it into a drawer, too te to erase its presence.

  "Be careful," he said lightly. "Pagan deities have a way of being dangerous."

  So do the men who want to own them, I thought.

  The door opened at his signal. The padins waited beyond, faces impassive.

  As we stepped back into the corridor, I felt the shape of the next danger settle into pce.