The moment the chains fell from Ithriel's body, a ripple tore through the unseen foundations of the Court.
It wasn't physical no tremor, no quake but a spiritual tremble that only those attuned to truth could feel. In the highest chambers of Heaven, records trembled. Statutes flickered. The celestial oathkeepers stirred from their sanctified slumber, brows furrowed by a sensation they hadn't felt in millennia:
Disruption.
But down in the sealed catacombs, Lucien felt only silence.
The once-chained angel collapsed into his arms, weightless as ash. His body was scarred with divine runes, still glowing faintly as if clinging to their purpose long after being shattered.
Lucien steadied him. "Are you able to stand?"
Ithriel looked up, dazed but lucid. "I can do more than stand, Advocate."
The fallen Witness pressed a trembling hand to the ground, whispering a name in a forgotten tongue. A pulse of raw essence swept through the chamber. The dark abyss surrounding them faded like mist under sunlight, revealing the truth hidden beneath centuries of illusion.
Lucien's eyes widened.
They were not alone.
All around them, trapped behind shimmering cages of unlight, floated hundreds of angels.
Each imprisoned differently some bound by chains of song, others by twisted memories, others encased in mirrors that reflected not their form, but their sins.
"This…" Lucien whispered, stepping forward. "This is a crypt."
"No," Ithriel corrected, rising fully now, his posture regal despite the ruin clinging to him. "This is a vault of truth the Court wanted buried. Every soul here once stood against the Doctrine. Every one of them spoke."
Lucien scanned the rows. Each angel's nameplate bore a brand: heresy. One, near the front, was sobbing quietly into their hands. Another stared at him with dead eyes hope long extinguished.
He turned to Ithriel. "Why were you imprisoned?"
The Witness did not answer immediately. He stepped toward the nearest sealed angel and whispered, "Nirell, daughter of Zephar, Seer of Broken Tomorrows. Accused of falsifying prophecy. Condemned without hearing."
He moved to the next. "Thamuel, Guardian of Mercy. Banished for questioning the Judgment of the Seventh War. His testimony erased from the archives."
He continued down the line.
"Alahra, Choirmistress of the Fifth Sphere. Refused to sanctify a sentence she knew was flawed. Labeled a traitor."
Only when he reached the final cage did he stop.
"...and I, Ithriel," he said, staring at his own reflection in the mirrored bindings, "stood before the Thrones and declared that Heaven had forgotten what it meant to be just."
He turned back to Lucien, gaze piercing. "And for that, they broke me."
Lucien felt the weight of it centuries of silence, of stories never told, of verdicts passed in shadows. He remembered his own struggles in court, how evidence disappeared, how truths twisted into lies with nothing more than a whisper from the right Seraph.
"We have to bring this before the Tribunal," Lucien said. "The Grand Judge must see this."
Ithriel laughed softly, bitterly. "Do you think he doesn't know? He was one of the first to sign the sealing decree. It was unanimous. The Thrones were terrified."
Lucien's jaw clenched. "Then I'll take it to the public. Let the angels see what their laws hide."
"And they will call you liar," Ithriel said gently. "They will say your proof is conjured by shadow and sin. You think the Court will let you walk free after this?"
"No," Lucien said. "But I won't walk alone."
He turned to the imprisoned angels.
"How do I free them?"
Ithriel hesitated. "You can't—not yet. Each cage is bound to a separate verdict. They were sealed not just by law, but by consensus. The same Court that bound them must be fractured before the spellwork can unravel."
Lucien's mind spun. "Then I need to turn the Court against itself."
"Not turn," Ithriel corrected. "Split."
Lucien looked back at the cages. At the potential witnesses. At the truths that could burn Heaven down and rebuild it anew.
The next phase of the trial wasn't in the courtroom.
It was here, beneath its floor, where silence reigned and justice slept.
But first…
He pulled from his robes a scribing crystal a personal archive bound to his soul. He activated it, letting it hover and record.
"State your name," Lucien said to Ithriel.
The Witness tilted his head, then smiled knowingly.
"Ithriel, once Seraph of the Fifth Convocation. Accused of heresy. Condemned without trial. Imprisoned for three thousand, four hundred, and six years."
"What did you see?" Lucien asked.
Ithriel's eyes glowed faintly.
"I saw purity twisted into obedience. I saw light wielded as a weapon. I saw the Court betray its own essence."
"And what would you have them know?"
The Witness stepped forward, placing a hand on Lucien's shoulder.
"That justice," he said, "must begin where silence ends."
Above them, in the Court of Eternal Judgement, alarms began to sound.
Someone had found the broken seal.
The trial was about to take a darker turn.
---
Objection from the Thrones
The sanctity of the Court trembled.
Not visibly no cracks on the polished golden walls, no signs of rupture in the sky above the Celestial Hall but the vibration of unrest echoed in the hearts of every seraph, every judge, every watching soul in the Tribunal.
In the upper tiers, high above the central ring where Lucien had stood only hours ago, the Thrones stirred.
The Nine.
The ancient ones. Divine arbiters whose very presence kept the Great Court from collapsing into chaos. They rarely spoke. Even more rarely did they intervene. But now…
Now, one had risen.
"Throne Solmara has stood," an attending bailiff whispered, voice laced with dread.
In the gallery, murmurs stilled.
The figure of Solmara radiated ethereal authority. She wore a veil spun from the breath of newborn stars, her eyes hidden, her expression unknowable. Yet her voice rang like a blade through silk.
"The Advocate has broken protocol."
A gasp fluttered through the courtroom.
On the platform below, Prosecutor Malrik straightened, a smirk playing on his pale lips. "Finally."
Lucien had not yet returned from the vaults beneath the Court, but that did not stop the gears of celestial judgment. The Thrones had convened. And when they did, the scales could tip without warning.
Solmara continued. "Unauthorized access to the Vault of Heretical Testimonies is a violation of the Prime Sanctity Accord, Subclause 77-A. Punishable by disbarment or dissolution."
"Dissolution?" One of the junior scribes dropped their quill.
"Meaning?" a nervous observer whispered.
"Meaning death."
But Solmara was not done.
She lifted one hand, and with it, summoned a ripple of memory into the air. A vision a living record of Lucien's actions. The image flickered to life above the courtroom:
Lucien standing before the cages.
Ithriel speaking.
Truths spilling forth.
The gasp became a collective cry. Some angels fell to their knees. Others looked away, unable to bear the sight. For even a fraction of that testimony long-suppressed, long-denied carried enough power to unmake belief.
And yet, one voice dared to challenge the wave.
"Objection."
It was Lady Virelle, Chief Justice of the Third Panel and one of the few members of the Court who had not spoken since the trial began.
Solmara's head turned, her veil barely shifting. "Speak."
Virelle rose slowly, her wings tucked, her cane tapping softly against the floor. Her voice was aged, but sharp.
"The Advocate's actions may be in violation of code. But are we now to punish truth as treason?"
"Order must be maintained," Solmara replied. "The Vault was sealed for balance. For unity."
"And in that unity," Virelle said coldly, "we have buried the innocent."
Gasps. Again.
Malrik's face darkened. "If you defend the Advocate, then you too"
"Silence," Solmara snapped not at Virelle, but at Malrik.
That in itself was a storm.
Prosecutor Malrik, who had ruled the courtroom like a serpent cloaked in starlight, now stood rebuked by one of the Thrones.
He stepped back, lips curled. Watching. Calculating.
Lady Virelle turned to the floating vision of Lucien and Ithriel.
"I motion to admit the testimony of the Witness into the Court record."
More silence.
Then
"I second," said a low, grating voice from the back of the gallery.
Everyone turned.
It was a shadowed figure a seraph cloaked in torn judgment robes. Forgotten by most. Dismissed by all.
Judge Calren. Once shamed for defending a case too similar to this one. He had not spoken in decades.
But now he stood tall.
Solmara's voice was unreadable. "Two votes to admit. One Throne opposed."
A pause.
The ancient rules clicked into place.
"If one more vote sides with admission… the record becomes lawful testimony."
Tension rippled. No one moved.
Until…
A third figure stirred among the Thrones. One cloaked in dusk, whose wings shimmered with constellations.
Throne Elarion.
He spoke only one word:
"Admit."
And the courtroom exploded.
The declaration struck like a trumpet's blast. All over the tribunal, echoes of the Witness's words began inscribing themselves into floating tomes. Quills burst into motion. The Court's recordkeepers ancient, faceless archivists hissed in alarm as the very history of Heaven was overwritten.
Malrik's eyes glowed with fury.
"This is madness!"
Solmara turned toward him. "This… is judgment."
The court shifted again, as suddenly, light rippled from the Vault gates below the tribunal. A figure stepped through, ragged but defiant.
Lucien.
And behind him, Ithriel walked with chained angels in tow not freed, but present. Witnesses.
The audience surged. Some rose in reverence, others in protest. Cries of "heretic!" clashed with shouts of "justice!"
Lucien stepped into the ring.
"Your Honors," he said, voice hoarse but steady, "I present to you the forgotten. The silenced. Those who were buried not because they lied, but because they spoke."
He looked directly at Malrik. "The Court will now hear them."