[Mirabel Anstalionah.]
I ran the reports until the pages blurred. Names, numbers, endless columns that my hands kept flipping through because my eyes refused to stop.
Each sheet felt heavier than the last, as if the ink itself could be measured in guilt.
I didn't want to believe it. I needed it to be a nightmare.
I tore through the capital, wind clawing at my skirts, the streets dissolving into a smear of color and sound.
When I reached the great church, it loomed like a wound, black obsidian crowned with a golden idol, its hollow hand pointed toward the heavens as if in accusation.
But inside, there was no light. No incense. No hymn. Only dust, shattered pews, and crosses broken clean in half.
I slammed the ledger closed and swore. My fingers trembled as I found the final entry beneath Jennifer Howling.
Nicole Anstalionah.
The name sat on the page like a verdict.
People in the plaza watched me hold the paper. Their faces were hollow, confused, then came that slow, spreading animal fear that blooms when the world's order begins to fray.
Murmurs rose as Saint Satire passed through the front lines, and then the church emptied.
The story spread outward like a crack through glass.
We'd heard the reports in fragments over the last two weeks: worshippers vanishing mid-prayer, patrols returning to neat rows of empty helms where soldiers had once stood.
Entire households woke to find that someone had erased the people who lived in them.
Clocks stuttered backward for one breath; memories dissolved in others. Mothers and fathers who remembered their children yesterday found no children today.
No one could say when the change began.
When Satire first stepped from the battlefield, the temples went still. Overnight, altars were left bare. Priests disappeared. Statues crumbled as though time itself had stopped caring.
From Uthopia to Bamdia, silence answered every plea. Kings convened emergency councils.
Borders held while rulers who had spent lifetimes clawing at each other agreed on one thing: the Golden Authority must be stopped.
Whoever commanded the church now held something far darker than doctrine.
The ledger on my lap listed five thousand names from our regiments alone, soldiers, clerics, citizens, all vanished in the Saint's wake.
Rumors multiplied: mercy, erasure, punishment for blasphemy, or souls folded into some divine liturgy no living tongue could speak.
No explanation eased the weight in my chest.
I had been cautious. Too cautious. I had delayed inquiry behind the mask of prudence.
I had hesitated to press Nicholas. I had not forced open the cathedral doors.
That hesitation cost us Nicole. It cost Jennifer. It cost thousands.
A special act followed the chaos.
Sovereigns and generals would meet in Anstalionah for what would have been our wedding, now transformed into an alliance, a coalition of crowns sworn to end a power that had weaponized faith.
The vows would bind more than two houses that day; they would bind nations.
I had thought Nicholas had withdrawn because of grief, hiding in silence, softened by sorrow.
In truth, what he had seen lay beyond Kivana's visions, beyond anything I could imagine.
Whatever confronted him was not sorrow but something absolute, something that made even grief feel small.
It drew him away from mourning and into a resolve carved of ice.
I ran to the highlands estate, past guards, bridges, and the city's last bright things, until the garden gate opened like a held breath.
He stood among white lilies and roses, backlit by the pale morning.
His hair was wild, his skin unscarred, his body bare save for torn white pants and the ancient sword at his back.
But it was his eyes that stole the air, blank and white, not pools of color but voids, cold moons where pupils should have been.
Sansir followed a step behind, solemn. Nicholas inhaled once, and the faint scent of rot that clung to him faded.
He scanned the garden and spoke, slow and even. "I can't feel her. Not anywhere."
If he could not sense his sister in all the world, then she might truly be gone. My throat tightened. "It's the Golden Authority," I whispered. "They betrayed us."
He closed his eyes. The line of his mouth set like forged steel. "So I was late." His laugh came quiet, cracked, and small.
"Then prepare, Mirabel. Not just for our wedding, for the annihilation of every last follower of that false god."
I wrapped my arms around him because that day I needed to hold the man who had become something other than the boy I would marry.
"First," I murmured into his hair, "let's wash you up."
***
As I tended him, the memory of the Nicholas I had known pressed sharp as a blade.
He had been lazy in small, infuriating ways, an elegant indolence hidden behind charm.
He could be heartless when duty bored him: late for councils, distracted in crises, perfectly content to let others bear the weight while he lingered in comfort.
I used to blame his youth. Sometimes I suspected it was something deeper, an instinct to drift rather than command.
He had been brilliant, yes, but unbothered, a prince who wore authority like silk.
Now that had changed, utterly.
The cracks that once marked his body had closed; the flinches were gone. The softness burned away, replaced by a brightness that made the world seem dim around him.
Where he once held power like a trinket, he now carried it like a blade.
His presence narrowed the world, stripping it down until courts, gossip, and politics felt weightless beside him.
The long nights of training, the choices he once refused, they had made him more than a commander. He had become a will made flesh.
He turned to me then, voice steady. "Can you imagine a world without death? Without hate? Without war?"
I did not answer. My hands kept washing, each motion a quiet act of penance.
He smiled, soft but brittle, older than his years. "Maybe I got soft. Maybe I wanted rest." His fingers brushed my shoulder. "Do you think my sin is too dark, my little miracle?"
"We all sin," I said. "But you've always carried yours as if the world would end if you ever set it down."
He laughed again, hollow, distant. For a heartbeat, he looked like something forged rather than born, no longer the boy I had loved, but a presence of will and consequence.
He no longer fit within the small measures of mortal life.
He had become a force, harsh, clear, absolute.
He looked at me then with quiet resolve. "It's time," he said. "I'll show the world who I am."
I felt it then, the difference between the man who once postponed burdens and the one who now wore destiny like skin.
The old Nicholas had been careless with hearts and with duty. The new one was terrible in his precision.
In the wash of steam and the scent of soap, I understood that the man before me had passed through fire and come out remade.
The person who stood now made everything else, crowns, treaties, gentle mercies, feel small.
And I, who had long tempered my own hunger, could not deny the awe I felt.
His change was not merely better; it was complete.
Whether that completion would save us or destroy the world, I could not yet tell.
But I no longer doubted one thing: Nicholas Anstalionah would make the world bow.