The west wing felt narrower tonight.
The hallway lights had dimmed to their overnight hum, casting long, uncertain shadows across the tiled floor. Kaelith walked with deliberate pace, her boots silent against the linoleum, each step careful, contained—like a dancer crossing a stage that might shatter beneath her.
Mills had vanished by the time she reached Cell 77. Perhaps he'd sensed something he didn't want to witness. Perhaps he was never really there at all. The keypad waited, red light blinking faintly like a heartbeat slowed to stillness. She keyed in the code. The lock disengaged with a soft, mechanical click.
The door opened.
Saevus was already standing.
No restraints this time.
His hands were at his sides, relaxed but alert. His eyes were focused—intensely, quietly alive in the shadows, like coals that had never fully cooled.
Kaelith stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind her with a hiss that sounded too final.
He didn't move.
Neither did she.
Something hovered in the space between them—thicker than silence, heavier than breath. Her fingers twitched at her side. The cut in her palm had stopped bleeding, but the skin still stung beneath the makeshift bandage. She wondered if he could smell it.
"Did it speak to you?" Saevus asked, voice soft.
She didn't answer.
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing slightly. "The relic."
"I didn't come here to talk about the relic."
"Of course you didn't," he said, stepping forward. "You came here because something woke up."
Kaelith's jaw clenched. "What do you think you know?"
He stopped just a breath away, gaze never leaving hers. "I know you're shaking."
"I'm not."
"You are. Not outside. Here." He raised a hand—didn't touch her, but hovered close to her temple. "You're trembling in memory."
She stepped around him sharply, putting space between them.
"There's something you're not telling me," she said. "Something in that place. In the sealed level. The mural."
His voice followed, low and steady. "What do you want to know?"
"The truth," she said. "All of it."
Saevus turned slowly, expression unreadable. "Then sit."
She hesitated.
But only for a second.
The table was cold. The chair colder. The atmosphere in the cell shifted—denser now, charged. As if the walls were listening. As if they remembered too.
He remained standing.
"You weren't brought to the Mouth of Divinity," he said. "You created it."
Kaelith's throat went dry.
"Liar."
"No," he murmured. "You didn't lead it. Not in the way I did. But you were its first voice. Before me. Before any of the others. You gave the cult its name. You named its rituals. You gave it its fire."
She stared at him, fingers curling against the metal tabletop.
"I was a child."
"You were divinity in a child's body," he said. "And when they saw that—when they saw you light the first circle—they couldn't contain you. So they tried to cage you in another name. Another life. Another self."
Kaelith shook her head slowly.
"No. That's not—"
But her voice failed.
Because suddenly, without warning, the air shifted again. Grew hot. And in her mind's eye—like a dream erupting mid-breath—she saw it:
Her hands, small and trembling, smeared with ash and blood.
Drawing a circle.
A boy's body laid inside it, eyes closed, mouth open in mid-sob.
Not fear.
Surrender.
He wasn't resisting.
He was offering.
And she—
She was smiling.
Kaelith jerked upright, the metal chair scraping back with a shriek.
Her chest heaved. Her skin was cold. Her breath came in shallow bursts.
Saevus was suddenly in front of her, kneeling again, hands up, as if to offer calm.
"It was the first ritual," he said. "You gave him a name before you let him go. That was the law. You called him Adros. And he thanked you."
She shook her head. Hard.
"No, no, no—"
"Yes," he said, voice threading into hers like a second pulse. "You were the mouth before me. And I only ever spoke what you taught."
Kaelith's knees buckled.
He caught her.
She didn't remember falling, but she landed in his arms, her fingers clutching his shirt, his breath warm against her ear.
Her body trembled violently—not from fear, but from the rupture. The tearing. The pressure that had been building for weeks, years, a lifetime maybe, now breaking open like glass struck by lightning.
"I saw it," she whispered.
"I know."
"I named him."
"You did."
"I watched him die."
Saevus's arms tightened around her, firm but gentle.
"And you lit the flame," he said. "Because you believed it would free him."
Tears rose, unbidden.
She hated them.
But they came anyway.
And Saevus didn't comfort her.
He didn't offer apology, or excuse, or warmth.
He simply held her.
Held her the way a priest holds a blade before a ritual.
With reverence.
With awe.
And with complete understanding of its danger.