The moonlight in Sanctus was a liar. It spilled over the capital city of Aethel, turning the alabaster towers of the Grand Basilica into pillars of spun silver and the grimy cobblestones into paths of polished obsidian. It promised purity, a divine and cleansing light that washed over the world. But Ilia knew the truth. Moonlight was just reflected glory. It had no warmth, no life of its own. It was beautiful, but it was empty.
Just like her.
From her balcony in the Saint's Spire, the highest point in the Basilica complex, Ilia watched the city breathe below. She was a figure of impossible grace, her slender form draped in the simple, unadorned white silk of her nightly robes. Her black hair, a stark river of ink against the pallor of her skin, was unbound, cascading down her back in a way no one but her handmaidens ever saw. To the world, she was the Saintess, a vessel of the Divine Light, a miracle made flesh. Here, alone in the cold embrace of the night, she was just Ilia, a nineteen-year-old girl living in a cage of gilded marble and suffocating faith.
Her chamber was vast, its vaulted ceiling painted with frescoes of angels ascending into a golden heaven. The air was perpetually thick with the scent of white lilies and ceremonial incense, a fragrance so constant it no longer felt pleasant, but invasive. It clung to her clothes, her hair, her very skin, a constant reminder of what she was. An icon. A symbol. Not a person.
She trailed a finger along the cold stone of the balustrade. Twenty-seven steps from her bed to the balcony door. One hundred and twelve tiles from the door to her private altar. She knew these numbers. She knew the texture of every tapestry, the face of every painted angel. This room, this entire spire, was her world. And it was shrinking every day.
Her god had not spoken to her in years.
In her childhood, when she was first identified by the Holy See as the next Saintess, the Light had been a roaring fire in her soul. It had felt like warmth, like love, like a constant, reassuring presence. She had conversed with it, laughed with it, felt its power flow through her when she performed her first minor miracles—mending a bird's broken wing, coaxing a withered rose back to bloom.
But as she grew, as the rituals became more rigid and the expectations more crushing, the fire dwindled. It became a flicker, then an ember, and now… nothing. Just a hollow silence where a god used to be. She still performed her duties, of course. She blessed the masses from this very balcony, her hands raised in a gesture of serene power. The Light still flowed through her, a tool she had learned to wield with practiced ease, but it no longer came from her. It was a river passing through a stone channel, leaving it cold and untouched.
The lie was exhausting. The smile she wore was a mask, the serenity a performance. The people below saw a conduit to the divine, but she felt like a fraud, a beautiful, empty vessel echoing with the silence of an absent god.
A chill that had nothing to do with the night air snaked up her spine. It was a familiar feeling lately, a subtle wrongness at the edge of her senses. It was the reason for the tension that had gripped the capital for months.
The Abyss.
It had started as a whisper from the northern provinces. A strange blight that leached the color from the land, turning lush forests into skeletal grey woods and fertile soil to ashen dust. Then came the whispers of madness, of people losing their minds, their eyes reflecting a starry emptiness that was not of this world. The Holy See had named it the Abyssal Creep, a corruption spreading from the domain of the Betrayer, the first god who had sinned and been cast down. Zephar. A name that was a curse.
Now, the Creep was no longer a distant threat. It had been seen at the very edges of the Aethelian plains. The air itself felt thinner, tinged with a despair that even the Basilica's holy wards couldn't entirely purify. The lie of the moonlight felt more profound than ever, a thin veneer over a growing darkness.
A soft knock came from her chamber door.
"Enter," Ilia called, her voice as smooth and calm as polished glass. She did not turn.
The heavy oak door opened and closed with a soft click. Footsteps, light and respectful, approached. It was Elara, her head handmaiden, a woman who had been with her since she was a child.
"Your Holiness," Elara said, her tone laced with a worry she tried to hide. "A message from the High Cardinal. He requests your presence in the Chamber of Echoes."
Ilia finally turned. Her serene expression was flawless, a perfect mask of gentle inquiry. But inside, the cold knot of dread in her stomach tightened. The Chamber of Echoes was not for regular audiences. It was where the most solemn, most secret decisions of the Holy See were made. She had only been there once, on the day of her formal consecration.
To be summoned there, at this hour…
"Did he say why?" Ilia asked, her voice betraying nothing.
Elara hesitated, wringing her hands in the folds of her simple grey dress. "He… he said it concerns the salvation of the empire, Your Holiness."
Salvation. The word hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Ilia looked past Elara, at the fresco of the ascending angels on her ceiling. They seemed to be mocking her, their painted smiles full of a divine certainty she had lost long ago.
She had spent her life praying for the salvation of others. She had a sinking feeling she was about to be asked to pay the price for it.
"Very well," Ilia said, pulling the mask of the Saintess firmly into place. "Help me dress. One does not keep the High Cardinal waiting."
As Elara fetched the formal robes, the heavy, silver-embroidered vestments of her office, Ilia took one last look at the lying moonlight. It offered no comfort, no answers. It was just a cold, distant light, illuminating the path to a fate she did not choose, but which she would be forced to endure. The cage was about to get much, much smaller.