Cantus held a dagger to the priest's throat, the silver tip of the blade glinting in the pale moonlight. "Say your final words, priest."
The old man sat calmly on his stool. Unlike Cantus's other victims, his breath held steady, and his eyes remained relaxed. It was unusual, but it wouldn't stop him from completing his task. His mission was to investigate this particular priest, and based on his findings, to kill him and make it look like a botched robbery. He had done it before, and he would do it again.
"You have an unusual shade of eyes for a human," the man said, his voice surprisingly calm. He reached up, resting a wrinkled hand on Cantus's cheek, his finger near his ear.
Startled by the priest's lack of fear, Cantus recoiled. A quick shake of his head forced him to regain his resolve. *Kill the priest.* "Sit up. Move over there towards the doorway."
The priest complied without protest, rising slowly from his stool with the careful movements of someone who had counted too many winters. His robes whispered against the stone floor as he shuffled toward the entrance of the small chapel sanctuary. Cantus followed, maintaining the distance between them, his blade steady despite the unease creeping up his spine.
"Near the collection box," Cantus commanded, gesturing with his free hand. "Kneel there."
It had to look authentic. A robbery interrupted, a priest defending the church's meager offerings, a thief panicking and striking too hard. The city guard would ask few questions about another dead holy man in the lower districts. These things happened when churches kept coin in unlocked boxes.
The priest lowered himself to his knees before the wooden donation chest, his movements deliberate and unhurried. He clasped his hands together, not in prayer, but resting them calmly in his lap. The moonlight streaming through the narrow window caught the silver in his hair, creating a halo effect that made Cantus's stomach turn.
"You're not what I expected," the old man said quietly. "When I heard the footsteps, I assumed the Lady's judgment had finally come. But you—you're just a boy playing at being death's messenger."
"I'm old enough to do what needs doing," Cantus snapped, moving behind the priest. His eyes scanned the room, cataloging the scene. The overturned stool—good. The open door to the vestry—better. He'd need to scatter some coins, maybe overturn the collection box after the deed was done. Blood on the floor near the entrance would tell the right story.
His contractor had been anonymous, as they often were. A dead-drop payment, instructions left in coded messages, intelligence delivered through intermediaries who knew nothing of the ultimate employer. All Cantus knew was that someone wanted Father Tomos dead for his crimes as an inquisitor, and they wanted it to look like a random tragedy. No assassin's precision. No political statement. Just bad luck and worse timing.
"What did they tell you I did?" the priest asked. "What sin earned me a knife in the dark rather than a trial in the light?"
Cantus's jaw tightened. The job was cleaner when they didn't talk. When they begged or wept or fought, it was business. But this calm curiosity, this absence of fear—it complicated things in ways he didn't appreciate.
"Does it matter?" Cantus replied, repositioning his blade for the killing strike. "You're a dead man either way."
"It matters to me. I'd like to know which part of my past finally caught up with me." The priest's voice carried no bitterness, only a weary resignation. "Was it the families of those I killed? The survivors who still remember their villages burning? I've been expecting someone like you for ten years now."
Cantus said nothing, but his investigation had been thorough. Father Tomos—formerly Inquisitor Tomos Greyhand—had spent fifteen years hunting heretics across three provinces. But his specialty hadn't been rooting out wayward doctrine or blasphemous worship. He'd hunted non-humans: elves who practiced their ancestral rites, dwarven communities that refused to abandon their old gods, halfling settlements that harbored fugitives the Church deemed unclean. The records painted a picture in blood—entire villages purged, families burned, children torn from parents who would never see them again.