For three days, Albrecht did not leave his room.
The gold crowns sat in a heap on the small table, gleaming dully in the light from the single window. He didn't touch them. He barely looked at them.
He was busy with the inside of his own head.
Consuming the Blessed Knight had been different. It wasn't just life he'd taken. It was *context*. A worldview. A complete, ordered system of belief that now rattled around inside his skull, foreign and persistent.
At first, it was just physical power. A surging, radiant strength that made his old reserves—Orval's greed, the guard's violence, the cow's dumb vitality—seem like weak tea. He could have punched through the stone wall if he wanted. He knew this with the same certainty he knew his own heartbeat.
But with the strength came the noise.
Fragments. The knight's name was **Tristan**. He had taken his vows at sixteen. He loved the smell of incense and the quiet of dawn prayer. He had a sister in a village to the south. He believed, completely and without irony, that his Goddess was love made manifest, and that his sword arm was an instrument of her mercy.
These were not memories Albrecht viewed. They were *experiences* he re-felt. The warmth of the sister's hug. The ache in the knees during long vigils. The serene clarity after confession.
He lay on his narrow bed as the first day bled into the second, assaulted by a saint's patience.
It was revolting.
His own psyche, a clean, dark engine of logic and hunger, fought the intrusion. The knight's devotion was a virus, a sentimentality that threatened to soften his edges. Albrecht gritted his teeth and did what he did best: he analyzed.
He dissected the feeling of "faith" into its component parts: a desire for external validation, a fear of meaningless death, a neurochemical reward system triggered by ritual and community. He broke "piety" down into observable behaviors and social contracts. He classified the "echo of grace" as a persistent energy signature with peculiar metaphysical properties.
By the evening of the second day, he had compartmentalized it. Tristan's life was not a person inside him. It was a database. A new set of files on how the enemy thought and operated. He could access the data—the knowledge of Cathedral routines, the layout of the knights' barracks, the patterns of prayer—without feeling the feelings.
He sat up, sweat-drenched but clear-eyed. The hunger, which had been stunned into silence by the influx of holy power, reasserted itself. It was changed, too. Sharper. More discerning. It didn't just want *life* anymore. It wanted *flavor*. It wanted *significance*.
It had tasted consecrated ground and found it good.
A knock at his door broke the silence.
He was on his feet, silent, before the second knock. He felt no alarm, only a cold assessment of threat. He could hear the visitor's heartbeat through the wood—steady, a little fast. Not a guard. Not a knight.
"Who is it?"
"Draven." The voice was low.
Albrecht opened the door. Draven stood in the dim hallway, his usual composure slightly frayed. He stepped in without waiting, closed the door behind him. His eyes went to the pile of gold, then back to Albrecht.
"You've been quiet."
"I've been busy."
"The Cathedral is in an uproar," Draven said, getting straight to it. "Knight Tristan was found in the vault. Not dead. Not... empty, like the others. He's in a waking sleep. They're calling it a 'Divine Trance.' They think he had a vision so powerful it unmoored his mind from his body. They've got priests singing over him day and night."
Albrecht said nothing. He filed the term away. *Divine Trance*. A useful misdirection.
"More importantly," Draven continued, watching him closely, "they know something was taken. The box. They don't know what was in it, but the seal was broken. They're discreetly questioning everyone—thieves, fences, men like me. Ser Corvin is gone. Slipped out of the city at dawn after he paid you."
"Good for him."
Draven took a step closer. His voice dropped to a whisper. "What did you *do* to that knight, Albrecht? Really."
"I took what I needed."
"You left him breathing. But he's gone. And it's not your usual work. This has... a different scent. Holy men are nervous. When holy men get nervous, the guards get brutal. It's bad for business."
"I completed the job. I was paid. Our business is concluded."
"Maybe." Draven's gaze was calculating. "But a man with your particular skills is a rare commodity. The fact you can operate inside *that* place... it opens new doors. Expensive doors."
"I'm listening."
"There's a man. A noble, actually. Lord Maxton. He has a country estate two days' ride from here. He's a collector of rare... spiritual artifacts. He's heard rumors. About the empty men. About a thief who can walk through blessed locks. He's made an offer. A *significant* offer."
"For what?"
"For you to acquire something for him. Something that hasn't left the Grand Cathedral in the capital in three hundred years."
Albrecht felt the new, refined hunger stir. The Grand Cathedral. The heart of the faith. A stronger lock. A holier guard. A richer meal.
"What is it?"
"A vial. Said to contain a single tear shed by the Goddess at the death of her first mortal prophet. They call it the 'Tear of Founding.'"
"And why does Lord Maxton want it?"
"To own it. To prove he can. To have a piece of divine sorrow on his mantle." Draven shrugged. "The motives of the rich are not my concern. The payment is. One thousand gold crowns. Half up front, delivered to you here. Half upon delivery."
A thousand crowns. A fortune to buy a kingdom. And a challenge that called to the deepest, most inquisitive part of him—the physicist who wanted to dissect a miracle.
"The security?"
"Impossible. Or so they say. The Tear is kept in a reliquary of pure white crystal in the Sanctum Sanctorum, behind the High Altar. Guards are Knights Exemplar—the highest order. The air itself is said to be so thick with grace it would burn a sinner's lungs."
Albrecht thought of the pressure in Valensford's cathedral, the resistance he'd felt and then broken. This would be magnitudes greater. A true test.
His hunger purred in anticipation.
"When?"
"Maxton wants it before the high holy festival in two months. The journey to the capital is ten days. You'd have to leave soon."
"Tell him I'll do it."
Draven nodded, a slow smile spreading. "I'll have the first five hundred brought to you tonight. Use some of it to get out of this flophouse. Buy a horse, good clothes. You need to look the part of a wealthy traveler, not a back-alley ghost."
After Draven left, Albrecht gathered the gold crowns into the purse. The weight was substantial. He was now a rich man. But wealth was just a tool. The real currency was the power thrumming under his skin, and the knowledge that he could take more.
He looked out the window at the Cathedral spire. They were praying for their lost knight, trying to call his soul back from a trance they didn't understand.
They thought they were dealing with a thief. A dark magician, perhaps.
They had no idea they were on the menu.
A week later, Albrecht rode out of Valensford's east gate on a tall, dark mare named *Soot*. He wore the clothes of a minor scholar-gentleman—sturdy boots, dark woolen trousers, a fine linen shirt, and a cloak of good, water-shedding wool. A plain sword hung at his hip, more for show than intent. In his saddlebags were the five hundred gold crowns, a change of clothes, and the cold, analytical mind of a predator.
He looked back only once. The town was shrinking behind him, its problems and its empty men growing small. He felt no nostalgia. It had been a laboratory. A training ground. He had learned to feed without killing, to break holy barriers, to compartmentalize the psychic backlash of his meals.
Now he was headed to a larger laboratory.
The road to the capital, called the King's Grace, was broad and well-maintained. He joined the flow of traffic: merchants' caravans, pilgrims in large groups, messengers on fast horses, and the occasional noble's carriage with outriders.
He kept to himself, spoke little, listened much. The talk on the road was of three things: the upcoming festival, the price of wool, and the "Valensford Affliction"—the strange sleeping sickness that had struck a few men, including a blessed knight.
"…said his soul is on a holy journey, and his body waits like an empty shell," one pilgrim said, her voice hushed with awe.
"Witchcraft, I say," muttered a merchant guard. "The Church just won't admit it."
Albrecht rode past them, his face a polite mask.
He camped off the road at night, not at the crowded inns. He preferred the silence of the woods. On the third night, he was tested.
He had made a small fire, was roasting a rabbit he'd caught. The feeling came first—a prickle on the back of his neck, the sense of being measured. Then the sound: the careful rustle of undergrowth, trying to be quiet. Two men. Maybe three.
Bandits. They'd seen a lone traveler with a good horse.
He didn't move from the fire. He finished his rabbit, licked the grease from his fingers.
"Evening," a voice called from the darkness. A man stepped into the firelight. He was big, with a broken nose and a rusty axe. Another emerged to his left, younger, holding a cudgel. "That's a fine horse. Fine bags, too. We'll be taking them. And your sword. Makes it easier for everyone."
Albrecht looked up. "No."
The big man laughed. "Got some spine, do you?" He raised his axe. "Let's see if it—"
Albrecht didn't let him finish. He didn't stand up. He simply *reached*.
Not with his hand. With his will.
He targeted the younger one first—his life flame was jumpy, nervous. Albrecht didn't drain it. He *tweaked* it. He imposed a sudden, overwhelming surge of terror, a direct injection of primal fear into the man's nervous system, using the boy's own adrenaline against him.
The youth screamed, dropped his cudgel, and turned to run blindly into the dark woods, crashing through brush, his wails fading into the distance.
The big bandit stared, confused and suddenly uncertain. "What did you do?"
Albrecht stood now, slowly. He looked at the bandit leader. This one's life was coarser, denser. A life of violence and petty cruelty. Not worth consuming fully. But useful for another experiment.
"I'm going to show you something," Albrecht said, his voice calm. "And then you are going to give me everything you have. And then you are going to forget my face, and this place, and live the rest of your life in fear of the dark."
He walked forward. The bandit swung his axe. Albrecht moved, not with supernatural speed, but with perfect, efficient economy. He caught the man's wrist, stopped the swing cold.
Then he placed his other hand on the man's forehead.
He didn't just show him fear. He *showed* him. He opened a conduit and let the bandit feel a fraction of what Albrecht now carried inside—the roaring void of his hunger, the cold, screaming memories of the dying, the flickering, sanctified agony of Knight Tristan.
He gave him a single, dizzying glimpse of the abyss that walked in a man's shape.
The bandit's eyes rolled back in his head. He wet himself. He dropped to his knees, moaning.
Albrecht took his small purse of coins, his slightly better knife. He left the man kneeling in his own filth, shivering and broken.
He saddled Soot and rode for another hour before making a new, cold camp. He didn't need the fire.
The experiment was a success. His control was increasing. He could modulate his power—not just on/off, but with precision. He could induce specific states: terror, catatonia. He could weaponize perception itself.
He lay looking at the stars, the knight's memory of the constellations—named for saints and martyrs—overlaying his own knowledge of celestial mechanics.
*The Grand Cathedral,* he thought. *The Tear of Founding.*
What would consuming a piece of a goddess do? Not a blessing channeled through a mortal, but a physical fragment of her attributed sorrow?
His hunger stretched inside him, vast and eager.
The journey continued. He passed through towns and villages, each grander than the last as he neared the capital. The presence of the Church grew ever more palpable—more priests, more shrines, more people speaking of the festival.
Finally, on the tenth day, he crested a hill and saw it.
**Lyranth**, the capital. The City of Spires.
It was immense, a sprawling tapestry of stone and smoke wrapped by a colossal wall. And at its heart, towering over everything, was the **Grand Cathedral of Eternal Grace**. It was not a single spire, but a forest of them, reaching like pale fingers clawing at the sky. Even from this distance, Albrecht could *feel* it. A pressure, a hum, a radiant energy that beat against the world like a second sun, invisible but undeniable.
It was the source. The wellspring of the faith that had broken Lysander and blessed Leofric. The engine of the narrative he intended to prove false.
He nudged Soot forward, down the hill toward the city gates.
He was no longer Albrecht the suicidal physicist, nor Lysander the disgraced noble.
He was the Arbiter. He had come to the holy city.
Not to pray.
To dine.