Enzo couldn't make sense of what had happened. Try as he might, the events simply refused to align. His Divination had never been exceptional. Good enough for certain missions, sure. But it was still nothing impressive, especially in the Apostolic See, where Dominion Reverends were a common sight. Losing track of an entire battleship? Watching a vessel that size slip out of every Stanza he cast?
That was something else.
He sat still, waiting for the vision to return.
No such luck.
The sea gave him nothing but a flat horizon and the faint echo of a presence that had already vanished. A faint tremor crawled down his spine. Not fear—at least not yet—but recognition. Whatever erased a battleship's footprint from the world didn't belong in the usual registers of threat. It felt… wrong. As if someone had tampered with fate itself.
Had it been an outsider, they would've blamed a storm and moved on. Sailors did that often enough—lose sight of something? Simply curse the weather and call it a day. But Enzo knew better. He had checked the ship once every hour. Duty demanded as much. A battleship didn't simply slip past him. Not with the Stanza he used. Not with the anchors he'd set on its wake.
And yet it had.
The realization sent a chill down his spine. If someone demanded an explanation, he had none to give. Worse—he might be expected to invent one. The thought alone pushed him into motion.
He left his post and climbed the upper halls, refusing to be blamed for what he couldn't control. The corridors buzzed with quiet activity, but the moment the others saw the look in his eyes, they stepped aside. Not out of respect—he wasn't vain enough to believe that—but out of calculation. No one wanted to be the obstacle blamed for slowing a Reverend carrying bad news. Not when a mission of this scale hung over all of them like an executioner's axe.
Enzo climbed the last set of stairs toward the chamber where Saint Colin presided, each step sending him ever closer to the brink. Whatever this was, it wasn't a simple mishap. And if a Saint had to hear it, then it was already too late to pretend otherwise.
"Enzo. Here to report?" Saint Colin asked.
The title alone made Enzo straighten. Facing the man was another matter entirely. Saying he wasn't afraid would've been a lie. Colin stood tall, broad-shouldered, built like someone carved out of a ship's keel. There was a roughness to him—an edge most Saints shed once they ascended. His bearing reminded Enzo of a Dominion Venerable—well, the few they had anyway.
And yet, the Untether Saint was known as the most approachable of the lot. Which, in Enzo's mind, said more about the Apex of the Submerged world than he cared to admit.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Enzo said, dropping to a knee. Colin didn't tell him to rise. He seldom did.
"Speak," the Saint said.
Enzo forced the words out. "The battleship I was assigned to monitor disappeared into thin air."
Colin's gaze sharpened so suddenly that Enzo felt his stomach twist.
"Disappeared?" The Saint asked flatly.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I checked on it every hour. Every fifteen minutes, at times," Enzo added, letting the lie soften his own incompetence. "But then it simply… faded."
The anger in Colin's face shifted into something else. Not pity, but understanding. The look a man gave when he recognized a problem too large to pin on the nearest subordinate. Enzo felt his lungs loosen for the first time since the ship vanished.
It wasn't his fault.
Which meant someone else had done this.
And that was far worse.
"Any spirituality?" Saint Colin asked.
"I couldn't trace a single soul, no matter where I looked," Enzo said.
Confusion dropped from the Saint's face. Dread took its place.
"Ripples?"
"I couldn't trace that either, Your Majesty."
Heavy silence that bordered on suffocating followed. Enzo kept his head low, fighting the urge to brace for a blow he wouldn't see coming. If a Saint decided to make him collateral, there wouldn't be time to protest. Or pray.
The silence stretched long enough for his pulse to start climbing.
Then Colin exhaled.
"Very well. You may leave."
Huh?
Enzo didn't wait for the Saint to change his mind. He bowed, offered a hurried farewell, and stepped out of the chamber. Whatever had erased that battleship belonged far above his pay grade. The important part—the part that mattered to him—was simple.
It wasn't his fault. And that was enough.
***
Colin paused, head tilted. "Did you hear that?" he asked his wife, who stood next to the window.
"Do I look deaf, Colin?" the Dominion Venerable replied. It pulled a chuckle out of him, at least before he remembered the situation they were in.
"This is no laughing matter, Nataliya. It could only mean one of two things."
"I know, my dear. I was merely attempting to calm my own nerves," she said, still looking out the window.
Truth be told, her Concealment Stanza was enviable. And while it didn't work on Venerables and Saints. It still did on every other Submerged, making it rather useful.
Getting a Dominion Instrument was an option, of course, but those weren't exactly compatible with his own Shanty.
"Great acting, by the way," his wife added. "The kid really thought you were worried."
"Comes with acting for decades, I suppose."
The Shanty of Untether was a solid one, all things considered, but he still disliked how it deprived him of his emotions. Fear, anger, sadness, happiness—each one a distant memory. And the worst part was that he couldn't even feel bothered by it, because that disappeared too.
"The last time such a disappearance happened was a decade ago," Nataliya said, turning to him. "Same sea route as well."
"Someone studied diligently," he replied with a smile. "The question stands, however: why would Britain attack us in such an obscure manner?"
"Who said anything about Britain?" Nataliya asked, leaving him momentarily confused.
"Why wouldn't it be Britain? Who else would have Saints capable of erasing ships in a heartbeat?"
The question wasn't rhetorical. Only they and Britain had enough Saints to risk such an attack. It simply wouldn't make sense for any other faction to be involved.
"What do you think is the Shanty of the aggressor?" Nataliya asked, steering the conversation.
"I don't see why that matters," Colin said.
"Think, Colin. Which Shanty can erase a ship in a heartbeat, then proceed to hide any and all traces?"
It was a valid question. One that forced him to actually think.
"A Deprivation Saint?" he finally said.
"One can steal a ship out of existence, sure. Avoid Divination, however?"
"Are you saying we have a… Dominion Saint on the loose?" Colin asked, receiving a solemn nod from his wife.
Oh.
"Regardless," Nataliya said after a long pause, "that hardly matters as much as the objective at hand."
"Look at you, acting like the Saint here," he said with a grin. "Yeah. I'm aware."
She was right, as she usually was. The potential existence of a Saint who had struck five times in a century mattered far less than recovering the stolen instrument of equal level. If news of such a blunder reached Britain—or any other nation—it would damage their prestige indefinitely.
Besides, none may become a Dominion Saint. Not even our own.