"Gendi? Ment?" Nirael hadn't seen this coming; anger flared like a torch in a storm. "Ment, what did you do to Gendi?"

She already understood, cold clarity like ice settling on water. Gendi was possessed by Ment, turned into a puppet. Yet she hadn't sensed it.

As her believer, he should have set her senses ringing like a struck bell. A heartbeat ago, in her sight, Gendi still had his own mind.

"What did I do? Made him my puppet, of course." Ment's voice rolled through the air like smoke. He glanced at Lucimia, eyes like knives.

"Didn't expect you to sniff it out. You're Lucimia, right? Heh. The Purification Deity mentioned you killed Elyssus. So it's you."

"You carry Olivya's Devouring Authority. What is Olivya playing at?"

"Hmph." Lucimia snorted, chill like frost on steel. The ice blade in Gendi's heart drank in Devouring Authority, bite by bite eroding Ment's possession.

The smoke he burst left coiled and thinned like mist at dawn. Ment left a final whisper, a thorn dropped in passing.

"Lucimia, Nirael lied to you. I'm the god saving the Empire."

"Spare me." Lucimia's gaze cut through him like winter sun. Fuzzy Orb gulped the last smoke, and Gendi's eyes fell shut.

He sagged to the ground like a cut puppet. Ment severed his link with Gendi, the cord snapping like a string.

"Lucimia, is Gendi... going to be okay?" Desty stepped up, crouching like a shadow pooling, reaching to feel the boy's breath.

"Don't bother. Becoming a puppet is basically death." The answer came not from Lucimia, but from Nirael, heavy as a stone dropped in a well.

"How could this..." Desty's spirits wilted like a drooping willow. Nirael had no time to comfort stormed hearts; urgency beat like drums.

She faced Lucimia. "If you knew Gendi was wrong, why not act earlier? Why wait and let us be ambushed?"

Lucimia looked back, calm like a moon in cold water. "Move too soon, and you startle the snake. He'd swap to another plan."

"At first I only suspected, no proof, and one detail bothered me like grit under the eyelid."

"What detail?"

"The timing of Gendi becoming a puppet," Lucimia said, words falling like pebbles. "He's your believer. You should have sensed it easily."

"Yet you didn't. So when he first met us and avoided our eyes leaving the basement, I thought it might be manners, not guilt."

"So I didn't pierce it at once, just carried that doubt like a thorn." "Ah? No wonder you stared at Gendi then." Desty finally recalled, memory surfacing like bubbles.

"Yeah. Doubt means I won’t let go. So I fished. I had Nirael keep our real plan from Gendi, to see if Ment got our location."

"That doesn't mean Gendi tattled. Ment himself, riding him, discovered it," she added, voice level as still snow.

"Ment likely planted something in Gendi, a seed that didn’t puppet him at once, but bloomed when needed like night-blooming flowers."

"Think about it. Gendi poisoned everywhere and ran with time-acceleration, yet soldiers never caught him. That didn't fit Ment and Lev's weight class."

"Most likely, Gendi had been caught earlier. They planted a curse, wiped his memory, and let him go, like setting a hooked fish back."

"In a way, my last Reversion blundered into breaking that card. I grabbed him before a crowd; officials couldn't release him again."

"They could only squeeze his last value, trying to pry intel from him," her tone dry like old parchment.

"This time, Ment probably puppeted Gendi and kept slipping curses onto me. Too bad for him, I'm not a possession."

"I'm a substitute body. The secret curse likely doesn't work on me," she finished, and shrugged, light as a leaf falling.

"I see..." Nirael looked down at Gendi, gaze softening like rain, then sighed and lifted her eyes to Lucimia. "Lucimia, I swear I'm no Dark Deity."

"I didn't deceive you. So, please..." "I know," Lucimia said, pulling her power back, brushing dust off like ash. "Let's go."

"At least we still hold one edge. Ment doesn't know our feint." "Alright."

Desty set the two cats on open ground, and Lucimia turned them back into horses, manes tossing like waves.

The Disguise Power worked like a charm, though it still burned her own energy like oil in a lamp.

"You ride. I'll sit behind. Skip the carriage. We'll likely face an ambush outside. Ment's brewing curses like stormclouds."

"You handle the reins. I'll back us with magic." "Got it." Desty swung onto the horse in one stride, clean as a swallow taking off.

Lucimia sat behind her, steady as a shadow. The other horse took Nirael, who possessed the fake Gene, so a rider who knew horses held the reins.

Before leaving, Lucimia devoured from Gendi's memories the route and the Cross's location, swallowing them like ink into water.

Last, she sent Fuzzy Orb with poison toward the Cross to taint it, a silent seed on the wind.

—

They stepped out of the shop, and the street was unnaturally still, a pond without ripples. From the dark, killing intent coiled like wolves.

"Nirael, give the horses speed." Lucimia snapped the first order, words like flint. "Okay."

As Nirael's power fell, both horses surged, hooves drumming like rain. In seconds they left the market street and reached the central square.

Right there, the ambush waited like a net cast over moonlight. Brilliant blue beams speared upward on all sides with a whoosh.

The pillars stood like prison bars, caging sky and earth. They locked the three of them in the center like birds in a bell jar.

"What Magic Array is this?" Lucimia asked Desty, voice low as night wind. "...No idea. But to deploy this, it must be a Church Inquisitor."

"Inquisitor... how strong?" "At least a Ninth Rank Mage or a Ninth Rank Swordmaster." "...Alright."

Lucimia watched the Array set, face tightening like ice. In her skyward sight, a graceful figure drifted up, outlined like a crescent.

A mature woman's form, wrapped in deep blue robes finer and more ornate than common cloth, hung there like a star-robed idol.

She held a staff with a spiral-crowned tip in one hand, and her eyes burned blue like cold stars. Her gaze was contempt from a cliff.

Her red lips parted, and an ethereal voice rang across the sky like a bronze bell. "Dark Deity Lucimia, Nirael, rebel Desty..."

She paused, a heartbeat like a held breath. Then she pronounced, crisp as a blade. "Receive judgment."

She raised the staff and tapped the air. A dull boom rolled out like thunder. Power rippled from her in widening blue rings.

The gust lifted trees like tide and whipped Lucimia's hair and clothes like flags in a gale. "...That's Purification Power," Lucimia said.

She raised a hand against the wind and stared at the woman above, whose magic blazed like a burning sea.