One day later, Jerusalem.

The Holy City churned like a tide, a crowded sea where pilgrims mixed with beastfolk like driftwood in stormwater.

Commanders doubled the guard like patching a dam in flood.

Broad avenues shrank to bottlenecks, a thicket of shoulders and sighs that prickled the scalp.

“Unreal. The gate posts clocked over a hundred near-Legendaries,” a young priest muttered, tongue clicking like a pebble on glass.

“Since when does a trial pull a whole storm front?”

He stood at the observatory like a crane by a reedbed, eyes on a scrying screen that shimmered like a still pond.

Crimson vestments draped his narrow frame, the cardinal’s robe a scarlet flag on a sapling.

The veil mapped the city like a spiderweb, each strand a street, each dot a moving ant.

The strong were marked in red like coals in ash, their tracks pinned from the first step under the Church’s eyelids.

“Do your job,” the old priest beside him rasped, voice like dry bark.

“Run your mouth, you’ll end up chained like me.”

The elder’s white beard fell like frost as he steadied the arcane lattice with weathered hands.

With his touch, the screen held smooth as ice, and the red points flowed sharp as sparks.

The young one wiped the veil away with a lazy sweep, grin flashing like a knife under cloth.

“Teacher, even as a cardinal I’m as broke as you,” he said, shrugging like a cat in rain.

“If His Holiness had the guts, I’d be a ghost already.”

The elder’s brow creased like a folded scroll; he stayed still, then sighed like wind through reeds.

“You’ve been shut in too long,” he murmured, words heavy as wet sand.

“You don’t even know who’s on trial.”

“It was supposed to be His Highness Adrian of the Empire,” he said, gaze dropping like a stone through water.

“But the Church grabbed his woman, plans to try her in public, and call a Holy War.

How could the crowd not swell like a harvest river?”

The young man’s mouth curved like a hook catching light.

He called the veil back like breath on glass, and in a blink he snuffed two red dots like fireflies in ink.

He let his face fall blank again, a mask as smooth as slate.

“Listen up. Today’s run might be a road with no return,” Vivian said, voice steady as a drawn bow.

“I won’t force anyone. Step back now if you must; I won’t chase shadows.”

In a hidden townhouse, the Nightingales ringed a map like wolves around a fire.

The Holy City lay spread with veins and bones: troop routes, dead drops, and ambush nests marked like thorns.

To secure that parchment, they burned years of hoarded favors like candles in noon sun.

Compared to a state bureau like Section One, the Nightingales moved like smoke through a keyhole.

“Hound, you’re late with the lifeboat,” a seasoned woman quipped, eyes laughing like moonlight on water.

“We boarded your pirate ship years ago.”

Laughter eased the room like spring wind, and Vivian’s hard gaze softened like thawing ice.

Faces she knew sat close as sisters, each one a blade wrapped in silk.

She and Adrian had left the Imperial Capital like birds cutting south, telling no one, not even shadows.

Yet when they reached the Holy City’s safehouse, Nightingales swept in from all over the continent like starlings to a bell.

Now at her side stood near-Legendary assassins, hands trained as razors and voices soft as falling ash.

They wore a hundred skins like snakes and lied like moonlit mirrors, their craft honed to a ghost’s edge.

Loose one inside this city, and the hive would buzz like a kicked wasp nest.

“Hound, is His Highness all right?” the mature woman asked, chin tipping at the next room like a leaf toward rain.

“He’s been meditating since yesterday.”

Adrian’s control sat cold and perfect, not a thread leaking like water through a reed mat.

A Legendary’s aura usually sings with the world like a tuning fork in a storm.

In trance, they blur into the world, and that resonance breaks its banks like a river in thaw.

It warns like thunder at the edge of a field.

If there’s no ripple, it’s either weakness or mishap, a silence like snow after a hunt.

Adrian was no weakling, which made the quiet a riddle in smoke.

Vivian glanced at the brass ring on her left hand, a dull sun on her finger, and smiled like a secret.

“Him? Leave him be. He’s harder to kill than a cockroach under a boot,” she said, the jest light as dandelion fluff.

“All right, tasking time. Stir trouble at these points like stones in a pond.

If needed, take down anyone at cardinal level.”

Orders left her tongue like arrows, quick and bright.

The Relic of Original Sin hummed inside her like a hive, and she felt a sting of gratitude.

Through it, she shared a part of Adrian’s pain like winter in the bones, and gained a mind like a thousand abaci spinning.

He had thrown that power away because of the pain, a blade too hungry to hold.

In Vivian’s hand, it sang like tempered steel.

By noon, Adrian moved from his stillness like a beast waking under snow.

“It’s time,” he said, voice calm as a lake at dawn.

“The Church’s judgment is about to start.”

His presence folded tight, every gust tucked away like a knife in velvet.

He wore a plain robe, nothing of a mage’s battle regalia, a drifter’s cloth under cloud sky.

That restraint turned heads like a silent bell; near-Legendary killers watched him with a hunter’s hush.

Before, they feared the lives on his hands like black beads on a string.

Now, they feared the control, a fist closing around stormlight.

“Adrian… are you okay?” Vivian whispered, warmth first and worry after, like rain before thunder.

The Relic braided them together like twin roots; they knew each other’s weather to the breath.

She had seen him like this before, a hush draped over flame, and her heart beat like a trapped sparrow yet settled like stone.

In some way, their rhythm felt like husband and wife, quiet as a shared kettle at dusk.

“I’m fine,” Adrian said, smile brief as a comet.

“I’m in perfect shape. Trust me.”

Small spells slipped over him like a painter’s glaze, nudging features by a hair’s breadth.

He pulled up his hood like drawing night over a candle and opened the door with a soft click.

“Adrian!” Vivian called, the word leaping like a spark, and his step paused like a held breath.

He turned, a question in his eyes like a ripple, and their gazes crossed like blades that chose not to bite.

Color climbed her cheeks like dawn up a wall.

“Be careful,” she breathed, the plea light as willow fluff.

He chuckled like a low bell and left the house, footfalls quiet as falling ash.

Minutes later, her mind caught up and heat surged again like wine, as teasing looks pricked her like nettles.

She coughed hard to cover, a drumbeat in a quiet hall, and laughter spilled like beans from a jar.

Adrian flowed through the crowd like a shadow in tall grass.

Under his mask, the Church’s wards slept like dull hounds, and he slipped to Pilgrim’s Square with the press as cover, a fish in a shoal.

Before the gilded cathedral, priests hauled firewood for the trial like ants dragging twigs to a mound.

Ten-odd minutes remained, time hanging like a blade over rope.

Every line of defense lay open to his eye like ink on rice paper.

Priest or soldier, strong or weak, each path tracked like footprints in fresh snow.

An escape map unfolded in his mind like a crane from a square of paper.

The worse threat wasn’t the ring of guards, but Solomon and the Four Demon Lords, mountains under cloud.

Those things twisted reason like heat over a road, a mirage turned iron.

If it were only today’s Church elites, he’d gamble his blood to smoke Lilith out like a hawk from brush.

The Relic’s power drifted through him like a subterranean spring.

His step drifted slow within the square, never breaking the eddy, while faint Arcane Power misted outward like breath in winter.

Inside the gilded cathedral, Lilith hung bound to a cross like a night moth pinned.

No wounds marked her skin, yet her eyes were webbed with blood like cracked lacquer.

The Church hardly forgives humans, a frost on crops; it would never spare an outlier like her.

The Pope signaled for priests to shoulder the cross, to bear her out like a banner to wind.

The plan’s author stood at his side: Solomon, a smile like stale wine.

The Pope felt a burr under the wool, a wrongness like grit in bread.

Yet reason stacked like bricks: the plan pressed Adrian, and it baited a net wide as a harbor mouth.

If Adrian came, the Church’s iron lay thick as thorns; he’d leave with cuts or not at all.

“Your Holiness, do you think Adrian will keep the appointment?” Solomon asked, voice smooth as oil on water.

“He will,” the Pope said after a beat, words falling like pebbles into a well.

“Seven years ago, a spy from the Empire sent me a letter.

A storm swallowed him after, and when it cleared, our digging found the eye of it.”

“A half-blood succubus and Adrian,” he said, each name a coal.

“For her, he killed several nobles of his own Empire, a tale like thunder in blue sky, yet true.”

“So, he’ll come, and he’ll try to make the storm howl,” the Pope finished, gaze hard as baked clay.

“Keep hold of that succubus, and chances to gut Adrian will fall like pears in season.”