Outside, the Knights moved under the cathedral like thieves beneath a god’s teeth.

The western side of the Luminarch complex was quieter than the main approach, but only just. Mana lamps glowed in iron brackets along the pale stone walls, casting pools of gold over narrow walkways and drainage channels. The force field above the grounds gave off a constant faint hum, like a choir holding one endless note.

Somewhere overhead, bells tolled through the stone.

Slow.

Heavy.

As if the cathedral itself were counting down to something unpleasant.

They moved in shadows where they could.

Pitch went first, a blur of dark along the wall. Ray followed close behind, low and alert, one hand near her weapon. Hughes carried himself with the steady grimness of a man who had broken into worse places for better reasons. Plum clutched her notebook to her chest and tried very hard to look like this was normal field journalism rather than the beginning of a holy disaster.

Lumina and Skye had been left near the bend in the outer passage, keeping watch over the approach while Arcade worked.

Neither of them looked happy about it.

Lumina kept glancing toward the cathedral wall.

Then toward the dark maintenance hatch.

Then back again.

Her ears drooped.

“I’m worried about my sister,” she whispered.

Skye looked down at his cards, shuffling them once, then twice, though he was not reading them.

“I know.”

“She gets scared when people ask lots of questions.”

Skye’s fingers paused.

“So do I.”

Lumina looked at him.

He swallowed, eyes fixed on the cathedral doors somewhere beyond the stone.

“If I get the chance…” His voice went very small. “I’m going to try and talk to my dad.”

Lumina blinked.

“Father Tamsin?”

Skye nodded.

“Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe he’ll see reason.” He hesitated, then added more quietly, “Maybe he’ll help.”

Lumina looked back toward the cathedral.

“I hope so.”

Skye did not answer.

Hope, in his experience, was safer when not spoken too loudly.

A few yards ahead, Mezzo kept glancing back toward Silver.

Not because he trusted him.

Because he didn’t.

Silver had been forced to come with them after Ray made it very clear she was not leaving him behind to “accidentally” rearrange the narrative while they were inside. He wore the look of a man deeply offended by mud, criminal activity, and being supervised by common sense.

Mezzo slowed just enough to let Silver catch up beside him, red spiky hair bristling with agitation.

“If she’s harmed,” Mezzo said under his breath, voice low and dangerous, “I will kick your fecking arse so hard your ancestors will feel it.”

Silver didn’t even look at him.

“How vivid.”

“I mean it.”

Silver smoothed an imaginary crease from his cuff.

“Do calm yourself. If the Church discovers she is a foreign agent, or some Mythic plant with delusions of command, you will all thank me eventually.”

Mezzo stopped walking.

For one bright, holy second, it looked like he might simply kill him there and save time.

Then his eyes narrowed.

“…What the feck happened between you two?”

Silver’s expression did not change.

“Drop it.”

“No.”

“I said drop it.”

Mezzo marched toward him.

“Celeste has been walkin’ around like someone reached into her chest, grabbed the wee happy light inside her and stamped on it.”

Silver’s face tightened.

“And every time she tries talking to you,” Mezzo continued, “you look at her like she’s just licked your dinner.”

“I assure you, if Celeste had licked my dinner, this conversation would be considerably stranger.”

“Don’t.”

“I thought you appreciated humour.”

“Not when you’re usin’ it to dodge the bloody question!”

Silver finally looked at him.

Cold.

Flat.

“It is none of your business.”

“She’s my friend.”

“She is your commanding officer.”

“She’s both.”

“How wonderfully egalitarian.”

Mezzo’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, there it is.”

“There what is?”

“That smug rich-boy shite you do when somebody gets within three feet of an emotion.”

Silver’s jaw tightened.

“How touching.”

Mezzo made a strangled noise.

“Mother LIGHT, you’re unbearable.”

“And yet here you remain.”

“Because CELESTE IS MISERABLE!”

That finally cracked something.

Mezzo’s voice lowered further.

“What did she do?”

Silver looked away.

That was answer enough to make Mezzo push harder.

“Did she hurt you?”

No answer.

“Did she say something?”

Still nothing.

“I thought she’d secretly declared war on your family or nicked your favourite coat or insulted your bloody genealogy.”

Silver spun on him.

The movement was sharp enough that Mezzo actually shifted his weight back.

Gold flashed under Silver’s eyes.

Not full transformation.

Not even close.

But enough.

Heat rolled off him in a sudden wave, and when he spoke, the words came out with smoke under them.

“I said,” Silver snarled, “drop it.”

For half a second, it looked like fire might spill between his teeth.

Mezzo’s face changed.

Not fear.

Fury.

“Oh, that’s it.”

He turned with his whole body behind the punch.

Ray caught his fist before it connected.

Barely.

Her hand snapped around his wrist and stopped him inches from Silver’s face.

“Mezzo.”

““LET ME HIT HIM.” Mezzo growled, trying to pull free.

“No.”

“He’s a prick and he’s making things worse for us.”

“I know.”

Silver’s eyes flashed. “Excuse me?”

Ray did not look at him.

“Not now,” she said to Mezzo. “Mission first. We can tell him off later.”

Mezzo bared his teeth.

“He needs more than telling off.”

“Later.”

“He—”

“Mezzo.”

That snapped him still.

Ray’s voice had gone commander-flat.

Mezzo breathed hard through his nose, still glaring at Silver over Ray’s shoulder. Then, with visible effort, he lowered his fist.

Ray released him.

Slowly.

Then she turned to Silver.

“And you.”

Silver straightened, heat still flickering faintly at the corners of his mouth.

Ray pointed at him.

“I have a bone to pick with you.”

“I await the tribunal with breathless anticipation.”

“We’ll do it later.”

Silver’s nostrils flared.

Ray stepped closer, eyes hard.

“Do not make me do it now.”

For once, Silver seemed to recognise the wisdom of silence.

He looked away first.

Mezzo gave a bitter little laugh.

“Miracles do happen.”

Ray pointed toward the side passages.

“Silver. Mezzo. Check the entryways. Make sure no patrols are coming round behind us.”

Mezzo’s head snapped toward her.

“You’re sending me with him?”

“I’m sending you both where I can’t hear you.”

Silver looked personally offended.

Mezzo muttered, “Fair.”

Ray’s gaze sharpened.

“And no punching unless it’s a priest trying to stab you.”

Mezzo glanced at Silver.

“What if he stabs me with his eyes?”

“Then suffer quietly.”

Silver rolled his eyes as though all of this were terribly provincial.

For one second, Silver looked like he might argue.

Then Hughes glanced at him.

Silver’s mouth closed.

“Charming,” he said. “A promotion to decorative perimeter cat.”

He turned with a sweep of his uniform coat and moved down the side passage, muttering something deeply aristocratic and probably insulting under his breath. Mezzo Followed.

Hughes watched them go.

“Best place for them.”

Ray looked back to Arcade.

“Open the door.”

Arcade had already dropped to one knee by a maintenance console half-hidden behind a stone lip near the drainage line. Wires snaked from his Arcbracer into the cathedral’s outer systems. C.H.I.P. hovered over his shoulder, projecting code in blue-white layers that washed Arcade’s face in cold light.

Electricity danced over Arcade’s fingers as he worked.

Fast.

Precise.

Focused enough that the world seemed to narrow around him into circuits and intrusion paths and old Church security protocols that had never expected to be insulted by a Hybrid with spite and a toolkit.

“Topsy,” Ray whispered.

“Already chaos,” Topsy whispered back brightly.

Then she vanished around the far bend.

A heartbeat later, a tremendous metallic crash rang through the corridor, followed by Topsy shouting, “Sorry! Sacred bucket emergency!”

Two guards shouted after her.

Then footsteps pounded away in pursuit.

Plum blinked.

“I genuinely can’t tell whether she plans these.”

“No one can,” said Hughes.

Arcade didn’t look up.

“Good. They’re stupid with confidence. I’m in the outer feeds.”

The security interface opened in layers across the projected screen.

Hallways.

Vestibules.

Archive doors.

Stairwells.

Patrol markers.

Static-laced interior cameras from older sectors still running on Church-era cabling.

“Find her,” Ray said.

“I’m trying.”

Arcade flicked through feed after feed.

Empty hallways.

Two priests arguing in a records room.

A paladin checkpoint.

A prayer chamber.

A locked confessional.

Then—

“There.”

The image sharpened.

Not a cell.

Worse.

A circular chamber flooded with pale gold light.

Priests.

Scientists.

Machinery.

Celeste strapped to a device at the centre, her wrists bound, her body tense and trembling beneath a crown of rotating crystal lenses.

Ray swore softly.

Hughes leaned in so fast he nearly shoved Arcade sideways.

“Open that door.”

“I can’t until I know the internal lock chain.”

“Arcade—”

“Shut up and let me breathe, I’m doing seventeen crimes at once.”

On the screen, something was wrong.

The scientists in the room stood stiff and glassy-eyed. One of them was deleting files from a terminal with eerie, puppet-like precision. Another had knelt and was placing tablets and scanned documents at Celeste’s feet as if making an offering. A third was wiping down the recording apparatus with mechanical obedience.

And Celeste—

No.

Not Celeste.

The girl in the chair lifted her head.

Her eyes were molten gold.

When she spoke, the audio hissed, then cleared, and the voice that came through was not hers.

It was layered.

Old.

Resonant enough to make the tiny speaker in Arcade’s kit buzz in protest.

“Strike thy proof from memory.”

The scientist at the terminal obeyed instantly.

“Render unto mine vessel the records thou hast stolen from her.”

Another bowed his head and placed a stack of data slates beside the chair.

“Thou shalt remember naught of this exchange.”

The gold light in the scientists’ eyes deepened.

“Now sleep.”

One by one, the clergy in the room sagged where they stood.

Not dead.

Not injured.

Just dropped neatly into slumber, like marionettes whose strings had been snipped by a royal hand.

No one outside the feed breathed.

Then the thing in Celeste’s body turned.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

It looked straight into the camera.

Its head tilted.

And it smiled.

Arcade’s whole body went cold.

Something moved through the screen.

Not visually.

Not physically.

A pressure.

A hook.

A voice where no voice should have been.

Use C.H.I.P.

The words sounded not in his ears, but behind his thoughts.

Arcade’s pupils widened.

Enter by the leftward side. Beneath the storm drain. Take this key and be swift.

Digits appeared in his mind with perfect clarity.

Ray touched his shoulder.

“Arcade?”

He did not answer.

His fingers moved.

Fast.

Certain.

Not with his usual chaotic genius, but with smooth, unnatural purpose. He yanked a secondary cable from C.H.I.P.’s docking array and fed it into the maintenance lock under the west transept, electricity snapping bright between his hands as he typed in a code he had not known three seconds earlier.

C.H.I.P. tilted in the air, optical sensors blinking.

“Ah,” the robot said cheerfully. “She is in your head now. Marvellous.”

Ray stared.

“What?”

Arcade kept working.

“Arcade?” she said again, sharper now. “What are you doing?”

Nothing.

He didn’t even look at her.

The storm drain seal under the wall gave a low thunk. Internal bolts began retracting one by one.

Pitch took a step back.

“That’s not normal.”

“No,” Hughes said grimly, “it bloody isn’t.”

Arcade’s hands flew faster, sparks skating over his knuckles. The code kept unspooling through him, not like knowledge, but like instruction. He obeyed because, for those few terrible seconds, obedience did not feel optional.

The cathedral’s left-side security net collapsed in silence, blind spots opening like petals in a poisoned flower.

And then Arcade heard it.

Not through the speaker.

Not through the feed.

Through him.

A song.

It slipped behind his ears and under his thoughts, vast and golden and impossible, carrying something that was not sound but command. Pain moved inside it like a blade wrapped in silk. Fear too—Celeste’s fear, sharp and bright and trapped beneath all that ancient power.

Arcade’s fingers froze over the controls.

His mouth went dry.

For one terrible second he could feel her.

Not understand her.

Not speak to her.

Feel her.

Strapped down.

Hurting.

Terrified.

And underneath it all, something old and royal had woken in the dark.

“Stars,” Arcade whispered, voice hollow.

“That song is beautiful.”

C.H.I.P. tilted in the air, optical sensors blinking.

“Oh good,” the robot said cheerfully. “Master you are finally sensing it too. I was wondering when you would.”

Then the pressure vanished.

Just like that.

Arcade jerked as if waking from a dream with his face already on fire. He stumbled sideways, ripped the cable free, and vomited hard into the drainage channel.

Ray lunged to steady him.

“Arcade!”

He was shaking uncontrollably.

Not delicate trembling.

Violent, full-body shuddering, like his nervous system had not yet decided who it belonged to. His face had gone grey beneath his fur. Sweat stood out along his neck.

“I—”

He swallowed and nearly gagged again.

“I had my body. I had it and I—”

He looked at the screen.

At the golden-eyed thing wearing Celeste’s face.

Horror crashed fully into focus.

With fumbling, frantic hands, he transferred the footage from the intercepted cathedral feed into his own private encrypted storage. Then, with a speed born entirely of panic, he deleted every trace of the recorded exchange from the Church system.

Every cache.

Every mirrored buffer.

Every auto-save.

Plum stared.

“Arcade—”

“If anyone sees that,” he said, voice ragged, “if the Council sees that, if the Church keeps a copy of that—”

He looked up at them all, stricken.

“They will kill her.”

No one argued.

Because no one looking at that screen could doubt it.

Not interrogate her.

Not detain her.

Kill her.

And all of them with her, most likely, for having seen too much.

“What happened?” demanded Hughes.

No one answered him.

Ray did not even look his way.

Arcade wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, still shaking, then pointed at the half-open storm drain access beneath the western wall.

“We go in there,” he said, voice ragged. “Now.”

On the muted screen, the golden-eyed thing in Celeste’s body continued to sit in the centre of the room like royalty chained to a chair for someone else’s insolence.

Waiting.

As if it had known exactly what it was doing.

As if it had wanted them to come.