Outside, time began to rot.
At first, it was only a few minutes too long.
The sort of delay people pretended not to notice because naming it would make it worse.
The team lingered at the cathedral steps beneath the vast golden shadow of the spires, watched by silent paladins in white-and-gold armour while the force field around the grounds hummed faintly overhead. Priests still moved in and out of side doors carrying clipboards and sealed folders, faces drawn tight with purpose.
Whatever was happening inside, the cathedral had not grown calmer since Celeste entered it.
If anything, it had grown busier.
That was what frightened Ray most.
No one looked surprised.
No one looked like they were waiting for routine questioning to finish.
They looked like people in the middle of something already underway.
Mezzo lasted the shortest amount of time.
“This is takin’ too long,” he muttered, pushing off from the van.
He strode up the lower steps two at a time, shoulders squared, jaw tight. One of the paladins lowered a halberd before he reached the entrance. Mezzo stopped dead, eyes flicking from the blade to the expressionless guard behind it.
“I’m goin’ inside.”
“No,” said the paladin.
The answer was flat as a locked gate.
Mezzo laughed once, humourless.
“That wasn’t a request.”
A second paladin stepped in from the side.
Before the situation could become gloriously catastrophic, the cathedral doors opened.
Diana Lockhart stepped out.
She descended the upper landing with all the visible discomfort of someone forced to deliver news she already hated. Her white-and-gold armour caught the light beautifully. Her expression did not.
“Commander Astallan has been forwarded for questioning,” she said.
The words struck the group colder than the morning air.
Ray went still.
Mezzo’s wings bristled.
Plum’s pen stopped moving.
Diana’s tail twitched once behind her.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” she continued, voice clipped and professional, “but you may as well go home.”
No one moved.
Not Ray.
Not Mezzo.
Not Arcade.
Not Pitch.
Not even Topsy.
Diana looked at them for a long moment.
Then exhaled quietly through her nose.
“I thought as much.”
Mezzo took another step up.
“Then let us in.”
“I can’t.”
Ray’s voice came low and dangerous.
“Can’t, or won’t?”
Diana’s mouth tightened.
“I have my orders.”
“From who?”
Diana did not answer.
That answer was answer enough.
Ray had been pacing for the last five minutes, boots striking the stone in short, sharp lines. She stopped now and looked from the shut cathedral doors to Diana, then to the others, then finally to Silver.
He was standing a little apart from the group, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight, expression cool.
Too cool.
Not worried enough.
Not angry enough.
Not even irritated enough.
Just calm.
Far too calm.
Ray’s stomach turned.
Arcade, meanwhile, had half the Gwennan’s portable systems spread across a crate, wires trailing from his arcbracer into the van’s jury-rigged console. C.H.I.P. hovered beside him, projecting code in shimmering lines while Plum tried and failed not to read upside down.
“I’m telling you,” Arcade muttered, fingers flying over a cracked interface panel, “if the cathedral has anything like a secured intake log, I can get—”
He stopped.
The light from the console changed colour.
C.H.I.P.’s voice sharpened.
“Static.”
Arcade stared at the screen.
Then swore.
Not one of his normal dramatic swears either.
A real one.
The sort that dropped like a wrench into silence.
Ray turned instantly.
“What?”
Arcade’s face had gone pale beneath the fury.
He tapped the screen once.
Then again.
“No.”
His voice changed.
Thin.
Scared.
That frightened Ray more than the swearing.
“What?” she demanded.
Arcade looked up slowly.
“Celeste’s arcbracer just went dark.”
The whole landing seemed to lose sound.
Even the paladins shifted.
Mezzo’s voice came out flat.
“What do you mean dark?”
“I mean off,” Arcade snapped, fear sharpening every word. “Disconnected. Dead signal. Either they blocked it, removed it, or someone shut it down from inside.”
Topsy’s ears flattened.
“They can do that?”
Arcade looked toward the cathedral doors.
“They just did.”
Then his eyes moved.
Straight to Silver.
The anger came back so fast it almost looked like a spark catching oil.
“You absolute—”
He actually seemed too angry to finish the sentence, which impressed everyone.
Silver arched a brow.
“Do go on. I’m always fascinated by what the mechanically inclined consider rhetoric.”
Arcade jabbed a finger at the projected data.
“I pulled the comm trace. Your conversation with Lysander.”
The air changed.
Mezzo spun around.
Ray went still.
Even Diana looked like she wanted to quietly vanish into a religious wall.
Arcade took a step forward, voice rising.
“You knew something was coming.”
Silver’s expression cooled.
“I knew Lysander had concerns.”
“Concerns?” Arcade barked. “Celeste is in there with the Inquisition and her arcbracer has been turned off.”
Silver’s jaw tightened.
“I did not organise the Inquisition.”
“Oh, well, splendid,” Arcade snapped. “That makes it cosy.”
Silver’s eyes narrowed.
“I asked Lysander and Bartleby to look into her background. That is all.”
“That is all?”
“Yes.”
Arcade laughed once, sharp and furious.
“That’s never ‘all’ with people like you.”
Silver’s voice hardened.
“I cannot be blamed for what my friend did with information he acquired independently.”
Ray stared at him.
“Are you hearing yourself?”
Silver turned toward her, offended now.
“I asked for a background inquiry. I did not ask anyone to march her into a cathedral and hand her to a High Inquisitor.”
“No,” Ray said. “You just pointed rich, powerful people at her and acted surprised when one of them pulled a knife.”
Silver’s mouth opened.
No answer came quickly enough.
Arcade stepped closer.
“You fed the idea,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t build the trap. Maybe you didn’t spring it. But you helped draw the map.”
Silver’s expression sharpened.
“That is an absurd simplification.”
“It’s a very tidy one, actually,” Arcade said. “Even you should appreciate the efficiency.”
Mezzo moved first.
Not all the way.
Just a sudden, sharp step forward, fist half-clenched at his side, shoulders coiled.
For one wild second, it genuinely looked like he was about to punch Silver in the mouth on the cathedral steps.
Silver recoiled instinctively, more shocked than afraid.
“You would raise a hand to me?”
The sheer disbelief in his voice made it sound as though Mezzo had proposed spitting on the moon.
Ray did not move to stop him.
In fact, the look on her face suggested she was considering whether one punch was enough.
Silver looked from one hostile face to another, bafflement creeping in beneath his composure.
“Why,” he asked, “is everyone suddenly behaving like savages?”
Arcade barked a laugh so sharp it nearly cut the air in half.
“Because her arcbracer is off, Silver.”
His voice cracked.
Just slightly.
“She’s alone in there.”
The colour drained from his face in a new and much uglier way.
“Oh,” he said.
Ray turned sharply. “What?”
Arcade looked up.
Arcade looked up.
“That’s why Celeste changed the plan.”
Silver’s jaw tightened.
Arcade pointed at him, voice sharpening with every word.
“That’s why she suddenly decided we all had to come here. Not Godiad. Not the split route. Here.”
Hughes was already walking.
Not quickly.
Not loudly.
Worse.
He crossed the space between them with the heavy, deliberate calm of a man who had just found exactly where to put his anger.
Silver straightened as Hughes came right up to him.
Close enough that Silver had to look up by a fraction.
Hughes’s voice was low.
“Did you make her change the plan?”
Silver’s expression flickered.
Only slightly.
But Hughes saw it.
“I suggested the Church should be prioritised.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Silver’s mouth tightened.
“Commander Astallan made her own decision.”
Hughes leaned in.
“Did you make her change the plan?”
Silver’s eyes flashed.
“I fail to see how this is relevant.”
“I bloody knew it.”
The words came out rough.
Furious.
Hughes looked back toward the cathedral doors, then at Silver again.
“When she was talking to you, she looked nervous. Not thoughtful. Not uncertain. Nervous. Then she came back smiling like something had gone wrong behind her eyes and changed a whole mission plan she had argued for five minutes earlier.”
Silver’s composure sharpened into frost.
“Hughes—”
“No.” Hughes cut him off. “This was never about protecting the Knights. It was never about safety. You wanted her brought here so you could find out what the rest of us knew.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Ray lifted her arcbracer.
“Enough.”
She triggered an emergency priority call.
The projection sprang to life in a burst of silver light, resolving into the stern, elegant image of Lady Umbranox Arcturus. She appeared seated in what looked like a council chamber or private office, cloaked in shadow and expensive disdain, one hand resting against the arm of her chair.
She took one look at Ray’s face and skipped straight past pleasantries.
“What has he done?”
Ray did not waste a second.
“Silver got Lysander looking into Celeste. Lysander warned the Church. Now Celeste has been forwarded for Inquisition questioning, and Arcade says her arcbracer is off.”
Umbranox went very still.
Then she said, with terrifying calm, “Put my son on.”
Silver straightened at once, face smoothing back into noble control.
“Mother—”
“I already interrogated Celeste months ago,” Umbranox cut in, each word precise enough to draw blood. “Personally. Quietly. Thoroughly.”
Silver froze.
“And now,” she continued, “because you could not restrain your ego for one miserable afternoon, it appears you have undermined your own commander in front of the Church.”
Silver’s expression tightened.
“I did not organise this.”
“No,” Umbranox said. “You merely placed suspicion into the hands of someone more than willing to sharpen it.”
His jaw set.
“That is not fair.”
“It is exact.”
“If Lysander acted without me—”
“Then your choice of confidants is as defective as your judgment.”
That landed.
Even Silver’s expression flickered.
He recovered quickly.
Too quickly.
“If Celeste is detained, I can lead the Knights until the matter is resolved.”
The silence that followed was so perfect it was almost holy.
Then Umbranox slowly turned her head, as if checking whether she had in fact given birth to a decorative object.
“You can.”
Silver mistook that for agreement.
“Exactly.”
Umbranox’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Without Celeste’s core, the Knights are useless.”
Silver gave a dismissive little tilt of his hand.
“Then they will use conventional weapons.”
Ray actually closed her eyes.
Mezzo made a strangled noise that might have been laughter or despair.
Umbranox stared at him.
“Against zombies.”
Silver froze.
The point hit him a full second late.
His face changed.
Just a little.
But enough.
Because yes.
Of course.
Without Celeste’s mana core stabilising and amplifying their combat effectiveness, without her unique resonance and the way it let the team function against things ordinary steel could barely slow, they were not an elite anti-zombie unit.
They were a handful of exhausted people with blades and attitude.
And attitude, unfortunately, did very little against a sugar-crazed abomination the size of a tram.
Silver had, quite genuinely, forgotten that part.
Umbranox made a sharp, disbelieving sound and rose from her chair in one fluid motion, cloak sweeping behind her like gathered stormcloud.
Then, with the grace of a queen forced to apologise for her court jester, she turned her gaze to Ray.
“Forgive my idiot son.”
Ray crossed her arms.
“Not today.”
“A sensible stance.” Umbranox’s jaw tightened. “You are in charge until I execute a release order.”
That snapped everyone into focus.
“In the meantime,” she said, “get inside and help your commander.”
For one long, brittle moment after Umbranox’s projection vanished, nobody spoke.
Then Hughes broke the silence with a disgusted grunt.
“Well,” he said, adjusting the strap on his rifle with deliberate calm, “that was educational.”
Silver looked at him sharply, still recovering from the shock of being dressed down by his mother in front of half the team.
Hughes met his stare without the slightest bit of awe.
“You are,” he said, “a well-meaning idiot.”
The words landed like a boot to the chest.
Mezzo let out a tiny, vicious noise of approval.
Silver’s face went still. “Excuse me?”
Hughes stepped forward, weathered and broad and utterly unimpressed by nobility, his voice low with the kind of authority that did not come from titles but from surviving too much to care about them.
“You wanted the Knights to be taken seriously,” he said. “Well done. You’ve just made it worse. You handed our commander to the Church on a silver plate and called it policy.”
Silver drew himself up at once, all frost and wounded dignity.
“Mind how you speak to me.”
Hughes’s expression did not change.
“No,” he said. “You need reminding of who you are now, not who you keep pretending to be.”
That did it.
Something hot and furious flashed across Silver’s face before he strangled it back into shape. His jaw tightened so hard it looked painful.
“Pretending,” he repeated.
Hughes gave a small shrug. “Aye.”
Silver looked like he wanted to say something devastatingly aristocratic and surgically cruel. For once, no words came quickly enough.
For half a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then everything moved at once.
Ray turned on Diana.
“You heard the Caedrix.”
Diana Lockhart exhaled slowly, relief and dread mixing in equal measure.
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
Mezzo cracked his knuckles with deeply unhelpful enthusiasm.
Arcade started yanking cables free from the console.
“Great. Fantastic. We’re storming a church. Very normal morning.”
Plum reopened her notebook.
“This is the best day of my career.”
Topsy bounced once on the balls of her feet, all nervous energy and fury.
“Can I bite a priest?”
“No,” Ray said.
“Can I threaten to?”
“We’ll workshop it.”
Pitch pushed off from the van in silence, already checking his weapon.
And Silver—
Silver stood amid them, composed no longer, the first thin fracture finally visible in the perfect marble of his confidence.
No one looked at him the same way now.
Not one of them.
The cathedral loomed above, golden and impenetrable, its doors still shut, its force field shimmering in the pale light like a halo with teeth.
And somewhere inside, Celeste was alone.
