The cathedral rose from the earth like an old wound that had never healed.
Its collapsed spires jutted skyward at broken angles, ribs of stone clawing uselessly at the clouds. What had once been stained-glass windows were now jagged mouths, teeth shattered and scattered across the ground below. Murals that had preached salvation and judgment alike were blackened beyond recognition, their pigments burned into shadow by centuries of neglect and ruin.
Noctis stepped into the wreckage without hesitation.
The ground shifted beneath his boots, rubble grinding softly as he crossed the threshold. The air inside was stale, heavy with dust and something older—memory, pressed so deeply into the stone that it had never faded. This place knew him.
Here, he had been chained.
Here, vows had been broken—not his.
Here, betrayal had been sanctified and sealed in prayer.
The stones remembered.
At his will, his vision sharpened.
The world peeled back its surface lies, revealing the hidden architecture beneath.
Cracks in the ruin glimmered faintly, not with light, but with meaning. Old lines of power still clung to the place, fractured but stubborn, tracing their way through columns and floors like ghostly veins. The wards had been shattered long ago, yet they refused to fully die. Holy glyphs flickered weakly on cracked pillars, bleeding sanctity into the dust where it dissipated without purpose.
Half-buried chains lay tangled among fallen masonry.
They twitched as he passed.
Noctis crouched, reaching down to brush one link with a claw. The metal responded immediately, shivering beneath his touch. A low hum vibrated through it—thin, fragile, like the last breath of a dying thing clinging to relevance.
Then it went still.
Whatever authority it had once wielded was gone.
He moved deeper.
The light dimmed as corridors narrowed and ceilings collapsed inward. Shadows thickened, pooling where altars had once stood, stretching long fingers across broken floors. Yet beneath the quiet decay, Noctis sensed something else.
Rhythm.
Faint. Uneven. Persistent.
Heartbeats.
They were not thralls. Not remnants animated by spell or instinct. They were alive—barely—but sustained by something deliberate.
Saints.
The catacombs lay beneath the cathedral's shattered heart, a place meant for reverence that had become a vault for suffering. He found them chained to the walls, bodies slack against stone etched with failing wards. Time had not been kind to them. Their skin was pale, stretched thin over bone. Their forms bore the marks of long endurance rather than peace.
They were relics of another age.
Not honored.
Preserved.
Sanctity still clung to them, faint and exhausted, feeding them just enough to keep them from death. Their eyes fluttered open as he approached—clouded, dim, yet still holding the faintest sparks of light.
For a moment, instinct surged.
Hunger sharpened his senses. Saints were rich prey—faith condensed into flesh, sanctity refined by devotion and sacrifice. To devour them would be easy. Efficient.
But Noctis did not move.
A different thought unfurled, colder and far more ambitious.
If saints could be corrupted—if devotion itself could be bent rather than destroyed—then faith would no longer be an enemy to overcome.
It would become infrastructure.
His lips curved faintly.
Drawing on the newly awakened vein within him, he let his presence change. The pressure of abyssal silence folded inward, replaced by warmth. Radiance flowed outward, measured and convincing. The air brightened subtly around him, as though reassured by his arrival.
He stepped into their sight not as a predator, but as salvation.
"Do not fear," he said, his voice low and steady, threaded with borrowed faith. "I am the bishop. I have come to deliver you."
The reaction was immediate.
Their eyes widened. Chains rattled as weakened bodies strained to move, hands trembling as if reaching for a promise they had long abandoned hope of receiving. Half-formed hymns slipped from cracked lips, prayers unfinished but earnest.
Noctis moved among them slowly, reverently.
One by one, he broke their bindings—not with force, but with care, lifting them as though they were precious. The wards sputtered and died at his touch, mistaking his presence for divine authority.
When he led them upward into the light, the throne hall stirred.
Murmurs rippled through the kneeling figures as the saints were revealed—frail, broken, unmistakable. The queen bowed her head immediately. Tina and Iris followed, Clara and the maids sinking lower in awe and disbelief.
It was Veyra who reacted most visibly.
Her breath caught. Her eyes widened, reflecting not fear, but reverence.
"Saints…" she whispered. "Saints of the past…"
Noctis rested a hand on her shoulder, his grip firm but reassuring. His eyes gleamed faintly as he looked down at her.
"Heal them," he said. "Nurture them. They are ours now."
Veyra bowed deeply, trembling—not with doubt, but devotion.
"Yes, Master."
The saints were carried away, their bodies light with weakness, their futures already decided. The corruption would not strike them all at once. It would seep gently, patiently, reshaping devotion until their light no longer burned upward—but inward.
Noctis did not watch them go.
He turned back toward the cathedral.
His wings unfurled as he descended once more into the ruins, passing beyond the catacombs and into chambers long forgotten. The deeper he went, the older the stone felt. Wards sparked faintly along the walls—some still holy, others twisted and broken, overlapping like arguments left unresolved.
Silence thickened with every step.
At the end of the labyrinth lay the final chamber.
Altars lay shattered across the floor, chains broken and discarded in tangled heaps. The air felt heavy, charged, as though waiting for a decision that had been delayed for centuries.
There, resting opposite one another, were the relics.
One radiated darkness so profound it seemed to drink the light around it, its surface whispering in a language steeped in betrayal, rage, and ancient defiance. The other glowed faintly with holiness, its hum steady and pure despite centuries of abandonment.
Evil.
Holiness.
Both intact.
Both patient.
Noctis stepped between them, his shadow stretching long across the chamber.
He did not rush.
A predator never did when the choice before him promised more than a single kill.
Opportunity stood on both sides.
And he intended to claim it all.
The chamber reeked of dust, rot, and the slow decay of centuries.
Time had pooled here, stagnant and heavy, pressing down on the broken stone and warped metal like a lid that had never been lifted. Noctis stood at its center, surrounded by the remnants of forgotten rites, his presence the only thing in the room that felt alive.
Before him lay the relics.
They did not rest peacefully. The air between them vibrated faintly, a tension so constant it had become background noise, like pressure before a storm that never broke. Even in stillness, they opposed one another—locked in an argument older than the cathedral itself.
One was a shard of obsidian, jagged and irregular, as though torn from something far larger. Its surface drank in the dim light, veins of oily black pulsing beneath it like a slow, malignant heartbeat. It whispered without sound, promises seeping directly into instinct: hunger without end, wrath unbound, chains that never loosened.
The other was a chalice.
Its crystal body was etched with scripture so fine it looked grown rather than carved. A soft glow emanated from it, steady and patient, the rhythm of a heart that had never known fear. It radiated calm strength—mercy that did not waver, absolution that demanded surrender.
Damnation and salvation.
Both waiting.
Noctis felt his fangs bare without conscious command. Instinct urged him toward the easier path: devour one, corrupt the other, claim power without risk. Either choice would have been enough to elevate him further.
But his hunger had long since moved past enough.
He wanted both.
At his will, the Blood Grid unfurled.
The world thinned, the chamber dissolving into the vast internal void where chains stretched endlessly in every direction. Crimson links gleamed with dominion, threaded through with veins of white-gold sanctity and streaks of abyssal darkness. The lattice strained as it sensed what he intended.
Resistance rippled through it.
He stepped forward anyway.
His clawed hand closed around the obsidian shard first.
Darkness surged.
It did not enter gently—it clawed. The shard dissolved against his skin, spilling cold fury into his veins, flooding him with violence so pure it felt like instinct stripped bare. Promises screamed through his marrow: endless conquest, annihilation without restraint, the joy of chains tightening forever.
At the same time, he seized the chalice.
Light exploded.
Holy fire tore into him like a rising sun, searing through flesh and soul alike. It burned not with hatred, but with absolute certainty—purification that demanded submission, mercy that erased choice. His nerves screamed as sanctity tried to overwrite him completely.
The two forces collided inside him.
Light and dark slammed together in his veins, tearing at one another, ripping through the Grid's structure as if trying to tear it apart from within. The void shuddered. Chains snapped and recoiled. Pain unlike anything he had known ripped through him—not damage, but contradiction.
His wings snapped wide as a roar tore from his chest, echoing through both chamber and void. Tattoos across his body ignited, blazing in molten gold and abyssal black, the patterns warping and rewriting themselves in real time. Blood spilled from his lips, vaporizing before it could fall, hissing into red mist.
For a heartbeat, it threatened to tear him in half.
Then Noctis forced his will outward.
Not as command.
As law.
"Obey."
The word did not echo. It anchored.
The Blood Grid convulsed, then responded. Broken chains reforged themselves, links snapping together into new patterns. Light was forced to bend. Darkness was compelled to yield. The two streams twisted around one another, not merging, but interlocking—each restraining the other where it would have consumed everything alone.
Wrath smothered excess mercy.
Sanctity caged endless hunger.
The pain changed.
No longer tearing—tempering.
The Grid stabilized around a new core, one that pulsed with alternating gold and black light, neither dominant, neither suppressed. Twilight settled into the lattice, perfect and terrible in its balance.
Noctis's body trembled as the transformation completed.
His wings stretched fully, one blazing with gold fire, feathers radiant and sharp; the other cloaked in shadow so deep it seemed to swallow light itself. The chamber shook as stone cracked and rubble fell from the ceiling. The relics were gone—not shattered, not discarded, but utterly absorbed, their essence rewritten into his veins.
When the shaking stopped, Noctis stood unmoving.
He opened his eyes.
Gold and black spiraled together in his gaze, impossible to separate, burning with quiet authority. The Grid no longer strained around him. It recognized him.
He was no longer merely a predator wearing sanctity, nor an apostate devouring faith.
He was both.
Saint and demon.
Light and abyss.
Crowned not in day or night, but in the space between.
The cathedral groaned softly, old chains snapping loose from the walls as if acknowledging a master they had never truly served before.
Noctis smiled, blood still dark at the edge of his fangs.
He had not chosen.
He had taken everything.
The heart of the ruined cathedral had not yet settled.
Stone still trembled faintly beneath Noctis's feet, as though the building itself struggled to accept what had been done within it. Dust sifted down from fractured arches in thin, drifting curtains. Somewhere deep in the shadows, old chains clattered softly, their echoes hollow and uncertain. Fragments of broken scripture—once etched to endure eternity—crumbled into ash as the last traces of borrowed sanctity burned away.
At the center of the devastation, Noctis remained unmoving.
His wings were spread wide, one half wreathed in deep shadow, the other limned in steady radiance. Gold and black bled together along the feathers, neither overwhelming the other. Twilight clung to him now as naturally as breath. Beneath his ribs, the Blood Grid pulsed—no longer a distant engine, but a living presence that pressed insistently against his will.
It demanded to be opened.
Noctis did not resist.
He allowed his awareness to turn inward, and the world peeled away.
The void unfolded around him once more—vaster than before, yet more precise. Crimson chains stretched outward into infinity, but they were no longer uniform. Rivers of gold and black ran through them, interwoven so tightly that separating one from the other was impossible. The lattice spiraled endlessly, ordered and ruthless, and at its core burned the principle that now defined him.
Twilight Sovereignty.
Not balance for its own sake, but domination achieved through mastery of contradiction.
As he looked across the Grid, points of light pulsed into awareness. Nodes flared like distant stars—some dim and dormant, others blazing with potential. He felt the weight of essence coursing through him, thick and roaring, far more than he required.
More than enough.
He reached out with intent, and the Grid answered.
The first surge flowed into the foundations of his predation. Where once he had torn life from flesh, now something deeper answered his pull. Essence bled more completely, sanctity unraveling alongside vitality, divine spark stripped away with every extraction. Hunger refined itself into efficiency.
The chains shifted again, feeding the arsenal that circled him even now. The Reapers sharpened in response, their edges slipping through dimensions rather than space alone. Barriers—physical or otherwise—would no longer slow their passage. They would strike as they moved, tearing reality as easily as armor.
His connection to the immaterial deepened next. His form learned to forget solidity, not all at once, but in parts—an arm, a shoulder, a wing—phasing selectively through matter when he willed it. Flesh and shadow became negotiable states.
The surge spread outward after that, beyond the cathedral, beyond even the city. His presence learned to drink from entire districts at once, essence flowing toward him like a tide drawn by the moon. Where he walked, life weakened subtly, inexorably.
Movement itself bent to him. Space folded more cleanly now, and when he stepped through it, echoes lingered behind—afterimages that struck and vanished independently, blurring the line between speed and multiplication.
Each change locked into place with the soundless snap of chains reforging themselves.
And still the Grid offered more.
From the twilight core, new expressions of power coalesced—no longer tentative, no longer experimental. Weapons formed of fused light and shadow existed now as inevitabilities, unbreakable by design. Detonations of twilight energy promised annihilation that spared neither sanctity nor void. Blessings sharpened into instruments of quiet bondage, restoring strength while tightening unseen restraints. Even prayer itself became vulnerable—his presence able to unravel rites and curses alike, leaving nothing but silence behind.
He turned then to the finer lattice that threaded between greater powers.
With deliberate will, he snapped chains open one by one.
His body adapted faster, healing with ruthless efficiency as it learned to absorb both holy and abyssal forces without backlash. The ground beneath him bent subtly when he moved, domains yielding just enough to acknowledge sovereignty. Essence expenditure lightened wherever hunger was active, predation subsidizing dominion.
Strength followed—raw, undeniable—his muscles and bones reforged beyond their previous limits. His senses sharpened further still, piercing illusions of both light and shadow, perceiving sanctity even when cloaked by divine artifice. At the core of it all, a stabilizing structure took hold, allowing him to contain far more power than before without rupture.
The void roared as the final nodes ignited.
Noctis felt it in his veins, in the tension of his wings, in the way the tattoos across his body shifted and rewrote themselves—crimson patterns now overlaid with intricate filaments of gold and black, scales of twilight etched into flesh and soul alike.
When the Grid finally dimmed, he drew in a slow breath.
The cathedral felt smaller.
Not diminished—but insufficient.
Rubble and ruin could no longer frame him. The space strained simply by containing his presence. His silence expanded instinctively, pressing outward in a suffocating wave—then, with practiced control, folded back into his chest, masked beneath the gentle radiance of the Lumen Vein.
To the world beyond these walls, he could walk as a saint.
Within him, the Grid raged—a storm of twilight bound by absolute will.
Noctis smiled faintly, teeth catching the low light.
The transformation was complete.
His body burned with power.
His dominion stood secure.
And soon enough, the world itself would learn how easily it could bend.
He climbed from the cathedral's hollow with nothing more to find; the depths had given up their relics and their secrets. Sunlight struck his wings and turned the gold-black feathers to living metal as he rose. Veyra met him on the steps, robes folded, face pale with duty and something like fear that had learned to call itself obedience.
He kissed her in the stairwell where the city could see—an exhibition of possession disguised as blessing. No one in the square murmured. Their eyes were his now; devotion had been rewritten into reflex.
They walked together to the hall where the rescued saints were laid out: twisted bodies on pallets, skin like parchment, ropes of warding around wrists, hands that still tried to shape prayer even when they could not stand. Veyra hurried forward with the others to report their progress. She spoke softly, words of recovery and treatments, and Noctis listened with a patient half-smile. Then he told the crowd to leave. He would be the healer. Veyra's face pinched; concern rose on her lips, but she obeyed. Her obedience had been honed into certainty.
He shut the doors and the hall fell into a hush that felt like expectation rather than fear.
He did not heal.
He bit.
It began small—an exploratory nip into a wrist, the saints' blood hot and metallic with the memory of prayers. They did not scream at first; the saints were tired, broken, their throats full of old hymns that would not leave. When Noctis bit deeper, savoring the sacred iron tang, the first of them opened an eye wide with surprise as if remembering truth and betrayal at the same time.
[Skill: Dawnsunder Fang — Activated]
Blood ran dark and golden in his mouth. Each pull fed the Grid. With every draught the room seemed to tilt, inscriptions on the walls brightening and then blackening as sanctity rebled into corruption. Messages slid across his vision—tiny prompts of system text that announced gain, mutation, warning—and he ignored them, tasting the cathedral's centuries like a map.
He moved from pallet to pallet. A bite here, a careful slice there; he drank enough to leave them alive but hollow. Their breaths came ragged, their hands twitched with the memory of benediction. For every saint's blood he drank, a new system notice flared: small, clinical, irrelevant in the heat of the feast. He kept drinking.
When the last saint's pulse thinned to a whisper, Noctis drew the chalice he had made of his own blood, its rim already stained gold from the angel's ichor and black from the obsidian. He cut his wrist with a clean sweep and let his blood pour into it, crimson falling to join what sanctity he had taken.
[Skill: Benediction of Chains — Activated (inverted)][Doctrine: Twilight Sovereignty — Node: Benediction of Chains engaged]
He lifted the chalice. One by one he forced the saints to drink.
They convulsed. The mixture burned down throats with a sound that was half prayer and half howl. Pain tore their faces into masks; the hall filled with the raw, animal noise of bodies unmade and remade. For a long stretch of air he simply stood above them and let the sounds wash across his skin. The Grid drank the theatre of agony like a hymn.
Then the cries ebbed. The convulsions stilled. Quiet returned in a way that was heavier than sleep. One by one, the saints' eyes opened.
They rose like a small host called into being. Their movements at first were tentative, then certain. Strength returned to joints, to lungs. The light in their eyes had changed: it was not pure white; it was threaded with shadow. They looked at him—at the man who had bitten them, bled into them, and reformed their marrow—and one of them asked, voice small and hoarse, "What have you done to us?"
Noctis smiled—calm, almost fatherly.
"I healed you," he said. "I have given you life. But that life is bound to me. You are no longer only saints. You are my servants." His tone was plain, the logic of a sovereign explaining a decree. "You will keep the light, and you will keep the shadow. You will stand in the world and protect people without being broken by those they serve."
The idea landed like a stone in a calm pool. A few of them shuddered at the word bound; some murmured prayers that turned thin and stopped on their lips. A few recoiled and lunged—hands raised, holy motes flaring as they tried to strike him.
They did not reach. Chains—silent, invisible at first—snapped about their wrists and throats. He had planted bindings when he poured his blood: small nodes of obedience woven into the chalice's draught. They froze mid-motion, eyes wide, a haunted incompletion in their faces.
"How can you—" a saint began.
"How can you strike your master?" Noctis asked softly. His voice did not shout; it cut. "You are bound. You serve." A laugh, small and pleased, escaped him. "You will be more than martyrs. You will be what the world needs—guardians who are no longer tolerated and then discarded. Who are no longer used and abused."
He allowed them time. They tested themselves, each lifting a hand to try a small benediction. White-gold motes answered at first—untouched, familiar. Then shadow bled into those motes; they wavered and coalesced into something new: a litany that could burn and heal at the same instant.
[Skill: Hollow Prayer — Passive effect observed][Node: Golden Maw — Yield increased]
They performed simple rites. When they placed hands on a wounded thrall, the wound sewed and a trace of shadow braided into the seam—repair that left a mark. When they called a short benediction, it mended and etched a sigil of allegiance into bone. They could feel the corruption within them, a small dark thing nesting beside the holy light. Some wept silently; others clenched their teeth and bowed.
Veyra watched from the doorway, hands folded, eyes wide. She had been worried that he would violate the sanctity as before—kill or devour—but this was worse and better at once: a conversion that kept them living and turned their vows into service. Her mouth moved. She began to weep, not from revulsion but from devotion that had remade itself into acceptance.
Noctis stepped back and let them stand as they would. Saints new-made, bearing both salvations and curses, tested their powers and found them true. He had given them back their function—protection, guidance—but under his name. They would be saints and sentinels, holy and corrupt, guardians of a sanctuary that would answer to him.
He looked down at Veyra and saw a question there, unspoken. She feared what he had done—and yet she obeyed.
"We will build a haven," he told them quietly, the promise folded inside his command. "A place neither wholly light nor wholly dark. You will stand in its halls and you will be its wardens. You will be loved, fed, and given purpose. You will be my saints—and the world will not break you."
They bowed, one by one, not in submission alone but with the mixture of hope and the strange hunger that lived now in their veins. The hall smelled of blood and incense, of burning candles and the metallic tang of new oaths. Noctis heard the system's last small notification ripple through his vision—a clean, clinical confirmation of the nodes he had set—and then he pushed it away.
Outside, Veyra took them in hand as he had ordered. She wrapped tender robes about brittle limbs and began the slow work of tending wounds and waking faith into this new, perverse devotion. Noctis watched only a moment longer. The city awaited; the kingdom awaited. His throne waited.
He stepped out into the light and the capital's breathless loyalty folded around him like a cloak. The new saints followed close, quiet and resolute.