[The First Day of Destruction, 18:30]
.
[The Inner District — Grand Six Cathedrals]
.
"Did you feel that? The ground... it shook again."
Lucina clutched her holy symbol, the silver edges digging into her palm until the skin threatened to break. The cloister of the Earth Cathedral, usually a sanctuary of meditative, cavernous silence, had devolved into a suffocating trap of hushed, terrified whispers.
Beside her, Kaelen paced. His heavy brown robes swished erratically against the flagstones. He stopped, his trembling fingers worrying a small, wooden charm of the Earth God at his neck.
"It's getting closer," Kaelen hissed, his eyes darting toward the high stained-glass windows.
The vaulted glass, meant to filter the evening sun into warm, comforting gold, now bled a sickly, pulsating verdigris onto the cloister floor. The light didn't shine; it festered. It cast long, diseased shadows across the stone faces of the saints.
"The Middle Wall," Kaelen stammered, his breath hitching as he leaned closer to her. "The guards at the Inner Gate... they said the Middle Wall was breached. The Outer City is just gone, Lucina. Burned to ash. We are next."
"Don't say that." Lucina smoothed the front of her robe, though her own hands shook violently. "The Scriptures are here. The Cardinals wouldn't let the Holy City fall. It's..." She swallowed hard. "It's a test. A trial of our faith."
"A trial?" Kaelen laughed, a shrill, hysterical scrape that echoed off the columns. "The sky is bleeding poison! I saw a militiaman carrying past the courtyard. His armor was melted into his ribs. What kind of fire does that?"
He grabbed her sleeve, his eyes wide and red-rimmed. "I left my mother in the Lower Market this morning. I left her with half a loaf of bread and told her I'd see her for evening mass!" He choked on a wet sob.
"Quiet yourself, Kaelen," Lucina whispered, trying to summon the calm of the elder priestesses. She hummed a fractured bar of the Canticle of the Stone, but the notes dried up in her throat. "The Gods protect the faithful."
"I saw the refugees who made it to the plaza," Kaelen interrupted, his voice a raw, ragged whisper. "Their skin was sliding off like wet parchment, Lucina! What kind of god tests us with a plague that eats the soul?"
"Kaelen! Hold your tongue!"
The stern voice cut through the panic like a physical blow. Senior Priest Vance strode into the cloister, accompanied by Elder Brother Mathias. Vance, a grim veteran of the Beastman incursions, had a face like carved granite, but tonight, the granite was cracking under immense pressure. His immaculate vestments were askew, the heavy gold embroidery smeared with greasy black soot.
"Father Vance..." Lucina stepped forward, desperate for the illusion of safety. "Is it true? Are the walls failing?"
Vance looked at the acolytes huddled in the diseased green light like frightened sheep. He sighed, a heavy, scraping sound from deep in his chest. "The situation is... critical. The enemy is unnatural. But despair is a sin, children. Despair feeds the darkness."
"We must seal the heavy bronze doors," Mathias argued, his voice a reedy, panicked wheeze. He clutched a heavy, iron-bound tome to his chest. "We must gather in the Inner Sanctum and sing the Wards of Protection! The Cathedral is sacred ground. If we open the doors to the mob, the miasma will enter!"
"The miasma is already in the air, Mathias," Vance snapped, his voice hard, theological but ruthlessly pragmatic. "We are the hands of the earth. What good are hands that hide in their pockets while the body bleeds?"
"But the artifacts!"
"Are metal and stone!" Vance roared, silencing the older man. He took a breath, reigning in his temper. "The Six Great Gods did not abandon us when the Dragon Lords ruled the sky. They did not abandon us when the Demon Gods ravaged the land. They will not abandon us now. But they judge us by our works."
He turned back to the novices, his hand dropping heavily onto Kaelen's trembling shoulder, squeezing with grounding force. "Faith is not a shield against pain, Kaelen. It is the strength to endure it."
"But Father," Kaelen whispered, tears finally spilling over his ash-streaked cheeks. "What can we do? We are just acolytes. We can't fight monsters."
"You will not fight. You will save," Vance commanded, his voice hardening into the cadence of a field general. "The Inner District is filling with the broken. The refugees who made it through the Middle Gate need healing. They need to see that the servants of the Gods are still standing."
Vance pointed toward the massive double doors leading to the front plaza.
"Go to the steps. Set up triage stations. Lucina, gather the minor healing scrolls. Strip the minor altars of their decorative linens—tear them for bandages. Use the heavy hymnals as splint-boards for broken bones if you have to. Kaelen, fetch clean water from the deep well. Boil it. We need poultices for chemical burns."
"Tear the altar linens?" Mathias gasped, scandalized even as the world ended. "Use the hymnals as wood? That is sacrilege!"
"Sacrilege is letting a child bleed to death on our steps while we pray for a miracle!" Vance retorted fiercely. He looked back at Lucina, his eyes dark with the burden of command. "Use every potion, every ounce of mana you have. If a man is missing a limb, use a tourniquet. But listen to me carefully: if a man has breathed the green fog deep into his lungs... give him a draught of poppy sleep and move on. Do you understand? Save those who can be saved."
A cold shudder ran through Lucina. Triage. The cruelest mathematics of survival.
"But the inner sanctuary," Kaelen protested weakly, glancing back toward the great golden altar. "Shouldn't we stay near the relic?"
"The relic will not stanch a wound," Vance said, his tone brokering no further argument. "If this is the end, let us meet it doing our duty. Move."
Lucina looked at Kaelen. She saw the absolute, primal terror in his eyes, knowing it was perfectly mirrored in her own. But beneath the panic, the heavy, unyielding weight of duty settled over her shoulders.
"Yes, Father," Lucina said, bowing her head. "We are the hands of the earth."
She grabbed a heavy leather satchel of medical supplies, her fingers brushing the cold metal of her holy symbol one last time. As she and Kaelen hurried toward the heavy oak doors of the plaza, the ground shuddered violently beneath their sandals. Dust rained from the high, vaulted arches, catching the sickly green light in suspended, swirling clouds that choked the throat.
Through the cracked double doors, the reality of the night rushed in. A distant, frantic alarm bell clanged off-rhythm in the city below. In the vestibule, a soot-stained woman slumped against a marble pillar, a terrified, ash-covered toddler silently clinging to the frayed, bloody hem of her skirt.
Then, a single, wet cough echoed from the outer steps.
"Sara?" a man's voice rasped in the dark, fragile, and dying.
Lucina swallowed the lump of bile in her throat and pushed the heavy doors open, stepping out into the emerald nightmare.
(Please, Earth God), She prayed silently as the screams of the city washed over her. (Hold the walls. Just for a little longer.)
.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Read The Next 15 Chapters + 10 Extra Chapters
patreon.com/cw/Horizon2burns