[The First Day of Destruction, 21:35] [Inside the Cathedral — The Nave]
The dead stepped onto holy ground.
In response, the heavy bronze doors of the Earth Cathedral slammed shut. The booming finality rattled the stained-glass windows in their leaden frames. Heavy iron deadbolts ground into place. The living tomb was sealed.
Inside, the sanctuary devolved into a cavern of claustrophobia.
The air was a humid, suffocating soup. It tasted of burning frankincense, unwashed bodies, the sharp tang of ozone from failing wards, and fresh copper blood. Tens of thousands of refugees huddled on the cold, polished stone floor of the nave. They were packed shoulder-to-shoulder. There was no room to kneel, let alone lie down.
The grand, sweeping architecture, designed to make worshippers feel small before the majesty of the gods, now only served to amplify their collective terror.
The floor shuddered. The massive artillery ballistae fired from the roof above. Beneath that sharp percussion lay a secondary, far more terrifying frequency.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The undead legion was marching across the plaza outside.
Junior Priest Kaelen moved blindly through the mass of humanity. His pristine white vestments were stained brown and crimson to the elbows. He stepped carefully over outstretched legs and discarded, shattered weapons.
A few paces away, Junior Priestess Lucina knelt beside a wounded militiaman. Necrotic acid had melted the soldier's iron pauldron directly into his collarbone. Lucina's hands hovered over the horrific wound. A faint, dying golden light flickered at her fingertips. Tears cut clean tracks through the thick soot on her pale cheeks.
"I'm sorry," Lucina whispered. Her voice cracked. The golden light sputtered and died completely. "My mana... the rot poisons the ambient energy. I cannot pull from the earth."
She grabbed a roll of mundane linen. She wrapped the ruined shoulder tight, relying on brutal physical pressure where miracles had failed. The soldier did not scream. He stared blankly at the vaulted ceiling, his jaw slack, deep in the numb embrace of shock.
"Water," a woman rasped.
Bony fingers snapped out, grabbing the hem of Kaelen's robe. Her face was a waxy gray. Her eyes were utterly unfocused. She cradled a soot-stained bundle of blankets to her chest.
"My baby... he inhaled the ash."
Kaelen unhooked his leather waterskin. His hands trembled so violently he nearly dropped the cork stopper. He pressed the leather nozzle gently to the woman's cracked lips. "Drink. Slowly. For the child."
He surveyed the nave. The fear in the room was a physical, crushing pressure. It pressed against the monolithic stone pillars, threatening to crack the masonry. In the dim candlelight, the faces of citizens, merchants, nobles, bakers, and beggars blurred together. Stripped of their worldly distinctions by the great equalizer of death, they were all masks of hollow despair.
"Will the Six save us?" a tiny voice whimpered.
Kaelen looked down. A boy, perhaps six years old, clutched Kaelen's bloody robe. The child was not looking at the priest. He stared up at the grand, circular stained-glass window above the altar.
The violent, emerald fires burning in the city outside backlit the colored glass. The holy light was corrupted. The serene, painted faces of the Six Great Gods twisted into grinning, malefic monsters bathed in green necrosis.
"We keep faith," Kaelen promised. He dropped to one knee to meet the boy's eyes. He forced a reassuring smile that felt like shattered glass on his face. "The gods are testing us. The earth holds firm. We keep the path open."
"They aren't listening!"
The bellowing voice sliced through the low din of weeping.
A heavy-set man, his fine velvet coat torn and scorched, climbed unsteadily onto the edge of a stone baptismal font. His eyes rolled with the wild, unrestrained panic of a cornered animal.
"Where are they?!" the man screamed. He pointed an accusing, trembling finger toward the elevated, roped-off sanctum at the rear of the cathedral. "Where are the Cardinals?! Where is the Pontifex?! Our homes are ash! Our children are burning in the streets!"
The crowd rippled. The weeping curdled into a sharper, deadlier frequency. Wrath. Desperation.
"He's right!" a woman shrieked, her voice tearing her throat. "We paid our tithes! We prayed every day! Why is the green fire eating us? Why are the dead marching on holy ground?!"
"Show yourselves!" another man roared. He drew a chipped iron shortsword and waved it toward the altar. "They locked us in here to die while they hide behind the inner wards! Break the barricades! We demand answers!"
The panic flared like dry tinder. Hundreds of people surged forward. It was a blind, crushing wave of bodies pressing toward the inner sanctum. The senior clerics were up there, desperately bleeding their life force into the heavy vault doors. If the mob panicked, they would trample each other to death long before the Death Knights breached the cathedral.
"Brother Kaelen!"
A Senior Cleric grabbed Kaelen roughly by the shoulder. Jagged fingernails dug into Kaelen's collarbone. The old man's eyes were bloodshot and wide with raw terror.
"The choir is failing," the older priest gasped. Blood and spit flew from his lips. He pointed toward the elevated choir stalls flanking the altar. "The acolytes... they can't breathe. The smoke is too thick. If the holy song stops, the panic will consume the mob. They will tear this sanctuary apart from the inside. Get to the transept! Sing!"
"Yes, Father," Kaelen choked out.
He stumbled forward. He shoved his way through the swelling, angry crowd. He passed a man clutching a ceremonial sword with no scabbard. He passed a woman rocking back and forth, muttering incoherent nursery rhymes to a dead cat. He passed a conscripted guardsman staring silently at the bloody stump of his own severed hand.
Kaelen reached the carved wooden steps of the choir stalls. The consecrated candles guttered in the foul air. Hot wax pooled over the brass holders like congealing blood. The other junior priests and acolytes were collapsed against the pews. They wept. Their mouths moved in silent, terrified prayers.
We are alone, Kaelen realized. A freezing weight plunged into his stomach. The Cardinals have no answers. The magic is dead. The gods are silent.
He looked down at the nave. The velvet-coated man screamed again, inciting the crowd to tear down the iron grates separating the altar from the pews. The people watched the priests. They demanded a miracle.
All Kaelen had was a dry throat and a breaking heart.
He closed his eyes. He forced the ash-tasting air deep into his burning lungs. He pictured the great mountain of the Earth God. He pictured the monolithic stone that did not burn. The stone that did not break.
He opened his mouth. He sang.
"The stone does not ask... the stone does not weep..."
His voice was thin. It was reedy. It cracked violently with the smoke. It was not a beautiful sound. It lacked the resonant, magical amplification of a high-tier spell. But it was a human voice, entirely devoid of panic, echoing across the vaulted ceiling.
"It holds the burden... while the mountain sleeps..."
The shouting near the baptismal font wavered. The man in the velvet coat paused, looking up toward the choir stalls.
Beside Kaelen, heavy cloth rustled. Lucina had climbed the steps. Her face was smeared with soot and blood. Her hands were empty of magic. But she gripped the wooden railing. She closed her eyes. She raised her chin.
"The roots go deep... where the shadows crawl..." she sang. Her voice was a pure, piercing alto. It intertwined perfectly with Kaelen's broken tenor. "We are the foundation... we will not fall."
An older acolyte, still trembling on his knees, weakly joined the chorus. Then a senior cleric near the altar.
Down in the nave, a wounded militiaman recognized the ancient battle-hymn of the Earth God. He began to hum the deep, rumbling baseline. A mother hushed her crying child and whispered the lyrics.
The hymn rose. It was shaky. It was off-key. It was thick with unshed tears. But it was defiant. It rippled through the mass of refugees. It formed a fragile, psychological shield of sound pushing back against the encroaching dark.
The angry mob slowly lowered their weapons. The panic overriding their rationality was quelled by the ingrained religious conditioning of a lifetime. They clung to the hymn like drowning sailors to splintered driftwood.
They sang to the unyielding stone, desperately pretending they could not hear the monolithic thud-thud-thud of the apocalypse waiting just beyond the bronze doors.
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