The Grand Cathedral of Saint-Lumière, Imperial Capital.
Year 1300 AD.
The darkness within the cathedral was never truly empty. It breathed between the towering marble pillars, lurking behind a scent of incense that was far too thick—a fragrance that failed to mask the faint, metallic tang of blood.
Beneath the magnificent golden altar, an elderly monk knelt. His hands trembled violently as he attempted to transcribe a forbidden manuscript. His blurred eyes kept darting toward the vaulted ceiling, where the shadows of the stone gargoyles seemed to shift and crawl.
"They do not sing with voices," the monk whispered, his breath hitching with terror. "They sing with silence."
Suddenly, the echo of footsteps rang out. Not the heavy thud of a soldier's boot, but the soft, rhythmic friction of silk robes across the cold stone floor. The monk froze. He knew who had arrived.
A figure in majestic papal robes stood in the gloom of the entrance. His face was shrouded in shadow, but his eyes—hollow, dark, and devoid of light—stared directly at the manuscript in the monk's hands.
"You hear them, don't you, Brother Silas?" The Pope's voice was soft, yet as biting as a North winter wind. "The choir... they are calling for their vessel."
"This is no holy prophecy, Your Holiness!" Silas cried out, tears beginning to track through the grime on his face. "This Sainticous script... it isn't about salvation! It is about sacrifice! That white-haired girl... she is not the light, she is—"
CLICK.
The distant snap of a pocket watch being pressed cut Silas short. In a dark corner of the cathedral, a woman with piercing golden eyes stood hidden behind a pillar, observing it all. She did not move. She only listened.
The Pope smiled—a curve of the lips that never reached his eyes. "She is the key to silencing the world, Silas. And you... you are merely a footnote that must be erased."
Instantly, the shadows on the cathedral walls began to elongate as if alive. They surged upward, coiling around Silas's body and choking the scream before it could leave his throat. There was no ring of steel, no splatter of blood. There was only a lethal, suffocating stillness.
In her hiding place, Lady Anne Marie Vain snapped her pocket watch shut. Her face remained composed, as if she had just witnessed a tedious theatrical performance, yet her fingers tightened around the spectacles in her hand.
She had heard enough.
The prophecy was a sham. The Church was a hornet's nest of demons. And her naive prince, William, had just set out to fetch the world's undoing from a border village.
Anne turned, vanishing into a secret passageway just as the soundless choir began to resonate inside her head.
"The Silent Choir has begun its symphony."