“Once, a monarch ruled the Holy City of Erdoan.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Was the position hereditary?”
“No. The throne was held by the believer with the most profound faith.”
“Could even a child serve?”
“Indeed. The records are full of those who were peasants in the morning and wore the purple-gold crown by night. However, it was later discovered that they were incompetent at governance. The Church simply abolished the monarchy and moved to a system of selecting elite talents from across the nation to form a Planning Committee to act as proxies for the state.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Richel, do you know where a monarch’s power comes from?”
“The unified submission of the people?”
“Correct. A monarch’s will is only carried out if the masses recognize it; it isn’t something they can wield recklessly. What happens if someone betrays the monarch?”
“Arrest, trial, and punishment—to serve as a warning to others.”
“And if everyone betrays them?”
“Then they find themselves on the guillotine.”
“A clever girl, Richel. If a monarch’s power comes from the people, then what of a god? Where does a god’s power originate? If everyone were to betray a god, would They be sent to the guillotine as well?”
Lysithea Ramirez, Commander of the Knights of the Sacred Fount, couldn’t stop a shiver from running down her spine. It was difficult to imagine such words coming from the mouth of a Cardinal Bishop. She even wondered if she had misheard him.
“Of course not,” Elliot Sanchez answered his own question. He reached out to pull back the carriage curtains, letting the sunlight stream in. He continued, “And what would the result be? Would the god punish the believers who betrayed them?”
“They… would, wouldn’t they?”
Richel didn’t dare think too deeply on the matter, fearing she might desecrate her faith.
“It depends on how powerful the god is,” Elliot murmured to himself.
His gaze drifted across the golden fields of swaying wheat and the neatly arranged thatched houses, eventually wandering toward the azure sky. He pointed a finger upward.
“The most powerful gods have no need for faith. Humanity believes itself to possess infinite wisdom, but in Their eyes, such intellect is no more advanced than that of a wild beast. They have no interest in the tiny lives struggling to survive on a planet; They lack interest even in the planet itself. To Them, these are merely trinkets already researched to completion, much like the mysteries of dimensions and time.
“The next tier of gods also has no need for faith, but They occasionally interact with humans as a diversion—a bit of salt to season a dull, flavorless existence.
“It is much like how humans treat ants. A kind act is tossing them a few breadcrumbs; a malicious one is burning them with a cigarette butt. If a desire for research arises, one might even pour molten tin into the colony to create a cast of the nest. Compared to the former tier, doesn’t this seem rather primitive?
“Then there is the third tier: gods who crave faith. They exist in a mutualistic symbiosis with humanity, often adopting personified avatars to attract worship. They perform frequent miracles to build their renown, exploiting human weakness and fear to provide spiritual comfort or tangible power. This strengthens the bond between them, rooting dependence and blind obedience in the heart. Their ultimate goal is always the extraction of more faith…”
Elliot’s speech grew faster and faster. The fat on his cheeks trembled incessantly, and his white teeth flashed with a cold, hard light.
Richel felt entirely ill at ease. She pressed her palms firmly against her thighs, fearing she might instinctively leap out of the window and run away without looking back.
Elliot’s bloated head turned at an eerie angle. His eyes were like glass beads glued onto a model—static and frozen—as he stared straight at her.
“Tell me,” he asked. “The one we worship… what tier of god is He?”
Richel stood there, mouth agape, completely stunned.
“I think it’s best if it’s the third kind—the one in symbiosis with humanity,” Elliot said. “Otherwise… wouldn’t it be too terrifying?”
The Bishop has gone mad, Richel thought.
Ever since receiving the urgent missive from the Church Headquarters in the Holy City, Cardinal Bishop Elliot Sanchez had been mentally unstable.
At times, he fell into delirium, muddled and chaotic. At others, he sat in long bouts of stagnation as if he had lost his soul. He suffered sudden convulsions that nearly caused him to faint, paced restlessly while muttering under his breath, or rolled his eyes as if searching for non-existent gnats.
The key to everything was that wax-sealed letter bearing the seal of the Church Headquarters.
Richel had heard a rumor about its contents—the annual Conclave of Cardinals had been moved forward. Every Cardinal Bishop from every diocese was required to attend; no absences allowed.
This was the reason the two of them were currently in the carriage.
The Pope had not passed away, yet the Conclave had been called early. This only happened if something monumental was occurring.
Richel’s hand slowly moved from her waist to her lower abdomen. In three months, the “Living Husk” had already grown a supple layer.
***
Marble pillars, smooth and gleaming, stood at intervals along the corridor leading to the Cardinal Assembly Hall.
The floor was fashioned from a single, gargantuan slab of high-quality marble, polished so flat that light flowed across it without a single ripple.
Peering between the columns, one could see manicured flowers and lawns. Baroque stone lamps were exquisitely carved, and a fresh breeze blew in following the rain.
As Elliot and Richel walked through the corridor and reached the intricately decorated double doors at the end, a sight suddenly greeted them: networks of flesh and blood vessels crawling and climbing outward!
These crimson, viscous vessels looked like venous networks stripped from a living animal, twisting and tangling in a chaotic sprawl. Their surfaces had a strange, polished sheen; they were slightly translucent, revealing thick, blackened clots of blood surging rhythmically inside. It was a gruesome sight.
Faced with this eldritch imagery, neither of the two expressed surprise or confusion. They kept their eyes forward, stepping through the gaps in the vessels covering the floor to enter the inner Assembly Hall.
An oval table, its long axis exceeding twenty meters, held fifteen white-gold filigree high-backed chairs. Most were already occupied.
The vessels continued forward, crossing the table and converging toward the head seat.
Pope Xize sat there. He was a man in the winter of his life, his vitality withered and his skin sagging like a piece of moldy cheese left over a fire—mold spots flowing and interspersed with tufts of curled hair.
The Pope wore no clothes, his body barely covered by a magnificent blanket.
Behind him, the vessels rose up, their diameter several times thicker, clustering together into a polished, swollen nest of flesh. The Pope’s silhouette was sunken deep within it; his skin had dissolved and spread, merging with the fleshy mass as the conduits burrowed densely into his body.
This Special Grade Relic, known as the “Cage of Immortality,” could delay aging to the greatest possible extent. However, much like placing food in a refrigerator, it locked in the freshness but could not preserve the moisture or the luster.
The Pope’s features had long since distorted. His skin was cracked, revealing blackened, mutated flesh beneath. He could neither think nor act; the boundary between life and death had been stretched infinitely thin, leaving him only to crawl slowly and painfully toward an unreachable death.
The Assembly Hall was deathly silent. In the stillness, the thumping of the vessels was exceptionally loud, sounding like bubbles rising from a deep spring or the resonance of water being squeezed through an esophagus.
After Elliot took his seat, Richel stood behind him, joining the other Knight Commanders from the various dioceses.
Once the Cardinal Bishops representing the fourteen dioceses were all present, the doors to the Assembly Hall abruptly slammed shut.
Unlike previous years, this meeting was stripped of all ceremony. There were very few attendants, making the vast palace feel exceptionally desolate. There wasn’t even a glass of water on the table, which was covered in a layer of dust that hadn’t been cleaned for a long time.
A voice like flowing water cascading over rocks rang out, clear and resonant.
“Presumably, you have all learned of the urgency of the situation from the missives.”
The one speaking was not Pope Xize, but a young man standing to his right.
Jeremy Phillips.
The First Successor.
Should the Pope drop dead on the spot, Jeremy could simply kick the corpse aside, pull over the still-warm chair, and sit down—entirely legally and logically.
Of course, the process would be slightly more “civilized.”
Jeremy was a young man with narrow, upturned eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips. He had no facial hair, and his features were delicate and almost feminine.
Rumors claimed that, having come from the choir, he was a castrato. Others whispered that he was a woman in disguise, which was why he never dared to sit on the “probing chair” used to verify a Pope’s anatomy.
However, he clearly possessed immense authority. Aside from the Pope—who was hovering at death’s door—no one surpassed him.
The thirteen Cardinal Bishops all looked toward him.
Jeremy, however, turned to Elliot, a faint smile touching his lips as he asked, “Lord Sanchez, I hear you have a pawn in the Evernight Realm?”
