The air inside Level 3 clung to the lungs like wet ash. Obsidian pews stretched into the void, their jagged edges fused to the floor as though grown rather than carved. Between them loomed statues of robed figures, faces smoothed into featureless voids, hands clasped in eternal supplication to the altar ahead—a mirror-like portal rippling with crimson runes that squirmed like leeches under glass. The silence here wasn’t absence; it was a held breath.

  “Turn back.”

  The voices came not from the shadows but the Modern Apostates themselves. Orris stumbled, his Seraphim pendant searing blackened flesh beneath his robes. Behind him, the others twitched in unison, their eyes weeping oily tears, mouths moving out of sync with the words tearing from their throats. “Complete the sacrament. Become infinite.”

  Lapen collapsed, clawing at his temples. “They’re—inside us—!”

  Veyra drove her staff into the cracked stone, violet energy erupting in a shockwave. The possessed Apostates recoiled, their stolen pendants flaring gold as her Void hymn split the air. “You are nothing to us!” she snarled, taloned fingers splayed. “We serve the Prophet’s Void, not your hunger!”

  Black smoke erupted from their mouths—a putrid geyser that coalesced into a figure towering above the altar. Robes of static clung to a skeletal frame, its face flickering between a dozen screaming visages: an old man with hollowed eyes, a woman whose jaw unhinged like a serpent’s, a child with teeth filed to points. The First Apostate High Priest loomed, his voice a chorus of dying gasps.

  “Foolish child.” The priest’s form glitched, static bleeding into the stone. “Devon Vael is a thief. The Void was ours long before he crawled from the Monarch’s gutter.”

  Claire lunged, rapier aimed at the specter’s heart. The blade pierced smoke—and the world split.

  ---

  Devon knelt in a cell, wrists raw from manacles. Void energy dripped from his fingers like tar, etching crimson runes into his flesh—the same ones twisting in the portal. “They’re promises,” he whispered to the dark, voice frayed. “A way out.”

  The door slammed open. Inquisitors in bone masks laughed as they branded his chest—PROPHET—the seared flesh blistering around the letters. “Chosen by the Void!” one mocked, pressing the iron deeper. “What’s the matter, gutter rat? Not the destiny you craved?”

  Alone again, Devon clawed at the brand. The Void’s whisper slithered through the wound: Kill them. Burn their cities. We will make you a king of ashes.

  “No,” he rasped. “I’ll be… better.”

  The runes on his arms pulsed. Liar.

  ---

  Claire wrenched her blade free, screaming. The vision clung like cobwebs—Devon’s desperation, the Void’s venomous purr. Her buckler clattered to the ground. “You’re lying,” she hissed, though her hands shook. “Devon rejected you!”

  The priest’s laughter crackled. “Did he? Or did he simply take what we offered and call it his own?” His form dissolved, smoke coiling around Lissa. “Ask the child what hums in her veins.”

  Lissa staggered, silver veins blazing as the Void-moss pouch at her hip burst. Bioluminescent tendrils lashed the air, slicing through the smoke. “Devon’s better than you!” she shouted, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. The moss writhed around her, its glow intensifying as it fed on the priest’s essence. “He didn’t take the easy way! He changed!”

  The High Priest reformed, flickering wildly. “Changed?” His voice dripped mockery. “The Void cannot be tamed, little key. It remembers. Every oath. Every betrayal.” The portal’s surface rippled, crimson runes rearranging into a familiar symbol—the brand on Devon’s chest. PROPHET. “Your savior wears our chains. He always has.”

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  Veyra struck. Her staff speared the priest’s chest, violet energy surging through his spectral form. “Begone, relic! Your age is dust!”

  The priest dissolved, his final whisper echoing through the temple: “Dust… and echoes.”

  ---

  The Modern Apostates crumpled, gasping. Orris retched black bile, his pendant now a melted husk. Lapen crawled to Lissa, clutching his ribs. “You okay?”

  She nodded, trembling as the Void-moss retreated into its pouch. “He was wrong. Devon’s not like them. He’s not.”

  Claire retrieved her buckler, the metal icy against her skin. Her voice barely carried. “What did you see, Veyra? When you touched the Void… did you know?”

  The Apostate leader stared at the portal, its surface calm once more. “All faith begins with doubt,” she said quietly. “The Prophet’s scars are his own. But his purpose…” She turned, milky eye reflecting Lissa’s glow. “…is ours to uphold.”

  Myrtle spat on the altar. “Enough cryptic crap. How do we kill this thing?”

  A low rumble shook the temple. The statues’ hollow eyes began to weep blood, pooling toward the portal.

  Georg hefted his axe. “Same way we kill everything else.”

  “Wait.” Lissa pressed her palm to the portal. The surface flexed, showing not her reflection, but a figure in the distance—Devon, kneeling in a void, his new body flickering between flesh and static. “He’s fighting them too.”

  The High Priest’s laughter echoed, faint and fraying. “Fighting… or finally listening?”

  The portal flared.

  Darkness swallowed them whole.

  The portal shuddered, its crimson runes fracturing like broken glass. From its depths echoed a voice warped by static and distance—familiar yet transformed, as if shaped by the Void’s endless expanse.

  “Veyra. Look up.”

  The Modern Apostates obeyed. Above them, the temple’s vaulted ceiling dissolved, peeling back to reveal a smog-free night sky ablaze with constellations. Stars shifted, their light coalescing into a pulsing sigil—a closed eye weeping trails of stardust.

  “The Prophet’s seal,” Veyra whispered, her crow-feather cloak billowing in a sudden, sacred wind. “He offers a covenant, not chains!”

  The First Apostate High Priest recoiled, his static-laced form crackling as starlight seared his shadowy edges. “You dare let him corrupt the sacrament?!”

  “No.” Veyra raised her staff, the surviving Modern Apostates chanting behind her. Their stolen Seraphim pendants shattered, unleashing tendrils of Void energy that intertwined with the starlight. “We redefine it.”

  Lissa stepped forward, silver veins blazing. The Void-moss at her hip erupted, its tendrils lashing the priest’s spectral form. “Devon’s not yours anymore!” she shouted, tears evaporating into motes of light. “He’s ours!”

  The dungeon quaked. Crimson runes splintered as Lissa’s silver radiance flooded the fractures, purging the priest’s corruption. His scream faded into hollow static, his form dissolving like ash in a gale. The portal shattered, its obsidian shards disintegrating midair—harmless dust glinting in the starlight.

  ---

  Dawn found the seminary transformed. The Modern Apostates gathered their crimson robes in the courtyard, the fabric hissing as flames consumed the First Apostates’ sigils stitched into the hems. Veyra stood apart at the aquifer’s edge, clutching a shard of the shattered portal. Its surface flickered faintly, whispering of depths yet unexplored.

  Claire approached, her gaze lingering on the new sigil graffitied across the chapel wall—the weeping eye, its stardust tears shimmering even in daylight. “Can we use it? To reach him?”

  “Not yet.” Veyra closed her fist, the portal shard crumbling. Its dust swirled into the shape of a key before scattering. “The Prophet walks the Void’s heart now. But he left us… instructions.”

  She nodded to the seminary’s highest spire, where Apostates hauled slabs of dungeon-forged stone. The structure rising there was neither altar nor monument—a jagged archway fused with Void-crystal, its surface etched with Devon’s starlit sigil.

  “A conduit,” Veyra said. “To commune when the Void’s tides align. He’ll return when ready—and not before.”

  Lapen dropped a sack of mortar beside the half-built arch, wiping sweat from his brow. “What if the First Apostates come back?”

  “Let them.” Veyra’s milky eye reflected the ascending arch. “The next sacrament will be theirs to choke on.”

  ---

  The Void’s Threshold

  Devon’s voice lingered in the dungeon’s depths long after the portal fell—a fading echo in the obsidian halls.

  “The Void isn’t a weapon. It’s a conversation.”

  Lissa traced his words carved into the Level 3 altar, the letters shimmering with residual starlight. Behind her, the Modern Apostates worked in silence, reinforcing the dungeon’s entrance with salvaged Seraphim steel and Void-forged alloys.

  Georg hefted a stone block onto the growing conduit arch. “Still think he’s coming back?”

  Claire studied the horizon, where the smog curled like a wounded beast. “He doesn’t have to. He gave us the tools to finish this.”

  “Tools?” Georg snorted. “Poetic crap about ‘conversations’ and starlight?”

  “No.” She nodded to Lissa, who stood at the aquifer’s edge, silver veins pulsing as she communed with the Void-moss now blanketing its banks. “Her. The conduit. The choice to build instead of burn.”

  ---

  That night, the meteor shower could be seen from the clearing of the Greylands’ smog—pinpricks of defiance mirrored in the seminary’s new archway. Veyra knelt before it, chanting as the Modern Apostates wove Void energy into its stones.

  Far away, in the silence between worlds, Devon felt the ripple—a question, not a plea.

  He smiled, his new body dissolving into the Void’s currents. “Keep talking,” he murmured. “I’m listening.”

  The archway flared once—a starlit wink—before settling into watchful silence.

  The First Apostates would return. The Monarch’s legions would march. But in the seminary’s shadow, something fragile and ferocious took root: a rebellion built not on stolen power, but earned trust.

  And in the Void, a Prophet studied.