How absurd.

  Silvanus shut the notebook with a controlled motion that disguised none of the strain in his fingers. The leather—warm from his palm—cover shut with a dull, muted thud across the hall. This was not the first forbidden document he had handled. It was, however, the first one that felt as if it were handling him in return. This notebook, a personal journal, had been buried, and somehow escaped erasure even if someone had wanted it forgotten. Only to have be remembered by the one who was to be forgotten next.

  He kept the notebook pressed against his sternum, as if the contact alone could keep its contents from leaking into the stale air of the hall. The last lines still pulsed behind his eyes once more. It's scribbling handwriting that had dissolved into the scratches along the collapse of sense. The names of the deceased repeated over and over again--perhaps, he had not wanted to forget them—as if some never died, and they were living within the memories of it. Whatever that was created by the researchers.

  Just what had unraveled itself below them?

  Insanity. Silvanus concluded. He exhaled once through his nose, and easily slid the notebook back into the hidden fold of his coat, as if he never dared to read something in the halls of the Sun. The very halls of the Sun Cathedral that swallowed him whole. Gold, marble illuminated in the light slanting through the stained glass, illuminated by the Sun itself had come down. It was a spectacle of beauty in both it's interiors and exteriors, yes but beauty staged for an audience. Every step, every breath felt observed by an invisible gaze—the gaze of the Sun.

  The Archives called to him next, a vast chamber of wooden shelving and dust-dense air where records were kept with both care and cruelty. Scrolls, ledgers, and codices lay stacked in deliberate chaos. Just as much chaos as the current situation of Solthar.

  Here, history was recorded, but history also erased.

  Silvanus ran his fingers along the spines of the records, careful not to disturb the fragile balance of dust and paper. He pulled a narrow volume from a shelf, its leather cracked, the clasp rusted. The ledger contained appointments, transfers, and ordinations spanning decades and decades contained in it's various volumes. He picked one, flipping through it with slight urgency, he found entries on every bishop’s ascent, each recorded in the meticulous, almost obsessive script of the Cathedral archivists—some could be written by Quillan, some by the two scholars he met a while ago.

  When he reached the current year—the year Malvar fell—there was a blank, vacant, no mention of the name Samael or the man removed by the paranormal (Because those who vanished would vanish quietly, and the world would pretend none had ever been there just so another can fill that space with no raised brows.), no trace of anyone appointed in the current Year of the Sun. It was as if the man had arrived fully formed into the vacancy left.

  That's not how it was intended to worked.

  He moved to another shelf, scanning for records of the members of the clergy. Whoever Samael had been, the Cathedral had erased the evidence, or the man had carefully avoided leaving any. That made more sense, but why? Nothing here indicated a family, a prior post, a mentor, or a hidden faction that might be against the Sun. The man seemed to have no lineage among the clergy, no trail leading to any known political or ecclesiastical power. Why would a man with no fight for power kill Bishop Malvar? Silvanus exhaled through his nose. Perhaps he was running after the wrong suspect.

  He did not close the ledger. He would not sleep tonight. Not yet, not until he got to the bottom of an investigated murder.

  For the next days, he decided to plant small inconsistencies. A name misremembered here, a transfer misattributed there. "Surely, Bishop Malvar had attended the ceremonies himself, did he?" he asked innocently in passing.

  "Bishop Samael will do so," was the response.

  He was mid-phrase, testing another subtle thread, letting it dangle just long enough to observe like he was a fisherman by docks with a bait on hook. "The ordinations of were not… exactly recorded, were they?" he asked one of the scribes, in midst of a casual conversation. "Surely, someone else must have overseen the rites?" A pause.

  The nameless scribe’s eyes flicked to the ledger in hand. "Bishop Samael ensured all matters were correct, why do you ask inquisitor Silas?" the man said carefully, swallowing a frown.

  The shuffle of hurried steps echoed faintly through the corridor, but Silvanus hardly looked to see who it was. You shouldn’t be running. He could scold him. He didn't.

  The words barely settled of the scribe's response before a startled cough split the air. Silvanus’ head turned to see who had arrived in such a hurry.

  "what are you doing here?" Mattheos asked.

  Instead, of replying just yet, Silvanus' gaze drifted to a letter clutched in his fist. One with the same seal as the one Silvanus had just burnt away with his ghost flames countless times. A crest of the Sun Cathedral. So that's why the knight rushed all the way to the archives, Silvanus silently concluded.

  "Nothing that may concern you, Sir Mattheos," he replied with a clenched jaw.

  "I am not... a knight, please don't address me as such," the boy responded.

  And the man remained quiet, choosing to observe the walls and the drifting sunlight through the tinted glass rather than anything of note. Was he lost in thoughts, Mattheos shuffled over his feet.

  When the scribe had finally excused himself with a polite nod, the boy thrust his parchment forward as if it might change it's own words should the other choose to read it. "A courier gave this to me, this morning. It's sighed under Bishop Samael's name. Do you have any idea what it says?"

  Samael this, Samael that. The man was everywhere and nowhere at once. Silvanus studied the boy's flushed face and, for a moment, saw a flash of those in chains whose execution he had overseen as a novice, the mother clutching her child. None of them had chosen. Choice had been a luxury. The young boy's fear was always too transparent. He had the unfortunate quality of being honest, and honesty was an illness especially in the land that was Sunless.

  "Enlighten me, boy."

  "I am assigned to assist in upcoming ceremonies, even if I have not taken my oath," he recited. "Does that... does that make sense to you?"

  Silvanus glanced at the boy. "Most things do not," He trailed off. "It makes sense however," Silvanus said. "You are useful, capable, and a Veranth. What is there to worry about?" The Veranth house was influential, it made sense for them to invite the sole heir to their ceremonies. The family's name would open doors for the new-comer.

  Mattheos frowned. "So I shouldn't question it?" He questioned.

  "You shouldn't question me regarding it," Silvanus answered. "Oaths are formalities to be given a title, but you are already considered as one. Regardless of how we see it, you are to not question the Bishop's decisions. Only few are safe to question aloud their choice. We are not one of them."

  "I’ll be standing beside men who decide who is burned away and who is faithful enough to be living…"

  "Yes," said Silvanus. "You will."

  "I would rather not."

  "Choice is a luxury." You know that better than anyone.

  "Still, I haven’t proven myself," Mattheos mumbled. "I don't think I can either."

  "Bishop Samael is a strange man," Silvanus rambled. "To see a new bishop already appointed on the day of the passing. They are rather quick—no ceremony, not news, nothing. It seems to me, as if, it is all his doing." From the death of the previous bishop… to the Midsummer… "Which is why you must attend, do as you are told." He reached into his coat and pressed a folded letter into Mattheos' hand. "Deliver this for me. And listen: after this, don't expect much. Letters may be our only exchange, if they reach you at all. I don't wish to risk anything under Bishop Samael's gaze."

  Mattheos furrowed his brows, confused not at the warning but the recipient.

  "To whom?" He inquired with a raised, curious, brow.

  "Not your concern," Silvanus snapped. "Deliver it, and ask no questions. Everything is being listened to within this place. Any more, and we will be—" Mattheos shuddered. "—corrected," Silvanus finished flatly.

  The boy swallowed hard and nodded. "Understood. I'll run it at once."

  "Good." Silvanus was already turning away. "And, Mattheos?"

  "Yes, Inquisitor?"

  "If you falter, or if you hesitate, your own shadow will denounce you before anyone does."

  The boy swallowed, tucked the letter into his tunic, and left with a final nod. His footsteps faded, chains echoing after him though none were there, and the silence crept in again. He stood alone in the hall, or so he thought. A faint shuffle stirred the silence, the scrape of parchment against stone.

  Silvanus knew he hadn't been alone at all.

  When he finally paused atop the balcony that overlooked the Cathedral, the notebook tucked safely in his coat, sunlight slanting across his face, was when he finally met the one who tailed him.

  "Come out," Silvanus called. He broke the calm himself.

  Upon the call, from behind a column, emerged the scribe, ink stains blotting his sleeves, spectacles askew, and unkempt as always—it was Quillan. He clutched a stack of records to his chest as though they might shield him from the harsh glare of the Inquisitor.

  "Silas," Quillan stammered. "I—I wasn't lingering around. Just passing through."

  Silvanus raised a brow. "Is that so?"

  The scribe's fingers tightened on the papers. His mouth worked before words came. "Ugh, fine. I will admit I was eavesdropping. Just to see what you were up to, Inquisitor Silas."

  "Eavesdropping," Silvanus repeated slowly, coldly, letting the cold dread sit through Quillan. "And what did you hope to gain by doing so?" His tone was not angry, but enough to make the scribe nervous.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "I—nothing," he mumbled, guiltily.

  "Did you find anything noteworthy?" Silvanus pressed.

  "Not yet," Quillan responded, walking over to him, into the balcony overlooking the grey city.

  "You risk much by admitting it, anyways," Silvanus agreed.

  "Risk is my profession just as much as it is yours," Quillan muttered, hugging the papers tighter. "I catalogue names, events, rites. I see who is sent off, even those that may vanish. It's all... that's how it has always been."

  So he is aware... Silvanus finally turned to him. "And you think you see mine?"

  Quillan's lips parted, but no sound came at first. "You're... investigating something. Aren't you? This is more risk that anything, Silas."

  "I am."

  Quillan took a step closer to the edge. "Why? You have rank, authority, the Sun at your back. Why must you dig deeper into the unknown?"

  Silvanus' gaze sharpened, almost amused. "Have you never wondered what lies beneath this Cathedral?"

  "W—Why do you ask?"

  Silvanus tilts his head down and curves his lips knowingly, "Ah. You've heard whispers as well," he commented.

  "They're just rumors." The timid scribe shakes his head.

  "They're warnings." Silvanus pressed; trying to keep the conversation in control. "Warnings about who will vanish next. Are they not? He is who will decide who gets to disappear."

  "No. No, not at all." Quillan shook his head in denial. "It's impossible to arrive to that conclusion..."

  "Impossible is exactly what the Cathedral is built on." Silvanus turned, coat brushing marble floor like a hushed caress. "But first," Silas continued, "they will crown it with ceremony... Isn't that what the festival is for?"

  He didn't tell him what, but Quillan had written things down that no one else could have. He knew what Silvanus was trying to uncover.

  "And you mean to stop it?" The scribe asked shakily. "To stop him?"

  Silvanus paused at the threshold of shadowed edge of their conversation. "That is if you tell me about it."

  "Must I?" Quillan pursed his lips, "Inquisitor, to me it seems as if you have already found what you were looking for. Why must I speak of insanity in the holy walls so that the Sun may cut my tongue off?"

  At that, Silvanus smiled knowingly as he is pivoted back, and the shadows of inquiry finally gave way to the brilliant fire. "If it frightens you, then you are no longer a mere recorder of tales, Quillan. You are a witness. And witnesses," he said, voice dropping to a whisper, "hold the weight of what others would forget."

  "It's…" Quillan began, "But—if I speak, if I give you what I know..."

  With the pull of what he knew, Quillan let it lead him into it's influence.

  "Then don't," Silvanus interrupted. "Don't speak of it."

  Quillan’s lips trembled. Finally, a whisper slipped free. "Then… I will not. Everything I have written. Everything I have observed. I will not speak of it."

  Silvanus’s gaze lingered on the scribe who had always existed as an observer of names and dates, had suddenly been forced into a role heavier than any he had ever catalogued. The scribe’s decision to withhold what he knew was an act both of fear and preservation. Silvanus understood the choice for revealing too much would be perilous, yet remaining silent made him complicit in the unfolding designs of powers that did not see men as men but as pieces on a board.

  Who was moving them across the board? Silvanus understood then that the hand moving them was not singular in the mortal sense. It was not merely Bishop Samael, becuase Samael was an active piece—only if power did not wish to show itself but through another face. And so, Quillan moved forward, the inquisitor followed silently. Quillan moved forward into the archives, then between the shelves in soft steps. They passed dimmer sections of the vault of knowledge. He did not reach for the records' spines, the ones with no labels. But he knew amongst the pages there were those that were ordered to be concealed, burned.

  They stood in the dim aisle, the air thick with dust and the lingering scent of ink and old leather. The scribe’s records, meticulously compiled over years of observation. They were not allowed to be seen by the rest, concealed behind in the locker.

  "You didn't get rid of them," Silvanus stared ahead. "All that you were told to burn away."

  In another scenario, Silvanus would have slain any who dared stand against the Cathedral's beliefs.

  Quillan pulled out a small journal without another word. All that he had known had been written, for saying it was a crime. And so, Quillan said nothing. But whatever had anyone wished to know of the truth, it would all be here.

  "It is not much," the scribe said, "because you know enough."

  · ? ·

  The cell stank of damp stone and sweat when he entered , the dull light against equally dull bricks contrasting the white marble of the pure halls that pressed against the room of haeresis. It contained handful of merchants chased in caravans and once proud, refugees, nameless unorthodox thinkers, all that were now shackled here. Some lifted their heads as the interrogator entered while the rest seemed to have given up everything, especially their desire to live. Their eyes carried no heresy, only loss.

  Silvanus stepped inside, coat brushing the stone. The disciples of the Sun withdrew, leaving him alone with the man. The one who was apparently recognized as the leader of the caravan. Their eyes tracked him for a moment, and not with reverence, but accusation of his crimes.

  "Why are you here?" Silvanus asked, though the script demanded no such questions and only a recitation of what he was accused of. "You call yourselves merchants. Yet the Cathedral calls you dissenters. Tell me—" He let the pause hang like a blade, he let the man breathe for a moment. Something that Silvanus would never have done before. "—why is it that your names find their way into ledgers?" And erased right after.

  "How about you answer me once," the merchant, no, criminal, spat. "Tell me, Inquisitor... do I look like a heretic?"

  "Listen well. I will have the truth. If the resistance has leaders, I will know their names. If you shelter conspirators, I will have their heads. If you lie to me—" He leans close, voice dropping to a whisper. "—then your silence will not buy martyrdom. It will buy suffering for all of you here, and the rest that are to come after you."

  "And if we speak, Inquisitor? What then? Do we live, or do we die just a little slower?" He retorted with a glare, irises burning with something close to fury but nothing strong enough to impact the rigid man before him.

  And to that, Silvanus did not answer. His own silence was colder than words, contrasting with the victim's flaming anger.

  "To open a mouth in this city is to earn a death warrant, you are well aware of that," he added.

  "Then our sin was asking for clean air. For children not coughing blood in the smog your Cathedral feeds on," a nameless older man responded. "Let us be punished."

  Silvanus' jaw tightened, as he folded his arms over his chest, staring at a wall to keep himself grounded. Their words struck as no lies. He had grown in silks raised behind tall windows that let in every slant sunlight, at least enough that slipped through the faint smog of Solthar. His mother's hands never blistered from labor, and their table never empty, because the Scrivener family obeyed the Sun with absolute belief. He had knelt at marble altars alongside her, his mother, praising a Sun that never failed them. But here, in this cell, that same Sun had starved men, women and children so like his family. Silvanus had once began to wonder if the god they praised was truly fair.

  "As they say the Sun burns brightest on those who endure. Perhaps that is why you were chosen to suffer," he muttered indifferently.

  "Chosen? Do you hear yourself? My sister wasted away in the smog! What was she chosen for, Inquisitor? To die coughing in the street?"

  "You are a blind man!" A woman accused. "It’s convenient. You call it light so you don’t have to see what it leaves in the shadows!"

  Silvanus looked at them, long and unblinking, and inside his mind, a thought twisted. If the Sun chose, then it was cruel. If it did not choose, then the Cathedral lied.

  He stepped closer to the former merchant, with his voice low, he spoke. "You know what awaits you. Yet you still haven't admitted to your crimes."

  "So be it! We'll rot, we'll die either way with our lungs hardened and charred! We praised the Sun, we begged it, only to get nothing! If this is His will, then do your worst." The man spat at the stone. "Keep defending your beliefs!"

  Silvanus let out a long, measured sigh. Stubborn.

  "You're mistaken, I defend no beliefs, no divinity," Silvanus replied. "But I do have a proposition," he said, leaning close, in voice barely more than a whisper, as if hiding a secret from the prying eyes in the walls.

  The man's eyes flared with anger once more, or more like the anger was never subdued. "Madness! We'd sooner die than betray the resistance," he retorted.

  Silvanus straightened, turning toward the door without another glance. "Then die for if you live even longer, you will come to regret your choices," he said. His steps echoed hollowly in the chamber, as if he had already let the bells mark the end of the day, ready to retire for the rest.

  "Wait!" The man called, and Silvanus stilled with one hand on the gate. The man's voice was hoarse (after day of nothing to drink), and laced with something close to curiosity. "What... what kind of proposition?"

  "Exactly what you've done before." Silvanus turned over his shoulder, yet face unreadable. His cool glint eyes searched for what he was looking for on the man's face.

  "And what will you pay me? Us?"

  Silvanus leaned into the torchlight, and spoke, albeit quietly, "A chance to unmake what you've cursed all your life."

  The older man froze, his brows furrowed in confusion. After a moment of letting it settle in his mind, his eyes widened as if he'd glimpsed something larger than death. He didn't agree in words, for the man who requested it of him had already departed as if he knew the descision the heretic would make. He was certain of all that he did as if fate was sewn by his own hands.

  Silvanus' thoughts churned as he left the cell. A noble house taught me obedience. The Cathedral taught me faith. But these men... They knew what he was not taught to believe; how he was conditioned to distinguish permitted truth from everything else. Silvanus excelled at that, blindly, always.

  The Midsummer Festival loomed above as the Cathedral's most sacred spectacle masking its ugliest machinery. Beneath it, a Soul Fragment pulsed in the dark, and the inquisitor loyal to the Cathedral had decided his next move with the resistance pulled onto his chessboard.

  And, Silvanus understood: to challenge the chess master, he would need to play the same game, anticipate the same invisible moves, and prove the impossible of catching a ghost in a cathedral built of light and shadow.

  The game had begun and confrontation would be the reward.

  · ? ·

  Elsewhere, under a different moon, another soul was being hunted...

  "What did it leave for you?" Silvanus asked.

  "The marionette, the disciple that hunted me, said I carried something... Some... Sun fragment."

  He then demanded the boy of his cloak, replacing it with an archivist's grey robe—a dusty coat found in a storage room within the archive, Sol didn't ask much else. The disguise diminished him just slightly. It was a pale grey, appearing like something that makes eyes slide past him without recognition, until they strained to recognize him as the boy from the Trials, or the boy painted on the wanted poster, or the beacon of disasters. Sol did not like it, feeling the rough fabric drag against his wounded, bruised skin. His spine stiffened at the sudden change, his hands curled to resist, yet he accepted the change with equal reluctance.

  "Your first instruction will arrive," he said. "And you will obey it if you wish to survive the next three weeks."

  He wearily sighed at the memory. And now, he was in a shabby lodging-house wedged between two ventilation shafts, around the underground Solthar. Pipes rattled constantly overhead, coughing steam through hair-strand sized cracks in the metal. Here, the ordinary residents minded their own lives. Here the prying eyes were less, for they already knew the cost of looking too closely. They would never concern themselves with chasing a boy with a printed face.

  Sol was lent a room with a door that wouldn't fully shut and a single slit of a window that opened into a damp alley. The night he was thrown in by Silvanus, he cleaned the blood from his arm and chest with a rag that smelled of old soap. He changed out of the grey robe only long enough to scrub his skin raw, then he put it back on because he had no choice. Every time he saw the fabric on his body, he felt the anger welling up with the saliva behind his teeth.

  The scorching emblem of the Cathedral burned him.

  Throughout the days, he moved around mechanically as if possessed by the marionette he killed, woke before dawn, listened for any footsteps, ate whatever was left at the communal counter, kept his head down. No sunlight reached the lower district. He despised it.

  Say nothing. Keep breathing.

  By the third day, the routine became unnerving. Every hour stretched like a taut string, eternal, as he waited for the arrival of any news from the man.

  By the night, he had pulled out the Sun charm from his pocket, observing it's disappearing edges, slowly but surely. It retained it's warmth letting him mistake it for the original just for the sake of false comfort.

  On the fourth, it finally did, when a weightless square paper slipped beneath his door, containing no seal, no signature, just cursive in dull ink. He read it twice, then a third time, as if the letters might rearrange themselves to something more comprehensible. It gave no explanations, no reassurance, and certainly no promises of freedom from damnation.

  Market plaza. He will wait or you, by the antique store, the first line began, he read it just how Silvanus spoke. Until then, burn this letter, or the Cathedral will know it touched your hands.

  Only direction.

  How absurd.