Marked by hell

The Citadel of Solis Lux was nothing like she remembered.

Marble towers that pierced the sky. Gold filigree along the streets. Everything gleamed like righteousness...but Serenya could smell the rot beneath it.

It had been twenty years since her last visit.

Twenty years, if you didn't count the lifetime she spent rotting beneath its dungeons.

"You sure about this?" Veylan adjusted the holy robes uncomfortably. He looked like a rat in priest's garb.

"I was born in this cesspool," Serenya said. "I can fake the shine."

They passed the outer wards with forged papers...thanks to Azrael's magic and a few blackmailed clerics.

Inside the city, everything was chained by light.

Wards. Blessings. Prayers inscribed into the stone.

If she flinched, the magic would notice.

So she smiled.

And let it burn.

Their goal: The Sanctum Archives.

A restricted vault below the Grand Chapel. Full of forbidden texts, erased histories, and the name of the Saint who ordered her death.

"He was called Lucian the Just," Serenya murmured. "They say he bathed in fire and walked with angels."

"Sounds like a prick," Veylan said.

"He was also my father's best friend."

To get in, they needed two things:

1. A Saintblood seal — carved from the bone of a martyred priest.

2. A veil blessing,.. a cloaking enchantment that tricked holy wards into seeing innocence.

The problem? Both were guarded in the Hall of Martyrs where the bodies of dead saints still whisper through the walls.

Sneaking in wasn't an option.

So Serenya chose sacrilege.

She and Veylan disguised themselves as paladin acolytes and joined the midnight procession: a ceremonial blessing of the relics.

Candles flickered. Chants rose like smoke. The air was thick with power.

And as they passed the bone altar, Serenya stole a relic from under the eye of a Seraph.

Literally.

The Seraph's eye was embedded in the altar. Watching. Breathing.

She reached in with a silk-wrapped hand, pressed her own sigil against the stone...Hellmark pulsing hot and the Seraph flinched.

It blinked.

And she smiled.

"Good dog," she whispered.

They ran.

Silent. Swift.

Back through the cathedral's underbelly, straight into the vaults.

She placed the bone seal on the altar.

The doors groaned open.

Inside: a library of lies.

Scrolls of rewritten history.

Accounts of "miracles" that were actually demonic massacres covered up.

Records of a girl with Hellfire in her veins… labeled "False Prophet. Traitor. Slain for the safety of all."

"They made you a villain," Veylan said.

"They needed one," she replied.

---

But then...she saw it.

A scroll bound in iron thread. Titled in old runes:

"Concerning the Sealed King."

Azrael's true history.

She grabbed it.

And triggered the ward.

Boom.

The ground split. Alarms screamed. And above them, the High Inquisitor descended in silver armor, sword raised, wings of pure mana.

"Who dares violate the Sanctum?!"

Veylan reached for his blades.

But Serenya whispered: "Don't."

Because this Inquisitor....

This was the man who lit the pyre in her first life.

"I know his face," she said, voice like ash.

"Let me kill him."