The moonlight cut through the fog like a cold scalpel, and Ryan lay on the damp wall, white mist looming between his teeth in his breath. He could smell blood coming from the altar three hundred meters away, mixed with myrrh and rotten lilies - the antiseptic spices the Order of Light used to deal with traitors.
"Found you, Eileen West." He licked the poisoned arrow in his palm, its venomous bronze tip glinting green. As the best scout of the Shadowsong tribe, he tracked down the saint who had escaped the Church for seven days and seven nights. Legend has it that her blood runs with the memory of the first believers, now beating with the heartbeat below the collarbone.
There was a sudden sound of glass shattering from the altar. Ryan's pupils collapsed, his black iron boots crushed the moonstone powder, but he froze as he looked at the center of the altar. The girl in the silver robes was curled up in the center of a cocoon of light, her long pale blond hair growing wildly, wrapping around her bare ankles and seeping into the ground like a living thing.
"Stop it!" His animal ears twitched unnaturally. This was no ordinary awakening ceremony. The old Elvish etched on the walls was warping as the girl screamed. As the first rays of morning light pierced the clouds, Lane saw a crescent birthmark on the back of the girl's neck identical to his right eye.
The pain burst out of my heart, and the memories flooded in. He finally understood why he had a splitting headache every time he was near Irene - the god of War, who had been crucified in the Fountain of Light three hundred years earlier, was another restless soul in his blood. And now the holy woman, kneeling in a pool of blood, is using her body to absorb the power that is about to get out of control.
"Come on!" Lane tore off the rune necklace around his neck and threw it toward the altar, a dozen brass bells forming a barrier in the air. He knew that the pursuit of the Order of Light was on its way, and he knew that if the Holy See found the blood of God in the Holy woman...
Irene suddenly grabbed his wrist, and ancient rune veins appeared beneath her skin. At the moment she touched, Lane heard two overlapping voices roar in her head: "Find her" and "Bring her back." The moonstone powder was suddenly suspended, converging into a rotating star chart above the two men.