Chapters 67-68

We're behind schedule, my bad.

Chapter 67

Lily’s mind would not let go of Sabinus. Every thought led back to the image of him lying there, and she kept running through every possibility that could bring him back or take him away for good. Yet as much as she worried about Sabinus, she could not ignore the pale woman standing across from her. This woman insisted that she was not just an ancestor, but the very founder of the Gens Claudia, and Lily could not shake her suspicion.

“My friend—”

“He’s not dead,” the woman answered before Lily could finish. “He will not die for a long time. His vitality will continue to drain away, but that is a slow process. He is not lost yet.”

Lily did not relax. Instead, she squared her shoulders and glared. “What do you want?” she demanded, her voice flat with hostility.

The specter’s lips twisted into a smile, and a short, cold laugh escaped her. “Me? I want nothing at all. You are the one who woke me up after so long. Why would I want anything from you? I ought to ask whether my family is finally back in power.”

“What?” Lily’s eyes narrowed. “The Gens Claudia is one of the Great Families. Of course we have power.”

The woman’s smile faded. “That is not what I mean. I am asking whether we have reclaimed the seats we once held in the past.”

Lily hesitated. “The seats? Are you talking about the Papacy?”

The woman fell silent, and her eyes unfocused as though she looked somewhere far beyond the room. 

“How long has it been since someone last awoke me? Why do I sense so much Death all around us? Wait—there is something very wrong with the projection. What is going on here?”

Lily’s confusion grew. 

“The projection?”

The woman turned to her with a heavy expression. 

“The ghost you saw is just one of many projections that were carved into the foundation of this villa. I do not understand why everything here feels abandoned. Where are the living? What has happened to this place?”

Lily blinked several times as she tried to put her answer together. “We’re in the Dead Lands. Nobody lives here. Everyone says it’s cursed.”

“I do not know that name. Dead Lands?” The woman looked genuinely lost. “Did anyone move our ancestral home? Where are we now?”

Lily searched for a clear explanation, but the right words refused to come. “No, this is still the same land. I think. Maybe it would help if I told you about the Church. I mean, what’s going on right now.”

“That would help a great deal,” the woman replied, and her shape brightened a little. “The Church of Light and Darkness is dear to me.”

Lily’s mouth twisted. 

“Actually, we call it the Church of Light now.”

The woman’s laughter rang out, bright and crystalline, but there was nothing warm in it. 

“They are still making that old joke? Those men who sit in the seats of Light—they always wanted to believe they could cut the Darkness out and hold the power alone.”

But when Lily did not laugh with her, the woman’s amusement disappeared. The two stood in silence for several seconds, and the air between them grew heavier.

“You’re not joking,” the woman said, her voice thin.

“I wish I was,” Lily said.

For almost an hour, Lily explained everything. She described the way the Church had been arranged, the laws that banned women from leading the Great Families, the way even Librarians were hunted and burned as heretics. She answered every question the specter asked, and she did not try to soften the truth or spare the woman’s feelings. She told her how power had passed from hand to hand, always shrinking and darkening—at least that was what Caesar had told her. She told her how women had been pressed into corners and cut out of their own traditions. She told her about the endless hunting and the fear that spread wherever someone spoke about Darkness.

The woman listened, and every answer seemed to make her taller, angrier, and somehow sadder. By the end, she looked like a statue made of old regrets, lit from within by something that might have been pride or bitterness.

“I do not know what happened,” the woman admitted, her voice stripped bare. “It was never meant to be like this. When the Church was founded, it was so to celebrate the union of Light and Darkness. That was the entire purpose. The communion of what was holy and what was forbidden bound us together, and there was no shame in it.”

“So, could women lead families?” Lily asked, and the question was not polite.

The woman nodded. “Not only could we lead, we often did. Women would take the Seats of Darkness, and men would take the Seats of Light. It was our custom to encourage the Great Families to arrange marriages between their best, because strong blood built strong generations. But we did not force divisions. When two people married, they could forge their own House. They were not owned by anyone. It was not a rule, and it was never a law.”

“You could just marry anyone?” Lily’s frown deepened.

“Our empire was wealthy, and there was enough for everyone. We only fought when monsters came, not for power among ourselves. Sometimes women oversaw Death Magic and Darkness, and men handled Life Magic and Light, but those were tendencies, not laws. Sometimes, the council had more women on the Seats of Light and more men on the Seats of Darkness. Nobody’s fate was ever decided by attitude or gender.”

“There was a council? What about the Pope?”

“Sometimes the council would choose a representative. The strongest seat would lead us through war or famine or times when decisions had to be made fast. That leader was called the Dictator, or the Pope, but it was never meant to be a permanent throne. Whoever took up that mantle had to step down after the crisis ended. If they refused, the council had to remove them.” 

“So you did fight each other.”

Claudia shook her head, “more rarely than you’d imagine.” 

Then, she sighed. 

“I remember the last one—Octavia. She was the greatest of us, and when a monster horde threatened our entire land, she led us to victory. But when her time came to step down, she fought it. She could not give up the power, and in the end, we had to confront her. I was mortally wounded during that struggle, and I anchored my soul here to watch over this place. I never learned how she died, but I always hoped her sacrifice would not be wasted.”

Lily asked, “And the Necromonarch? Was that a thing, back then?”

The woman nodded. “There were always those who went too far with Death. It was usually men who had never faced Darkness before. They wanted to touch the forbidden and seize what was not theirs. Just like women, the feminine had a way of drawing them in, but power always had its price.”

Lily shifted, feeling the weight of too many stories at once. “So what now? What am I supposed to do with all of this?”

The woman looked at her with a gaze that pinned her to the floor. “Who are you, really?”

Lily answered, “I told you. I am Liliana Claudia, daughter of Lucianus and Adriana—”

The woman shook her head. “Not your lineage.”

She drifted closer, her form half-glowing, and pressed a spectral finger against Lily’s chest. Lily’s body turned cold, and she shivered.

“Your soul is old. What brought you here? What kind of magic was used?” The woman’s hand passed into her body. Lily felt a sensation like ice in her heart.

“I don’t know. I have memories that aren’t mine. Sometimes they’re so clear, but I can’t ever grab them for long. I think they come from another life. They get sharper each day, but always slip away when I try to hold on.”

The woman’s eyes widened. She drove her hand deeper, searching for something hidden. Lily could not breathe. Then, suddenly, the woman pulled back, her expression shocked.

“This is divine magic. Someone made a bargain. Did you make a deal with anyone?”

“With who?” Lily asked, her voice trembling.

“Not you, then. Someone sacrificed dearly for you, Liliana Claudia. Or perhaps—”

The woman stepped back as glowing runes spun through the air, drawing lines of light into a Mandala above her. She lifted her face, breathing in magic that no living person could see. Her spectral body rose higher, casting the room in a radiant glare.

“What are you doing?” Lily shouted, panic rising as she felt her skin prickle with heat.

“I must know you,” the woman answered.

Light burst through the room, and Lily screamed as symbols crawled over her skin, burning for a moment before fading.

“You are not just Liliana Claudia—” the woman began. “You’re also Liliana Ember. You—”

She stopped. Her mouth snapped shut, and the magic around her constricted into a web. For a long moment, she only stared at Lily, caught by rules that would not let her speak.

“What did you see?” Lily demanded.

“Forgive me, child,” the woman said. “I saw your memories, both past and present. I know why you are here.”

“My mother sent me—”

“That is not the only person who sent you here, I fear. Come with me now. There is more you must learn.”

Chapter 68

Lily stepped out into the garden of the old villa that the Gens Claudia had owned once in the Dead Lands. The building rose behind her with pale stone that looked weathered yet proud, and the garden spread ahead under a dull sky that pressed low on the hedges. 

Gravel paths cut the beds into sober shapes, and glazed pots lined the colonnade where ivy climbed and pulled at the mortar. Claudia’s revelations still turned in her head, and the more she tested them, the more they unsettled her.

Apparently the Church had not always cared only for Light. It had once embraced both halves of existence, Light and Darkness, in equal measure. The claim sounded like music that she knew in fragments because someone had always stopped the song before the chorus.

She kept circling the same question and she asked what had changed everything. Claudia had offered a blunt theory that a Pope had gone rogue, had seized absolute control, and had reshaped the Church’s purpose. The explanation convinced her more than any other, yet even if it proved true, she did not know what to do with it.

And if she somehow managed to prove it?

Could she… topple the Papacy?

I have Caesar's support. I have my dad's support. Maybe, in the future... Lily reasoned.

Yet a more pressing problem stood in her way because the Undead moved while the Church argued. Caesar had warned her that something felt wrong and that the Necromonarch acted more shrewdly than anyone believed. If he judged the situation correctly, then the greatest danger did not come from any Pope or any council, and it came instead from the annihilation of the Papacy at the hands of the Undead. She could not chase thrones while graveyards marched.

Claudia walked ahead and brought her to the garden fountain. 

The basin sat low and wide, and its rim showed chisel marks that a careful mason had left there a lifetime ago. Water ticked against the stone lip with a steady beat that sounded like a clock.

Somehow, the enchantment for the fountain still worked. 

Claudia stopped and faced the pool. She spoke without ceremony.

"This will be the second trial, the missing half of your Skill, Liliana."

"Okay?" Lily said. "Where's the mirror?"

"There is no need for mirrors. The mirror in your rooms is only an old simulacrum that someone enchanted with the right spell. You can teach Skills and you can teach even ones as complicated as this without an artifact."

Claudia pointed at the water. "Look in the fountain. That is all you have to do."

Lily obeyed and leaned in until her breath stirred the surface. Claudia raised her hands and Mana pressed out from her like a storm front that bent tall grass. The surface quivered, and the villa gave a low creak as if old stones remembered the hands that had set them. Wards along the eaves woke and thrummed until the roofline hummed. A chill reached Lily’s teeth and crawled along the roots.

Claudia spoke in a tongue that sounded foreign at first, and then meaning slid into place inside Lily’s mind with the weight of carved granite.

"By the will of the ancients, by the will of the Dark, by the will of the God of Darkness, forge this young warrior in her shadow."

The water thickened and bubbled. It stank of Death Magic, and the scent carried iron. Pressure gathered against Lily’s skin and pushed at her breath. She set her heels on the stone and locked her stance because she did not want the pressure to force her back.

The pool stopped boiling and went still. Silver light crossed the surface until it looked like poured mercury. The rim of the fountain bleached white while Death Mana swelled inside the basin and made the air heavy.

"Your destiny is to learn this Skill, child," Claudia said. "But you will have to survive yourself."

Lily knit her brows and doubt tightened her shoulders, yet the water answered before she could speak. The mirror rippled. Darkness swallowed her reflection and a hand rose from the pool. It looked inky black from wrist to nail and smoke curled from it with each small movement. The smoke dragged through the air as if the hand scratched faint lines into the world that her eyes could not fully catch.

"Oh," Lily said. "I see."

A figure climbed out of the water and stood on the lip of the basin. Lily took two steps back. The figure stepped down onto the flagstones and faced her. The garden went quiet and even the birds stilled in the hedges. The thing did not fidget and it did not sway. It breathed with her cadence and it matched the slow rise and fall of her chest.

As the black mirror in the Gens Claudia estate had done, the fountain gave her an exact copy. It mirrored her down to the small scar at her knuckle and the slight posture she favored when she expected a feint. It mirrored her completely.

The copy opened its eyes. The irises looked like wet ink, and a seven-pointed white star turned inside each one with the smooth precision of a well-made gear. The mouth curled into a grin that belonged to Lily.

"Dawn's Mercy," Lily said.

Smoke poured thicker from the copy’s skin. A pulse moved under that smoke and Life Magic beat through its form with a rhythm that matched her own heartbeat. Heat licked the air without flame. Lily recognized the pattern at once.

"[Lux Vitae Overdrive]," she said.

Caesar had drilled that Skill into her until muscles burned and breath scraped like grit, and it was one of her aces. It had the form and it had the flow.

A prickling rose along Lily’s arms. 

The copy narrowed its eyes and the stars brightened. 

The gaze tracked along Lily’s shoulders and hips as if it measured joint angles and counted how she loaded her feet. She slid left and then right to break the reading and the copy matched her beat for beat. She centered her weight and let her focus sharpen until sound thinned and the world shrank to footwork and reach.

She had trained the gaze to read motion and to map lines of weakness that crossed a body like hidden seams. The copy held that gaze, and the stars turned in clean arcs. The fountain gurgled once as if the pool approved. Claudia watched in silence. Her face showed nothing, yet the set of her shoulders told Lily that the old Matriarch would not intervene. 

If the copy carried two Skills, then it might carry the other two as well, and she needed to confirm before she committed.

"Come on," Lily said.

The copy answered without words. It tilted its chin in the same small challenge Lily used when she wanted an opponent to make the first mistake. 

Lily slid her left foot half a length and kept her guard narrow so she could close lines quickly. She angled her body to offer less target and to set a trap for a right-hand entry. 

She did not blink. 

She tracked the rise of the copy’s heel and a twitch that moved along its forearm, and she caught the faint, clean scent that came when Life and Light braided inside her veins.

Does it have...

The answer, of course, was yes.

The body of the shadow snapped forward because [Coniunctionis flooded it, and Lily had to fight at the very limit of her ability from the first step.

The shadow went full-out from the start.

She parried a punch, but then she screamed in pain. 

Death Magic electrified her skin and corroded it like acid that ate fast. Her skin lifted and her flesh sizzled in sharp lines where the touch had landed. She flared Life Flow and changed her style at once.

She gave up hard parries and turned to pure movement because she could not afford the trade. She tried to make the shadow miss by centimeters and she tried to move on the half-beat. Yet the shadow possessed the same ocular Skill and it predicted her choices. Ocular Skill faced Ocular Skill. [Lux Vitae Overdrive] met [Lux Vitae Overdrive], and [Coniunctionis] lined against [Coniunctionis]. The exchange blurred and she could not read it with conscious thought because the rhythm changed between heartbeats.

The shadow kept silent and it remained relentless.

"What am I supposed to do?!" Lily shouted.

Her mother had given clear instructions for the trial of Life Flow, and that memory did not help here. This trial outstripped her capabilities.

The shadow did not only mimic every ability she had, because it also carried a Death-Magic strike that tore at the body.

"The Skills that have run in the Gens Claudia are the two aspects of existence. Life and Death, Liliana."

"OK?" Lily said, and a strike passed a hand’s breadth from her head.

She saw an opening because her gaze caught a gap under the elbow. She kicked the side of the shadow with all the force she could bring. Her shin hammered shadowy ribs under the power of [Coniunctionis] and the impact cracked across the courtyard.

"What power did you use to pass the trial?" Claudia asked.

"Healing?!" Lily shouted as she slipped outside another line. The shadow popped up from the flagstones and her kick looked like it had never landed.

"Healing? Is that it?"

"Medicine?! Knowledge?!" Lily bobbed and weaved and she tried not to get clipped while she formed a plan.

"Your knowledge of Life was tested, but your knowledge of Death was not."

"What does that even mean?!"

The shadow’s foot snapped out. The tip dug into her stomach. Lily retched and heat flooded her eyes. She doubled over and then she rolled across the stones so a second step would not crush her skull.

"Death. You know about life. The memories you have told you a lot about that. But what about Death? What is Death?"

Lily frowned and she stopped asking questions.

What is Death? the blonde girl wondered.

A few words came to her mind.

Apoptosis. Shock. Cellular death. Shortening of the telomeres.

Her mind sketched more because study had left lines that she could follow. She pictured necrosis that spread when membranes failed and she pictured ischemic cascades that dumped calcium into cells until enzymes ran wild. She thought of oxidative stress and free radicals that chewed through lipids. She thought of mitochondrial collapse and cytochrome release that triggered caspase activation. She thought of p53 that halted replication and she thought of senescence that set in when telomeres frayed. The list did not give comfort and it did not stop the shadow’s advance, yet it gave shape to what pressed against her skin.

Her eyes went wide and she stopped dodging for a heartbeat. She let the shadow brush her face and she felt the thing that hid inside the touch. Death Magic drove at the substance of her cells. It entered and it shredded.

I’ve never even thought about this. Am I an idiot?

Lily pulled Darkness to her hands. When the shadow struck, she caught its wrist and she twisted so the joint locked. Bone that was not bone buckled. The shadow failed to react in time and she threw it down so hard that the tiles trembled under her boots. She stepped in and drove a punch into its chest with everything she had. She pushed Darkness through her knuckles and she forced her mind to hold every Death-shaped memory she owned. The blow ripped its pattern apart and the body came apart like smoke that had lost heat.

"That was… hard," Lily said as she panted and then bent her hands to her knees. [Lux Vitae Overdrive] burned in her and her Skills ran hot, yet the fight still wore her down. Fighting someone built on her exact level gnawed at her focus until her jaw ached.

"How many trials did your first ritual have, Liliana?" Claudia said. "This is not the end."

Lily turned toward the fountain and two shadows rose from the pool and climbed onto the rim. The water stilled again and silver light settled as if it waited.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," Lily said as her hands trembled. "That’s too much!"

"We’ll see."

A trickle of Death Mana from the dissolving body slid into her arms and then into her chest. She felt a closer connection to a pattern that did not belong to Life, but to the Great Skill of Death that the Gens Claudia had once guarded when the Seats of Darkness still stood and still had names that the Church had not erased.