They led him beneath the chapel.
Even deeper.
Stone gave way to salt. Salt to bone. Bone to something older—fossilized air, stale and humming with potential. The walls of the corridor were smooth, veined with gold that didn't reflect, only absorbed light.
The Collector walked ahead, robes trailing behind him like a shadow cast by thought.
Behind them, Kael muttered, "There's a line between cool and cursed. We crossed it six hallways ago."
Leonis didn't reply.
He could feel it now.
The memory in his blood.
It wasn't knowledge in the usual sense—it was sensation, instinct, shape.
Like remembering how to scream in a language you'd never learned.
They entered the Court of Dust through a door made of compressed ash.
The chamber was circular, lit by dozens of hanging soul-lamps that burned with blue flame. The walls were lined with figures in red, hooded, seated—silent witnesses. Their faces were hidden. Their voices were one.
"We are the Crimson."
"We are the Ones Who Remember."
"Show us the proof."
The Collector raised a hand.
A gate in the center of the room opened with a shudder.
Two rebels dragged out a man—half-naked, skin pulsing with golden threads under the flesh. He writhed silently, his eyes rolled back, his breath shallow.
Leonis stepped forward.
The Collector intoned:
"A fragment. Torn from a dying Seraph during the Last Purge. It was bound to this man as punishment… or perhaps as preservation. Touch it, and you may die. But destroy it, and you prove that memory has teeth."
Kael leaned in. "They're feeding you a godpiece as a test?"
"Apparently."
"Sure. Let's all die."
Leonis stepped closer to the man.
He could feel it radiating off him—divine essence, like sunlight behind flesh. But wrong. Twisted. Trying to escape.
The System whispered:
"Warning: Divine Fragment detected. Class: Beta-Seraphic Remnant."
"Caution: Soul-bonded. Lethal to separate with standard methods."
"God Memory Fracture: Advised."
Leonis dropped to one knee beside the man.
His hand hovered over the man's heart, where golden light flickered beneath translucent skin.
He closed his eyes.
And reached inward.
The Court of Dust disappeared.
The Collector. The rebels. Kael.
Gone.
Instead—Leonis stood inside a storm of fractured memory.
He saw not the man—but the fragment.
Not as light.
But as a name.
A divine name.
Nareh'el. Light-Binder. Flame of the Ninth Choir.
Once a voice of the heavens. Now… broken. Screaming. Bound.
Leonis spoke. Not with words—but with memory.
"You were not meant to rule."
"You were meant to reflect."
"Now, shatter."
The name cracked.
The light screamed.
And then—
It broke.
Leonis gasped and pulled his hand away.
The golden threads in the man's skin dimmed.
Then vanished.
The man collapsed, breathing evenly for the first time in years.
"God Fragment destroyed."
"New Passive: Divine Name Severance acquired."
"Effect: Can isolate and erase residual divine identity from soul-bound objects or beings."
The Collector turned to the Court of Dust.
Silence.
Then one voice—deep, cracked, female—spoke:
"Let him rise."
Another: "Let him walk the Revenant path."
Another: "Let the gods remember why they feared the dead."
And slowly, one by one, they stood.
Leonis rose with them.
Kael blinked. "So... you passed."
Leonis looked at his hands.
They trembled. Just slightly.
"No," he said. "I changed the test."