No. 6 and the others huddled behind a jagged rock by the riverbank, craning their necks to scan their surroundings.
They were disoriented, lost. The nearby patrols forced them to move with agonizing caution, daring not to activate the revealing footprints. Erasing them was a slow, nerve-wracking process, each second heightening the risk of discovery. A furtive rustle from the bushes behind No. 6 sent her spinning, Tidal Force crackling at her fingertips.
"No. 7?!"
His lean figure materialized from the inky shadows, squeezing into their already inadequate cover.
No. 6's relief was palpable. She seized his sleeves, her grip almost desperate. "What are you—? How did you—?"
"Shhh." No. 7 pressed a silencing finger to his lips, his gaze raking over each of them. His eyes locked with No. 8's; a silent, charged challenge arced between them.
No. 8, leaning against the cold rock, offered a grudging nod. The usual animosity in his eyes was noticeably blunted. "Well, well. Our star pupil finally deigns to step out from under Silas's wing?"
Before No. 7 could retort, No. 5 erupted from the shadows, clapping him on the shoulder with bruising enthusiasm. "Enough with the digs! If it wasn't for this guy, I'd be staring at the inside of a guard's cage right now! You should've seen him – like a damn ghost, phasing through the trees…"
"Alright, focus," No. 7 cut in, his voice low and urgent. "I found No. 3's exam paper in Silas's office. It's a disaster. He botched half the answers, copied others completely wrong. He'd be lucky to scrape a pass, let alone first place."
No. 6 went still, her brow furrowing in troubled thought.
No. 8 let out a harsh, skeptical laugh. "And *that's* why you risked your neck to find us? Because No. 3 cheated?"
"No," No. 7 stated, his voice chillingly calm. "Because the Church *needed* No. 3 to be first. Because that entire exam was a meticulously orchestrated farce."
An unnerving silence fell, broken only by the river's incessant murmur. A cold dread slithered down their spines. No. 6 vividly recalled the Bishop's smile as he'd announced the results—a smile of absolute, unshakeable satisfaction.
No. 7 crouched, palm hovering inches above the damp earth. A tendril of blue light, like captured lightning, lanced into the ground, instantly illuminating a clear set of footprints. In the next heartbeat, they vanished, erased as if they'd never been. The entire sequence was so swift, so seamless, it was like a trick of the eye.
"That's…" No. 4's eyes were wide, pupils still unnaturally dilated from the prolonged adrenaline.
"Basic Tidal Force manipulation," No. 7 said curtly, dusting off his hands. "What you send out, you learn to recall." He squinted, tracing the phantom path of the erased prints.
No further explanation was offered, none needed. He led, they followed, the moonlight their only guide.
No. 7 moved like a wraith, leaving scarcely a whisper of a trace on the sodden ground. He instinctively, almost unconsciously, erased their tracks as they went. No. 5, trailing behind, could only marvel. *The kid's a natural-born sneak.*
They skirted a dense, thorny thicket, arriving at the sheer precipice on the Sanctum's northern face. The cliff loomed, a pale, bluish-grey edifice in the gloom. At its base, rows of dark red runes pulsed faintly, an unsettling, almost obscene script marring the ancient stone.
No. 6 reached out a tentative hand, fingers hovering just above the alien symbols, not daring to make contact. The runes seemed to squirm, to breathe, like a nest of repulsive insects.
No. 8 unsheathed his makeshift dagger and attempted to pry at one of the rune-etched stones. The instant the blade met the surface, a piercing, metallic shriek split the air.
"Damn it all!" he swore, snatching his hand back as if stung.
No. 4, after a moment's calculation, cautiously channeled a sliver of his power into a nearby rune. It flared to life, then, like a ravenous leech, greedily sucked the Tidal Force from his body through his fingertips. He choked back a cry, staggering, then collapsing to the ground.
"It's a sequence… some kind of specific activation," No. 7 muttered, frowning as he studied the intricate patterns, simultaneously hauling No. 4 back to his feet.
No. 8 kicked a loose stone in sheer frustration. "What, now we have to play cryptographer?"
They were stymied. Their destination lay beyond this barrier. No. 3 was in there. Their only hope of home was in there.
.....
No. 3's eyelids, heavy as lead, fluttered open. He felt as if he'd slept for an age, drifting through a dream whose details now eluded him. He wiggled his fingers. The icy chill of stone beneath him was an unwelcome reminder of reality.
A cloying miasma of mildew and some unidentifiable, exotic incense assailed his nostrils, so potent it provoked a violent sneeze.
"Ah, he stirs."
His vision swam, then slowly resolved into a dim, stone-vaulted ceiling. A single, flickering candle cast his elongated, dancing silhouette onto the cold stone above.
"Wh-where… is this?" No. 3's voice was a disembodied whisper, like an utterance from some unseen specter. He raised a hand to rub his eyes, but his fingers brushed against an unfamiliar object—a circlet, delicately woven from small, pristine white flowers. Their petals, fully unfurled, exuded a surprisingly fresh, clean fragrance.
Two figures stood silhouetted against the light in the doorway. No. 3 squinted, his eyes struggling to focus. When their forms finally coalesced, a jolt of terror nearly sent him tumbling from the slab.
They were entirely coated in gold paint, their bodies shimmering with an almost blinding metallic luster in the wavering lamplight. They wore immaculate white robes, heavily embroidered with complex, arcane symbols in gold thread.
But it was their masks that truly chilled him to the bone: one, a grotesque, weeping visage, with crimson tears eternally streaming from its eyeholes; the other, an ecstatic, manic grin, its corners stretched almost to the ears.
*Am I still dreaming?* No. 3 thumped his head, a desperate attempt to discern reality from nightmare.
"The hour is upon us, No. 3," said the smiling mask. The voice, disturbingly gentle, was one No. 3 recognized: Rhaenys, the history instructor.
The weeping mask glided forward. Its golden fingers, light as a breath, settled on No. 3's shoulder. A fine dusting of gold powder drifted onto his clothes. "Fear not. This is the ultimate honor." This voice, too, was achingly familiar, yet he couldn't quite place it.
One on each side, they lifted No. 3. He passed through a massive stone portal, and the sight that greeted him sent his knees buckling.
He stood at the precipice of a colossal subterranean grotto, its sheer scale staggering. It was a perfect circle, easily a hundred meters in diameter. From the cavernous dome hung hundreds of iron cages, each blazing with a furious, golden-yellow flame, bathing the vast space in an otherworldly, phantasmagoric light.
The grotto walls were a dizzying panorama of carved reliefs: to the left, Jupiter's celestial host; to the right, the pantheon of his faithful saints, as chronicled in the sacred texts. In the center, these two disparate mythologies converged into a grotesque, syncretic abomination—the goddess Hera, bizarrely sporting goat legs; Jupiter, clutching his thunderbolt staff, incongruously crowned with a delicate floral wreath. The eyes of every sculpted figure had been gouged out, replaced by glittering, embedded rubies that, in the firelight, pulsed like a thousand malevolent, bloodshot eyes.
But the most suffocating presence was the silent assembly within the grotto—at least fifty figures, all robed in white, all gilded, all masked with a terrifying array of expressions. They stood in motionless ranks, clutching ceremonial swords of varying lengths, like an army of inanimate, fanatical idols. As No. 3 was guided past, every masked face swiveled in perfect, chilling unison, a hundred sharp, unseen gazes piercing him from the vacant eyeholes.
"When… when can I speak with my family?" No. 3's voice was a thin, trembling thread.
The smiling mask chuckled, a soft, dry sound. "Soon, No. 3. Very, very soon."
They led him through a winding, labyrinthine passage, emerging before a central stone dais. Upon it stood an exceptionally corpulent figure. His white robe strained against his bulk, the gold dust caked in its fleshy folds like leprous sores. But his mask was the true horror—the left half, an infant's cherubic, innocent smile; the right, a leering, demonic snarl.
No. 3's blood ran cold. Even through the grotesque disguise, he recognized the unmistakable contours of that triple chin. The Cardinal Sin Bishop.
The Bishop spread his arms wide. Gold dust cascaded from the layers of his quivering flesh, shimmering like a rain of malevolent sparks in the firelight.
As he gestured, the very air behind him seemed to ripple and distort. A swirling, blue-white vortex materialized from nothingness, its rotation slow and inexorable. And suspended in its lambent heart, a sphere of such breathtaking, blinding beauty it defied description.
It was a magnificent planet, swathed in an ocean of deepest azure, its surface veiled in delicate, ethereal wisps of white cloud. The ghostly outlines of continents drifted in and out of view, brown mountain ranges and verdant plains a mesmerizing, alien tapestry.
"Come, my child. Come, and be seated," the Cardinal Sin Bishop purred, gesturing towards a large, circular disc at his feet. The disc itself was immaculately clean, yet it reeked with a strange, disturbingly familiar, coppery scent.
No. 3's feet felt as if they were encased in lead. His legs, no longer under his own volition, stumbled forward. He sensed danger, a primal, visceral dread. A high, keening whine resonated in his skull, a desperate, repeated warning: *Do not go near!* Yet, as he gazed upon the radiant sphere, an overwhelming, inexplicable sense of kinship, of homecoming, welled within him. An unseen force gently propelled him forward, until he stood at the disc's very center.
"This is your home, child," the Bishop's voice whispered in No. 3's ear, a sound both intimately close and infinitely distant. "A place we call Terra."
He paused, then added, his voice a silken caress, "Though, of course… some still call this planet… Earth."