Beyond the simulation chamber's mirrored observation wall, the Confessors watched in silence.
The first to speak was Father Alric, his voice heavy with concern. "This is too much. He understands this is a test, yet the memory still wounds him deeply. We risk driving him further from faith, not closer."
Father Verdan nodded in agreement. "He holds firm now, but such pain, such hatred—it festers. His anger might one day turn on the Church itself."
They turned to the third: Confessor Malena.
Her eyes never left the chamber, shadowed and distant. When she finally spoke, her voice was smooth, almost too calm.
"Hatred is strength. Suffering is the forge of redemption. To rise, he must be purified through fire—through pain deeper than loss."
A chill settled.
Father Alric's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"
Malena's lips curved in a dark smile.
Without warning, the mirrored glass of the confessional cracked, spiderwebbing across the surface. Then it shattered inward with a thunderous crash, sending shards scattering like holy rain.
Smoke hissed as sulfur stung the air. Caelin's gaze lifted just as the illusion of Maeria faded—and before him stood a grotesque figure. The VR chains rattled and disappeared. He rose slowly, fists clenched.
Malena's form twisted, morphing—her human guise melting away to reveal a bloated demon, limbs like serrated blades, skin mottled with blasphemous sigils. Her jaw split vertically as she laughed with a voice both hers and something far older.
"She screamed your name, Caelin," the demon hissed, circling him like a viper. "Not in that garden, no. In the fire. You watched her burn. You knelt. A knight? A coward."
Caelin said nothing.
"I drank her terror. Her last breath begged for you. Not for God. For you. And what did you do? Pray? Pathetic."
Still, Caelin remained silent.
"What would she say now, seeing you crawl through filth for a Church that betrayed her? That bound you? That spat on your vows and stole your name?"
The demon leaned in, eyes blazing.
"What would she say, knowing you carry her in your heart like a relic… while they mock you behind their white robes?"
Caelin's voice was low, steady, cold.
"Christ have mercy on your tongue, demon."
He stepped forward, unarmed but resolute.
"For I shall not."
The demon lunged.
It was fast—too fast—and its talons punched straight through Caelin's abdomen. A flash of white-hot agony burst through his core as blood sprayed from the exit wound behind him. The force lifted him off his knees and slammed him into the ground.
But Caelin did not scream.
His face twisted—not in pain, but in fury.
He rolled as the demon slashed again, its bladed arm tearing a jagged line down his cheek and across his left arm. Blood flowed freely, dark and rich, but he ignored it. The chamber stank of sulfur, blood, and incense now scorched by hellfire.
The two male Confessors stumbled back in horror, one pounding on the security panel. "Guards! Inside, now! The chamber's compromised!"
Caelin's vision blurred, one eye swelling shut, but still he rose—shaking, bloodied, snarling.
The demon grinned. "How much more will you lose, little Forsaken?"
It came again, claw raised high—but Caelin ducked low, grabbed the wrist, and twisted. Bone snapped. The demon shrieked.
With a roar pulled from the pit of every loss he'd buried, Caelin drove his elbow into its midsection, again and again, his blood mixing with the demon's foul ichor. It retaliated with a rake of its clawed foot, slicing deep into his thigh—but Caelin held.
His left hand clamped the demon's lower jaw, his right the horned crown of its skull. He put everything into that final act. Tendons strained. Bones groaned. Black ichor spilled.
The demon thrashed in panic.
And then—with one wrenching snap—its head tore free, spine still twitching in Caelin's grasp.
The chamber fell into a stunned silence. Only his ragged breath and the drip of blood broke the stillness.
The security door hissed open.
The Pope's guards stormed in, crossbows raised—only to stop short as they saw him there: shirt torn, bleeding from a dozen wounds, face half-covered in gore, holding the demon's head aloft.
One guard muttered, "Throne of Heaven…"
Another lowered his weapon slowly. "He did that?"
Caelin dropped the head to the floor with a wet thud. His knees trembled, but he refused to fall. He stood in a puddle of blood and ash, breathing hard, eyes locked ahead.
One of the Confessors whispered from behind shattered glass, shaken and pale:
"…we judged him?"
Then came the tearing.
The air warped—a foul stench of sulfur and blood—and the floor cracked outward as new shapes surged into the chamber. Slithering, skittering things made of bone and sinew, crawling out from vents, shadow, and split steel. Three. Then five. Then nine. Mid-tier demons, summoned by the breach, clawing through the veil that once protected the sanctum.
The ship was compromised.
Caelin stood in the middle of the confessional chamber, still covered in wounds, still soaked in gore. No weapon. No armor. Just fists.
The first demon lunged—he caught it by the throat mid-air, twisted its spine, and drove its skull into the ground so hard it cracked the metal.
Another pounced. He ducked under its claws, shoulder-checked it into a pillar, then drove his boot through its chest.
The Confessors backed away, wide-eyed. One cried for help through a vox-bead. Another dropped to his knees, muttering protection prayers through bloodied lips.
A third demon raked Caelin's chest open. He grunted, staggered back, then bit down on its arm like a beast and snapped it in two at the elbow. Another claw slashed down his side. He caught the next blow with his bare hand and drove his forehead into the creature's jaw, breaking its teeth.
The fight was savage. Primal. Holy.
One of the guards outside the broken VR wall finally snapped out of shock, speaking urgently into his helm bead. Then a voice crackled across the vox—harsh, commanding, and resonant.
"This is Captain Bravach of the Sanctum Guard. Confessors—report."
The first Confessor leaned into the voice-bead. "The Forsaken… lives. The VR test failed. The demons have breached. He is—"
A pause. Sounds of shouting in the background. Then:
"He is what?"
The Confessor looked at Caelin, surrounded by twitching corpses. "...fighting barehanded."
Another pause.
"Then he's the only one who might survive. Get him moving."
"To where?"
"The Pontifex's sanctum. We've lost contact. All paths are compromised. We're giving him priority clearance. Go."
Caelin stood in the steaming gore, breathing hard, blood running down his ribs and arms in crimson rivers. One of the younger guards stared at him like he was looking at a myth.
The first Confessor whispered, "He's… not a man anymore."
Just then, the clatter of boots down the corridor. Three recruits approached, carrying a bundle reverently between them. They stopped just outside the wreckage of the chamber, gazes locked on the broken bodies.
Dareth's sword, cleaned and sharpened. His Forsaken armor, reforged from the shattered remnants. Still black, still marked with the red brand of condemnation, but now fused with metal tempered in holy flame. Across the chest gleamed the Lion of Judah, Dareth's crest reborn.
"Take it," the lead recruit said, voice trembling. "The forge-master said it wouldn't let anyone else wear it."
Caelin stepped forward. As he touched the cuirass, a searing heat pulsed from it, not to burn—but to recognize. He pulled it over his ravaged body without flinching. The sabatons locked into place. The gauntlets clamped down like a second skin.
The sword hissed as it entered his palm. One last voice buzzed into the chamber.
"Caelin," came Bravach's voice. Not Forsaken. "The path to the Pontifex's sanctum runs through the upper sanctity decks. They're crawling with filth. You go alone. Clear them. If His Holiness lives—bring him back."
Caelin nodded once, his face stone.
"I was going that way anyway," he said.
Then he turned, stepped through the wreckage, and vanished into red-lit halls slick with blood and crawling with monsters.
The Sanctum Caligar was burning from within.
Caelin advanced into the upper sanctity decks, where every wall once gleamed with inlaid scripture and silver-framed icons of the saints. Now, the holy corridors ran red. Fires licked at the once-sterile steel as if hell itself had bloomed inside the starship.
He moved like judgment incarnate, Dareth's sword heavy in his grip, his breath steady despite the chaos. His reforged armor clung tightly to his frame, its once-jagged mockery now tempered into cruel elegance—still black, still scarred, but whole.
Each step was muffled by ash and viscera. Each corner, a trap.
Demons, lesser and mad, tore through acolytes and scribes alike. He struck them down with surgical brutality. One leapt at him—mouth split ear to ear—and was cleaved through the spine midair. Another, serpentine and shrieking, coiled around his legs. He shattered its ribs with a single stomp and severed its head with one brutal stroke.
These were not the tactical horrors of Karaziel's nest. These were frenzied, berserk things. Wild. Uncoordinated. They smelled of death and desperation—panicked embers left behind by a quenched inferno.
They knew he had slain their god.
The Sanctum's upper levels narrowed, adorned with vast stained-glass panels that once caught the stars. Now those same panels were cracked, blackened, twisted into grotesque shadows by the red emergency lights that pulsed like a heartbeat.
He paused at one such panel, depicting Saint Taranus casting down the Serpent Host. Cracks ran through the saint's face, spiderwebbing across his upraised sword. The irony was not lost on Caelin.
A trio of demons lurched from a broken archway. One bore a mock-scepter of bone. Another had tongues instead of eyes. The third was bloated and twitching.
He didn't slow. Steel flashed. The scepter shattered. The tongue-faced shrieked until it was silent. The bloated one burst apart in a haze of spores, and Caelin tore through the cloud, trusting in his breathing mask and the wrath that guided his hand.
A blood-streaked initiatus—a boy, barely armored—staggered out from behind a pillar.
"Forsaken," he gasped. "They—they breached the sanctum vault. Took the censer—"
"Fall back," Caelin ordered. "Seal the halls behind me. You have your orders."
The boy nodded, scrambling back with a half-muttered prayer. Caelin didn't watch him go.
Ahead, the doors to the next deck were partially caved in, buckled from within. Clawed. He placed a hand on the metal. It was warm. Alive, almost. The corruption had seeped deep.
He pushed through.
The next hall was worse.
Here, priests and guards lay in heaps, twisted in shapes no human body should bear. The relics they guarded had been torn from their display alcoves, smashed or defiled. The air reeked of burning parchment and sulfur.
A demon knelt over a dying confessor, licking the blood from his face with a tongue like a rotted eel.
Caelin didn't announce himself. He simply drove Dareth's blade down through the demon's back, pinning it to the floorboards. It howled, but not for long.
"You still breathing?" he asked the confessor.
A nod, barely. "The Pope… we heard nothing. The wards failed…"
"I'm on my way," Caelin said. "Hold your breath and pray."
As he rose, the floor trembled. Not from footsteps—no. From something deeper. A resonance. Something ancient, clawing through the ship's bones. He knew the feel of it. A high demon...or something worse.
Caelin pressed forward, drenched in sweat, blood, and holy rage. He didn't know what waited beyond the next gate, but the mission was clear.
Find the Pontifex. Purge the ship.