One day before
It was dead in the night.
Not simply dark—a drowned darkness, the kind that swallowed sound and intention, the kind that felt less like the absence of light and more like the world holding its breath, clenching its jaw, waiting for sothing disastrous to unfold.
Aiden felt the weight of that darkness pressing down on the High Church’s outer halls as he and Iliana materialized out of thin air. The teleportation sigil dissolved behind them like dust made from quiet nightmares.
The air still rippled from their arrival, a faint shimring distortion that clung to the cold stone walls before slowly fading.
The long corridor they appeared in was empty—eerily empty. Even the moonlight that slipped in through the tall stained windows felt muted, trapped, as if it feared revealing their presence.
Iliana, the elf known in hushed circles as the hasa of her people, exhaled shakily. Her breath misted in the chilled night air before being swallowed by the silence. She clutched at her cloak a little tighter as she glanced up at Aiden.
"It still feels wrong," she whispered, though her voice barely reached above a breath. "Being here."
She wasn’t wrong.
They stood in the backbone of the empire’s faith—the sanctum where the High Church made its decrees, judged nations, blessed armies, crowned kings.
Aiden only tilted his head slightly.
"Wrong is subjective," he murmured. "Useful is objective."
Iliana swallowed once. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, tapping hard and uneven. She hated how calm he always was. That calmness was heavier than fear. He carried it like armor, like a blade sharper than anything she had ever crafted.
And she knew he wasn’t calm because he lacked fear.
Aiden’s calm ca from sothing else entirely—a certainty that bordered on madness, or destiny, or sothing too dangerous to na.
Still, she forced her trembling hands to steady as she activated her rare item again.
A thin ripple of magic unfurled from her body, then wrapped around her and Aiden in a silent cocoon. The spell humd—barely audible, like a dying heartbeat—but its effect was absolute:
All presence erased.
All aura masked.
All footsteps muted.
All existence... hidden.
It was the only reason she and her daughter remained untouched during Aros’s attack weeks ago. That item, that ability—the only one of its kind among her tribe—had preserved her life when entire halls crumbled beneath the abomination’s wrath.
Now, ironically, that sa ability made her useful to the very man Aros sought to kill.
They moved in sync down the corridor, their steps gliding across the marble floor with unnatural silence. Every breath felt heavier, every exhale seed too loud.
Iliana’s nerves fluttered again.
She had never imagined herself infiltrating the Pope’s personal chambers—not in her darkest nightmares or most blasphemous thoughts.
And yet here she was.
Walking beside the empire’s most unpredictable anomaly.
They stopped before a large wooden door trimd in gold. The handle was engraved with holy scripture. Runes of protection glowed faintly across the fra.
Iliana shot him a frantic look. "These barriers—"
Aiden placed two fingers on the rune.
A single soft pulse of energy left his fingertips...
...and the barrier parted like silk.
Iliana almost stumbled back.
He didn’t even break it.
He simply told it to open.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Was this truly the sa man she once thought was beneath her?
The sa man whose origins were murky, whose race was still questioned, whose aura felt wrong even before he awakened?
Aiden pushed the window beside the door—not the door itself—open quietly. Cold night wind rushed in, bringing with it the scent of incense, old wood, and a tingling holy pressure that pressed against Iliana’s skin like pins.
She winced at the sensation but followed.
Aiden stepped through the open window lightly, landing inside the Pope’s massive chamber with the quiet grace of a shadow slipping across the floor.
Iliana climbed in after him, though much less gracefully. Her boots caught on the fra; she nearly fell. She caught herself on the bedpost—
And froze.
Her eyes widened.
Her expression soured.
Disgust crawled across her face like a burning rash.
The Pope—the supposedly sacred leader of the empire, the supposed mouthpiece of the divine—was lying in his massive king-sized bed...
with three won curled around him.
Their clothes lay scattered across the floor like spilled secrets. The room slled faintly of sweat, perfu, and sanctimonious hypocrisy.
Iliana clenched her jaw.
"So this is the ’holy shepherd’ of humanity..." she whispered bitterly.
Aiden didn’t bother to look disgusted or surprised.
He’d expected this.
"Holiness is a costu," he said simply. "Power reveals the skin beneath."
Iliana shivered—not from the cold, but from how casually he dismantled the sanctity of the place.
Yet he didn’t co here to judge.
Not tonight.
He walked silently toward the massive bed. The Pope snored loudly, his body heavy and slack. One woman drooled against his shoulder. Another clung to his arm possessively, even while asleep.
It was a pathetic picture.
A symbol of a crumbling authority too weak to detect the sharpest blade in his room.
Iliana could only stare.
She had hated humans before. But this... this made her understand why her people never trusted the Church.
Aiden lifted his hand.
Iliana tensed instinctively.
She expected him to kill the Pope.
Or torture him.
Or do sothing monstrous.
But instead—
Aiden gently placed his hand across the Pope’s forehead.
His voice whispered through the dark like a ribbon of silk:
"Dream Weaving—activated."
The air around them shifted.
Not visually—not physically—but the air felt different.
Like the atmosphere took a breath inward and forgot to let it go.
Iliana’s eyes widened.
His mana, invisible yet suffocating, seeped into the Pope like threads of quiet corruption. The Pope’s sleeping expression twitched once. Then twisted. Then softened. His fingers curled weakly.
"What are you doing to him?" Iliana whispered.
Aiden didn’t answer imdiately.
A flicker of concentration passed through his eyes. A faint glow rippled under his palm, like words written in dreams were reshaping themselves according to his will.
Finally, he spoke.
"Preparing him."
"For what?"
"For tomorrow."
Iliana’s stomach tightened.
His voice held no hesitation. No doubt. No worry.
Just certainty.
Deadly certainty.
But then he added—
"I can’t manipulate him like Calipso or Seraphael. He’s not chard. Yet."
Her breath stuttered.
The idea that he had chard powerful beings casually enough to compare them was terrifying.
"But I can influence him," Aiden said. "Just enough."
He removed his hand.
The Pope exhaled shakily in his sleep—the kind of breath soone gives when brushing against a nightmare. Aiden’s influence had latched on, subtle but firm.
Iliana stared at him.
"And what will you... influence?"
Aiden looked down at the old man with cold amusent.
"His reactions. His fear. His choices. The words he’ll speak in front of the Saintess."
Iliana’s eyebrows shot up.
"The heroine you talked about?"
"Yes. The new Saintess."
A pause.
A whisper of wind through the open window.
"And I will make sure the Church kneels," Aiden finished softly.
His words were not loud.
Not threatening.
Not boastful.
But they carried the quiet gravity of inevitability.
They left through the window the sa way they entered—silently, invisibly, impossibly.
But Iliana felt it.
As her magic cocoon wrapped around them again and they vanished into the night, a single thought echoed in her mind:
"If he really succeeds... the empire might change...."
And if he failed?
The world would burn.
.
.
.
In the present ti.
The Pope was trembling on his throne.
Not with fear—
but with the aftershocks of the dream Aiden had planted into him.
And because of those whispers Aiden placed in his sleeping mind—
Because of that manipulated sequence of dread and clarity—
The Pope’s assassination plan
The holy chains
The execution squad
Every counterattack he had prepared
failed.
Failed before they began.
Failed because the Pope himself—convinced by dream-shaped fear—
positioned the Saintess exactly where Aiden wanted:
on his lap.
"Aahhhh.. " she moaned, feeling Lucifer’s touch. As he placed her on his lap.
Placed there like a precious relic.
Offered like a bargaining chip.
Presented as if fate itself demanded their alignnt.
The Saintess sat stiffly, trembling faintly where her thighs rested against his. Her breath stuttered every few seconds, heat crawling up her neck, down her spine, into places she didn’t want to acknowledge.
She didn’t understand why the Pope had ordered such ritual.
She didn’t understand why her own body reacted—
with fear, yes
but also with sothing unbearably fragile and warm—
whenever Aiden touched her, even by accident.
She didn’t understand why her visions blurred now, why every divine ssage felt like static, why the world broke into fractured shards every ti she tried to glimpse his fate.
But she understood one thing:
The Pope was terrified of Aiden.
And that fear had made him make a mistake.
A mistake that placed her—
the sacred Saintess—
on the lap of the one man Heaven couldn’t predict.
Her breath caught when his hand brushed her waist accidentally.
Her aura flickered violently.
Her thighs pressed together—reflexively, instinctively.
"W-why..." she whispered, unable to finish.
Aiden said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
Because the truth was simple:
Aiden had prepared all of this.
The dream.
The fear.
The Pope’s behavior.
Her position.
Her proximity.
And now...
His plan had succeeded.
Completely.
The heroine was in his grasp....and soon, the hero too.
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