Suraiya surveyed the apartments Selucia had guided her to with wonder.

The rooms she’d been granted were part of the Tollarius Wing of Last Hope, situated to the right and due east of the ‘palace central’ which hosted the throne room and various assorted public chambers. It was not far from those facilities, from what she had gleaned in their journey, but that was only by merit of scale.

Last Hope could have fit the Royal Palace of Stormharrow within it five times.

The rooms Selucia showed her to consisted of a main bedroom large enough to house twenty people comfortably with space to spare, a connected bathroom that her cousin called an ‘ensuite’, a walk-in wardrobe with rotating racks and smooth drawers both powered by runic choirs she’d never heard of, a living area complete with a fully furnished kitchen, balcony, and impressive sitting area; and finally a parlor between the outer entrance and inner entrance to the apartments.

“This is all for me?” Suraiya asked with a look of shock toward the redhead.

“You’re the daughter of the High Justicar, Suraiya.” Selucia said with a laugh. “Why are you surprised?”

“I didn’t think…” she trailed off and shook her head instead of finishing.

Selucia, however, was not to be deterred.

“You thought your relationship would mean nothing due to your being godsworn, I take it?”

Suraiya grimaced at the tone of amused exasperation in Selucia’s voice, but nodded nonetheless. Her companion’s words had been on the mark, and even when she felt the faint flush of embarrassment heating her cheeks, she didn’t call on Iron Will to suppress it. She deserved the shame that came with the presumption.

“We are not a trusting or foolish people, Suraiya. We know the threat your people pose, and I assure you, we are hardly ignorant of the fact that even if you are questioning—likely thanks to your mother’s presence as much as the common sense you seem to possess—and reconsidering your entire life, there are many others that will not share your open-mindedness.”

Selucia moved forward and discarded her heavy cloak and robes, under which she wore a scandalously loose-fitting crimson top that barely covered her sarvellum-wrapped breasts, and a pair of identically coloured and similarly bold short-cut leggings that all but clung to her wrapped thighs.

When she finished doffing her attire, she promptly flounced into one of the four luxurious white sofas square-framing a beautiful crystal table at their centre. The formation was located near the far side of the living area, near to the closed pair of impressive glass balcony doors, and set into a subtle depression clearly intended for guests to relax and take their ease.

“Ah, your clothes—?”

“We have modesty aplenty, Suraiya.” Selucia said with a laugh and mischievous twinkle in her jade green eyes. “While wrapped in sarvellum, I am no more naked than you are in all that gaudy plate. My shape may be clearer, but I assure you, the wrappings hide more than they show.”

A rich laugh escaped her when Suraiya’s cheeks heated again, and the princess very nearly let herself succumb to the desire to pout.

“You are teasing me.” she accused while making her way toward the sitting area.

“Of course I am.” Selucia agreed shamelessly. “We are family, of a kind, and it is my pleasure and privilege as the elder to enjoy how easily flustered you are. I have no doubt that your doe-eyed wonder will not last, given whom it is you were born from. I intend to enjoy it while I can.”

At the mention of Vasilia, Suraiya’s mirth dimmed and she paused mid-stride to look back toward the inner doors to her apartments, peering at them without fully seeing the golden runes dancing along the white-painted doors. Her mother had not accompanied them when Selucia had led her away, and while Suraiya knew it was important for Vasilia to speak to the Stormharrow Knights that had accompanied the expedition, the absence of her mother still hurt.

Their reunion had been far too short for her liking.

“You will have plenty of time to speak to her soon, Suraiya.” Selucia said in a more reassuring tone, and drew the princess’ gaze back to her. “Your mother is the High Justicar. Given her origins, that title was not won easily nor absent on-going suspicion. Every move she makes is criticised, and for all that Elysea is not enthralled by the despotic tyranny of the Nine, we have our own problems with internal power struggles.”

Suraiya’s eyebrows rose at the honesty on display, and she only hesitated for a moment before settling her doubts and promptly beginning to doff her armour—starting with her gauntlets, pauldrons, and sabatons.

“What manner of power struggle?” she asked without obfuscation. “Perhaps I can be of aid to her.”

“Ha! You may be her daughter, but you are no Princess here, Suraiya. Your intervention in such matters would only bring harm to her cause. It will take years before the people here see you as one of them, barring a miracle or Imperator’s Decree.”

“Sanctuary has a monarch?” Suraiya asked in surprise while laying her cloak on the floor—dirty and dusted as it was—and setting her sabatons, pauldrons, and gauntlets upon with the careful arrangement she’d been unconsciously following since she’d been taught proper armament care in the Desolation.

“It does not,” Selucia said with a shake of her head. “It has the Regent, Charlemagne.”

“The Calamity.” Suraiya half-stated, half-questioned.

“Yes. The Calamity. Or at least, the remnant of the last one we know of. He is what we call an Echo; the remnant of a Soul whose essence is preserved as a mana simulacrum of the original.”

“I still don’t know what that is.” Suraiya said, and allowed Selucia to hear the frustration she felt at her own ignorance.

“A Simulacrum?” Selucia asked with a grin.

“No, I meant—oh.” Suraiya gave the other woman a baleful look at her continued teasing, and worked on undoing the straps and buckles of her stained and dulled once-shining alabaster breastplate. When it came off, she sighed in relief after her breasts were freed from the compression. She couldn’t wait to unwrap them and take a hot bath, which she could only assume the Elyseans had some miraculous means of procuring.

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She was filthy with sweat, dirt, and general weariness that clung to her like the stench of a refuse-laden aqueduct.

“I’m sorry.” Selucia said with a quiet laugh. “You are very easy to tease. You want to know about the Calamity title, I take it?”

“Yes.” Suraiya said as primly as she could muster, and while banishing the wave of exhaustion that gripped her when she was finally free of her armour and the underlying chainmail. Next she worked on removing the leather padding she wore on her thighs, shins, arms, and chest—without pulling off the loose-fitting cotton shirt and leggings she wore beneath, set over wrapped skin or not.

She had no desire to all-but-expose herself to Selucia, friendly or not.

“It’s simple enough, really.” Selucia began while stretching out on the sofa like a cat. “The Calamity is a title reserved for the greatest heroes, adventurers, and villains the Prime Material has ever known: the Nephilim.”

Suraiya cursed when her dust-and-sweat matted hair got caught in the leather jerkin, and she very nearly tore out a small handful of the golden strands in frustration while working to untangle them. Thankfully she managed to avoid assaulting her own hair, and threw down the leather jerkin with a huff. Damnable thing.

“Nephilim are a children’s tale.” she said to Selucia automatically. “Lies and propaganda created by… the… oh.” Suraiya trailed off when she realised what she’d been about to stay, and felt herself ripple with another wave of existential anxiety. Unable to resist any longer, she stepped forward and sank into the welcoming embrace of one of the sofas.

“You’re starting to see the pattern, it seems.” Selucia said calmly.

“Every time I feel ready to dismiss something as a tale, or hearsay, or lies—it always comes back to the same thing; I was taught those truths by the Grand Ascendancy. If everything they said was false, then what was real? You say the Calamity refers to Nephilim, the Ascendancy say Nephilim are a bedtime story made to scare disobedient children. It is incredibly disorienting to have to consider everything I’ve ever known to be a lie.”

“You’ll get used to the truth with time.” Selucia assured her.

“That’s just it, though.” Suraiya said with frustration. “I know you believe what you’re saying to be true, and much of what you’ve shown me truly does support your words, but does that mean I can just take everything you say at factual value? You are not omniscient, Selucia, and neither are your people. How do you know that what you believe is true isn’t just another falsehood?”

“You’re going to spiral if you think like that.” the redhead said firmly.

“I’m already spiralling.” Suraiya admitted with more audible exhaustion than she wanted to show. “Sanctuary was just the pinnacle of the proverbial tower. My dead mother is not only alive, but is essentially one of the highest authorities in a nation I didn’t even know existed. My entire life has apparently been deception stacked on top of maliciously enforced adherence to a social order that intentionally perpetuates needless suffering, and stratifies people for some perceived notion of social stability that I am still struggling to find sense in after what I’ve seen here.”

Suraiya felt her ears glisten, and she realised she was too exhausted to care.

“Everything seems so backward, Selucia. You seem so friendly, yet you’re as much my companion as you are my captor. My mother, my own flesh and blood, has a new family, with a step-father and half-brother I never knew existed. You talk to me about the history of the world, and tell me it’s a lie—that my bloodline is noble and treacherous both, and that I am the daughter of traitors and killers while simultaneously praising me as a child of heroes and Emperors.”

“All of that is true.” Selucia said simply.

“Do you not hear how mad that sounds?” she asked hoarsely.

“I do. The truth is neither kind nor convenient, sometimes. It simply is. Much like the Blightspawn, it neither hides its nature nor apologizes for what it is. You must simply confront it and, if you have the strength, conquer it or be crushed beneath its weight.”

“How are you so certain about everything? How can you be?”

“Faith.” Selucia replied simply. “Faith, and the Mantle.”

“I thought the gods were evil.”

“My Faith is not in gods, cousin.”

“Then what?” Suraiya asked with an edge of desperation.

“The Prophecy.” Selucia said simply. “The Nephilim.”

“Gods, you don’t even realise how ironic that is.” Suraiya said bitterly. “Prophecies. Nephilim. Do you even realise how similar you sound to the Hierarch and Clerics? Prophecies are of the gods, Nephilim are mythical warriors descended from Heaven to bring devastation upon the righteous, as a test from the Divine.”

“Prophecies have nothing to do with gods,” Selucia disagreed firmly, “and Nephilim are Calamities, but so too are they miracles. It was said by Varian Corinnius Merar that a falling star will bring justice with the flames of its descent, and in the hour of greatest need, the Nephilim will come to liberate Elysea from the Nine.”

Suraiya looked up at Selucia’s words, and felt a glimmer of recognition.

“A falling star…?” she asked distantly.

“The same one that fell weeks hence, yes. The same one I knew you pursued. The same one the System sent you to find. That is not a celestial body, Suraiya. That is the Nephilim—that is the Calamity, and it comes to sunder the world on the edge of its Blade.”

“And that doesn’t sound like evil to you?” Suraiya asked incredulously.

“Compared to over five millennia of enslaved obedience to divine Tyrants?” Selucia asked with a snort. “No, Suraiya. That sounds like justice to me.”

“...madness.” Suraiya said in a wave of exhaustion. “It’s all madness, Selucia.”

Tears stained her cheeks, and Suraiya could hear that she was speaking hoarsely—she just didn’t care. It was all so exhausting.

“Everything feels so wrong, and twisted, and turned on its head. You speak of doomsday prophecies, deny divinity, and then use the same methods of the Ascendancy’s preachers in the same breath—albeit to different purpose. Gods… even this place! I feel so at peace here, and that terrifies me, because what if this is a lie too? What if I’m under a spell, or everything I’m seeing is some fanciful illusion? What if I’m being eaten by some mad Blightspawn and don’t even know it? I—I—”

Suraiya’s shoulders shook and she buried her face in her hands.

As the floodgates burst open, a deluge of pent-up emotions cascaded through Suraiya. It was as though a dam, long strained and cracking, had finally given way under the relentless pressure of her stress, pain, bitterness and horror. Her once unyielding endurance finally shattered and fragmented, like a mirror reflecting her fractured soul.

The weight of her experiences in the Desolation, a wasteland she had dared to tread against a chorus of warnings, pressed down upon her. With each step she had taken in that forsaken hellscape, she had gathered more than just dust on her boots; she had collected scars, unseen yet profoundly felt—each one a testament to her defiant will, a will that now seemed as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke.

In that moment of sundering pain, as Suraiya felt herself crumbling under the relentless assault of her own memories; the worst realization was the gnawing guilt that ate at her heart. She knew, with a clarity that was almost cruel, that she had been the architect of her own Desolation. Her choices—naive, selfish, and misguided—had etched every trauma, every scar, and every haunting image into the canvas of her once-innocent mind.

She, and she alone, had killed the carefree girl she had been.

She, and she alone, had created the haunted killer that she had become.

Suraiya leaned into them like a lost child, and there was no thought of shame, propriety, or any romanticized notion of storybook honour. She wept with the raw intensity of a soul laid bare, her tears carrying the agony of her choices, the gripping fear and existential dread that had shadowed her steps, the burning rage at the unfairness of fate, the nausea at the brutality she’d witnessed upon the Desolation’s expanse, the gnawing worry for Ser Gilbert, and the aching, almost childlike yearning for the reassurance of her father’s wisdom, and the desperate need to feel the embrace of her mother.

She let it all out in a hoarse, wailing, shameless display of utter weakness.

In the warm grip of a stranger, an enemy, and newfound family; she set her pain free at last.