The three thousand villagers, many weeks and miles away from Inillo, stood by the road overlooking the Fusirlo river. They mourned the boy whom they now buried in the ground without a coffin, accompanied into the next world by only the token offerings they could spare: a wooden effigy of St. Philomena, a toy horse of beaten tin, and an amulet pouch containing holy water and soil from his birthplace. Girolamo’s mother wept before the fast-closing grave, and her closest kin and friend keened alongside her. As if unaware of the wailing din, Father Andrea leaned on a sturdy cane and read a homily for the gathered crowd.

Girolamo’s courage, zeal, and good heart were all praised, and for meeting his death in the aid of a living saint his place in Heaven was assured.

They had been three days on the road out of Beroli, and traveled with greater speed in those days than at any other time in their journey. They had no wagons nor animals to pull them, but each went on their own two feet, and even the eldest had more vigor and endurance than they did before the Holy City fell. This, they all agreed, was the blessing of God and the work of Cato, whose baptisms rejuvenated both body and soul. None gave equal credit to the fear of Beroli, that the guards might ride in at any moment in pursuit, though when they walked on through the dark hours without rest it was that fear and not their piety that drove them forward.

But after three days of constant travel the caravan was broken, tired, and hungry. They had no welcome in any of the villages they passed, for the plague had only worsened as time went on. Without their animals and wagons, never mind the absence of a powerful noble to defend them, they cut a much sorrier picture than before. Even though many had pouches full of Beroli’s silver, these other villagers looked on their money with disdain and called them bandits. But after so much hardship, they could finally see the high towers of Anthusa peering over the horizon. At night, the city shone like a star that hid shyly beyond the lip of the earth.

Now, with dark clouds to their backs and the city’s lights before them, the people of Inillo stopped and laid their lone casualty to rest.

The night was warm and dry, and they were blessed in avoiding the humid heat of early summer. The villagers lay down to rest on the hillside atop their coats. Families huddled together less for warmth than for peace of mind. A few dozen kept watch, among them Remiro, who was still unable to walk more than a few paces away from the palanquin. While both he and Andrea had been beaten severely by the Beroli guards, Remiro’s resistance had earned him far more crippling injuries which Cato had only begun to heal before his disappearance. Even with his superior physique, he was still far from recovery.

“Father Andrea.” Tommaso the baker whispered. “You should get to bed, Father. We can keep watch ourselves.”

Andrea smiled and waved him off. He hadn’t even meant to keep watch, he just couldn’t sleep if he tried.

There was too much to consider. Why had Cato left them? Why had he allowed Girolamo to die? Why did he lead them into Beroli? Was it worse if he knew what fate awaited them, or if he didn’t? Why did he see fit to instruct Andrea in the Book of Zevon? Now that they were so close to Anthusa, what were they meant to do?

Before Cato appeared, Remiro had already planned to come here and seek out a new noble patron. Baron Inillo was by no means famous, but he was known in the area, and Remiro had a good reputation for diligence and tact among the local aristocrats. If he brought Father Andrea and some of Inillo’s more skillful residents, he would have little difficulty finding a new patron, perhaps one even wealthier and more influential than the baron.

But with a caravan of three thousand souls uprooted nearly whole from a remote village, many of them very young or very old, with no property except what they carried on their persons? How many of Anthusa’s honored and wealthy lords would take the chance on them?

None, Father Andrea thought, except perhaps as a gesture of pity. He burned with indignation at the thought that the future of his parish depended on the fickle moods of those so far above them.

It had always been that way. But when the baron was there, or when Cato came after him, it was so easy to forget that and that responsibility on their shoulders.

Nearby, a sleeping child coughed and hacked in his parents arms. A few minutes later, his father did the same.

When Cato was with them, not only had Inillo avoided the ever present plague, not a single person had gotten ill. Neither the children nor the elderly, despite traveling for weeks through wind and rain, had so much as coughed. But now Andrea could hear the plague spreading through the caravan, and on occasion wondered if some of the villagers were hiding black spots under their clothes. The whole caravan had watched the same suspicions tear apart the communities they passed by, and as much as it shamed him, Andrea was starting to suspect his own parishioners.

So he left behind any pretense of keeping watch and went down to the riverbank, where he watched his face and prayed. First for wisdom, then for temperance, then for answers, and finally, for Cato, wherever he might be. He hesitated for a long time about whether to pray for Cato’s return. It struck him as ungrateful in a way, that he had the privilege of meeting such a man and keeping his company, and even after he saved their lives and delivered them nearly to Anthusa’s doorstep, he still demanded more.

But Cato had made an oath, hadn’t he? He swore to protect the people of Inillo from harm. He had done so much for them, but perhaps he could do a bit more…

As Andrea washed his face and rose from the river bank, he spotted something floating in the river. It was hard to make out in the waning moonlight. A log perhaps. Or a body.

Impelled by some mad, impossible hope, Andrea ran towards it. He waded into the waist deep water and took hold of a hand, and oh so familiar hand, and pulled it to the riverbank with all his might.

“He has returned! He has returned!”

His yells awoke the entire caravan in a short time, and they came down to the riverbank. Andrea, exhausted and hurting from the exertion, lifted Cato’s body up from the wet earth. The villagers gathered around to touch him and see his face in the dim light. He was warm, but he had no pulse or breath, and in all other ways seemed dead.

But they stayed by his side and prayed. When the white sun rose, his eyelid twitched. When the gold sun rose, his limbs stirred. When the crimson run rose, he took a deep breath. And when the cerulean sun rose, so did he, and the villagers of Inillo cheered and wept at the end of their long and restless night.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Sister Aseneth watched this scene from a far hill, the mounting dawn behind her. She wore the monk’s torn habit, and smiled beneath the cowl to see Cato reunited with his people.

It was the least she could do after killing and eating him, though she hadn’t been in her right mind at the time. But she also couldn’t deny a powerful curiosity. He was a traveler from another world whose soul had been placed in a nearly-dead body, which all her considerable knowledge of souls and their movements suggested was impossible. Despite just barely surpassing the second realm of body and soul cultivation, his reserves of energy far outstripped his realm, such that he would explode if he tried to summon even a tenth of it all at once. It was ridiculous, wasteful, frivolous: he could only have gotten there by swigging holy wine like it was water. The body he inhabited was layered with powerful defenses, including an incredibly potent piece of necromancy that raised the host’s shade and drove it to eliminate threats, retrieve the soul and reconstruct the body. It was sophisticated enough to pull the soul out of her before she could finish digesting it, and perceptive enough to recognize she was no longer a threat. Aseneth estimated that there were fewer than a dozen cultivators in the known universe capable of creating such a contingency. But why would they place it on the body of someone so weak, and why would the spell still recognize the interloper Cato’s soul as the target of its self-resurrection?

Despite all this, she had better things to do than investigate him. She had rejected a divine offer, fallen to earth, and spent weeks in the thrall of a demon. Purifying and redeeming herself would take a long time. But her first priority, now that she had the energy to spare, was to investigate the plague and the destruction of the Holy City.

Still, she had taken a liking to Inillo’s people after seeing Cato’s memories. She could grant them a little more protection, to make up for the golden lions she had destroyed and the self-resurrection she had used up.

Aseneth reached under the monk’s torn habit and pulled a strand of dark hair. Infusing it with power and weaving a spell over it, she transformed it into a coal-black raven with shining eyes. It flew toward the villagers and circled them, watching tirelessly for any threat.

Then Aseneth was gone, a whisper in the wind.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The self-declared Holy Son Magnanimous VIII watched the slow turning of planet Fleur from a porthole of the holy starship. It had been a very long time since he had seen the red and blue hues of his native world, not since he was first appointed to the cardinalship. In his defense, he was very, very busy. He dug his family’s roots deep into Vintal, and especially into the Holy City, and saw to it that his sons, nephews, and cousins were appointed cardinals as well. He and his family were ever obedient servants of the Holy Son before last, Zealous II, and stood by him even when his mad ambitions to unite all of Vintal under his own power earned the ire of the entire known universe.

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When Zealous II finally passed away, the planets waited with bated breath to see what his closest allies would do, and they breathed a sigh of relief when Magnanimous VIII and his faction unanimously supported the last Holy Son, Prudence IV, an elderly, mild, and unambitious compromise candidate, one over whom everyone had just enough blackmail and influence to feel safe, but not enough to gain dominance over the Holy City during his tenure.

The only truly unpleasant part of Prudence’s rule was his unalloyed affection for his only son, begotten of a courtesan, upon whom he showered lavish gifts (lavish even by the standards of the Holy Son prior to Zealous II, Mysterious I, who commissioned an expedition to retrieve the core of a star and work it into the centerpiece of the Holy Crown, which he insisted on wearing about the house, to the dismay of his family, cardinals, and all polite society) and who wreaked countless outrages upon the commoners and aristocrats of the Holy City alike, a worthless layabout whose dearest father pardoned him of all crimes, even his attempt to pilfer the Holy Vault in order to pay off truly astronomical gambling debts.

Not that Magnanimous VIII was bitter. Such emotions were beneath his present dignity.

He was not at all above the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that bastard, Tenorio Kyno, was well and truly dead. Magnanimous and his allied cardinals, all of them powerful cultivators in their own right, survived the fall of the Holy City and the Abyssinian onslaught only because they immediately piled into the emergency starship hidden beneath the Sanctum Summum and fled the planet. Kyno was a worthless wretch whose lack of discipline and talent left him at the second stage of cultivation at the age of 160 despite access to near-unlimited treasures resources thanks to his father’s position.

Never mind that, since his father’s death, everyone he had insulted during Prudence IV’s reign was itching to kill him, and he survived as long as he did only by hiding away in the Sanctum Summum. With the Sanctum destroyed, the city virtually annihilated, and enemies that would kill him on sight all over the universe, his death was assured.

Magnanimous had that little satisfaction to tide him over while he waited in orbit over Fleur. The Holy Son’s traditional seat of power on Vintal was gone, and he needed a new place to assert his power. As much as it irked him, the best option was to return to Fleur and give up some of the Holy Son’s traditional independence in exchange for the King of Fleur’s protection. Beyond being his native planet, it was one of the largest, wealthiest, and most heavily armed kingdoms in the known universe.

True, his relationship with the King of Fleur had soured as of late, as Magnanimous had to make many deals and burn a great many bridges in the course of securing the Holy Throne. He made a lot of decisions he would have avoided if he knew that most of the cardinals would have been killed.

Not that he was bitter.

But when the Holy Son came knocking at your door and asked to settle on your planet, you said yes! It was a no-brainer! So why was the King of Fleur making him wait so damned long?

No that he was-

“Your Holiness!”

“Cardinal de Resol. Come, take a seat.”

“At once, Your Holiness.”

Magnanimous VIII’s rage subsided in another wave of warm and fuzzy feelings. Yes, he had waited so very long to hear that title, that reverence. Granted, it was coming from his nephew, but soon all the universe would call him by that name. He had waited so very long. He could wait just a little longer.

“I’m afraid I have some news, Your Holiness.”

“Go on.”

“I was cataloging the items in the hold. The ones from His Holiness Prudence IV’s offices.”

“What about them?”

“While I was down there, I heard an alert, and found a broken resurrection effigy.”

Now that was news. Those effigies were anchors for potent spells that could autonomously resurrect their hosts. This one must have just raised its host.

“Whose was it? One of Prudence’s younger allies? Cardinal Zeno, maybe?”

Such spells were rare and difficult to create, but also of limited use. For cultivators as powerful as Magnanimous or Prudence, they were pointless. Anything that could kill them would be more than capable of destroying the spell, which could at most imitate the power of a cultivator in the fourth realm. Cardinal Zeno was appointed to his office at a very young age and had only just crossed the barrier into the fourth realm himself. It wasn’t out of the question that he might have escaped with an injury, passed away afterwards, and returned to life now.

“I’m afraid not, Your Holiness.”

“... spit it out, Guillaume.”

“It belonged to Tenorio Kyno.”

…

Tenorio Kyno had a resurrection effigy. Of course he did. The old bat Prudence had already done everything else for his bastard son, so why not also spend one of the most valuable enchantments the church had on him?

The air tensed and flexed around the self-declared Holy Son in waves. The hull of the starship creaked in protest as his wrathful aura twisted space.

“Do you mean to say that wretch not only survived the city’s destruction, but something else killed him and he’s still alive?!”

“Please, calm yourself, Your Holiness.”

“Why?! Give me one good reason not to throw you out the damn airlock right now!”

“There is news from Fleur, Your Holiness.”

Yes. Fleur. That did merit his attention more than the life of a spoiled brat. The air calmed, and the starship’s hull remained intact.

“This had better be good news, Guillaume.”

His Holiness’ nephew froze.

“... the King has declared… that he will give the Holy Son a new home in Fleur… and support Your Holiness’ legitimacy against the slander of heretics.”

Good, good… what? Neither his nephew nor the King were in the habit of being imprecise with their words.

“What does he mean that he will support my legitimacy?”

“Your Holiness…” the younger cardinal trailed off.

“Answer me, damnit!”

“Cardinal Tor also survived the Holy City’s fall and has declared himself the Holy Son.”

A bright meteorite clad in red robes burned in the skies over Fleur. It crashed in a lake just twenty miles outside the royal palace, swam to shore, changed into fresh clothes, and went into the palace to tell His Majesty that His Holiness Magnanimous VIII would accept his generous offer with an open heart and immense gratitude.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The late Holy Son Prudence IV stood on the steep slopes of the Mountain of Heaven and watched the universe below. Immaculate XIII would often start reciting songs of praise as he climbed, and being so accustomed to the null-time of heaven could wander up for several days before realizing Prudence wasn’t following him.

This time it took him only a few hours to realize the younger Holy Son’s absence and climb back down the mountain.

“What is it now, Prudence?”

Prudence stepped aside and gestured toward the gap in the coruscating golden clouds of heaven. A young man with auburn hair, looking even younger than he last remembered, woke up in the arms of peasants on the shores of a river.

“God and all his angels give me strength! You doted on the boy quite too much when you were alive, it’s time you let him go.”

“He was killed a few days ago.”

“And he was resurrected, just like you prepared. He’s fine.”

“He won’t be fine if he dies again.”

“He’s almost two hundred years old, Prudence. If he winds up in Hell now it’s his own fault.”

“He would have been better off if I helped him less, I think.”

Immaculate XIII raised his arms to the higher heavens and praised God that, at last, his great grandson had comprehended the bleedingly obvious truth.

“Now that we’re on the same page, let’s go.”

Immaculate XIII walked up the Mountain of Heaven for another hour before realizing Prudence IV hadn’t so much as moved.

“I swear to God and all his angels, Prudence, I will zap you into dust and reconstitute you at the top if you don’t move!

Prudence IV remained as he was, observing a young boy on the third tier of Purgatory.

“Prudence…”

“Fine, I’m coming! What happened to temperance, or is that not a virtue anymore?”

With a wave of his hand, Prudence IV tossed a shining ball of light through the portal and let it close.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Girolamo lay bruised and beaten on the third tier of Purgatory. All around him was a dark mist, and from that mist emerged twisted shadows that stoned and beat and burned him. They had the faces of the bricklayers and the guards, but worst of all was that horrifying stranger on the road. No matter how long he endured the pain, he endured yet more without passing out or feeling it dull.

He didn’t know how long he had been there. Time seemed to be a far away illusion. But one day a shining silhouette appeared, descending from on high, with the face of his father. His father, who had left when he was eight, absconding with the old smith’s daughter and leaving his wife to raise Girolamo alone.

The shadows backed away as the shining figure approached.

“Papa…”

“My son.” His father did not weep, but his voice was filled with equal measures of joy and sorrow.

“Papa… help me.”

The shadows stepped forward again, but this time they assaulted the shining figure. They drove him to the ground with heavy blows and burned brands into his skin.

“Stop! Stop hurting him!”

“I forgive you.”

That was what the figure uttered with each blow. Whatever the torment he absorbed on behalf of his son, those words were never far behind.

“Papa, what are you doing!?”

“You have to forgive them, Girolamo.”

He looked upon the faces of these vicious tormentors. How could he begin to forgive what they had done to him?

“Papa-”

“It’s hard, I know. Start by forgiving me, Girolamo.” There was sadness and joy alike. “Forgive me, my son.”

Girolamo hugged the bright spirit of his father as it shielded him from clubs and irons, and forgave him. After many days of forgiveness, the shining figure waned like mist, and rose up the mountain of purgatory, back to its punishment on the seventh tier.

Then the beatings and burnings came for Girolamo again, but each time he forgave his tormentors, and the pain was transformed into the purest joy. So his redemption continued for many years, until his soul was purged of all wrath and anger.