Sophia Cortez-Price rose at dawn, walked the halls of her cathedral clad in a white dress and naught else. The stone was cold beneath her bare feet. It was not the first time she had made the pilgrimage; God willing, it would not be the last. The Blessed People depended on testimony from their Oracle, who had been ordained by the world's Architect Himself. Even though He slept within the Aerie, He still spoke to His people. She was the mouthpiece through which they could hear his divine word.

Every morning Sophia woke to the attention of her eight handmaidens: other girls in white dresses with flowers braided loosely through their hair. The handmaidens came from villages surrounding the holy city of Alethia, each nominated by parishioners who valued their virtue and character. Most churches sent letters to attempt to sell their pure women to the Holy See in Alethia—year after year, clamoring for the honor of serving the faith. The older nuns, former handmaidens all, would request the girls that caught their attention and marched them into the capital to judge their worth. The handmaidens-to-be would recite scripture and poetry to prove their devotion; they would swear oaths to God that they would serve Him in unwavering faith; they would pray and fast for days to show resilience.

Those that passed the initiation were given the solemn right to attend to the Oracle. Those that failed returned home.

The halls around her had high ceilings, with stone walls adorned in murals depicting the history of the ages: battles, love stories, coronations, defeats. The paintings had been painted in a colored ink that glowed from underneath, resembling stained glass. For millennia the Holy See's scholars had documented the goings-on of the world, painstakingly painting the sacred stones into eternal reminders.

When the physical world came to be, materialized from the chaotic matter of the astral world, life had begun here. Long before the Holy See had built its stronghold around the Aerie, it had been nothing more than a landmark— a meteorically large rock that had sunk deep into a gorge. Now the Aerie was surrounded by Alethia, the Holy City: the place that lords and peasants alike faced when they prayed.

Sophia walked the ancient halls of the cathedral with her head held high, her posture straight, her voice silent. Dozens upon dozens of Oracles had made their daily pilgrimages before her, each journey a little bit different from the last. The walks were always the same, but the visions were different each time.

When the crusaders liberated her from her home on the coast, a little fishing village where fields of wildflowers grew off the cliffs, and the sea crashed into jagged rocks day in, and day out, the nuns had brought home the seeds of her homeland's plants. Now the stone halls were wreathed in deep-green vines that grew between the cracks in the rocks, dotted with blue and white flowers along their lengths. It was beautiful, but it was still so unlike her homeland without the roar of the sea and the taste of fresh-caught fish.

All eight handmaidens were walking behind Sophia. First, they traversed the stained glass halls from her quarters to the antechamber. Then they gathered around a circular dais in the center of an open courtyard, where the colossal mountain that was the Aerie towered above everything else. A stream flowed from the Aerie's peak, which began to flow at dawn and broke at dusk. It was Sophia's duty to proceed onward through the mouth of the Aerie's entrance, and delve into the darkness within, to see the divine wisdom that the Architect granted to her each day.

The handmaidens gathered around the dais, where they fell to their knees and clasped their hands over their eyes. It was a tradition among those trained by the nuns of the Order to cover their vision, to show that humanity may as well have been blind without the guidance of the Holy See. Sophia did not look back at them; she did not need to. They each played a part in the rite of the daily pilgrimage.

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The moment Sophia crossed the threshold into the Aerie, there was a shift in the air. A shimmering mist obscured her vision. There were no lights to guide her way.

It became darker further inside; her footsteps were careful but not hesitant. It took precisely three hundred and forty paces forward to reach the Cloister. Sophia counted each step until she reached the total, then stopped. The ground beneath her lit with a radiant golden script. In moments the Cloister's walls were illuminated by runes scrawled in an angelic language. Then a stone slab fell to seal her in the Cloister, and clear water rose from her feet to the ceiling. Sophia felt her weight go slack, and she let herself float, her dress and hair billowing in the now-still Cloister. She drifted into the center of the room and said a quick prayer under her breath, her arms slack at her sides. The visions began.

Men were groaning in chains where the light could not touch them. Other men in gleaming armor marched through the halls, carrying torches on a quest to find something. There was a flash of blonde hair and bright blue eyes; there was a demon with claws like blades, its snarling visage drenched in blood. There was a brief song, a scream and a roar of something— a string instrument?--the likes of which she had never heard.

Sophia did not need to breathe, no need to move. Instead, she floated, letting the water course over her without fear. The visions came as the tide came. There was no chance of God allowing harm to come to her, even beneath the waves.

The waters roiled and brought her consciousness elsewhere. Rather than resist the pull, she moved with it. There was no point in trying to guide the visions that came from the Aerie; her will did not matter. It was the Architect that determined the pace of it all.

Sometimes the handmaidens would ask her what she saw in the Aerie, how she was able to glean meaning from the sea of souls. Sophia would tell them that it was a bit like knowing that someone stood right behind you: it was instinctual, natural.

Sophia waited, aimlessly floating. If God willed it, she would be here until dusk, when the waters would drain, and she would be released from her solemn duty until dawn broke again. There was a deafening silence for an amount of time she could not measure—which ended abruptly in a flurry of disembodied sights and sounds.

A woman was buried deep in the ground, entombed in sandstone miles beneath the surface. A veil of white flames coursed around her, which rendered the rocks soft and molten. She did not burn. Instead, she reached upwards, parting the earth with flame-cloaked fingers. Screaming and grunting, she pulled herself towards the surface, leaving a trail of liquefied stone in her wake.

Clawed fingers gripped the loamy surface as she tore herself from her prison. A pillar of fire erupted from where she stood on shaky legs, which rendered the entire space around her a charred mess. A wildfire broke out on the hilly plains, torching the grasses and trees beneath the setting sun.

Sophia saw rage and desperation in the woman's wild eyes, her ashen hair devoid of all color, her canine teeth the fangs of a devilish creature. Black, oaken horns jutted from her temples, resembling that of a nymph from fairy-tales said to children. Once her mother had explained that nymphs would not hurt humans, that if you respected their lands, they would allow you to pass unharmed. They grew flowers and tended to trees older than civilization itself. They adorned themselves with all manner of bright plants and lived in harmony with the world.

This woman did not have vines draped around her, and the earth did not grow faster beneath her feet. All around her, there was a devouring white flame that turned plants to ash, the air choked in gusts of acrid smog. Her horns were gnarled, twisted, and black. Each time she stepped, flames billowed from beneath her feet.

Sophia closed in on the woman within her mind's eye, tried to see closer— to confirm her suspicions. As she beheld the fury in that woman's eyes, her pale face broke out in a grin. She mouthed the words, "I can see you."

The waters of the Cloister lowered. Sophia fell to the earth, sopping wet, and hugged her arms close to herself.

"It can't be," she whispered. There could have been only one explanation. That woman was the Reveler: the devil that promised a flaming end to the only world they'd ever known. The Oracles before her had long prophecized that this day would come, warned the Holy See time and time again. Now it was her duty to return from the Aerie and bring news of the coming ruin.