The proceedings had left the knights emotionally exhausted. They wouldn’t have had much in them to react, if the new revelation had simply been shocking.

Their surprise had simply run out. What was another secret passage at this point? Or more of the castle’s dirty laundry? The proceedings had already gone through so many turnabouts that, even if the inquisition were to be flipped on its head yet again, it wouldn’t feel so dramatic.

But what’s left, when most of one’s emotions are wrung dry, are the most primal ones: the ones that border on instinct.

And what was building in the abbey right now, as Aldous related the tale of Lady Renea’s birth, was the most primal form of dread: that which—as long as the right person prodded it in the wrong direction—could become terror.

Demons were never a matter to be taken lightly in Varant, even though there were many in the Order who believed them to be a nonsense superstition.

Not every knight was pious. And not every knight lived their lives with faith. But those who did feared demons greatly, believing them to be the evil that underlay the encroaching darkness. If holiness was what tempered their swords, then surely the machinations of demons were what sharpened their foes’ claws.

The taboos were older than Varant itself, and had been around since the beginning of the empire. They were written into its oldest chronologies, recited in its most ancient oral traditions.

And now the most respected man in the duchy was testifying to the demons’ existence, with no deception apparent in his voice, nor any hint of irony.

If Aldous had been known as a zealot, perhaps it would not have been so striking. But he had never acted superstitiously before. Nor had he been particularly known to engage in discussions of religion or theology. He was not even one to be seen frequently in the abbey.

Sir Aldous Ferme had always simply been a man of conviction. When he fought the shadow beasts beyond the north wall, it seemed as if his aura and his alone never faltered.

There were those skeptics, who honed their fearlessness to keep their aura sharp. There were the devout, who, even at the northern wall, spent their time recuperating in prayer.

And then there was Aldous, who had always wordlessly led the battle with will alone. The way he’d lived his life ‘till now gave his words credence, and the strident conviction in his voice gave them salience.

Aldous had never been shy in saying Renea’s birth was the one time in his life he had seen the hands of something greater at work—a more powerful force, intervening in the matters of man. And that made the ferocious way he retold the story convincing. Aldous wasn’t merely rewrapping the tale in his newfound contempt and vehemence.

He was telling it as a horror story.

As many times as they’d heard the tale, none of the knights in the room had ever taken the time to viscerally imagine it: what it would be like for an unmoving, unbreathing infant to abruptly come wailing back to life in your arms.

Now that they gave it due consideration, the actual imagined experience of the ‘miracle’ was frankly chilling.

And then there were the implications.

Demons—as described by those who believed in them—were crafty creatures. They were liars and sycophants, who veiled themselves in that which was supposed to be good, in order to cover up their core which was wicked.

From what they’d seen today, did that not aptly describe Lady Renea?

The knights were silent, and their behavior was calm—but for Ailn who was trying to keep Renea away from nooses and guillotines, it was the most dangerous shift in the abbey’s atmosphere yet.

The only good news was that, judging by the look on Kylian’s face, Aldous’s story was only serving to alienate him.

“Something evil filled that dead child that day, Sir Kylian,” Aldous said, trying to restrain the anger and sorrow that were entering his voice. “That creature’s flashing red eyes… were unmistakably those of a demon’s.”

“You would truly rest your claims on such a shallow superstition at this moment?” Kylian asked, in disbelief.

“The fool I was that day thought the same, Kylian. When I held the infant in my arms, I said taboos be damned,” Aldous growled. “I told not a soul of it. Not even Celine.”

Suddenly, Ailn had a terrible premonition. He broke into a cold sweat, realizing the worst thing that could happen right now.

Something told him it was about to.

“I watched over her with hope,” Aldous said. He sounded regretful. “I was so certain the old tales were only for simpletons and children. I had been tricked, in the cruelest of ways—because such is a demon’s wont.”

…And Ailn’s instincts tended to be right in these situations. He could hear Renea quietly sniffling.

It was apparent she found Aldous’s condemnation too painful to watch, because she’d gone back to staring at the floor.

Previously, the floor was just the natural destination for her listless gaze. Now, from the way she was blinking fast and biting her lip harshly, Ailn wagered she was proactively self-repressing and self-minimizing—as much as she reasonably could with swords at her neck.

"Yet, from the very outset, her mannerisms were of such a peculiar nature that one could not simply overlook them,” Aldous said. "Many among the knights gathered here can attest that she uttered her first discernible words at a mere six months of age.”

This darker interpretation of what was once a cherished fact about Renea, prompted many knights to exchange wary glances, their discomfort palpable in the charged silence of the abbey.

“It is not a sin to be precocious, Aldous,” Kylian uttered, clearly taken aback by the many knights’ ready acquiescence. “His Grace Sigurd was exceptionally quick to take on the sword. What of it?”

"Did young master Sigurd also babble of strange and eerie magics when he was but a babe of two?" Aldous asked. "Did he speak of tapestries that could move on their own, and soothsaying that could predict the very weather?

Then Aldous’s grimace darkened further.

“And what of when I caught the child gazing intently into the mirror and pondering her ‘true name’—as if the one she bore was somehow false?” Aldous asked. “Was this precociousness as well?”

Gasps echoed through the abbey. This latest testimony evidently left many of the knights deeply unsettled.

Stolen novel; please report.

“It was Celine, not I, who first felt the eeriness of the child, the accumulated ways in which she did not seem to belong,” Aldous said. “And it was I who defended Lady Renea, when even Celine was adamant she sensed not a shred of holiness from her own child.”

Anguish progressively clouding his features, it was clear that Aldous now felt he’d made a terrible mistake.

“I only realized the grievousness of my error on the day Celine died,” Aldous said, his voice beginning to stiffen. “Did you know, Sir Kylian? I rode my beloved horse to death that day.” The pained look on his face took on a note of chagrin. “Yet still I had… arrived too late to save our beloved Saintess.”

Despite the concerted effort Aldous made to compose himself, his breathing was turning labored and heavy.

“When I looked at poor Celine’s body, I saw something I simply couldn’t comprehend,” Aldous said, struggling with his emotions. “She’d been struck by an arrow to her upper abdomen. It would’ve been a slow death… from blood loss.”

Now fully lost in remembrance, Aldous’s nostrils flared like a bull’s. “How… how could Lady Renea have failed to save her?”

He was no longer looking Renea’s way. Just as she couldn’t stand to watch him as he condemned her, Aldous couldn’t bear the sight of the girl he called a monster.

Not while he was dredging up these painful memories for which he held her responsible.

“There and then, I shook Lady Renea by the shoulder, begging her for an explanation. It was insolent and shameless, but what could I do? The child simply stared into my eyes wordlessly, with… her red eyes, demonic and flickering.”

“There were no tears. No sorrow, even as she knelt over her mother’s corpse,” Aldous no longer restrained the fury in his voice. “Only the flashing red, as vivid as on the day of her birth—a stark innuendo, mocking the mercy I once assumed right.”

Aldous had been wily all evening, and arguably the inquisition’s best actor. But right now, his tone was filled with genuine disgust—the kind that couldn’t be mimicked.

It mixed with all the dread and fear in the abbey. And it was having a particularly strong effect on Renea, whose breath had started hitching.

That’s when Ailn saw it, in the periphery of his vision.

The flicker of red in Renea’s eyes.

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Renea couldn’t stop her panic. Fear was fraying what little presence of mind she had left. The swords at her neck made it so hard to breathe. Her real eyes were coming out. She could feel them. She couldn’t stop them.

And the moment she felt her red eyes manifesting, she squeezed them shut immediately.

Being seen without being able to see anything in return except for the darkness of her lids—knowing the entire abbey was watching her break down—was as humiliating as it was painful. But the knights might really kill her if they saw them.

Because of her eyes, there was a very real chance she was going to be hung.

Her real eyes weren’t noble, nor blue and wide like the sky. They were… a flashing red, that flickered like flames, and they were so bright that when Renea saw them in the mirror she could swear she felt them burning.

Anyone would think they were demonic. Someone important to her had.

Now, it was only a matter of time before her burning eyes would be forced open for everyone in the abbey to see.

The full reality of her situation was only hitting her now. Her execution was almost inevitable. The knights were truly beginning to believe she was a demon.

And it was her fault. Her wretched and petulant behavior had poisoned the knights’ sentiment toward her, and now the inquisition was escalating to the point where even the truth would fail to dissuade its course.

She’d tried to rescind her self-incriminating testimony when Aldous gave her the chance; she even lied that she healed Ailn, despite how disgusting it made her feel.

That would’ve been her last chance to tell the truth.

But the memory of her mother scoffing paralyzed her. With her eyes shut, she couldn’t escape it: the image of her mother sneering even as her body went limp, and the snow beneath her turned scarlet.

----------------------------------------

Trying not to show it on his face, Ailn panicked internally. He caught it fast, but who else did?

Renea must have realized it was coming, because upset as she was, she still had the presence of mind to immediately close her eyes.

Ailn watched the knights’ reactions in his visual periphery. A face or two looked startled, but no one had yelled out, so there was that. Judging by the way Kylian’s hands were shaking… he probably caught sight of them too.

“And if it is not a demon who controlled Renea eum-Creid that day, then her soul is only all the filthier,” Aldous snarled. “Her birth was no miracle… It was blasphemy.”

A stifled whimper escaped Renea. Her eyes were shut—but her ears weren’t.

Their one lucky break was that Aldous didn’t seem to have seen it himself. He hadn’t been looking at Renea, because he’d been too absorbed in the most painful part of his story.

If Aldous forced open her eyes right now, while the abbey was still in this mood, it really could be over for them.

Ailn was at a loss for what to do.

“What say you, Lady Renea?” Aldous asked coldly.

But Renea said nothing in response.

With Aldous now addressing her directly, she tried to force herself mute. She’d long lost control of her autonomic state, so it wasn’t really working, but whatever the case she refused to answer him.

That’s when he finally turned toward her—and saw that her eyes were closed in desperation. Aldous was not a man too dull to miss what this likely meant.

“...It would seem Lady Renea has a reason to conceal her eyes,” Aldous said. “I can only conjecture as to why,” he added dryly.

The problem was that Aldous had already started to calm down. He’d gone through his worst memories, and unleashed all that bitterness and resentment in one glorious smear.

The catharsis that had come from his denunciation of Renea was evidently enough to ease him back into perfect lucidity, just as he looped back into his lies. And now he was trying to put a bowtie on everything.

Sophie, for her part, was baffled.

She couldn’t understand why her sister had closed her eyes—and now of all times.

“Renea… what’s wrong?” Sophie asked, in a worried whisper.

Yet her sister stayed mute. Renea was biting down on her bottom lip so hard now that it looked like it might bleed.

There had been a moment when things looked hopeful. So, Sophie kept quiet, tempted by the prospect of surviving the inquisition with their secret still theirs for the keeping.

But Sophie had underestimated just how severe the knights’ emotional battering would become. And just when she realized what a grave mistake she’d made, she was stunned to silence by the revelation that Aldous was likely her father.

She’d been momentarily shocked to inaction, right when her sister needed her the most.

Now that she’d caught her bearings, she had to say for Renea what Renea couldn’t say for herself. The truth.

But despite herself, she was shaken by the sight of Renea forcing her eyes shut.

Sophie didn’t realize Renea harbored secrets even she wasn’t privy to. It was the classic mistake of a faithful confidante: assuming that profound and deeply-rooted trust was as a matter of course absolute.

Her inner turmoil briefly silenced her, but it was just long enough for her to miss her chance to speak. Meanwhile, Aldous, with all his presence and charisma, continued to steal momentum.

“... What this insinuates, my fellow knights of the Order, is a pattern. One our two-faced Saintess cannot help,” Aldous said. His tone was clean and reasonable. “She does not stop at deceit. She exults in derision—and gloats when she has achieved her means.”

Aldous turned to Reynard, who still had his sword at Renea’s neck.

“Sir Reynard. You saw Lady Renea, as she postured—cunningly—as a maid. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of her demonic eyes yourself,” Aldous said. “Search your memory thoroughly.”

Reynard, thoroughly put on the spot, gaped back at Aldous. He dropped his gaze to the trembling Renea, then back to Aldous.

The knight was emotionally torn. But more importantly he was confused.

“I… it was dark, S-Sir Aldous…” Reynard stammered. Unlike Tristan, he wasn’t one to trip over his words. But his mind was working overtime. “There’s no way I cou—”

“Did she not flee from you and the other knights that night?” Aldous asked. “Surely you found this behavior strange?”

Solemnity on his face, Aldous was beginning to posture as if the inquisition was already his victory.

But just as Aldous was ready to pressure the knights into rendering judgment, the abbey doors flew open with a slam, and a scream came ringing out from across the way.

“Just what is going on here?!”

Late, but finally present, Ennieux stood at the abbey’s entrance—still in robe and with an awful case of bedhead.