Deus Necros

Gallows’s laughter stopped.

That mattered more than anything she could have said.

Ludwig dragged her slightly higher by the throat, keeping her feet off the ground now. ”Which line does what?”

Kaiser pointed to the first channel, a thick line of glowing blood that sank into the floor and pulsed with a cold, steady rhythm. ”That one is blocking the souls from leaving their corpses. It runs downward, toward the cells.”

The lantern shook again, as if it recognized the path.

Kaiser pointed to the second, which glowed with a pale gold edge beneath the red. ”That one isolates Titania from her divine patrons. It is tied to the veil around her and likely to the oath restraints.”

Redd looked toward Ludwig immediately, understanding the cost of leaving that line intact.

Ludwig did not speak yet.

Kaiser moved his hand to the third channel. This one was thinner than the others, but more deeply embedded into the chamber. It did not pulse as visibly. Instead, the blood script along it shimmered strangely, becoming difficult to focus on if stared at for too long. It ran upward through the wall and vanished toward the main structure of the Sacrosanctum.

”And that?” Ludwig asked.

”That one hides the entire operation from outside perception,” Kaiser said. ”Not from people physically standing in this chamber, obviously, but from those who might otherwise sense the ritual from beyond the Sacrosanctum. It conceals the descent, the soul-binding, and Titania’s isolation under the authority of the church. As long as it remains, the people above only feel what the Pope allows them to feel. The city sees a mass. The gods receive obstruction. Anyone outside the system receives noise.”

Gallows’s face twisted, and for the first time, the fury there became alarm.

Ludwig noticed.

The choice was obvious, though not painless.

A softer man might have chosen the children first. Releasing the souls would please Necros and end one immediate atrocity. Ludwig wanted that. The lantern wanted that. Every corpse below deserved that. Another might have chosen Titania, because freeing her would give them one of the most powerful allies in the building, a Saintess whose anger had been aging in chains for months. Ludwig wanted that too. Redd likely wanted it. Misty was waiting for it. It would turn the next fight into something far easier.

But both choices solved only what was inside.

The third line exposed everything.

It would not release the souls yet. It would not free Titania yet. It would not stop the Demon King’s descent. But it would rip away the curtain Clementine had built over the ritual and force the hidden crime into view. Mot could see it. The divine patrons could see it. Any sensitive power outside the Sacrosanctum could see what was truly happening beneath the mass. The Pope’s greatest weapon was secrecy, and if secrecy broke before the ritual completed, then the story Clementine had prepared would die with it.

Ludwig looked down at Gallows, whose eyes were now fixed on the third channel.

He smiled faintly.

”Isn’t it obvious?” he said. ”Break it.”

Kaiser’s expression shifted just enough to show they had reached the same conclusion. ”Good. I was hoping you would not make this sentimental.”

”I’m always sentimental. I just hate the Pope more right now.”

Gallows thrashed in Ludwig’s grip. ”Don’t you dare.”

Ludwig slammed her into the floor again, hard enough to crack the crater wider and silence her for another second. ”I’m done listening to you.”

Kaiser stepped toward the third line.

The moment his fingers touched the glowing blood script, the entire chamber reacted. The sphere pulsed violently, its rotating holy wards flaring bright enough to wash the room in white and gold. The blood lines thickened, trying to pull away from Kaiser’s touch, but he pressed two fingers into the script and began speaking under his breath. The words were not loud enough for Redd to hear clearly. Ludwig caught only fragments, old magic buried under formal structure, the kind of language Kaiser rarely used unless he wanted to remind the world that he was far older than he looked.

The concealment line resisted.

Kaiser’s hand shook for the first time.

The sphere’s inscriptions ignited in sequence, thousands of symbols crawling across stone, metal, bone, and silver. The mass above them swelled through the ceiling, the hymn changing pitch as if hundreds of worshippers had suddenly felt something press against their hearts without knowing why. The chamber began to tremble. Dust fell from the ceiling. The unconscious priests and paladins stirred, groaning under the pressure.

Then the third line snapped.

It did not burst in an explosion. It peeled open like a wound.

The hidden blood script tore away from the floor, unraveling along its path toward the wall. The moment the line broke, the sphere lost the clean false stillness that had wrapped around it. Its power became visible, not merely to those in the room, but beyond it. Ludwig felt the change pass upward through the Sacrosanctum like a scream finally finding a throat.

The building shuddered.

Not the chamber.

The entire Sacrosanctum.

Far above them, the hymn broke. Voices faltered. Bells rang out of rhythm. Somewhere in the upper halls, people began shouting. The holy wards around the sphere spun faster, no longer concealed beneath the Pope’s carefully managed ceremony. The ritual had not stopped. If anything, it became more violent now that its hidden channel had been severed.

Gallows began laughing again, but this time there was panic under it.

”Too late,” she rasped from Ludwig’s grip. ”Too late, too late, too late.”

The sphere cracked.

A thin black line opened across its surface, and from within came a pressure that did not belong to the Sacrosanctum, to the Order, or to any mortal ritual chamber. It was vast and descending, a presence answering the call that had already been sent. The air grew heavy with heat, ash, and something ancient enough to make the holy wards scream as they tried to contain it.

Kaiser pulled his hand away from the severed line, breathing harder than before. ”The descent has begun.”

Ludwig looked up as the ceiling trembled and the Sacrosanctum shook around them.

Above them, the mass dissolved into chaos.

Below them, the core opened.

The crack across the sphere widened.

At first it looked no thicker than a hairline, a thin black wound running through layers of stone, silver, iron, and bone. Then space itself began to tear from within it. The fracture did not break the sphere outward like ordinary damage. It pulled at the chamber, bending the light around the core, stretching the holy wards until their circular paths warped into uneven spirals. The sound that followed was not an explosion, nor grinding stone, but something deeper and more wrong, like a door being forced open in a place where no door should ever have existed.

The Sacrosanctum shuddered again.

Dust fell from the ceiling in thin streams. Cracks crawled across the polished floor, crossing the blood lines and breaking through the holy inscriptions that had been carved there with such careful arrogance. Somewhere above them, the mass had fully collapsed into chaos. The hymn was gone, replaced by shouting, running feet, bells ringing out of rhythm, and the muffled roar of a crowd realizing that the holy building beneath their feet had started trembling like a beast with a spear in its heart.

Gallows laughed beneath Ludwig’s grip, though the sound came through a half-crushed throat and broken breath. ”Too late,” she rasped again, eyes shining with vicious triumph. ”You can shake the walls all you want. You can break whatever little thread you think matters. The call already went through.”

Ludwig tightened his hand around her neck until her laughter became a strangled hiss. ”I heard you the first time.”

The pressure leaking from the crack in the sphere grew heavier. It did not feel like a monster entering a room. It felt like a distant world had noticed a gap and begun pressing its weight against it. The holy wards reacted by flaring brighter, trying to contain or shape the descent, but with the concealment line broken, the clean structure of the ritual had turned violent. The sphere was no longer hiding what it was doing. It was screaming it into the Sacrosanctum, into the city, perhaps beyond.

Kaiser, instead of stepping back from the damaged line, placed both hands against the glowing blood script.

Ludwig looked toward him sharply. ”What are you doing? You said it’s too late.”

”It is,” Kaiser replied, his voice strained but controlled. ”Too late to stop the initial descent with this method. Not too late to ruin the story.”

”What story?”

Kaiser pressed harder. The severed concealment line tried to crawl away from his hands like something alive, red light writhing beneath his palms. ”Think, Ludwig. If we merely stand here while this chamber tears open, the church comes down on us. Paladins, priests, saints, whatever else Clementine can throw into a corridor. And when they arrive, what will they see? You, me, Redd, Gallows, a damaged ritual core, and a Demon King descending beneath the Sacrosanctum.”

Redd’s eyes widened as the realization struck him. ”They’ll blame us.”

”Obviously,” Kaiser said. ”Three intruders from the catacombs, one of them carrying dark magic, standing over a broken seal while the Pope above declares sacrilege. Clementine will not even need to be convincing. Panic will do half his work for him.”

Ludwig’s jaw tightened. ”Can’t let that happen.”

”That is what I am attempting to prevent,” Kaiser said.

His fingers dug into the glowing line.

The effect was immediate and vicious. Holy power surged back through the leyline as if the formation itself had bitten him. The skin across Kaiser’s hands began to burn, not with flame, but with radiant pressure that peeled through flesh in slow, smoking layers. To Redd, he still looked like a young nobleman forced into a level of pain no ordinary mage would endure. To Ludwig, the truth beneath the lantern’s veil made the sight worse. Kaiser was not merely feeling heat through living skin. The holy aura was eating into a body that should not be standing at all, punishing the hidden thing animating it.

Kaiser’s face twitched.

Only once.

”Can’t say I missed feeling pain,” he muttered.