I heard Lazy's plan.
It was nothing short of insanity.
Pure, unadulterated insanity.
The plan used the only advantages we possessed: what little we knew about Tias, the corruption chained beneath my soul, and the sealed room she had created so she could torture me without interference.
It might work.
That was the worst part.
I wanted to cry from the sheer helplessness of it.
The other ghosts erupted in protest the moment Lazy finished explaining.
Even Bloody said it went too far.
Knight seized Lazy by the throat, the plates of his armour grinding as he dragged him away from me.
"You would condemn him to that title?"
Lazy did not resist.
"I am trying to keep him alive."
"By placing him inside the very future he returned to prevent?"
"Would you prefer she tears the truth out of him?"
Bloody's floating heart throbbed inside the hole in his chest.
"This is madness."
Hearing that from him did nothing for my confidence.
Sleazy did not argue.
He only stared at me, the colour drained from his face.
"Sorry, Seer."
His apology came out barely above a whisper.
Tias's fingers remained buried in my shoulder, holding the joint just short of tearing completely free. The living chair tightened around my legs while something inside it continued to weep.
Lazy's plan was the only thing that might work.
So I had to try.
Even if it sealed my destiny.
I let my head hang low.
Then a laugh slipped from my mouth.
"Hah."
It grew louder, climbing through the pain until it burst from my throat in a violent fit.
"AHAHAHAHAHA!"
Tias tilted her head.
"Oh?"
Her fingers stopped twisting.
"I did not expect you to break this quickly."
She tapped thoughtfully against my damaged shoulder.
"That is less than ideal. Perhaps we will have to remove your brain and examine it directly."
"There's no need."
I raised my head.
My face hurt from smiling, but I forced the expression wider.
"I'll tell you everything you want to know."
A confused sound escaped her.
"Where did this sudden confidence come from?"
I rolled my neck, ignoring the pain running through my shoulder.
"I'll tell you what actually happened on that branch."
"Oh, really?"
Tias's playful smile returned.
"What brought about this change of heart, dear Kamrik?"
"It's because I know who you are."
Her fingers went still.
Here we go.
"Tias. Surname unknown. More than three hundred years old. You survived the war that destroyed the Corruption God's medium by repeatedly altering your biology."
Her smile slowly faded.
I continued before fear could stop me.
"Undercover Grand Professor of Valthrune Academy. Executive Number Four of Manus Fati, assigned to oversee the candidate named in the Scripture."
The room became utterly silent.
I let the name fall between us.
"Carlos Strega. The intended Fifth Apostle."
Tias's grip loosened by the smallest amount.
I dragged one hand through my sweat-soaked hair.
"Did I get that right?"
The numerous medals across her chest no longer moved.
Neither did she.
When she finally spoke, her voice had lost every trace of warmth.
"Who sent you?"
I swallowed my fear and forced myself to lean back against the pulsing chair.
"Why don't we stop pretending first?"
Tias remained motionless.
I gestured toward the body she currently wore.
"You've survived for more than three hundred years by altering your own biology. Do you really expect me to believe this is the face God knows you by?"
It was a gamble.
I knew that the woman before me had been alive far longer than any human body should permit. I knew Flesh Manipulation allowed her to change herself as easily as she had changed the attendant beneath me.
But I did not know whether there was a single form she considered real.
Her silence told me I had struck something.
"You even know that this body is false," Tias murmured.
Her covered face turned slightly toward me.
"Only Mundus has seen what lies beneath it."
The name meant nothing to me.
Her conclusion, however, meant everything.
"Did he send you?"
There was no suspicion that my information might be false. She was only searching for its source.
That was what made Lazy's gamble possible.
I smiled.
"Why don't we speak in the forms God recognizes?"
Her hand finally withdrew from my shoulder.
"You first."
Silence filled the room.
Then Tias straightened.
"Very well."
Her smile returned, but there was no warmth in it now.
"If you belong to Mundus, then I cannot damage you further until I understand why he sent you."
The chair beneath me released a wet sigh.
Tias had no reason to fear exposing herself inside the sealed room. If I was lying, she could transform me into another piece of furniture before I reached the door.
"I will show you."
Her body shifted.
The skin of her borrowed face pulled taut before darkening into a smooth, deep brown. Her black hair lengthened past her shoulders, every strand gradually bleeding white until it resembled silk left beneath moonlight.
Her proportions changed beneath the academy uniform. The fabric unravelled alongside her flesh, threads sliding across her altered frame before knitting themselves into a shimmering white gown.
Then her left arm began to collapse.
The flesh thinned around it, withdrawing soundlessly from shoulder to fingertip. Muscle peeled away in clean layers, followed by tendons that sank into the widening sleeve.
Within seconds, nothing remained but an ivory skeletal arm.
The exposed bones were too long and elegant, each joint engraved with thin black lines that pulsed like veins. No muscle connected them, yet the fingers curled smoothly at her side.
The blindfold slithered from her face.
Beneath it were two dark-red eyes.
At first, they almost looked human.
Then their pupils opened.
Each black pupil divided into eight narrow sections, clustered together like the eyes of a spider compressed into a single socket. The individual segments shifted independently of one another.
Some followed my face.
Others watched my hands, the Bloodrend markings along my arms, and the stains covering the floor.
The blindfold wound itself around her horns and lifted its narrow head.
It had never been cloth.
It was a black snake.
Its tongue tasted the air while Tias smiled at me with a perfectly human mouth.
That made the rest of her worse.
She stood before me in her true form, white-haired and draped in light, with one arm stripped to engraved ivory bone and two crimson eyes containing sixteen separate points of focus.
Death stared at me through every divided piece of them.
A shiver ran through me.
I did not allow it to show.
Instead, I whistled.
"Wow. Look at you."
I leaned back as far as the living chair allowed.
"You should stay in this form. It suits you."
The divided sections of her pupils narrowed at once.
"What does Mundus want?"
Every trace of mirth vanished from her voice.
"He knows the East is my territory. He would not send one of his servants here without informing me."
The density of her mana pressed against my body. It was not an attack—merely a consequence of her no longer suppressing what she was.
My lungs tightened.
The chair beneath me trembled.
My legs wanted to shake.
The fear would have to wait.
"Well…"
I drew out the word.
"I don't know who this Mundus person is."
Tias froze.
Some sections of her pupils widened while others narrowed.
"But I can tell you who sent me."
Her skeletal fingers curled.
"Who?"
I smiled.
"God."
For the first time, every section of both pupils focused on the same point.
Me.
"What?"
"Oh. I almost forgot."
I raised one trembling hand.
"Let me show you my true form as well."
Then I pulled.
Deep inside my soul, the darkness responded.
The fruits.
No.
The gifts.
Corruption magic.
That was what they had given me.
I reached beneath the grey sea inside my soul, toward the black root chained in its depths, and loosened my grip around it.
Only slightly.
That was enough.
Defiled mana erupted from my soul.
It poured through my veins like freezing ichor, thick and wrong, forcing itself into every piece of me.
My back arched.
The silver faded from my eyes until nothing remained but depthless black. Dark cracks splintered across my hands and crawled beneath my sleeves, spreading along my pale arms like fractures in porcelain.
Power flooded my body.
My exhaustion disappeared beneath it.
My pain dulled.
Even my fear became distant.
And with it went something else.
Something small.
Something human.
A fragment of my morality slipped away so quietly that I almost failed to notice.
The voices that had once tried to devour my ego were gone.
There were no commands, visions, or screaming hunger demanding that I destroy everything around me.
The taint no longer fought me.
It recognized me.
Accepted me.
The Dark God had accepted me.
"What?!"
Tias's shout tore through the room.
For the first time since she had arrived, there was no amusement in her voice.
Only shock.
The living chair beneath me began to melt.
The moment my hand touched its surface, black fractures spread through the flesh. Skin collapsed into sludge, and the bone supports softened beneath my weight.
The attendant released a shrill, muffled scream.
I did not care.
That frightened me more than the scream itself.
I rose.
The remains of the chair slid from my body in wet clumps as I stepped toward Tias. Each footfall cracked the floorboards, black veins spreading beneath my feet and undoing everything they touched.
The wood softened and warped before dissolving into dark sludge.
"No…"
Tias stepped back.
Her eyes widened, every divided section of her pupils fixed upon me.
"This should not be possible."
Her retreat was not the reaction of a warrior facing something stronger.
It was the reaction of a believer witnessing something her Scripture had declared impossible.
My cracked lips peeled back.
Darkened teeth filled my smile.
"Hello."
I spread my arms and gave her a dramatic bow.
"My name is Kamrik."
I raised my head.
"The Fifth Apostle."
The declaration echoed through the sealed room.
Lazy's plan only worked because Tias had claimed its mana. Nothing inside could reach the academy's wards, and the containment field muted whatever response the God Tree might have produced.
Anywhere else in Valthrune, releasing the corruption would have exposed me immediately.
Here, I had a few minutes.
Perhaps less.
Dark cracks were already crawling toward the edge of her containment field.
The second reason stood before me.
Tias believed.
Not casually or politically.
She had spent three centuries serving the Dark God, building bodies for His followers, breaking lives in His name, and waiting for the arrival of His apostles.
Now divine corruption was pouring from a boy who should never have possessed it.
Tias stared at me.
Her lips parted.
For a moment, I thought she might kneel without being asked.
She did not.
Her shock hardened into suspicion.
"You are not Carlos Strega."
Her mana surged through the room, making the sludge ripple around my feet.
"The Fifth was chosen before you were born."
I smiled wider.
"And yet Carlos is dead."
Her expression twisted.
"You stole His gifts."
The accusation came out as though the words themselves were blasphemy.
"You intercepted a sacred trial and defiled gifts that were never intended for you."
She stepped toward me.
Death rolled from her body.
"Thief."
The insult struck harder than it should have.
Perhaps because she was right.
I had stolen Carlos's future.
His power.
His place.
Even the death that should have belonged to him.
I let the corruption spread farther.
The sludge beneath my feet crawled toward Tias.
She stopped when it touched the tip of her shoe.
The material began to dissolve.
Not rot.
Not break.
It was being undone.
Several sections of Tias's divided pupils shifted downward.
Lazy's voice came quietly from above me.
"Do not hesitate. She must believe you understand the gifts better than she does."
I did not understand them at all.
That was irrelevant.
I lifted my chin.
"Kneel."
Tias looked back at me.
Silence.
Then her face darkened.
"You dare command me?"
The room trembled beneath her mana.
"You wear stolen divinity like a child wearing his father's skin, and you believe that makes you an apostle?"
Fear clawed through me.
I buried it beneath the corruption.
The black cracks climbed higher along my arms, and my smile never moved.
"You seem confused."
I raised one hand.
The sludge climbed over her shoe. The white material disintegrated first, followed by the layer beneath it.
Then the corruption touched the false flesh around her ankle.
Tias recoiled.
The awe vanished from her face.
That fear was no longer religious.
I closed my fingers.
The corruption stopped.
Barely.
"I did not ask whether you believed me."
My voice sounded wrong.
Layered.
As though something beneath it were speaking alongside me.
"I told you to kneel."
Tias's skeletal hand closed into a fist.
"And if I refuse?"
I looked at the melting room, the attendant dissolving behind me, and the dark fractures eating their way through her containment field.
Then I looked back at her.
"I will undo you."
Every section of her divided pupils became still.
"Every body you have built."
I took another step.
"Every face you have worn."
Another.
"Every organ you altered to survive these three hundred years."
The corruption around her ankle pulsed.
"Your spell can reshape flesh."
The sludge climbed another inch.
"Mine can make it forget it was ever flesh."
For the first time, Tias looked down at her skeletal arm as though questioning whether it would remain attached to her.
"I will strip every alteration away, one piece at a time, until there is nothing left for your soul to hide inside."
That was almost certainly not something I knew how to do.
Tias did not know that.
Neither did I, technically.
The corruption seemed enthusiastic enough to try.
I extended my hand toward her.
"So let us try this again."
The dark sludge hissed between us.
"Tias."
Her name left my mouth like a commandment.
"Kneel before your apostle."