“Let me tell you the forgotten story of the God of nowhere.

She was, is and will always be a young woman when looked through our mortal lenses.

She is savage, inhuman, uncaring.

But do not mistake her as violent, idiotic, or beast-like.

She may have been the first of the Gods.

She was the end to us all.

Time caught up to her in the most subtle of ways.

As now that all nowhere has become somewhere, everywhere banished her.

To this day, her tales are still told, but the fear and reverence towards her existence has since long gone away.”

Imperatrix Hyn quote, Hymere jungle expedition, 73 after the war of the Firantes.

Nay woke up in an almost pitch-black room. Her head, arms and ribs were hurting, and her sight was fuzzy.

The room was small, void of any decoration or furniture except the chair she was sitting on, another one in front of her, and the electric lightbulb lit above her.

She took a few minutes to get her bearings back. Every thought that came to her was bringing waves of anxiety with it, and she barely managed not to go into a complete panic attack.

Had her mother and Lisana managed to get away?

Where was she?

The room seemed filled to the brim with Rreico, so she was still in the cathedral?

Did she lose control on her repugnant rhythm of grey?

She was happy to be alive, but did they know what she was? How much time before they made a mistake of apocalyptic proportions?

Was she going to have to convince the fanatical priests of her innocence, to protect everyone’s survival? How?

Nay took a slow and steady breath through the nose, then exhaled it all through the mouth.

She needed to focus on the here and now, and nothing else.

She was half-naked, only wearing her underwear. The cold of the stone floor was burning the sole of her feet. They had removed the cast on her arm, and tied her hands behind the chair, pulling painfully on her broken bone.

Why did they undress her? Strip her from her weapons, obviously, but why humiliate her so? Anguish gripped her throat. Think about something else.

She examined the room with more attention. It truly was dark inside, a feeble ray of light on the ground informed her of where the door was. It had no keyhole, probably locked on the other side.

The lightbulb flickered.

Nay focused on her Rreico.

She sighed of relief. Her Rreico was clearly visible, grey escaping her skin, but even unconscious, she had somehow managed to suppress the infinite tower of power. She only looked like a creepy God-Touched.

The bulb flickered again.

The light source was putting Nay on edge. There was something about it…

Voices came out from the other side of the door.

Nay jumped on her seat. She had missed Rreicos just next door?

Now that she knew they were there; she easily recognized the rhythm of life of the Archbishop of Ja. He was not the one talking though. She did not know to whom belonged the other Rreico, but the voice sounded clearly feminine.

“I shall not enter this room again, Archbishop!”

“Come now, these superstitions do not suit you, Valerie. She needs care, and we are not barbarians.”

“Do it yourself, then.”

“That would be improper. I may be a priest, but we are talking about a young woman. The rumours you propagated have made it so that no nuns in your ranks want to act as Adienha beckons them to do.”

“Rumours!? Well, go inside! Stay there, a long time. Tell me about my rumours afterwards. The dark is not natural, it…it talks to us.”

Nay shivered, and not because of the cold floor. She looked at the lightbulb, flickering once more.

It was shining brightly, should have lit up the room entirely.

Instead, Nay was barely seeing the chair in front of her.

A shadow passed next to the light source.

“And as I said before, I will do exactly that, when our guest is dressed.”

There was a short silence.

“Fine. I’ll put the clothes on her. But it will be the last time I set foot in there.”

The Archbishop sighed. “I will have to report your behaviour.”

The nun laughed briefly. “I don’t care. You’ll understand once inside.”

Nay had an unbelievably bad feeling.

“I’m freeeeeee!”

The voice, childish, was Nay’s.

The young Legio jumped so hard her chair jumped with her. She let out a fearful cry.

Because she had not said anything.

No one had said anything.

The door opened. Light entered the room, only to stop eerily three feet further as if eaten by a heavy fog.

An ancient-looking nun, with a stern face but a scared expression, followed the light inside. She turned her head to meet Nay’s cloudy eyes. She instantly turned around and left the room, closing the room behind her.

“She has woken up.”

“Well, that’s very good. Why did you get out? She can’t hurt you.”

“I can’t dress her without untying her.”

Nay watched the lightbulb. It was flickering more and more.

“Ah. We’ll have to wait for the soldiers to…no…”

“Archbishop?”

“Mhh? Yes, you can go Valerie.”

The nun didn’t need to be asked twice, Nay feeling her Rreico get further away hurriedly.

“I want to leave! I want to see my little sis. Me? You?”

Nay recognized her voice echoing in the room. Not her adult’s, but the one of her childhood.

The door opened once more.

The Archbishop entered, looking ashamed. He gave her a quick look then, his cheeks reddening, gazed away. He was holding some sort of blanket.

“Sorry about my rudeness, young Touched, but I really need to ask you some questions, and my experience tells me that if I wait for the Imperatrix’s soldiers, I won’t get any answers.”

He quickly walked towards Nay, and put the blanket over her body to hide her nakedness, then sat in front of her.

“Wha…” The young Legio tried to talk but was interrupted by her jaw aching in pain.

“Oh, I apologize. This is my fault. I believed we could easily use healing enchantments on you but well… that didn’t happen. Our healers were quite puzzled by your phantom miracle.”

“M…What?”

“The unique miracle given to every Touched, especially active when hurt or unconscious.”

“Passive magic?”

The Archbishop’s Rreico changed on the spot. Getting on his feet he violently gripped Nay’s wounded jaw.

“What kind of HERESY just came out of this mouth? The tongue that perjures Ja deserves to be TORN OFF!”

Then, as fast as it came, his sudden anger disappeared, and the man with the baby face sat back down.

“Sorry, you were clearly deceived by ABJECT beings. So, a phantom miracle. You don’t seem to have any Carradin tattoos, so I believed your power of anti-miracle was this phantom miracle, but then you showed that you could see or sense the power of the Gods, without previous enchanting, which should mean another type of phantom miracle. Very few God-Touched can enchant such a miracle with no words. Then, after your accident and loss of consciousness, you show us this.” He pointed around him. “I don’t understand. Two phantom miracles in one individual is unheard of. But... so be it! It isn’t the first time in history that our preconceptions are challenged like this. But three? This means I’m missing something.”

“Is he bothering you? Scaring you?”

Nay looked left and right, her focus switching towards the talking shadow.

The God-Touched in front of her didn’t seem to react.

“Y…didn’t hear?” She asked.

“What? No, no don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you.” Sage Defin had misunderstood Nay’s shivers as fear about what he was going to do to her. “We don’t have infinite sorts of miracles at our disposal, and of those we have, none seem to affect you. On the other hand, using the divine gift around you is not impossible, and your ability to see miracles gave me an idea. I personally forbade the miracle of god sight, as it was often provoking madness in our youngest recruits when they looked north-west.”

“…G…Touched cannot see ma…miracles?”

“Oh, we have some instinct, the most sensitive among us can feel the presence of the divine around them, but it is terribly unreliable.”

Nay was stupefied. The boy in the caravan…had been intrigued by something, he had not recognized anything. In the same way she had attracted the stares of the God-Touched distributing food to the refugees and the Teller in the cathedral.

But Vestigio had…Nay would have face-palmed if she could, as she realized her error. Vestigio was a master Legio, the master Legio. He saw what Nay saw. Would Nay’s efforts to hide her power have worked against him? Obviously not.

Which meant that if the Archbishop used this god sight enchantment...

“He is not allowed to see. He’ll kill us. He needs to join us.”

Nay shuddered. She noticed something floating in the air. A Rreico, inhuman, dead, only capable of expressing one thing: Rancor, dead before its time, sacrificed, swiped away for the purpose of a hateful war it was not responsible for.

“…You need to leave.” Nay advised her captor.

He did not listen.

“How did it go again? Mhhh…”

“Devin…Defin? Get out of here, I have no contr…” Pain in her jaw stopped her again.

Nay saw a shadow rise behind the Sage.

“Little man believing to be the biggest, thinking that the men of the past called Gods are the only ones above him, the same ones that let us die. Die? I am the End? Not dead.”

Sage Defin was startled up his chair. He had heard the voice this time.

“W…what? Your phantom miracle is conscious? But that is…” He gulped. “I understand the rumours better now. It is undoubtedly uncanny.”

“You…understand nothing. Run away! Please.” Nay asked.

“Nonsense, I won’t…”

The light turned off entirely, and despite the door still wide open, Nay couldn’t see anything anymore.

She heard herself laugh.

Then a cracking sound, followed by an excruciating scream. “Protection of Vanni on those with no sins!” The Archbishop chanted.

From the dark nothingness, four red walls, see-through and shining brightly, rose from the ground to surround Sage Defin. His right arm was dangling to his side like a marionette’s.

His Rreico showed fear, but more than that, marvel. He was smiling.

“Your shadow interacts with the living?”

At the edge of his protective wall, some sort of humanoid thing, entirely surrounded by dark shadows, was touching experimentally the magic separating itself from him.

“Strong. Alone? Can’t alone.” The spectre was using Nay’s childish voice.

The young Legio understood what her shadow meant effortlessly.

“No!” She shouted. “If you call the others, the devil will find us!”

The spectre turned around to face her. It gave no emotions, as it had no face, but the young Legio was certain she felt some sort of link between them. It was listening to her.

Sage Jormun had told her. The shadows would not obey her, but they would listen to her.

“I’d like to get out. See Lisana.” Nay coaxed it.

“Yes.”

“Can you free me?”

The archbishop interrupted her. “I won’t let you leave. Don’t you understand what you are!? So much power…”

“Shut up if you value your life.”

“Your phantom miracle, phantom, ha! Never has it been so fitting. It cannot kill me. She took me by surprise but…”

“What if there were ten like her?”

“Ridiculous, if that were the case…” He saw Nay’s expression, and his smile grew.

He was deranged, but at least he had stopped talking.

“Can you free me?” Nay asked her shadow again.

“Yes.”

It vanished, but the darkness was still present. The young Legio then felt her restraints unbind themselves. She rose to her feet, the blanket falling to the floor.

Finally, light filled the room as it should always have. The room was an empty office. As Nay had guessed, she was still in Leïn’s Cathedral.

The archbishop, still behind his barrier, was staring at her.

“Oh Trayx, show me the truth of this world.” He sang.

Nay reacted instantly. Not bothered by her nakedness, she rushed towards him, crossed his walls as easily as she went through thin air, and smacked her feet on his right temple. He crashed violently on the ground and stopped moving.

It was too late. Nay had felt his Rreico. He had witnessed what she was.

But instead of horror, he had felt fascination, and even worse, adoration.

“Biach.” She didn’t have it in her to murder an unconscious and unarmed man. She should have, as he was going to put her life and everyone’s at risk to quench his thirst of…whatever he wanted. But she just could not.

‘Why? You already killed Maggie, poor innocent guard just trying to protect her village.” The voice was inside her head, and this time, Nay had no idea what to retort to it.

That she hadn’t had a choice then, while she had a choice here?

In her opinion, that sounded like excuses.

Nay sighed and left the room. Trying to get her bearings was going to be hard, but she was happy to find her clothes and even a small dagger on a bench in the corridor outside the room. Her sword was gone though, and the money and weapons she had stolen were also not there. What bothered her the most was the missing crunched letter that should have been in her left pocket.

Still, she could not afford losing time to find her lost belongings.

She had to escape.