--Eyna--

Half an hour earlier. Eyna cursed out loudly. She was currently sitting on a cold rock inside a presumably dark cave. In her main hand Eyna held an intricately designed iron casket, the cover opened up widely. She had already closely inspected the contents but the so-called artifact emitted no sound nor smell. Therefore, the only thing Eyna had been able to do was to attempt touching it directly.

However, this decision became the cause of her swearing. Instead of hitting upon a hard object, she had felt her fingers diving into a watery surface. In the next moment, a sudden gush of wine then sprayed straight into her tensed-up face and soaked her already frigid clothes. The chilling cave was already frosty enough for her liking. Due to the biting cold creeping in through her wet clothes, the curses incomprehensibly poured out of her clattering teeth.

Eyna was taken aback. She had already tilted the casket a few times, but no drop of water had ever spilled over. Only when she had touched the inside, an abnormal explosion had occurred and Eyna was able to hear the sound of some sort of mechanism breaking.

Eyna didn’t know anything about divine artifacts, nor its previous owner Lucifer, who was the lord of hell himself. However, from the moment she had opened the casket, Eyna was assured that the item inside was something divine.

An unendurable oppressing force enveloped the small cavity once the lid moved. Eyna suddenly had difficulties with breathing and she was desperately gasping for air. Her eardrums winced in pain as if she was diving a few meters underwater.

Only after she had gotten accustomed a little bit to this absolute power Eyna managed to breathe normally and bring back down her racing pulse. Her fingers were still trembling and presumably had long turned white from clasping the iron box.

Even though Lucifer was dead for more than four centuries the sheer might of his heritage was stronger than any force Eyna had ever felt in her life. Therefore, Eyna was quite intrigued by the exact appearance of the artifact.

Maybe he had bequeathed his divine pet goldfish as part of his heritage. It would explain the existence of water inside the casket, an aquarium built for his most loved companion animal.

However, Eyna quickly discarded this hypothesis as she couldn’t picture one of the strongest beings in the universe showing affection to a cute little pet.

Even if this random thought proved to be correct, she didn’t need to be a veterinarian to know that the fish’s last hour had already hit. A wine-rich environment wouldn't be something any water creature favored.

Ultimately, Eyna had to reach into the casket a second time to discover the actual artifact still lying dormant on the bottom of the box.

Since the beginning of the plan to smuggle the artifact out of the city, there had been three identical-looking caskets. One had been secretly manufactured by Neal’s father on Eyna’s demand.

The second one was the fake casket in the sack of potatoes that she had gotten from Leraye. Already from this moment on Eyna already had the inkling of it being a dummy.

As her butler had already told her, divine beings didn’t possess the concept of falsehood and thus, were not able to lie. Only through vague and interpretable truths, they were able to deceive their opponents.

Leraye never told her that the artifact lay in this specific container. If she talked about the box in the bag of potatoes Leraye only used the term ‘casket’ to describe it.

When she mentioned the artifact itself no direct correlation could be found to this empty case. However, her specific wording let one habitually think two different containers were one and the same.

The third existing casket held the genuine artifact and was sewn into the heavy cloak. To hide this invaluable item even from the smuggler himself probably had two reasons.

First and foremost, it was to decrease the damage caused by a betrayal. Naturally, no mortal could ever escape a godly being’s grasp and he would be caught in no time. However, humans sometimes acted against reason and behaved foolishly. If one ever came to the stupid idea to open the casket inside the city, the heavenly forces would immediately be alerted. To prove this point, Eyna had done exactly this during the incident at the petroleum train. She was then already certain that no divine heritage could be found inside the box, but it was still a possibly disastrous gamble.

The second reason would come into effect if she had actually been caught by the angels. Even if there was only the slightest chance of retrieving the artifact by then, the demons still meticulously tried to increase their prospect of success by all means.

While the angels would be distracted by Eyna and the fake casket, nobody would pay great attention to a random cloak she wore. Only once the dummy was detected and all belongings would be dismantled, Lucifer’s heritage would appear.

This was exactly what Leraye had promised. She didn’t say that the cloak would protect Eyna somehow from the angel's attentiveness, but that it would lower the chances of the artifact getting found.

Eyna already had unraveled most of the demon's plans and used the diversion of the petroleum train to gain distance from the infernal forces. The preceding evening Eyna threw a block of ice containing a single drop of her blood into the fuel tank of the locomotive. Due to the cold temperatures, the frozen water would not melt until morning when she boarded the first train of the day.

When Eyna had been brewing up her plans, she didn’t know the exact circumstances she would be placed in during the escapade. But a covert way to scare away her demonic pursuers by baiting the angels was invariably a prerequisite if Eyna wanted to grasp this rare opportunity of getting her hands on a powerful item.

While the heavenly forces were searching for godly presence, Eyna cut open the heavy cloak and retrieved Lucifer’s heritage. Naturally, the casket itself appeared exactly the same as the duplicate inside the bag of potatoes. Because in the demon's worst-case scenario it would need to deceive the angels who had already possessed the casket once.

Eyna then switched the two cases and stitched the dummy into the cloak. Luckily, Eyna always carried a needle with her which she normally used to create embossed printings for blind people. As she had already murdered someone with this item, it wasn’t much of a stretch to use this item for its initial purpose.

Eyna herself was pretty content with the sewing skills she had shown back in the train wagon. The spacing of the stitches was a little bit irregular but she still managed to make the seam in a straight line.

Because the person who had created the hidden compartment in the cloak was still trapped inside the city, they would probably open up the fabric without his presence and her fraught wouldn’t come to light.

From many conversations with Leraye throughout the past few days, Eyna concluded that they probably did not yet know what the artifact exactly was. As Leraye had told her, they couldn’t open the casket as long as they were near the heavenly forces and check its content. And every time she queried further she received a vague answer which didn’t allow any further questioning.

This was the most contingent part of the plan but at the same time the most crucial requisite. Therefore, Eyna just took the gamble and she would find its outcome in a few days' time if her head would be separated from the body by then.

Eyna had placed another inexpensive item inside the dummy casket in order to perplex the demon’s investigation.

After the incident of the petroleum train, Eyna followed the original plan without heading back to a hideout inside of Eichstätt. If she had returned and the project was postponed, the chances of success would be much more uncertain. There were many noticeable holes in her plot which could only be hidden by letting herself be underestimated to the average stupidity of a mortal human. Hence, Eyna continued her way to the city gate even though the angels were on alert.

In order to leave Eichstätt undetected, Eyna had stolen a chestnut. When Eyna had asked Leraye why they couldn’t just put the artifact on an unknowing person who was exiting the gate, she had answered that even being an unaware accessory to a crime was deemed to be a sin.

Because Eyna’s sin of theft couldn’t be detected by the throne this act wasn’t a risk for herself. However, she hid the leftover casket with the chestnut in the cart of a merchant. As he now unknowingly aided Eyna to smuggle out a stolen item all attention would be focused on him once he entered the gatehouse.

The only thing Eyna had to do after that was to transmit the cloak with the dummy artifact to the infernal forces outside of Eichstätt and keep the real one inside the bag of potatoes. As the demon had suggested, Eyna didn’t immediately reenter the city but chose to check out the artifact in a hidden cave.

While Eyna never liked to go outside the walls where there were unpaved roads with countless small pitfalls, there still accumulated a few journeys through the wild during the past five years.

On one of these trips, she had stumbled upon this cave, in a literal sense. Eyna had lost her balance and fell abruptly into the two-meter deep hole which turned out to be a small entrance to a hidden cavity. It was a painful experience Eyna had shoved far back into her mind.

In actual fact, she had been accompanied by two servants. However, they clearly weren’t qualified enough if they didn’t notice their blind employer walking right over a big hole. Needless to say, the attendants were immediately replaced when they returned back to the mansion.

On the other side, Eyna now knew the location of a cold but secure hideout for unexpected cases like this one.

A single drop of water fell from the rocky ceiling and dripped on her hair. Eyna was jolted back out of her thoughts when the cold wine ran over her strained face and gathered at the tip of her chin.

One last time Eyna assured herself. When the droplet of wine fell down to the floor she had already reached the artifact.

Eyna's fingers were burning. She had felt a rough dried-out surface when a wincing pain suddenly crawled up her arm. A silent cry escaped Eyna’s open mouth as she frantically tried to keep her consciousness. She wanted to move her arm away, but her muscles didn’t listen to the desperate commands from the brain. She suddenly perceived bright flashes of light from the nerves of her blind eyes. However, Eyna didn’t have the calm to marvel at this miracle as her skin felt like it cracked up and was peeling off. In the last moments, her mind cried deliriously in pain. Then, she passed out.