“Isabella…” I whispered, feeling the strain in my voice. Here, in the ruins of the Pamphiljs’ chapel, I could feel the old wound left in the wake of her death come alive with a piercing, sharp pain. “Almost thirty years have passed, and I miss you all the same. You know, I still have our pictures together. I safeguard them jealously, but I can’t bear to look at them—too afraid of the emotions it would bring. It has passed so much time that I don’t even remember how you look nowadays,” I admitted, chuckling in bitter agony. “Yet, I suffer still.”

“I hope His Holiness was right,” I said, opening my eyes to a limpid sky, framed by the walls of the dilapidated church. Monsters had done a number on the old, gothic construction of which only three walls remained whole; the ornate pavement was no more, destroyed in the wake of the savage creatures inhabiting this forest, just like the caved-in roof and half of the wall that once housed the main entrance to the edifice. “I hope destroying this place once and for all will bring me closure. I can’t keep going on. Not like this. It’s not a wound I can heal from. I hoped God would help me, but faith in Him hasn’t filled that void you left, and I know it never will. It isn’t strong enough for that.

“If not…” I left the sentence hang; I wasn’t ready to make that vow—yet.

The crunch of boots over soil alerted me of someone else’s presence, allowing me the time to recompose. Showing my turmoil to the people looking up to me wouldn’t help anyone—I wondered if His Holiness did the same with me.

“Your Eminence,” I heard Luca, the head of my security detail, call. “Both guilds have entered the Great Forest.”

“Thank you, Luca,” I told him after taking a deep breath. “I will be out shortly.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

Hearing his receding steps, I sighed, letting the tension drain from my shoulders. I stared at the cross still hanging. Had I been a more devote believer, I could have interpreted it as a sign of His presence. Unfortunately, the more I looked at it, the more the weathered representation of the Christ resembled my belief—ruined, dusted, holding by a thread more out of despair than anything else.

I did the sign of the cross and turned, walking the ruined aisle. Outside, standing before the steps leading inside the church, Luca, Alessio, Elena, and Giorgio—the four A-rankers the Supreme Pontiff asked to accompany me—waited, looking at the tree line in caution.

I couldn’t blame them. Despite the beautiful day, there was something odd about the forest today. The mana in the atmosphere was heavy, pregnant with something dark and ominous. Maybe Mr. Scacchi’s concerns about the dungeon undergoing resurgence weren’t as unfounded as I believed.

Ultimately, I decided it didn’t matter. By the end of the week, the Great Forest will be no more.