Fangs of the Holy City

The outline of the Holy City emerged from the blood moon, resembling a metallic prosthetic eye embedded in a skull. The Church's defensive barrier was composed of billions of hovering crosses—each inscribed with the name of a martyr—with electrical currents leaping between them, pulverizing any approaching meteor into dust. Ash's escape pod screeched to an abrupt halt at the edge of the barrier, its cabin filled with the acrid smell of overloaded, scorched engines.

"Force your way through and you'll end up as a roasted crow," he remarked as he kicked open the warped pod door, rusted gears sliding from his sleeve into his palm. "But I saved a little toy for just such an occasion."

Alice strapped her mother's ceremonial sword to her back; the ice blade in her hand coalesced at her fingertips into a hexagonal dart. Kane's mutation had spread up to his collarbone, with bony spurs piercing his cloak and gleaming with a mercury-like sheen in the moonlight. He idly caressed Lia's four‐leaf clover earring—the metallic edges biting into his palm—remnants of the Eye of the Abyss's gear-scar, now pulsing in time with the heartbeat of the Holy City.

Ash embedded his own gear into one of the barrier's nodes, and the array of crosses suddenly fell into disarray. As the three of them slipped through the resulting gap, Kane heard the martyrs' shrill wails explode in his ears, like countless rasps of files scraping against a skull.

Spire Execution Ground

The streets of the Holy City were paved with bones, and the lampposts were living torches confined in iron cages. The projection of a preacher floated above the square, his sermon merging with crackling electrical noise:

"Godslayers are nothing but the lies of false believers—purification is salvation…"

Alice flipped over a patrolling mechanical guard with a swift kick, and an ice dart impaled its ocular socket. Just before the guard's core overloaded and exploded, Kane caught a glimpse of a scout from the North embedded in its chest—a face with its skin stripped away, its muscle tissue fused with circuitry.

"They're making cyborg puppets," Alice spat as she crushed the guard's core chip. "Father would even put every scrap of a corpse to use."

Ash's little gear-toy inadvertently triggered an explosion among the distant crosses, and in the burst of flames, the coordinates of Elena's ice coffin appeared. Suddenly, Kane's bone blade lashed out uncontrollably toward Alice, only to be parried by her sword's scabbard. His mutated right arm's scales opened and closed, oozing silver blood that began to corrode the ground.

"Keep your pet under control," Ash warned as he ignited a new gear. "Or I'll chop off those claws first."

From the shadows of the spires came the roar of gears meshing. The golden throne of the High Inquisitor descended slowly, its armrests entwined with two coiled serpents, whose eyes were set with the heads of Lia's clones.

"Welcome home, Alice," the High Inquisitor intoned, tapping on the snake's scales. "Your room has been kept just as you left it."

Mother and Daughter

Elena's ice coffin floated behind the throne, black blood seeping from its lid and pooling on the ground to form a rose crest. In Alice's hand, the ice blade melted in her palm even as her mother's ceremonial sword suddenly trembled, unsheathing itself and flying out to embed into the stone slab before the ice coffin.

"Are you desecrating her corpse too?" Alice's voice was colder than the edge of her blade.

The High Inquisitor raised his right hand like withered wood, and the barrier of the Holy City began to contract. Kane's bone blade lunged toward the throne but was repelled by laser beams emitted from the serpent's eyes. Ash's flaming sword cleaved into the ground, and molten rock swallowed the reinforcements of the cyborg puppets.

"Your mother was the first Godslayer," the High Inquisitor declared, his wooden sword pointing at the ice coffin. "Her blood can reawaken the 'Divine Wrath' of the Holy City's core—but at the cost of burning away every trace of Godslayer blood... including yours."

Alice's pupils constricted. She recalled how, at the age of seven, her father placed that wooden sword by her pillow and said, "A true knight will protect order at any cost." Now she finally understood the true meaning of sacrifice.

Kane's mutation burst through his right shoulder, his bony wings shredding his cloak as he charged toward the ice coffin. Silver blood trailed behind him, leaving searing marks. The High Inquisitor's wooden sword swept lightly, and at that moment, the heads of Lia's clones let out simultaneous screams, their sonic waves flinging Kane backward.

"Vessels belong in their incubation pods," the High Inquisitor sighed.

Blood Rose

Alice drew her mother's ceremonial sword. The small inscription on its crossguard had been soaked with black blood, but as she gripped it, ice crystals blossomed along the metal. She plunged the sword toward her own heart; as its edge grazed her skin, it transformed into rose vines that coiled around the serpent's eyes on the throne.

"My mother taught me…" the vines hissed as they crushed the heads of the clones, "A true Godslayer never raises his sword against his kin."

With a thunderous crash, the ice coffin burst open. In the moonlight, Elena's body sat up; black blood gushed from the sword wound in her chest, staining the bone-paved streets of the Holy City red. Ash's flaming sword stabbed into a fissure in the ground as molten rock flowed in reverse along the black blood, melting the barrier's crosses into liquid iron.

Kane's bony wings battered the spires as he caught the falling ice coffin. Suddenly, Elena's fingers clutched his wrist, her eyes flickering with the cold light of gears: "The gods dwell within the core…"

The High Inquisitor's wooden sword pierced Ash's chest, and in an instant, the flames were snuffed out. "Traitor," he spat as he twisted the sword's hilt. "You were meant to be Alice's sheath."

Ash coughed up blood spittle; his blood-stained teeth crunched down on a gear hidden beneath his tongue. A dull rumble emanated from the core of the Holy City, and the ensuing shockwave shattered every pane of glass.

Godslayer

Above the altar at the core floated a crystalline heart, every blood vessel of which was connected to Lia's clones. Kane's bone blade pierced the heart, and in the instant the crystal exploded, he beheld the true visage of a god—

A phantom composed of countless doctrinal characters, each stroke tainted with the blood of martyrs. The god's voice shattered Kane's eardrums:

"Your rebellion is nothing but a reflection of your own shadow."

Alice's rose vines coiled around the phantom, and her ice blade stabbed into the gaps between the inscribed letters:

"Then shatter the mirror!"

With his final flames, Ash ignited the High Inquisitor's wooden sword. In the moment when father and daughter locked eyes, Alice pressed the sword's edge into his heart:

"Rest now, Father."

The Holy City crumbled and fell. Kane clutched the last shard of Lia's consciousness as his bony wings shattered beneath the blood moon. Ash's embers drifted toward the ice coffin, gathering Elena's hair into a copper reliquary.

New Epoch

Alice stood atop the ruins, her mother's ceremonial sword having transformed into a rose scepter. The surviving clones crawled out from the core, their eyes no longer as dark as the abyss.

At her feet, Ash's copper reliquary opened, its embers scattering into the new moon on the wind. Kane's mutation faded away, and the gear-shaped scar on his palm burst into silver blossoms.

In the heart of a blooming flower, Lia's consciousness shimmered:

"Brother, this time, let me wait for you."

As the blood moon sank below the horizon, the first rays of sunlight pierced the clouds. Alice's scepter was planted into the scorched earth, and ice roses bloomed amid the ruins.

In the distant shadows, remnants of the Church were seen placing new Godslayer embryos into incubation pods.