Far from the Grove.
Far from the reach of prayers, sanctuaries, and divine grace…
She drifted.
Not in water.
Not in the air.
But in unreality — the shattered between-space where forgotten saints go when the world moves on without them.
Lisa.
Once the Arch Server.
Once the sword that guarded the altar.
Once the light people believed would never go out.
Now… she was a whisper inside a broken cathedral floating above a dead ocean — a sea where the waves moved backward and the sky had no stars, only veins of green light that pulsed with an envious beat.
Her body was suspended — not by ropes or chains, but by hymns long abandoned. Threads of sacred verses stitched into her flesh like spectral strings, holding her aloft over the altar where faith itself had bled out.
Her eyes were blindfolded with black silk. Her mouth sewn shut with thorns.
Not to punish her.
To protect her.
Because Lisa had seen it.
She had faced Envy.
And though she survived… her mind did not.
