After the void shattered like a mirror struck by divine wrath, Derrick's consciousness was flung back into his mortal shell, as if the entire descent had been but a breathless plunge into a bottomless sea. Meanwhile, far away, within the half-lit confines of an ancient chamber suffused with a cloying floral scent, Capella opened her eyes.
She had been seated cross-legged upon a smooth and gray stone altar.
It's surface worn by time and rituals too old to name. Encircling her were thorn-wreathed blooms—flowers that bore a striking resemblance to roses, yet carried a faint shimmer that whispered of something unnatural, something not meant to blossom in the light of any sun.
Carved into the front face of the altar, half-buried in creeping moss and dried offerings, was a bas-relief depiction of the Mother Tree of Desire. Its crown of crimson leaves arched high above the supplicant figures surrounding its roots—dozens of robed silhouettes, frozen in eternal genuflection, their heads bowed low in reverence or fear.
Standing just beyond the altar's thorn-ringed perimeter were three figures: a man and a woman—Capella's parents—wreathed in solemn silence, and beside them, holding the hem of his mother's robe with small, uncertain hands, stood a boy no older than twelve years old.
He was at a height of five-feet, and wore a simple buttoned up vest with a white collared shirt underneath. He had brown gentleman's pants, with black boots. The boy's face was the perfect mix of his parents with his hair being silver with hints of brown as his father's, and his eyes being ocean-blue like his mother's.
He seemed to be a handsome boy going on the verge of a teenager, but his real age was that of a four-year old.
His wide eyes reflected both awe and confusion as they fixed upon Capella. This was Arthur, Gareth and Lara's daughter, and Capella's younger brother.
Capella then elegantly arose from her sitting position on top of the altar and stretched out her limbs. She then leapt off of it in a playful manner and landed on one leg in front of them. She then proceeded to say with a sinister grin: "The establishment of the Sin Archbishops has officially begun."
Lara and Gareth both wore eccentric smiles on their faces while Arthur just stood there confused - still gripping tightly on his mother's robe.
"With that being said, I think it is finally time I start the advancement ritual to sequence eight." Capella continued. She then cast her gaze on Lara as if she was expecting an answer to an unsaid question.
Lara then inhaled an excitingly shaky breath, and firmly declared "I am ready to also advance."
Capella's eyes widened out of shock, yet she had also predicted this. It had been two years since she first received the boone that turned her into a beyonder so now would be the proper time for her to finish digesting it. But she did not expect that she actually wanted to.
Lara's original personality was a reserved one who liked doing the easier things, and she hadn't changed that aspect of her.
'So she's experiencing personal changes even after my 'adjustments'. Capella then made a mental note to carefully observe Lara, to make sure her brain wasn't going to revert back to how it originally was.
"Regrettably, that will have to wait," Capella said with a lilt of theatrical melancholy, her voice carrying the softness of velvet stretched over hidden thorns. "It's time I go tend to my newest plaything… and 'heal' their parents' ailments, as only I can."
She tilted her head, placing gloved fingers over her lips in a delicate parody of genteel manners. A giggle—restrained yet unmistakably deranged—spilled forth like a whisper of perfume in stagnant air.
Turning, she addressed her parents without glancing at them. "Father, do inform Collin about the growing number of monsters coming into the vicinity. It would be such a shame if more innocent lives were lost. And Mother… return to the orphanage tonight. I'm sure your hands will find use scrubbing away the filth, and make sure you do it while they are watching."
Lara and Gareth bowed slightly, their gestures mechanical, subdued. They moved soundlessly toward the shadowed corridor that led to the upper levels, vanishing one step at a time.
Only Arthur remained.
He had slipped his small hand free from Lara's robe, now standing at the foot of the altar in front of Capella - with an unnerving calmness. His eyes, once wide and innocent, seemed to shimmer with something darker.
Capella raised her chin, her smile turning brittle. "There's no need to play the pitiful child in my presence. Your act won't earn all of their affection .Not while I exist."
A sudden change overcame Arthur. The soft light in his gaze fractured, replaced by something sharp, mad—like a marionette whose strings had been tangled by an invisible hand.
"Sister," he said, voice honeyed and wrong, "I only wish to make everyone happy… to give them what they need. I'm only trying to do, what you should have already been doing. After all, isn't that what love is?"
His words were soft, almost tender-like.
Capella's expression soured and her pupils thinned. A low, discontented sigh pressed from her lungs, and the corners of her mouth drew downward.
"There's no need for me to pander or please anyone" she whispered, the words like a knife unsheathing itself from velvet. "I was born perfect. Everyone will learn to love me. Or they already do."
Her right arm melted into shadow and reformed—metallic, glistening, obsidian-like—a jagged blade pulsing with a sharp intensity. With the grace of a dancer and cruelty of a predator, she flung it straight at him.
*Clang!*
The child caught the blade mid-air with one hand, the impact ringing out like steel striking steel. Sparks cascaded in the gloom, illuminating his grin.
And for a fleeting instant, the air itself felt like it held its breath.
Capella gazed down at Arthur from her altar, the blade of her arm still humming with residual force. She tilted her head as though considering something beneath his skin.
"We'll finish this conversation another time," she murmured, her voice suddenly distant, like a chime lost in a heavy fog.
Hairline cracks began to spiderweb across her body—first from her feet, then her fingers, crawling upward in thin, shimmering lines of violet light. The smooth marble pallor of her skin fractured with delicate pops, as if she were porcelain giving way under invisible pressure.
Then—without a cry, without a scream—her form shattered completely.
A burst of black feathers erupted in all directions, a cyclone of wings and shadows. Hundreds of ravens spiraled into the air from where Capella had stood, their eyes glowing with an unnatural pinkish-purple hue, like dying stars blinking open in the dark.
The basement swirled with motion as the birds scattered like a splintered soul, fleeing into the countless corridors and exits, leaving only the silence of her absence behind.
Arthur stood alone in the stillness, the echoes of wings fading into the recesses of the stone chamber.
His huge frame began to tremble. Slowly at first, then violently. His shoulders shook, his fists clenched so tight that his nails dug crescent moons into the meat of his palms. His jaw clenched, teeth grinding as though he meant to pulverize stone between them.
"If it weren't for you…" he whispered, voice scraping out in a ragged growl, "if it weren't for the fact that you were the reason for my very existence…"
He paused, eyes wide with fury, glassy with something far older than childhood.
"I would have been shattered every bone in your body."
Then, slowly, a crooked smile broke across his face—a grotesque, affectionate curve of the lips, like a marionette pulled by invisible strings.
"But perhaps… this is the epitome of love, isn't it?"
He turned away from the altar, leaving behind an after-image in his wake and two footprints engraved in the stone.