The chamber felt colder than before.
Not because the temperature had changed—but because the silence had weight now. The kind that pressed against the skin, sank into the bones, and refused to leave.
The Saintess stood near the center of the room, barefoot on the stone floor. The light from the corridor spilled behind her, thin and pale, stretching her shadow across the wall like something fragile and breakable.
Then footsteps approached.
Slow. Measured. Deliberate.
They didn't belong to a knight.
The rhythm was different—unhurried, confident, as if the owner had never once feared this place or what lay within it.
The door opened wider.
A man stepped inside.
He was in his late fifties, perhaps older, his hair a dull silver threaded with black, combed neatly back from a lined but well-kept face. His robes were those of high clergy—white layered with gold trimming—but unlike the priests outside, his garments bore the weight of authority, not reverence.
A bishop.
