Triss had always been a bold woman.
Back when she was the Scarlet Witch, that boldness had gotten her into all sorts of trouble. Then Salokdar had plotted against her, leaving her destitute and weakened for over a hundred years, and it seemed to have worn that boldness down, turning her into a couch potato.
But as the old saying went, old habits died hard. It was a saying that suited Triss perfectly.
Beneath her peaceful, lazy, and carefree exterior, the radical side of the Scarlet Witch had never disappeared. It had merely taken on a different form.
As the continent's greatest theologian, Triss had traveled across the continent to uncover the mysteries of the gods. Whether she had found an answer was another matter, but when it came to building the faith of the Holy Light alongside Murphy, her strange enthusiasm and extraordinary audacity had genuinely surprised him.
Two vampires conspiring to create a god sounded absurd enough on its own. More absurd still was the truth: this wasn't some spur-of-the-moment idea. Murphy and Triss had already moved beyond planning and were putting it into action.
According to Triss, there were two ways to shape a faith: wait it out or take a shortcut.
The first was like the barbarians, who had praised Vam for hundreds of years without fail. The second was like Fele, who had used some kind of dark magic—not even Triss understood exactly what—to push the Lord of the Hunt into a filthy, pre-birth state with a single war during the Fourth Black Calamity.
Both methods had one thing in common: they required a group of people with strong convictions to form the first "collective imagination." Put simply, you had to know what the god you worshipped looked like, what ideals and powers it possessed,