"The blacksmith made a mold from the original, but after melting it down, he discovered it wasn't pure silver at all. Something else had been cast into it during its original creation, making up roughly half of it."
Having lain dormant within the metal for over twenty years, perhaps something had been stirred by its close contact with Dominic. Like an animal roused from hibernation, it sensed another turn of the seasons approaching, with defenseless prey all around.
"You really never noticed anything wrong with it?" Kup asked again in disbelief.
"Maybe... perhaps it was a little light." The Priest pressed tightly on the wooden Holy Emblem, trying to suppress the suffocating palpitations in his chest.
He had worn that Silver Emblem for a long time. Time had worn away its surface sheen and its sense of presence, making it a natural part of the Church—a part of him.
A faint, muffled crack sounded, seemingly from some distance away. He instinctively looked around, but could not find its source.
Still without an answer, everyone searched through the blacksmith's shop, collisions and clatters ringing out without end. Yet that one sound had been especially clear.
Closer than anything beside him, closer than his own ears—it echoed within his body, within his memories.
That crack was some kind of trigger. In his memory, he saw two monks grappling before him as he recited an exorcism Spell in panic.
Amid the chaos, something cracked—the old wooden floorboards, fragile finger bones, aged metal. The sound vanished in an instant, like an accidental fleck of ink splashed when putting brush to paper, unnoticed by anyone.
When he tried to wipe clean that memory, the still-wet ink blot spread outward, staining the image dark and blurred. The harder he tried to recall it, the hazier it