Judgment

Roland's wretched screams, thick with bloody froth and muddy water, still echoed in the wind.

Bishop Castian lowered his gaze slightly to the mass of flesh writhing madly in the mire. There was not a trace of pity in his eyes. He looked at Roland as though he were an insect that had dirtied the sole of his boot.

He raised the Holy Silver Scepter and drove it hard into the mud beneath his feet.

Clang!

The instant the scepter struck, an invisible shock wave burst outward from the bishop.

Crushing divine pressure swept across the clearing. Everything fell silent, and even the cold wind passing through the camp was forced to a halt.

Castian's deep voice rang out slowly. "By decree of the Holy War Council, the bloodline of Augustine has become a stain upon the Sacred Flame. From this day forward, the Lineage is... stricken from the rolls of human civilization."

A banner bearing a lion on a red field—the banner of the Augustine Lineage—was thrown at the bishop's feet.

Castian merely lifted a finger and flicked out a tiny spark of pure-white Sacred Flame.

The moment it touched the banner, the costly silk turned to black ash and scattered on the wind without so much as bursting into flame.

"All titles, fiefs, and treasuries of the Augustine Lineage are hereby placed under the Church's authority." The bishop's voice held no emotion.

"All members of the Lineage, along with their vassal knights, servants, and serfs, shall be stripped of their former status, branded with the Sinner Brand, and sent to the Eternal Night Wall to guard it for humanity."

Kevin's pupils contracted sharply. Augustine—a noble name passed down for centuries—had been torn up by the roots in a few sentences.

Bishop Castian then raised his head. His gaze crossed the wasteland toward Osteria's royal capital in the south.

"The Kingdom of Austeria has failed in its duty of oversight and thereby profaned the Holy War Pact.

As punishment, the kingdom must deliver three times the usual amount of holy silver ore and provisions to the Graymist Defense Zone within three months. It must also deploy an additional thousand-knight penal battalion to fill the gap in the defenses."

Thomas and Eric slumped on the logs, their teeth chattering uncontrollably.

Before the Most Holy Church, the noble blood and titles they took such pride in were no more than dead grass on the ground.

Shien stood motionless, the patch of black ash reflected in his ice-blue eyes.

Until now, the Most Holy Church had been little more than a lofty name in books and the original owner's memories. But a living Lineage had just been wiped away before his eyes.

Only today did he truly see the Church's shape, and a chill crept down his back.

With judgment passed on the kingdom and the bloodline, Roland's personal reckoning finally came.

Pinned before the brazier in a pool of mud, Roland had lost the last shred of his dignity to the agony of his shattered limbs.

Like a skinned grub, he writhed desperately, stretching his mud-smeared lips toward the toe of Bishop Castian's boot.

"Merciful Bishop! I'll go to the Wall! I'll go to the very front of the Graymist Defense Zone as a... disposable soldier!"

His anguished howl tore at his throat. Snot and blood spattered into the pit.

"Please... don't take away my soul! Don't cast me out!"

In utter despair, he began babbling about the laws of the Kingdom of Austeria, then sobbed about how much blood his ancestors had shed for the Sacred Flame.

But before long, his words stopped.

A silver-armored boot came down with a sickening crunch of bone. A Holy Knight ground Roland's babbling head into the mud, then hauled his body upright.

Bishop Castian's expression did not change. He took a slender crystal tube from a lead box offered by an attendant.

The bishop murmured an ancient prayer, dipped his rough fingertip into the Holy Oil in the tube, and pressed it to Roland's forehead as Roland howled hysterically through the mud.

The instant it touched his skin, the drop of Holy Oil became countless fine, pale threads. They burrowed from his forehead into his blood vessels and spread rapidly through Roland's body.

Within moments, web-like patterns of light covered him beneath the skin. The Holy Oil had severed his soul's last connection to the Sacred Flame Furnace.

In this world, death was not frightening. What people truly feared was finding no peace even after death.

A soul without that protection could only wander the Eternal Night Wastes.

Castian withdrew his finger, then raised the Holy Silver Scepter high. "Your flesh returns to the Long Night; your sins end in ash."

The instant he finished speaking, the power of Roland's second-tier Battle Aura in the Bodyguard Realm ran wild inside him.

Instead of flowing outward, it was pulled back by the Holy Oil. Like countless invisible hammers, it pounded his bones and organs from within.

His screams stopped short. The next moment, a mass of pure-white Sacred Flame erupted from Roland's gaping mouth!

Then fine, violent tongues of fire stabbed from his eyes, his ears, and even every gap between his fingers.

In mere seconds, all Roland's resentment, fear, and pleas were swallowed by the Sacred Flame burning from within.

Only a patch of ash remained on the cold mud.

Eric had been too close. The wave of heat from the fire pouring out of Roland's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth brushed one side of his face. The viscount's second son, who fancied himself so noble, shrieked in a cracking voice and scrambled backward.

Kevin clutched the collar of his cloak. In the fading firelight, his usually composed, elegant profile looked deathly pale.

The people around them backed away, almost instinctively putting distance between themselves and the scorch mark.

Shien alone faced the human-shaped ashes, still warm. He bent slightly, pressed a hand to his chest, and gave a formal salute of the Most Holy Church.

Bishop Castian watched him, his thumb slowly rubbing the raised Holy Silver patterns on the scepter. It was a habit of his when thinking.

The aftermath of last night's insect disaster had yet to subside when the knights he had dispatched delivered a report to his desk, recording Shane Graywood's actions over the past ten days.

At first, this illegitimate son of the Graywood count's household had not seemed worth a second glance. In the bishop's eyes, he was merely a piece of expendable material a noble Lineage had tossed out to plug a gap in the defenses.

But Castian now saw him in a new light. Shien was no scrap iron to be used up. He was more like a Holy Silver sword buried in mud.

He had cleanly beheaded a knight with treason in his heart, used a so-called points system to motivate the Convicts, and even knew how to invoke doctrine to stir the Church Knights into a fervor...

Better to burn with composure than cling to life by a thread.

The words lingered in Castian's mind for a moment.

Such a gift for command, such an understanding of the Most Holy Church, and an instinct for using its rules...

Could all that truly belong to a fourteen-year-old boy?

The bishop sighed inwardly.

If the boy were sent to another defense zone along the Eternal Night Wall, one that could still hold its ground, and given three to five years to be tempered in blood, he might truly grow into a Long Night Lord capable of holding a stretch of the defenses.

A pity it had to be the Graymist Defense Zone...

Then the bishop's gaze passed over Eric and Thomas with undisguised distaste. Along the way, those two fools had done nothing but squander supplies. They could not even be bothered to set up the most basic Caltrops.

Men like them did not even qualify as expendable. Even if the insects had not killed them, they would not survive the first few night raids once the Blood Moon Season truly began.

Last night's humiliating rout was merely a debt that had been bound to come due.

These secular kingdoms were growing more outrageous by the day, actually dumping such trash at the Eternal Night Wall.

His gaze shifted to Kevin, who was barely maintaining his composure. Castian rated him a little higher.

With an established noble Lineage behind him, Kevin handled himself steadily enough. But he carried too much of that particular reserve of a Royal Capital noble.

A watchdog that only knew how to follow rules might serve well in an inland castle, but it would not last many years at the Eternal Night Wall.

These new lords sent by their Lineages were, in essence, exiles.

Roland was only the first whom fear had driven mad.

Once the rest entered the Graymist Defense Zone, most would become food for werewolves in their first Blood Moon Season.

Castian had no interest in wasting any more anger on them. He had to bring in more troops—enough, at least, to see these new lords through half a Blood Moon Season.

He withdrew his gaze and pointed toward the heavy command tent in the distance. "Standing out here in the cold won't wash away the stench of your incompetence last night. We need to discuss how to clean up this mess."