Judgment

Roland's shrill screams, thick with blood and muddy water, still echoed in the wind.

Bishop Castian lowered his eyes to the mass of flesh writhing in the mud. There was no pity in his gaze, only the look of a man regarding an insect that had dirtied his boot.

He raised the Holy Silver Scepter and drove it 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, even the cold wind passing through the camp forced still.

Castian's low voice rang out. "By ruling of the Holy War Council, the Augustine bloodline has become a stain upon the Sacred Flame. From this day forth, the lineage is struck from the rolls of human civilization."

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

Castian merely raised 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.

"The Augustine Lineage's titles, lands, and treasury are hereby placed under Church control," the bishop said without emotion.

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

Kevin's pupils contracted. Augustine—a noble name passed down for centuries—had been uprooted with a few sentences.

Bishop Castian then looked past the wastes, toward the Osteria Royal Capital in the south.

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

As punishment, the Kingdom must deliver three times the usual amount of Holy Silver ore, grain, and fodder to the Graymist Defense Zone within three months. It must also dispatch a thousand-knight Penal Camp to fill the gap in the defenses."

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

Before the Most Holy Church, the noble blood and titles they prized were no more than dead grass underfoot.

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

Until now, the Most Holy Church had been nothing more than a lofty name in books and the memories of the body's former owner. Now, a living lineage had been erased before his eyes.

Only today did he truly see what the Church was. A chill ran down Shien's spine.

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

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

Like a skinned grub, he thrashed his limp body, straining to reach Bishop Castian's boot with his mud-caked lips.

"Merciful Bishop! I'll go to the Great Wall! I'll serve on the very front line of the Graymist Defense Zone as a... a man sent to die!"

His wail tore at his throat, spilling into the muddy pit with snot and blood.

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

In utter desperation, 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 his words soon 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 case handed to him by an attendant.

Murmuring an ancient prayer, the bishop dipped his rough fingertip into the Holy Oil in the tube and pressed it to Roland's forehead through his muffled, hysterical screams.

The moment it touched his skin, the drop of Holy Oil became countless fine, pale tendrils. They burrowed from his brow into his veins and spread rapidly through his body.

Within moments, web-like patterns of light covered him beneath the skin. The Holy Oil had severed the final link between his soul and the Sacred Flame Furnace.

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

A soul bereft of protection could only wander the Eternal Night Wastes.

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

As his words fell, the Second Tier Bodyguard Realm Battle Aura within Roland suddenly ran wild.

The power that should have surged outward was drawn back by the Holy Oil. Like countless invisible hammers, it crushed his bones and organs from within.

His screams stopped abruptly. An instant later, a mass of pure white Sacred Flame erupted from Roland's open mouth!

Then fierce, needle-fine flames burst from his eyes, his ears, and even every gap between his fingers.

Within seconds, the Sacred Flame burning from the inside out had consumed all Roland's resentment, fear, and pleas.

All that remained on the cold mud was a heap of ash.

Eric had been too close. The wave of heat from the flames bursting out of Roland's face brushed one side of his cheek. The viscount's younger son, who fancied himself so noble, shrieked and scrambled backward.

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

The people around them retreated, instinctively putting distance between themselves and the scorched ground.

Only Shien faced the human-shaped heap of ash, still warm, and bowed slightly with one hand over his chest in a proper salute of the Most Holy Church.

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

The aftermath of last night's insect attack had yet to settle when the knights he had sent out brought a report to his desk. It detailed everything Shien Greenwood had done over the past ten days.

At first, the bastard son of Count Greywood's household had not seemed worth a second glance. To the bishop, he was just another expendable noble families had thrown at a gap in the defenses.

But Castian now saw him differently. Shien was no piece of scrap to be used up. He was more like a Holy Silver Longsword buried in mud.

He had cleanly taken a traitorous knight's head, motivated Convicts with his so-called work points, and even known how to invoke doctrine to stir the Church Knights' fervor...

Better to burn brightly than linger on.

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

Such command, such an understanding of the Most Holy Church, coupled with an instinct for using the rules to his advantage...

Could a fourteen-year-old boy really possess all that?

The bishop sighed inwardly.

If this boy had been sent to another Defense Zone along the Eternal Night Wall, one that was still holding together, and given three to five years to be tempered in blood, he might truly have become a Long Night Lord capable of holding a stretch of the line.

But it had to be the Graymist Defense Zone...

The bishop's gaze shifted to Eric and Thomas, plainly irritated. Those two fools had done nothing but squander supplies on the way here. They had been too lazy even to set out basic Caltrops.

Men like them did not even qualify as expendable. Even if the insect attack 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 had been a debt they were always going to pay.

These secular kingdoms were growing more outrageous by the day, sending such trash to the Eternal Night Wall.

His gaze moved to Kevin, who was barely maintaining his composure. Castian rated him somewhat higher.

With an old noble family behind him, Kevin conducted himself steadily enough. But he carried too much of that reserved air peculiar to Royal Capital nobles.

A watchdog that only knew how to follow rules might be useful in an Inland castle, but he would not last many years at the Eternal Night Wall.

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

Roland was merely the first to be driven mad by fear.

Once the rest entered the Graymist Defense Zone, most would become Werewolf food during their first Blood Moon Season.

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

He looked away and pointed toward the heavy command tent nearby. "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."