Chapter 170: The Church Decided I Might Be a Heretic

Three days later, the evidence box sat on another table.

Not in Kharad.

It had reached a small liaison office of the Church of Eternal Light in a larger city along the road to Aurest.

The man who opened it was Brother Calven.

His job wasn’t hunting heretics.

It was considerably less exciting.

Calven classified magical residue, inspected artifacts, and verified that certain weapons weren’t using prohibited materials. Most days, every test gave him exactly the result he expected.

Today didn’t.

He cleaned the deformed projectile first.

Steel.

Nothing particularly unusual.

Then he placed a thin crystal plate over it.

The plate produced a faint glow.

Blue at first.

Then gray.

Then pale red.

Calven frowned and repeated the test.

The same sequence appeared.

He reached for a second instrument.

"Strange."

The assistant sitting across from him stopped writing.

"What is?"

"There are overlapping residues."

"Enchantments?"

"That was my first thought."

Calven rotated the piece beneath the light.

There were no runes carved into the metal, no engraved mana channels, no embedded crystal, and nothing else suggesting that the projectile itself had ever been enchanted.

He performed a third test, this time separating the residual signatures instead of reading them together.

One layer was kinetic.

Nothing surprising there.

Another resembled electrical discharge.

A third carried an extremely dense pressure signature.

And beneath those...

Calven stopped.

"No."

His assistant frowned.

"What?"

Calven repeated the isolation.

Then repeated it again.

The assistant waited.

Finally, Calven removed the plate.

"This wasn’t enchanted."

"Then what propelled it?"

The examiner looked from the deformed metal to the recorded results.

"Something that used to be alive."

The assistant’s expression changed.

"A core?"

"Not one."

Calven pointed toward the different residue patterns.

"These signatures don’t belong to the same biological structure."

Silence settled over the room.

"How many?"

"I can’t determine that from residual traces alone."

"Two?"

Calven slowly shook his head.

"More."

His assistant looked back at the projectile.

"Inside one weapon?"

"That’s what the report claims."

Calven requested everything attached to the case.

Witness statements.

Weapon descriptions.

The registered mercenary file.

The remaining documents arrived several hours later.

Raven Ashford.

Foreign national.

Approximate age: twenty-eight.

Mercenary House license issued in Greyhaven.

Asterian birth record: none.

Declared origin: foreign.

Known traveling companion: Valeria von Nacht.

Previous incidents appeared only in fragments scattered across regional reports.

Greyhaven.

Sablewood.

Mirevale.

Dunvar.

Velis.

Kharad.

Several documents mentioned unusual behavior around monster corpses. Others described physical and biological abilities witnesses had been unable to fit within a single recognized discipline.

Stone-like dermal reinforcement.

Accelerated movement.

Abnormal regeneration.

Thermal manifestation.

Another report connected his name to an incident involving Cassian Orbrecht.

Nothing on its own proved heresy.

Together, however...

Calven leaned back slightly.

"Who is this man?"

His assistant checked another page.

"A mercenary."

"I can see that."

"The House has him registered as Awakened."

Calven looked again at the recorded capabilities.

"An Awakened using a weapon capable of injuring a Level Thirty-Nine Elite at that distance."

"He was traveling with Valeria von Nacht."

"She didn’t fire the weapon."

The assistant had no answer to that.

Calven returned his attention to the projectile.

Multiple biological residues.

An unknown weapon.

No runes.

No conventional artificery core.

It wasn’t proof of corruption.

But it was enough to justify review.

He pulled a clean form toward himself and wrote:

[Ecclesiastical Examination Recommended.]

Below it:

[Potential Unauthorized Biological Artificery.]

Calven hesitated before adding one more line.

[Possible Preservation and Integration of Multiple Beast Functions Within a Single Artificial Vessel.]

Then he sealed the file.

He didn’t send it to the inquisitors.

Not yet.

He sent it upward.

---

The file changed hands four times.

First, a regional examiner reviewed it. Then a doctrinal artificer. After that, it reached an office specializing in biological anomalies.

Each person added something.

Nobody removed anything.

One comment focused on the complete absence of runes.

Another questioned whether any conventional enchantment could have produced the recorded combination of residual signatures.

Someone requested clarification regarding Raven’s origin.

Another person underlined the name Valeria von Nacht.

A separate request went out for older Greyhaven reports.

The file grew thicker.

HERESY still did not appear as a conclusion anywhere inside it.

Only as a possibility.

That was enough.

The Church didn’t need certainty before it started looking.

It only needed a reason.

---

The room was white.

Not entirely.

Gray stone showed beneath the paint in several places, and a golden line ran along the walls near the ceiling, forming sacred symbols that had been restored so many times their edges were slightly uneven.

A sword rested beside one of the chairs.

Straight blade.

White hilt.

Gold detailing.

Mercy.

Elise Veyra wasn’t holding it.

At the moment, both of her hands were occupied finishing a bandage around a child’s arm.

The boy sitting in front of her couldn’t have been older than ten. Perhaps younger. A long cut ran across his forearm, and his eyes were still red from crying even though he had spent the last several minutes pretending otherwise.

Elise tightened the final knot carefully.

"Don’t use that arm too much today."

The boy looked at the bandage.

"It doesn’t hurt anymore."

"That doesn’t mean it’s healed."

"But I can move it."

Elise smiled.

"And tomorrow, I would like you to still be able to."

His mother stood only a few steps away.

"Thank you, Saint Veyra."

"Just Elise is fine here."

The woman looked far too nervous to accept that invitation.

Elise didn’t insist.

There was someone else’s blood on the sleeve of her white clothing.

She didn’t seem to care.

The door opened.

A priest entered.

He wasn’t old.

He wasn’t particularly young either.

There was enough gold embroidered into his robes to make it obvious he hadn’t crossed half the city to discuss the weather.

He waited until the child and his mother had left before speaking.

"Saint Veyra."

Elise looked up.

"Yes?"

The priest held a file in one hand.

"We have a possible heretic."

Elise didn’t immediately reach for it.

"Possible."

"Yes."

"Then he isn’t a heretic yet."

The priest didn’t answer.

Elise took the file.

A name had been written across the cover.

[RAVEN ASHFORD]

Beneath it:

[Foreign Mercenary.]

[Biological Anomaly Investigation.]

[Unauthorized Artifact Concern.]

Elise opened the file and read.

The first page.

Then the second.

The weapon description.

The recovered projectile.

Residual analysis.

His reported Skills.

Valeria von Nacht.

Kharad.

The Skygrave Wyvern.

Her expression didn’t turn to hatred.

It didn’t become fearful either.

Concern was different.

"Has he harmed civilians?"

The priest took too long to answer.

Elise raised her eyes.

"Has he harmed civilians?"

"Not that we know of."

She returned to the file.

South Relay.

Workers rescued from the collapsed tower.

Registered road restored.

A Level Thirty-Nine Elite killed after repeatedly attacking the station.

Mercenary House contract completed.

There were reasons to investigate Raven.

Many of them.

But nowhere in the report did it say he had used the strange weapon against innocent people.

That mattered.

"Has he used this... ability on humans?"

"We have incomplete reports concerning previous conflicts."

"That wasn’t what I asked."

The priest fell silent.

Elise turned another page.

"Has his Authority been confirmed as corrupted?"

"No."

"Demonic?"

"Not confirmed."

"Necromantic?"

"No."

"Soul profanation?"

"There is no evidence."

Elise partially closed the file.

"Then what we have is a foreigner with an ability we don’t understand."

"An ability that uses monster tissue."

"Alchemists use monster tissue."

"Not like this."

"That is why we should understand it."

The priest studied her.

"The doctrinal artificer believes he may be preserving separate biological functions and forcing them to coexist within one artificial structure."

Elise looked again at the rough drawing of the weapon.

One of the guards at South Relay had apparently tried to reproduce it from memory.

He hadn’t done a particularly good job.

It looked like a sick crossbow.

"And you believe he may be doing the same thing to himself."

It wasn’t a question.

The priest hesitated for a moment.

"That concern has been raised."

Elise continued reading.

Regeneration.

Stonehide.

Movement Skill.

Fire manifestation.

There wasn’t enough information to prove that every ability originated from the same phenomenon.

But the possibility was there.

One person accumulating characteristics that should not naturally belong together.

For certain parts of the Church, that possibility alone would be enough.

Not for Elise.

Not yet.

"Who else has received this file?"

"Regional Examination. Doctrinal Artificery. Biological Purity."

Elise looked up.

That concerned her more than anything else he had said.

"Biological Purity."

"Yes."

"Have they issued an order?"

"No."

"A capture request?"

"Not yet."

"Elimination?"

"No."

Elise exhaled slowly.

Good.

There was still time.

The priest seemed to misunderstand her relief.

"Saint Veyra, if this information is accurate, we may be dealing with a form of corruption we haven’t classified yet."

"We may."

"And if it continues to grow—"

"He may become dangerous."

"Exactly."

Elise closed the file.

"He may also not be corrupted."

The priest stared at her.

"The integration of monster tissues—"

"I’m not saying it’s normal."

Her voice remained soft.

That made it firmer, not weaker.

"I’m saying we still don’t know what it is."

The priest glanced toward Mercy.

"Then what do you recommend?"

Elise rested the file on her lap.

Raven Ashford.

Foreigner.

Mercenary.

No registered birth in Asteria.

Traveling with a von Nacht.

Kills monsters.

Displays incompatible abilities.

Built a weapon the Church cannot explain.

Possibly integrates biological structures from multiple creatures.

It could be an abomination.

It could also be something nobody had encountered before.

There was a difference.

Elise had learned far too early that some people preferred to skip the part where they found out which one.

"Where is he now?"

"He left Kharad this morning."

"Direction?"

"South."

Elise nodded.

"Then we still have time."

The priest frowned.

"For what?"

Elise picked up Mercy with one hand and the file with the other.

Then she stood.

"To find him before someone decides killing him is easier than saving him."