Chapter 49: The Theology of Rotten Fruit

The metallic stench of fresh blood hung thick over the central plaza of Bergis, mixing with the damp chill of the mountain air.

Five headless corpses lay sprawled on the dark wooden planks of the execution platform, their crimson lifeblood seeping slowly into the grain of the wood.

A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the thousands of onlookers packed into the square.

Saintess Seraphina stood rigid on the balcony steps, her pale, delicate hand still hovering in the space where she had struck the young governor. A bright crimson welt was beginning to rise on Valerian’s left cheek, but his expression remained entirely unbothered.

His abyssal eyes—deep crimson pools with slitted, pitch-black reptilian pupils—glinted with a cold, terrifying clarity that seemed to clash with the Saintess’s divine aura.

Valerian did not raise his voice. He did not reach up to soothe his stinging face.

Instead, he turned his head slightly toward the shadow flickering near the balcony’s iron pillar.

"Pollux," Valerian commanded softly, his flat, absolute tone cutting through the quiet like a steel blade. "Disperse the crowd. Clear the square, shut the iron gates, and have the city watch escort the citizens back to their districts. I wish to have a private conversation with the Saintess."

"At once, My Lord," Pollux’s whisper echoed from the shadows.

Within seconds, shadow operatives materialized across the high perimeters, signaling Sir Van Liondale on the platform below.

The Vice Governor took a deep, steadying breath, raised his hand, and ordered the city watch into motion.

With practiced, disciplined efficiency, the guards began clearing the silent, awe-struck citizens out of the grand plaza, locking the massive oak-and-iron gates behind them until only the wind remained, whistling through the empty stone square.

Wren and Nox stepped back into the shadows of the archway, remaining on high alert alongside Seraphina’s twenty Holy Knights, whose hands rested nervously on their sword hilts.

Valerian slowly raised his hand, refastening the dark silk blindfold over his eyes, tying the knot securely behind his head.

The primordial, suffocating pressure in the air ebbed away, but the cold weight of his presence remained.

He turned his body fully toward Seraphina, who stood her ground, her immaculate white robes specked with blood, her sapphire eyes burning with a mixture of righteous fury and deep, theological conviction.

"Tell me, Saintess..." Valerian spoke, his voice dropping into a low, measured rhythm as he took a step forward, his obsidian walking stick tapping softly against the stone floor.

Thump.

"What truly makes one a saint?"

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"A saint is one who embodies the infinite grace of the Lord of Light. One who offers mercy where there is hatred, who washes away the filth of sin through absolute forgiveness, and who recognizes that no soul, no matter how fallen, is beyond the reach of redemption."

Valerian paused.

Beneath the dark silk of his blindfold, a soft, bitter sound escaped his throat—a quiet laugh that carried no warmth, only a faint, undeniable thread of anger and buried pain.

"Infinite grace..." Valerian repeated softly, his tone dripping with quiet irony. "A poetic doctrine. Yet your scriptures—the very holy texts carved into the ivory altars of Lumeria—tell a vastly different story of the men who actually walked beside your Lord."

Seraphina straightened her posture, her divine light flickering subtly around her shoulders like a protective mantle.

"Do not lecture me on sacred scripture, Lord Valerian. I have devoted my entire life to the holy canons."

"Then you should know them well," Valerian countered smoothly, taking another slow step toward her.

"Consider the two most prominent pillars of your faith.

"The first man... he stood beside the Lord of Light, swore absolute devotion, yet when the dark hourglass turned, he denied his Lord thrice in a single night to save his own skin."

Seraphina thinned her pale lips.

"And he wept bitterly. He sought forgiveness, and the Lord restored him, crowning him as the foundation of the Holy Church!"

"Yes," Valerian said coldly.

"He wept, he sought forgiveness, and he was restored.

"But tell me, Saintess... did his tears erase the fact that he was a coward when his master was dragged away in chains?

"Did his restoration erase the spiritual consequence of his betrayal?

"No.

"He spent the remainder of his days carrying that shame, accepting his trial, and ultimately enduring a brutal, agonizing execution upon a cross without ever declaring himself holy."

Valerian shifted his black staff to his left hand, his voice growing sharper, more intense.

"And what of the second man?" Valerian continued, his tone cutting into the quiet balcony.

"The fanatic born of the high courts who ruthlessly hunted, slaughtered, and dragged the children of light from their homes in chains?

"When the divine light struck him blind on the road to Damascus, he repented.

"He became the greatest apostle your church has ever known."

Valerian took a final step, stopping barely two feet from Seraphina.

"He wrote much of the doctrine your church built its theology upon," Valerian whispered, leaning in slightly.

"He spent his life bleeding for the light.

"Yet do you know what he called himself in his final letters to the churches?

"He did not call himself a saint.

"He called himself the chief of sinners.

"He accepted the beatings, the stonings, the shipwrecks, and the executioner’s blade as the natural, terrifying harvest of the blood he had spilled in his youth!"

Seraphina opened her mouth to speak, but the sheer weight of Valerian’s words held her tongue.

"Neither of those men ever claimed their actions carried no consequence," Valerian said, his voice trembling with a faint, raw edge of fury.

"They accepted that forgiveness redeems the soul for the world to come, but justice demands payment in the world that is!

"Fuck no... they never called themselves saints!"

He raised a pale finger, pointing down toward the blood-stained wooden platform in the square below.

"You look at those five pieces of shit," Valerian spat, his voice dropping into a harsh, disgusted rasp, "and you hear their weeping and think it was the holy spirit moving in their hearts?

"You think they cared about repentance?

"You think they cared about the light?"

"They were terrified!" Seraphina argued back, her voice ringing with desperate conviction.

"Fear is often the first step toward the altar! The divine light breaks the proud so that grace may enter!

"If they were given time, if they were led to the sanctuary—"

"Forgiveness and mercy may redeem a man before God," Valerian cut her off, his voice echoing like thunder over the empty square, "but what about the people their actions affected?!"

The silence that followed was absolute.

Valerian took a deep, shuddering breath, controlling the sudden flare of his dark dragon core.

He lowered his hand, his posture settling back into that cold, unshakeable poise, though his words remained razor-sharp.

"Answer me, Saintess," Valerian demanded softly.

"What of the mother in the lower slums whose thirteen-year-old daughter was dragged into Julian’s private villa and never seen again?

"What of the three hundred families who starved in the winter cold because Cassian poisoned the grain supply to force a market monopoly?

"Does your ’divine grace’ put bread back on their tables?

"Does your holy absolution bring those dead children back from the dark earth?"

Seraphina’s sapphire eyes flickered with a sudden, painful conflict.

She looked at the young boy standing before her—a blindfolded fifteen-year-old who spoke not with the reckless arrogance of a tyrant, but with the heavy, ancient burden of someone who had seen the absolute bottom of human suffering.

"The church... the church provides charity to the victims," Seraphina whispered, though her voice lacked its previous unyielding authority.

"We pray for their solace. We build sanctuaries—"

"Sanctuaries built with the tithes of the very nobles who bled them dry," Valerian scoffed softly.

"You offer the victims a crust of bread and a prayer, while offering their torturers a clean slate and a seat in the front row of your cathedral."

Valerian turned away slightly, pacing slowly along the balcony railing.

"No matter how fine an apple tree looks," Valerian said, his voice quiet, philosophical, and deeply solemn, "no matter how white its blossoms or how rich its soil... it can still produce the most disgusting, poisonous fruit, even when it is watered daily with the rain of mercy.

"And there is also an apple tree... one planted in barren, rocky soil, bearing the bitter consequences of its own bad seeds, that still manages to fight through the thornbushes to produce the sweetest fruit in the harvest."

He stopped, turning his blindfolded head back toward her.

"Your holy scriptures state it clearly, do they not?" Valerian murmured.

"’With the same cup you measure unto others, it shall be measured back to you.’

"Even the true saints of your church did not escape that law.

"They paid their debts in blood, sweat, and martyrdom."

Seraphina stood frozen.

The warm, divine light radiating from her robes had dimmed into a faint, trembling glow.

She stared at the blindfolded noble, her mind racing, searching through five hundred years of church dogma, scripture, and holy doctrine for a counter-argument that didn’t sound hollow in the face of his brutal reality.

Valerian slowly raised his black chitin walking stick, planting the obsidian tip firmly against the stone floor.

Thump.

He began to walk past her, his movements smooth, quiet, and deliberate.

As his shoulder brushed past hers, he paused for a brief fraction of a second.

He leaned his head closer to her ear, his voice dropping into a low, pained, and haunting whisper that sent a cold shiver straight down the Saintess’s spine.

"So tell me, Saintess..." Valerian whispered, his tone laced with an ancient, unbearable sorrow.

"...what really makes one a saint?"

Without waiting for an answer, Valerian walked past her, his black coat fluttering softly in the mountain breeze as he disappeared down the dark corridor of the Governor’s Manor.

Seraphina remained standing alone on the balcony.

The wind blew through the empty plaza below, carrying the sharp, iron scent of blood up to the high terrace.

She looked down at the five motionless bodies lying in the ash, then looked at the dark hallway where the young governor had vanished.

For the first time in her life, the pristine, unyielding light of the Holy Kingdom felt freezing cold.