Chapter 33: The Archbishop’s True Face

Rhaiven’s foot refused to lift. Zoria had thrown himself down to grab his ankle, both hands locked around it, straining to hold him in place.

"Lord Rhaiven, please, don’t do this."

"This plan took years to build. We can’t turn back now, not with victory this close. If we bring down Babayaga, I know we’ll find more on that woman, I’m certain of it."

Zoria’s voice had dropped into something close to begging, and the sight of it, an Archbishop groveling on the floor in front of everyone, visibly turned the stomachs of his own people watching. He didn’t seem to notice, or care. His ambition had swallowed whatever pride he had left.

Rhaiven’s foot came down hard, driving straight through Zoria’s grip. The impact sent him tumbling backward, sprawled across the floor.

"Why would I bleed myself dry for something this uncertain? You think anyone’s eager to throw themselves at Babayaga? Look at that old man over there, he’s already half-dead before he’s even set foot near him. We’d just be punching bags waiting for our turn."

The old man he meant was Kai. Rhaiven wasn’t wrong about it, either, Kai’s condition alone was enough to tip the whole campaign into disaster, and even at full strength, one Supreme standing against Babayaga alone had never been a fair fight to begin with.

Something in Rhaiven’s words had planted real doubt, doubt that had clearly been growing in all of them for a while now, despite everything Babayaga’s territory promised: control over trade routes spanning the entire continent, and buried beneath all of it, the true prize, a mana-stone dungeon rich enough that most of the world’s mana stones traced back to that single vein.

Plenty of others had tried to take it from him before. Every single one of them had lost, and lost easily.

Zoria pushed himself back up from the floor, laughing under his breath, a sound that made Rhaiven stop mid-stride and wonder if the man had finally cracked entirely, having already burned through his own dignity as Archbishop and every scrap of that Oracle fantasy chasing this plan.

"All of you already got what you wanted. And now you mean to betray me? You’ve got the staff, you’ve got the devil-blooded girl in chains, and you still refuse to help me. Tell me, who’s really the one doing the cheating here?"

Rhaiven answered flatly that he’d gained nothing from any of it, if anything he’d lost more than he’d bargained for, having already committed real resources toward helping him.

If Zoria had complaints, he told him, take it up with the two who’d actually walked away with something, Yunxi and Kai.

Kai tossed a gold pouch down at Zoria’s feet without ceremony. A thousand gold coins inside it, he said, though not ordinary ones, these were minted at ten times the value of standard currency.

Call it compensation, Kai added, for handing over Miyu and the staff bearing the Kirana crystal. But their aid in the coming war wasn’t part of the deal. It stood to cost them too much for too little in return.

"You think our Order is that desperate?" Zoria snapped, refusing to touch the pouch. "If this is all you—"

He never finished the sentence. Something landed at his feet before he could.

Four more gold pouches, identical in weight and value to the one Kai had already thrown down, dropped in front of him one after another.

Zoria’s eyes screwed shut, his hands curling into fists, his expression twisting with something close to disgust, even as the four guards standing behind Yunxi looked on in silence, offering nothing beyond the gesture itself, trusting he’d understand exactly what it meant.

He’d already made his position clear, though. Gold wasn’t what he needed from them.

"Use your head, Zoria." Rhaiven had already started walking away again. "With that much coin, you could hire every soldier you could ever want."

Zoria stooped and snatched up one of the pouches anyway, fist closing tight around it. Even a hundred thousand hired swords wouldn’t be nearly enough to bring down Babayaga, and some part of him seemed to finally understand just how thoroughly he’d been strung along by all of them.

He flung the pouch skyward without warning. Coins scattered through the air, raining down across the floor in a bright, chaotic clatter of gold against stone.

But.

Beneath the noise of all that falling coin, no one caught what was actually happening. Zoria’s arm had already swung out toward Rhaiven’s back, a thick rope of crimson fluid coiling from his palm, condensing mid-motion into something narrow and merciless, sharpened to a killing point.

It punched straight through Rhaiven’s stomach from behind. The last of the coins hit the floor and went still in the same instant, and only then did Zoria draw the blade of red back out of him.

One of the faithful, catching sight of what their Archbishop had just done, screamed in pure horror.

Rhaiven hadn’t died, not yet, though he staggered hard, blood already soaking through his cloak, forcing his legs to carry him backward, stumbling toward Kai and Yunxi as fast as his failing body allowed.

"You piece of shit. Zoria, what the hell is this?"

Something in Zoria’s face had already begun to change. His eyes bled to red, veins darkening visibly beneath his skin, and worst of all, that same crimson fluid began seeping from the corner of his mouth, dripping down his chin.

Panic tore through the crowd as people scattered, fleeing the sight of an Archbishop suddenly radiating dark mana thick enough to choke the air around him.

Even the four guards flanking Yunxi snapped into formation in front of her, urging immediate retreat. Yunxi only stared at them, genuinely puzzled by the sudden fear in men who’d never once flinched in front of her before.

Kai spoke up beside her, low and urgent, warning that the Crimson clan’s power defied prediction at the best of times, admitting he’d already suspected Zoria’s bloodline from the start, which was exactly why he’d kept his distance from the man since the moment they’d arrived.

The clan’s most feared ability, he explained, was simple and horrifying in equal measure: blood taken from another person could be absorbed, stacked, and turned into a mimicry of whatever power that person carried.

And Zoria was already putting Rhaiven’s stolen blood to use. The fabric across Rhaiven’s chest tore open on its own, jagged points of bone splitting up through his skin from beneath, and his arm rose, sweeping wide through the air in a broad, deliberate arc, fingers curling and dragging as though hauling something invisible forward by force.

Something answered the gesture. The Adenium blossoms piled high in every corner of the ruined building shuddered violently, dark mana pouring off them in thick, visible waves.

Murks tore free from the wilting petals in a swarm, rising to circle overhead, every one of them moving in perfect obedience to Zoria’s outstretched hand.

"How are you commanding my spirits without a Necromancer’s Grimoire, Zoria?"

Rhaiven’s voice came out disbelieving, staring up at a swarm he’d personally seeded inside that hidden desert cave, packed full of Murks he’d cultivated himself for exactly this war, and watching every last one of them answer to someone else’s will instead.

The plan had always been his alone to control, his Grimoire the only thing capable of commanding those spirits. Zoria’s stolen power had just rewritten that entirely.

"This is all your own fault," Zoria said, his voice dropped low and cracked, nothing left of the composed tone he’d carried only minutes earlier.

His hand swung toward them, and the Murks answered instantly, surging first toward Rhaiven, the nearest target, before wheeling to close in on Kai right behind him.

"Your Grace, we need to fall back, now!"