EKPOMA 10:02 PM
The Unlit Cathedral groaned.
Not the sound of stone settling. The sound of something straining. A law being pushed beyond its capacity.
Inside, Tessy was losing.
Her silver boots still glowed—faint, flickering, but present. Her Conviction still held—I am still moving—but every step was slower than the last. Every dodge was closer. Every breath was borrowed from a reserve that had been empty ten minutes ago.
Scotto stood over her.
Not gloating. Not savoring. Just... watching. His third eye spun slowly, cataloguing her exhaustion, her limits, her dwindling Faith.
"You're at your ceiling," he said.
"I don't have a ceiling."
"Everyone has a ceiling."
"Mine's higher than you think."
She lunged.
He caught her—his massive hand closing around her throat, lifting her off the ground. Her silver boots kicked at his chest, Stride still pushing, still accelerating, but without space to build momentum, the blows were useless.
"Your body is failing," he observed. "Your Faith is failing. Your Conviction is admirable, but admiration doesn't win fights."
"Neither does talking."
"I learn while I talk."
He squeezed.
Tessy's vision blurred. Her aura flickered. Her boots—Stride—dimmed.
Not like this, she thought.
Not here.
Not alone.
10:03 PM
The top of the Cathedral splintered.
Not shattered. Cracked. A single fissure, thin as a thread, splitting the absolute dark.
Through it fell David.
Green light. Fists raised. Jaw set. A pink dove spiraled behind him, its feathers glowing faintly, its presence impossible inside a domain that rejected light.
He landed between Tessy and Scotto.
"David—"
"Partners," he said. "Remember?"
Tessy stared at him.
Then she laughed—a raw, cracked, exhausted sound.
"You're stupid."
"So I've been told."
"You can't fight him."
"Neither can you."
"I was doing fine."
"You were losing."
"I was learning."
Scotto watched them both, his third eye tracking the pink dove still circling overhead.
"The bird," he said. "It's not yours."
"No," David agreed. "It's not."
The dove chirped.
And the Cathedral shattered.
FLASHBACK: SOME DAYS BACK
The Covenant base. Tessy's room.
Eloghosa sat on her floor, legs crossed, pink doves perched on her headboard. Tessy stood by the window, barefoot, arms crossed.
"You want me to train the rookie."
"I want you to watch the rookie."
"Same thing."
"Different thing." Eloghosa's voice was calm, unhurried. "Training is teaching. Watching is seeing. He doesn't need a teacher right now. He needs someone who can recognize what he is."
"And what is he?"
Eloghosa was silent for a moment.
"Something we've been missing."
"That's vague."
"Maybe." He stood, brushing off his pants. "The Covenant is full of people who follow orders. Who do their jobs. Who exorcise Phobias and go home and try to forget."
He looked at her.
"David isn't like that. He follows his ideals. Not orders. Not fear. Not even Faith, really. He follows what he believes is right."
"That sounds like a liability."
"It is." Eloghosa smiled. "It's also the only thing that's ever actually changed anything."
Tessy didn't answer.
"Just watch him," Eloghosa said. "You'll see."
PRESENT
Pink doves filled the sky.
Not dozens. Hundreds. Their feathers caught the trapped moonlight, reflected off the broken walls, painted the darkness in shades of rose and coral. The Unlit Cathedral—Scotto's incomplete domain—crumbled at their presence, its law unable to suppress so much light at once.
Eloghosa stood across the clearing.
His katana was drawn. The blade—Hearth, his Gift—glowed faintly pink, the color of sunset, the color of his doves. His uniform was immaculate. His expression was calm.
"Took you long enough," Tessy called.
"I had to find a parking spot."
"You teleported."
"The doves need rest too."
David stared at Eloghosa, then at Scotto, then at the pink doves still spiraling overhead.
"You came."
"You called."
"I didn't—"
"The dove." Eloghosa nodded at the bird still circling David's head. "They come when you need them. Even if you don't know you're calling."
Scotto's third eye fixed on Eloghosa.
"The tall one," he said. "The one Angel warned me about."
"Who?."
"She said you were dangerous."
"They're not wrong."
Eloghosa raised his katana.
David moved to follow—to press the advantage, to land another Communion, to fight.
Tessy caught his arm.
"Don't."
"He's right there—" He replied
"You'll get caught in what's coming."
David looked at her face. At the exhaustion there. At the certainty.
He stepped back.
Eloghosa extended his katana.
Not a thrust. Not a slash. Just... reached. The blade pointed at Scotto, across the clearing, across the rubble, across the distance.
"Glimmer."
The word was soft. Almost gentle.
The lightning was not.
Pink. Brilliant. Alive. It erupted from the blade's tip in a straight line—not a bolt, not a arc, a beam of condensed light and thunder. The sound cracked a second later, deafening, shaking the ground, shattering what remained of the surrounding windows.
Scotto didn't dodge.
He couldn't.
The beam struck him in the chest—his left side, his shoulder, his arm. The dark mass armor he had built over minutes, over hours, over his entire three-day existence burned away.
When the light faded, half his upper body was gone.
Not wounded. Not bleeding. Disintegrated. The left side of his chest, his shoulder, his arm—simply absent. The edges of the wound glowed faintly pink, the light still burning, still spreading.
Scotto looked down at himself.
His third eye was still open. His two primary eyes were wide.
"So," he said. His voice was quiet. "This is what I was warned about."
He touched the glowing edge of his wound.
"I can't heal my limbs back. Not like this. The light... it's still there. Still burning."
He looked up at Eloghosa.
"I poured all my dark mass into reinforcing my body before your attack. If I hadn't..."
"You'd be dead," Eloghosa finished.
"Yes."
Scotto's remaining hand curled into a fist.
"But I'm not dead yet."
Scotto raised his arm.
The barrier—the trapping barrier that had held them all inside—bent. Not broke. Bent. The darkness that had been contained within the Cathedral, within the domain, within the space Eloghosa had shattered—it surged.
Not at Eloghosa. At the barrier itself.
The darkness wrapped around the barrier's interior, feeding it, expanding it. The cage that was meant to keep things in became a conduit. The darkness spread outward—through the cracks, through the walls, through the ground.
"He's using the barrier," Tessy said. "Amplifying his range."
"Clever," Eloghosa observed.
"Can you stop it?"
"Watch."
He raised his katana again.
"Glimmer."
This time, the lightning wasn't a beam. It was a barrage—pink bolts erupting from Hearth's blade in rapid succession, each one striking a different point on the barrier's edge. The cage shattered. The darkness lost its container.
And kept spreading.
The darkness reached the streets. The buildings beyond the clearing. The city.
Eloghosa straightened his arm.
His katana—Hearth—glowed brighter. The pink light wasn't just around the blade anymore. It was in it. The metal seemed to drink the light and ask for more.
"Haven." he said
The darkness stopped.
Not slowed. Not pushed back. Stopped. As if someone had pressed pause on the world.
Then it moved.
Not toward Eloghosa. Into his katana. The blade drank the shadows—siphoned them from the air, from the ground, from the buildings, from the sky. The darkness didn't fight. It flowed, like water finding a drain, like light finding darkness's opposite.
By the time Haven was done, the clearing was clear.
No shadows. No darkness. Just moonlight, pink doves, and the faint glow of Eloghosa's katana.
Scotto was gone.
10:11 PM
David screamed.
"COME BACK! I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO LEARN! THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN THE END OF YOUR ACADEMIC YEAR, YOU DERANGED PHOBIA!"
His voice echoed across the empty clearing.
No answer.
Eloghosa sheathed Hearth, the blade's glow fading.
"He's not dead," he said.
David spun. "WHAT?"
"He escaped. Through the ground. Used the darkness as a tunnel." Eloghosa's expression was calm, but his eyes were sharp. "He's wounded. Half his body is gone. He won't be a threat for a while."
"A while?"
"Days. Weeks. Months. Depends on how fast he heals."
"He said he couldn't heal."
"That's because of my attack, Glimmer I should have just used the maximum output but he'll regenerate. Slowly."
David's fists clenched. His green aura flickered—not from loss of control, from frustration.
"We had him."
"You had him." Eloghosa walked toward them, his boots crunching on the broken ground. "You're more attuned with your faith now.You proved something tonight, David."
"What?"
"That you belong here."
Joy emerged from the SUV, her face pale, her hands steady.
"Amaka is stable. Agnes and Patrick are alive—barely. I've called for extraction."
"Good," Eloghosa said. He turned to Tessy. "Your arm."
"I'll handle it."
"I can heal it." he said
"I said I'll handle it."
He sighed—the sigh of someone who had had this argument before and knew he would lose again.
"Fine. At least let me—"
"Go check on Amaka. Make sure she's not dying."
"Tessy—"
"Please."
Eloghosa held her gaze for a moment. Then he nodded and walked toward the ruined building.
10:13 PM
David watched as Tessy sat on a piece of rubble, her back straight, her jaw tight.
Her silver aura flickered to life—not Stride, just her, just Faith.
The healing began.
Bone first—white, gleaming, pushing up from the wound. It grew slowly, vertebra by vertebra, until the rough shape of a forearm existed where nothing had been. Then muscle—fiber by fiber, weaving itself around the bone, red and glistening. Then skin—smooth, brown, unmarked.
By the time she was done, her left arm looked exactly as it had before Scotto's blast.
She flexed her fingers.
"Showoff," David said.
"Takes one to know one."
"Six Communions."
"In one fight."
"Omo I'm kind of a big deal now."
She almost smiled.
"You're kind of an idiot."
"Same thing."
10:15 PM
David's legs gave out.
Joy caught him before he hit the ground—her arms around his chest, her grip steady.
"Easy," she said. "You're running on empty."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're exhausted, dehydrated, and your Faith reserves are critically low."
"I said I'm fine."
"David."
Tessy's voice. Quiet. Certain.
He looked at her.
"You did good," she said. "Rest."
He wanted to argue. He wanted to stand. He wanted to chase Scotto into whatever hole he had crawled into and finish what they started.
But his body had other plans.
His eyes closed. His breathing slowed. His green aura dimmed.
He slept.
10:18 PM
Eloghosa stood where Scotto had disappeared.
His doves circled overhead—watching, waiting, keeping guard. The trapped moonlight had faded, replaced by the grey of a city that had survived another night.
Tessy walked up beside him, her new arm flexing experimentally.
"He's going to come back," she said.
"I know."
"Stronger."
"I know."
"Smarter."
"Tessy." He looked at her. "So will we."
She was silent for a moment.
"David," she said. "He's not like the others."
"No."
"He's not evil. He's just... curious."
"Curiosity killed the cat."
"Scotto isn't a cat."
Eloghosa watched the stars.
"No," he agreed. "He's not."
10:20 PM
Joy drove.
David slept in the back seat, his head against the window, his green aura completely gone. Tessy sat beside him, her new arm resting in her lap, her silver boots finally dismissed.
Eloghosa sat in the front passenger seat, his katana across his knees then they just dissipated into pink light.
"You could have released the gift before entering the vehicleyou know," Tessy said.
"My fault"
"Do you always now keep a dove with everyone."
"Don't worry they only appear when you're in dire need. I tweaked the technique a little bit."
"Better than the stalker crimes you've been committing."
"Crimes is a strong word though." He replied but she was clearly getting under his skin
"You better not keep one with me again."
"Yh… i won't and I'm really sorry about before."
Tessy looked out the window.
"I know," she said.
The SUV carried them away from the clearing, away from the ruins, away from the darkness that had tried to swallow them all.
Somewhere beneath the earth, wounded and healing, Scotto watched them go.
And smiled.