He did not draw a weapon. He did not cast a spell. He simply stepped out of the cell and caught the nearest guard by the back of the neck before the man had fully registered that death was standing beside him. Ludwig’s fingers dug in, found the throat, and tore. The guard’s body jerked violently, both hands flying up as blood spilled between his fingers. He tried to scream, but the sound came out as a wet choke.

The second guard turned fast enough to reach for his blade. Not fast enough to matter. Ludwig crossed the space and drove him into the wall with one hand clamped around his mouth and the other buried into the side of his neck. Bone cracked under his grip. Flesh opened. The guard’s eyes went wide with animal terror as blood ran down his armor and soaked into the white cloth beneath. Ludwig held him there, watching the hope flee from his gaze one trembling second at a time.

"You took their hope," Ludwig said quietly, leaning close enough that the guard could hear him over his own failing breath. "So it is only fair that yours leaves slowly. Bleed without ever being able to scream for help. Die in the same helplessness you made those children feel."

The guard’s legs kicked once against the wall, then weakened. Ludwig let him slide down only when the body had become useless. The first guard was still on the ground, trying to crawl while clutching the ruined mess of his throat. Redd had not moved. Kaiser had not moved. Neither needed to.

The bishop stumbled backward, mouth opening to scream. Bone arms erupted from the ground before sound could fully form. They burst through the stone like pale roots, gripping his wrists, ankles, shoulders, and jaw. Kaiser stepped out from the corpse cell, his skeletal hand raised slightly, the magic around him quiet and precise.

The bishop’s eyes bulged as the bone fingers forced him to his knees. "Filthy dark mages," he spat through clenched teeth once Kaiser loosened the grip enough for speech. "You dare defile the Sacrosanctum? You dare bring profane magic beneath holy ground?"

Ludwig turned toward him slowly.

For a moment, he said nothing. He looked at the bishop, then at the cells, then at the dead children whose souls still could not leave. The old man’s accusation hung in the air, absurd enough to almost be funny.

"Profane," Ludwig repeated.

The bishop trembled, though whether from fear or indignation, Ludwig did not care. "You crawl beneath the house of the gods like vermin. Eat away at the lives of those who have no power to protect themselves. And call me profane?"

Ludwig crouched in front of him and took the bishop’s right hand. He held it gently at first, almost politely, then bent the smallest finger backward until the bone snapped. The bishop screamed, a raw, ugly sound that echoed down the corridor. Kaiser flicked his fingers, and a thin veil of bone and shadow sealed the passage, swallowing the noise before it could travel too far.

"You will answer questions," Ludwig said. "And you will quickly learn that answering does not mean the pain will lessen."

The bishop gasped, eyes wet. "You... you monster..."

"No," Ludwig said, breaking the next finger with the same calm pressure. "You don’t get to use that word like it belongs to you."

Redd looked away, not out of pity for the bishop, but because his own hands were shaking. The ghost behind him flickered again, and for a moment her faint face turned toward the cells rather than the interrogation. Kaiser remained still, though even he seemed quieter than usual. Ludwig worked with patience, and that was the part that made the chamber colder. He did not rage. He did not roar. He asked questions, and when the bishop lied, he took something. A finger bent wrong. A nail torn free. A joint crushed under pressure. Small pieces. Nothing immediately fatal. Nothing merciful enough to end him.

The bishop screamed for the gods at first. Then for the guards. Then for mercy. Then, when he realized none of them were coming, he began answering.

The first answers were useless prayers wrapped in doctrine. Evil spirits. Corruption. Necessary purification. Sacrifice for Solania. Ludwig stripped those away with methodical cruelty until the old man stopped speaking like a bishop and started speaking like a coward who knew exactly what had been done.

The children were not possessed.

They were vessels.

Some had been taken from slums because no one would ask too loudly. Some had been gathered from refugee caravans after monster attacks. Some had been "offered" by families desperate enough to believe a cleric’s promise of healing. Their bodies were tested for resonance, pain tolerance, spiritual elasticity, and something the bishop called "Hope Density" a phrase so vile in its casualness that Ludwig nearly killed him then and there.

The souls were sealed in the corpses because death ruined the measurements.

A child who died normally passed on, and whatever the ritualists were studying vanished with them. A soul trapped in a corpse, however, could be measured, siphoned, pressured, and compared against living subjects. They were trying to understand how despair changed faith, how agony altered prayer, how much suffering a person could endure before they stopped calling for rescue and began calling for salvation. It was not science in the clean sense. It was theology with knives. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"It is no different than Undeath is it not?" Redd asked.

"No," Ludwig shook his head, "Undeath is a contract with Necros. You ask, he provides. This is theft, they stole form him. And believe me, he’s pissed."

"Who ordered it?" Ludwig asked, his hand resting against the bishop’s remaining unbroken wrist.

The bishop sobbed. "I don’t know all of them."

Ludwig pressed down until the wrist creaked.

"I swear," the bishop gasped. "I swear by the Four, I don’t know all of them. Not the saints. Not all the cardinals. This is not known to everyone."

That matched what Ludwig feared. Rot rarely consumed everything at once. It hid behind clean faces and let the innocent shield the guilty with ignorance.

"Names," Ludwig said.

The bishop gave them. Clementine was the one that mattered most. Not the soft public face He wore in the upper halls, not the careful administrator of holy charity and doctrine, but the person moving messages between the hidden ritualists and the faction dealing with Sloth. Sister Gallows, the Shrike, served as blade and courier when subtlety failed. There were others beneath them, minor bishops, wardens, physicians, scribes, and guards who never asked why certain cells always needed cleaning before dawn.

Misty did not know. Titania’s right hand had been kept away from the lower catacombs by design. Mot did not know either, or at least the bishop believed he did not. The Saint of Dreams was too strange, too watched by forces even Clementine did not fully understand, and too dangerous to involve before the final stage. Most of the Holy Order remained what it claimed to be, or at least close enough to fool itself: priests, healers, soldiers, fools, believers. That made the truth worse. The corruption had not needed everyone. It had only needed enough people in the right holes beneath the floor.

And the purpose was larger than the children.

The Hero was not enough.