The old woman rose from her chair with a grunt, crossing to the largest bookshelf in the room. She pressed her palm against a particular volume, and the entire shelf swung outward, revealing a narrow passage behind it.

"The tunnels," she said, gesturing toward the darkness beyond. "They run beneath the entire Holy City. Old smuggler routes, mostly. Some date back to before the church was even built."

"You have access to these?" Lillian asked, peering into the passage.

"I am these, girl." The old woman’s eyes glittered. "I helped dig half of them, back when I had knees that worked and hands that didn’t shake."

Evelina stepped into the passage without hesitation, her white hair disappearing into the gloom. Lillian followed, and the old woman came last, pulling the bookshelf shut behind them.

The darkness was absolute for a moment. Then, one by one, torches along the walls flickered to life, their flames burning with a steady, unwavering light that cast no shadows.

"Magic torches," Lillian observed.

"Convenience," the old woman replied. "I’m too old to be stumbling around in the dark." 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

They walked in silence, their footsteps echoing off the stone walls. The passage sloped downward, then leveled out, widening into a corridor that could have fit three people abreast. Side passages branched off at regular intervals, each one marked with symbols Lillian didn’t recognize.

"The distribution network," Evelina said, answering the unasked question. "These tunnels connect to every major warehouse in the Holy City. Including your family’s, Valemont."

"This is why people are scared of you, Evelina."

"And I love it."

Lillian shook her head, a disbelieving laugh escaping her. "You really don’t trust anyone, do you?"

"I trust Cael." Evelina glanced back, her crimson eyes catching the torchlight. "Everyone else has to earn it."

They emerged from the tunnel into a vast underground chamber, the ceiling lost in shadow, the walls lined with crates and barrels and sacks of grain. Workers moved between them, silent and efficient, loading goods onto wagons hitched to nothing.

"Golems," the old woman said, gesturing toward the wagons. "No need to feed them, and they don’t ask questions."

Lillian watched the golems work, their stone bodies moving with a fluidity that belied their construction. "How many of these do you have?"

"Enough."

Evelina was already walking toward a table at the far end of the chamber, where a map lay spread across the surface. It showed the Holy City in painstaking detail, every street, every building, every sewer grate and service entrance.

"The church’s ritual will begin in the evening," she said, tracing her finger along the map. "That gives us roughly three hours to move as many people as possible."

"Three hours," Lillian repeated. "That’s not enough time."

"Then we’d better start now."

The old woman snapped her fingers, and the golems stopped loading. They turned, their featureless faces somehow attentive, waiting for instructions.

"Pull everyone from the eastern districts first," the old woman said, her voice carrying through the chamber. "The church has been focusing its advertisements there. Those people are most at risk."

The golems moved, splitting into groups, each one heading toward a different tunnel entrance.

Lillian watched them go, her hand still resting on the wand at her hip. "What about the pilgrims already inside the church?"

Evelina’s expression didn’t change. "They’re beyond our reach."

"So we just... abandon them?"

"We prioritize." Evelina looked up from the map, her crimson eyes flat. "There’s a difference."

Lillian wanted to argue. But the words wouldn’t come. Because Evelina was right, wasn’t she? They couldn’t save everyone. They could only save the ones they could reach.

"The prince," Lillian said instead. "What do we tell him?"

"The truth."

"That we’re evacuating people behind his back?"

"That we’re giving him a reason to give the signal." Evelina straightened, rolling up the map and tucking it under her arm. "Come on. We have work to do."

The old woman chuckled, low and rasping. "I like her. She’s got steel."

"She’s got something," Lillian muttered.

They walked back through the tunnels, the torches dimming behind them as they passed. Lillian’s mind raced, calculating, planning, trying to find the flaw in Evelina’s scheme that she’d missed.

She couldn’t find one. At least one that was too major.

And that scared her more than anything.

"Will the golems just snatch people off the street to keep them from going to church?"

"Yeah, we can’t exactly tell them to stop their pilgrimage. But don’t worry, those golems are precise enough to control their strength to incapacitate rather than kill."

***

In the streets, the golems had already begun to move.

Each one was cloaked with runes that rendered them invisible, along with anyone they touched. They moved through the crowds like ghosts, finding their targets, subduing them in silence. A touch here. A grip there. Pilgrims crumpled without a sound, their bodies cradled by stone arms that left no bruises.

The golems’ job was simple: group up as many people as possible while Evelina and Lillian seized control of the Valemont assets. Wagons needed to be prepped. Warehouses needed to be cleared. Every unconscious body needed a place to hide before the ritual began.

With the current level of noise and chaos in the Holy City, the hymns echoing from the church, the merchants still hawking their wares, the crowds pressing through every plaza, a few small kidnappings wouldn’t attract attention.

And even if someone noticed?

Evelina had made sure the golems were tough enough to take on a handful of inquisitors or church guards.

A squad of them, even.

She hadn’t spent months planning a backup just for failure.

The streets of the Holy City churned with pilgrims, their voices rising in hymns that echoed off the ancient stone buildings. Incense burned in braziers at every intersection, thick and sweet, masking the smell of sweat and anxiety that clung to the crowds.

The golems moved through it all like shadows through water.

Invisible. Silent. Deadly in their precision.

A young couple, arms linked, singing along with the chorus, disappeared between one step and the next. Their bodies slumped against stone shoulders that caught them before they could fall. A merchant, closing up his stall to join the procession, vanished behind a stack of crates that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Three children, chasing each other through the crowd, were lifted from their feet and carried away before they could scream.

The church’s guards patrolled the edges of the procession, their golden armor gleaming, their eyes scanning for threats they couldn’t see. They walked past unconscious pilgrims hidden in alcoves, past golems pressed against walls like statues, past the growing gaps in the crowd that no one seemed to notice.

Because no one was looking.

Why would they? This was a holy day. A day of miracles. A day when Elion himself might descend from the heavens and bless his faithful.

No one wanted to believe that anything could go wrong.

No one wanted to see.

The Valemont warehouses sat in the industrial district, a sprawling complex of stone and iron that had stood for generations. Lillian’s ancestors had built them when the Holy City was still a trading post, and her family had maintained them ever since.

Now they were empty.

Or they had been.

The golems arrived in waves, each one carrying one or two unconscious pilgrims. They laid them in neat rows on the warehouse floors, arranging them by age and apparent health, the way a farmer might arrange harvest crops.

Lillian watched from the doorway, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable.

"How many?" she asked.

"Seventy-three so far," one of the golems replied, its voice a low rumble like distant thunder. "More coming."

"Seventy-three." Lillian shook her head. "In less than an hour."

"The mistress planned well."

The golem turned and walked back toward the tunnel entrance, its stone feet silent on the packed earth floor.

Lillian followed it with her eyes, then turned to look at the rows of unconscious pilgrims. Men. Women. Children. Old people. Young people. Rich and poor, all dressed in their finest clothes, all brought here to be saved from a fate they didn’t know was coming.

"Can’t believe you made me into a savior..."

Lillian spun.

Evelina stood in the warehouse doorway, her white hair bright against the grey stone, her crimson eyes sweeping over the rows of sleeping pilgrims.

"Seventy-three," Lillian said. "That’s not enough."

"It’s a start, don’t worry, once the golems start using the wagons, we’d double our efficiency."