The peace they had fought so hard to build was a beautiful, fragile glass, and for a moment, it seemed the cracks were starting to show.
It started when Seraphina noticed a draft in the hallway of the Astra Manor. She had gone to find Eveline for their nightly tea, only to find the Saintess's room empty, the window latched but the bed cold.
On her way to alert the guards, she nearly collided with Alaric, who was fully dressed in his Holy knight Regalia, his face grim.
"Killian's gone," Alaric whispered, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. "He missed the midnight watch change. I saw a shadow slip toward the Old Catacombs."
"Eveline is gone too," Seraphina replied, her eyes narrowing. "They think they can do this without us. Again."
Driven by a mixture of worry and that familiar, stubborn anger, Seraphina and Alaric followed the trail. They moved through the moonlit streets, silent as the ghosts of their past lives, tracking the two "traitors" deep into the ruins of the lower city—an area still choked with the rubble of the old regime.
They found them in the hollowed-out shell of an old archive, lit only by a single, flickering candle. Killian was hunched over a table covered in jagged pieces of black parchment, while Eveline stood over him, her hands glowing with a faint, searching light as she scanned the documents.
"It's a network," Killian's voice rasped, sounding like the soldier they remembered from the war. "They aren't just remnants; they're organized. They call themselves the 'Order of the Final Breath.'"
"They believe the High Priest was a martyr," Eveline whispered, her face pale in the candlelight. "They're waiting for the Festival of Light to strike. They want to turn the celebration into a slaughter."
"And you were planning on telling us when, exactly?"
The voice of Seraphina cut through the damp air like a blade. Killian and Eveline jumped, turning to see Seraphina and Alaric standing in the arched doorway, silhouetted by the moonlight.
Alaric stepped forward, the silver of his Holy Knight armor gleaming even in the dark. "You lectured me about being a 'hero' who works alone, Killian. And here you are, meeting in the dark like a fugitive."
"We were trying to protect you," Killian growled, though he had the grace to look slightly guilty. "You two finally found some peace. I didn't want to drag you back into the mud until I was sure."
"The mud belongs to all of us!" Seraphina snapped, walking to the table and slamming her hand down on the black parchments. "Did you learn nothing from the first life? We don't keep secrets. We don't 'protect' each other by lying. If there is a cult, we crush it together."
Eveline sighed, her shoulders dropping in defeat. "Killian found these hidden in the floorboards of the old Inquisitor's office.
They've been using the reconstruction projects to smuggle 'Siphon Stones' back into the city."
Killian pointed to a map of the capital. Several locations were circled in red ink—places where the common people gathered most often.
"They aren't targeting the palace," Alaric noted, his tactical mind immediately clicking into place. "They're targeting the heart of the new Empire. The markets, the clinics, the schools."
"They want to prove that our peace is a lie," Seraphina said, her voice turning cold and steady. "They want the people to fear the light again."
She looked at her three companions. The Knight, the Saintess, and the Commander. They had rebuilt the city with their hands, and now they would have to defend it with their lives.
"No more sneaking off," Alaric commanded, looking at Killian. "From this moment on, we hunt them as one. We're going to show these cultists that the 'Idiots of the Spire' are much harder to kill the second time around."