Calvian's Solbrand slammed into Sylas's curved blade with a force that shook the very foundations of the Cathedral. Golden fire exploded outward, colliding with arcs of blue-green light that seared across the ancient walls, burning scripture into black char.

The sound was deafening, metal striking metal at impossible speeds, underscored by the hiss and crackle of opposing energies devouring each other.

Soren stared down at the broken scripture-chains lying at his feet, his wrists raw and bleeding but gloriously free. The weight of them, physical and otherwise, had vanished, leaving him light-headed with sudden possibility.

'No one holds you anymore,' Valenna whispered, her voice steadier than it had been in days, the shard against his chest pulsing with cold, familiar certainty.

A reliquary exploded to his left as Sylas dodged a vicious overhead strike, sending fragments of glass and splinters of ancient bone scattering across the stone floor. The saint's skull within, centuries old and treated with reverence by generations of faithful, bounced once before shattering against a pillar. No one paused to mourn its destruction.

Soren bent and snatched up the fallen Inquisitor's shortblade, his fingers closing awkwardly around the unfamiliar hilt. It wasn't his preferred weapon, but it was better than facing this chaos unarmed.

The metal felt cold against his palm, the weight all wrong compared to what he'd trained with under Kaelor's watchful eye.

Across the hall, three of Sylas's hooded assassins engaged a cluster of Inquisitors with lethal precision. Daggers flashed in the chaotic light, finding gaps in robes with surgical accuracy.

The Inquisitors fought back with strange weapons of their own—scripture-chains that moved almost like living things, metal links wrapping around limbs and throats with malicious intent.

Blood spattered across ancient texts. Chants turned to screams. The air filled with the metallic scent of it, mingling with incense and the acrid smell of burning parchment.

Time seemed to slow around Soren as he took in the battle raging before him. Calvian and Sylas remained at its center, their duel transforming the Cathedral's sacred hall into something from legend.

The knight's golden perfection contrasted with the assassin's fluid grace, each movement precisely calculated yet somehow wild in its execution.

When their blades met again, the shockwave sent cracks spiderwebbing up a nearby pillar. Stone groaned in protest, dust raining down from the vaulted ceiling high above. The Cathedral itself seemed to shudder under the force of their conflict, centuries of sanctity crumbling beneath powers never meant to clash in these hallowed halls.

Through smoke and fractured light, a familiar figure appeared at the far end of the corridor. Veyr Velrane moved with that careful grace that disguised his limp, scripture-chains still binding his wrists before him.

Two Cathedral guards flanked him, their faces pale with fear as they escorted their noble prisoner through the chaos. Their hands trembled on their weapons, eyes darting frantically between the battle before them and their dangerous charge.

Veyr's pale eyes found Soren across the chamber, sharp with calculation despite the chains that should have humbled him.

Even now, surrounded by destruction, he looked composed, as if this violence were merely an interesting development in some grand design only he could see.

His voice cut through the chaos with surprising clarity, pitched to carry to the galleries above where clergy cowered behind ornate railings.

"If Solmir's Flame spared him," Veyr called out, gesturing toward Soren with his bound hands, "and Velrane blood stands with him, will you still call it heresy?"

The words landed like stones in still water, rippling outward with implications Soren couldn't fully grasp. Clergy members exchanged uncertain glances.

Some clutched religious symbols tighter, muttering prayers for protection or guidance. Others leaned forward, reassessing the chaos below with new perspective.

"Blasphemy!" shouted a white-bearded priest, his face flushed with righteous anger. "The sacred halls defiled! The relics destroyed!"

"Yet the Flame did not consume him," countered another, younger voice. "The texts speak of such signs—"

The Cathedral's unity fractured before Soren's eyes, splintering along lines that had likely existed for years beneath the surface of ceremonial harmony. Some called for his immediate execution, others for protection and study. The uncertainty created by his survival of the Eternal Flame now compounded by the violence erupting in their most sacred space.

Sylas moved like water made flesh, each strike flowing into the next with hypnotic grace. His curved blade left trails of that eerie blue-green light wherever it passed, the energy seeming to drink the golden fire that Calvian wielded with such righteous certainty.

For all their differences in style and purpose, both men fought with the absolute conviction of those who had dedicated their lives to a single path.

Yet for all his fluid precision, Sylas was gaining ground. Each exchange pushed Calvian back a fraction, the knight's perfect form showing the first hints of strain.

Sparks showered from Solbrand's edge where the assassin's blade scraped against it, the metal itself seeming to protest such contact.

Calvian countered with raw power, golden fire surging from his sword in waves that set the very air ablaze. Stone glowed where it touched, scripture etched into the walls illuminating as if the words themselves had caught fire.

The heat was overwhelming, forcing everyone back. assassins, Inquisitors, even Soren, who stumbled against a broken reliquary as he retreated from the inferno.

'They are like forces of nature,' Soren thought, watching the two combatants with a mixture of terror and awe. What struck him most wasn't their skill, though that was breathtaking, but the sense that neither was fighting at full strength.

Each held something in reserve, testing the other's defenses, probing for weaknesses that could be exploited when the true clash came.

In the midst of this chaos, Soren suddenly realized he had a choice to make. The battle had created a momentary window, all eyes fixed on the duel at the chamber's center, all attention diverted from the prisoner who should not have survived the Flame's embrace.

To his left, Sylas's remaining assassins had regrouped near a side passage. One caught his eye and made a subtle gesture, fingers curling inward twice in quick succession. An invitation. A path out.

To his right, Veyr stood with his guards, still speaking to the gallery above in that measured, persuasive voice. The heir was spinning political protection from chaos, weaving a narrative that might shield Soren from the Church's judgment, if he chose to accept Velrane authority once more.

And straight ahead lay the corridor leading deeper into the Cathedral's labyrinthine halls. Unknown territory, filled with danger but offering something neither Sylas nor Veyr could promise: true independence.

The shard against his chest pulsed with sudden cold, Valenna's voice low but clear beneath the battle's roar.

'Choose,' she whispered. 'Chains will find you again unless you move.'

Soren hesitated, the shortblade heavy in his hand as he weighed options that would have been unimaginable hours before. Freedom stretched before him in three directions, each with its own price.

The decision was stolen from him in the next heartbeat.

Calvian and Sylas's duel reached some critical threshold, a perfect alignment of opposing forces, a moment where neither would yield. Their blades met with a sound like thunder breaking directly overhead, golden fire and blue-green light exploding outward in a shockwave that tore through the chamber.

Walls fractured. A massive reliquary collapsed, centuries of sacred history crashing to the floor in a cacophony of shattering glass and splintering wood. The floor beneath Soren's feet cracked, stone splitting as if the Cathedral itself could no longer contain the powers unleashed within it.

The force of it lifted Soren from his feet, sending him tumbling through air suddenly thick with debris and opposing energies.

For one disorienting moment, he flew between fire and shadow, the world reduced to fragments of sensation, heat searing his face, cold pulsing from the shard against his chest, the shortblade spinning from his grasp as his body cartwheeled through space.

He crashed to the floor amidst broken relics and scattered scripture, pain lancing through his shoulder where Trescan's wound had barely healed. Blood trickled into his eye from a fresh cut across his forehead.

Every muscle screamed as he forced himself to his feet, staggering upright in a world transformed by violence.

The battlefield had split around him. To one side stood Sylas with his remaining assassins, their hooded figures resolute despite injuries.

To the other, Calvian rallied the Inquisitors, golden fire still wreathing Solbrand's edge though it burned lower now, as if the blade itself had tired.

Between them stood Veyr, somehow free of his guards, his voice rising above the din as he continued to shape narrative from chaos.

The chains still bound his wrists, but he held them before him like an offering rather than a constraint, pale eyes fixed on the gallery above where the Church's authority wavered in the face of unprecedented disorder.

Soren stood at the center of it all, blood dripping from his fingertips, the broken scripture-chains scattered at his feet. Three paths stretched before him, each promising a different future, a different kind of freedom, or a different kind of chain.

The choice loomed in the next heartbeat.

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