Seraphina couldn’t stop staring at the children.

The youngest girl stood half-hidden behind a doorway clutching a faded stuffed rabbit missing one button eye. Bruises darkened the skin beneath her throat while silver burn scars spread in thin uneven lines across both wrists.

Not battle injuries.

Restraint injuries.

The realization hollowed something inside Seraphina immediately.

The child noticed her looking and instinctively stepped backward.

Fear.

Not aggression.

Fear.

God.

Seraphina removed the silver cross from around her neck without consciously deciding to. The movement felt automatic somehow.

The girl’s shoulders relaxed slightly afterward.

Not much.

Enough.

Behind her, the sanctuary continued moving quietly through another ordinary night. Someone carried fresh blankets down the western corridor. The violin player had apparently been threatened into silence. Warm light spilled softly across concrete floors worn smooth by years of use.

Nothing about this place matched what the Order taught her vampires built.

“You’re pale,” the human medic observed while finishing the fresh bandage around Seraphina’s shoulder.

“I’m trying not to pass out from irony.”

“That’ll do it.”

Seraphina looked toward the children again.

“How long have they been here?”

The medic’s expression tightened.

“Some arrived months ago.”

“Arrived from where?”

Silence.

Not hesitation.

Weariness.

Finally:

“Church facilities.”

The words landed like broken glass inside her chest.

“No,” Seraphina said immediately.

Too quickly.

Too automatically.

The medic watched her carefully.

“I used to react like that too.”

“You’re saying the Order tortured children.”

“I’m saying someone wearing Church insignias did.”

That distinction should have helped.

It didn’t.

Because Seraphina suddenly remembered the underground tunnels beneath Prague.

The hidden laboratories.

The hospital bracelets.

Matthias begging through black veins spreading beneath his skin.

Piece by piece, certainty kept collapsing inward around her.

Lucien returned several minutes later carrying an old archive box tucked beneath one arm.

The moment he saw her expression, his attention sharpened.

“What happened?”

The medic glanced toward the children.

“She asked questions.”

Lucien went still afterward.

Not dramatic.

Just quiet enough that Seraphina recognized the tension immediately now.

“You knew,” she said softly.

Lucien looked toward the children too.

“Yes.”

“You knew this whole time.”

“I knew enough.”

Anger arrived suddenly after that.

Not clean anger.

Confused anger.

The kind fueled by grief and betrayal colliding together too quickly to separate properly.

“You should’ve told me.”

Lucien’s gaze shifted back toward her.

“You would’ve believed me?”

The answer sat painfully in her throat because no.

No, she wouldn’t have.

Three weeks ago she probably would’ve drawn silver blades and called him manipulative for even suggesting it.

Lucien seemed to read that realization across her face in real time.

His expression softened slightly afterward.

Not victorious.

Sad.

Again with that unbearable sadness every time she started understanding something too late.

“Come with me,” he said quietly.

Seraphina followed him deeper into the sanctuary.

Down narrower corridors this time.

Older sections.

The air changed gradually as they descended farther underground.

Cooler.

Drier.

Ancient.

The walls transitioned from modern concrete to stone foundations far older than Vienna itself.

Lucien carried the archive box silently beside her while soft yellow lights flickered overhead.

“You’re about to show me something terrible,” she said eventually.

“Yes.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“That’s becoming expensive for both of us.”

The corridor ended at a heavy iron door reinforced with old Church symbols partially scratched away over time.

Lucien unlocked it without speaking.

Inside waited a library.

Not beautiful.

Functional.

Shelves stacked with sealed records, medical journals, Church documents, photographs, recovered relic fragments.

Evidence.

The room smelled like dust, old paper, and antiseptic.

Lucien set the archive box carefully atop the central table before opening it.

Inside sat dozens of relics.

Silver crosses.

Blessed bullets.

Consecrated blades.

Ordinary Blackthorn equipment.

Seraphina frowned slightly.

“I’ve used half these before.”

“I know.”

He handed her one silver dagger.

Simple handle.

Blackthorn insignia near the hilt.

Perfectly familiar.

Then he placed an old surgical photograph beside it.

At first, Seraphina didn’t understand what she was seeing.

Metal restraints.

Medical tools.

A blood-covered altar beneath cathedral candles.

Then her eyes found the body strapped to the center table.

Vampire.

Young.

Still conscious.

The dagger nearly slipped from her hand.

“No.”

Lucien said nothing.

He simply opened another file.

And another.

More photographs.

More records.

More Church documents stamped with restricted seals.

Terms repeated over and over:

Consecration extraction.

Sanctified silver infusion.

Living blood binding.

Seraphina’s pulse turned uneven.

“What is this?”

Lucien rested both hands against the table edge beside the files.

“The relic program.”

Her mouth went dry.

“No.”

“The Church discovered centuries ago that relics become more effective when created during active suffering.”

The room tilted slightly.

Seraphina stared at him.

Then back toward the photographs.

The restrained bodies.

The surgical diagrams.

One report described silver driven directly into living vampire hearts while priests recited consecration rites during extraction.

Another outlined “preservation of subject consciousness” to strengthen blessing retention.

She stopped breathing for half a second.

“Those aren’t experiments,” she whispered.

Lucien’s voice remained very quiet afterward.

“No.”

God.

Her stomach turned violently.

Because she recognized some of the terminology.

Blackthorn training manuals referenced sacred forging protocols for high-grade relics.

Not in detail.

Never in detail.

Just enough.

Enough that suddenly entire sections of her childhood rearranged themselves into horror.

The relics.

The blessing ceremonies.

The way older priests spoke about “living sanctification.”

She remembered asking once why consecrated silver required blood exposure during forging.

Father Aldric told her:

Suffering leaves marks on holy things.

At the time she thought he meant metaphorically.

Seraphina grabbed the edge of the table hard enough her knuckles whitened.

Lucien watched her carefully now.

Not approaching.

Not touching her.

Like someone standing near a collapsing structure unsure whether movement would make it worse.

“You use these weapons because they work,” he said quietly. “Most hunters never ask why.”

“I was a child.”

“I know.”

The gentleness in his voice nearly broke something in her.

Because he wasn’t accusing her.

Which somehow felt unbearable.

Seraphina picked up another photograph with shaking fingers.

This one showed a cathedral chamber filled with restrained vampire children.

Children.

One of them couldn’t have been older than eight.

Silver restraints.

Surgical markings across pale skin.

The image blurred suddenly.

Lucien moved immediately.

“Seraphina—”

She shoved the photograph away hard enough papers scattered across the floor.

“No.”

Her voice cracked.

Anger.

Horror.

Denial colliding together too fast inside her chest.

“This can’t be real.”

Lucien didn’t answer.

Because the evidence already had.

Seraphina staggered backward from the archive table, breathing unevenly now.

Every relic she ever carried suddenly felt contaminated in memory.

Every blessing ritual.

Every prayer.

How many times had she held sanctified silver without understanding what created it?

How many people suffered so she could call herself righteous?

The nausea hit all at once.

She barely made it into the corridor before vomiting violently against the stone wall outside the archive room.

Pain tore through her shoulder again as her body folded forward.

Humiliation arrived half a second later.

Then exhaustion swallowed even that.

Lucien appeared beside her silently holding a damp cloth and glass of water.

No judgment.

No smugness.

Which made it worse somehow.

Seraphina pressed one shaking hand against the wall while trying unsuccessfully to steady her breathing.

“This isn’t possible,” she whispered again.

Lucien stood beside her in the quiet underground corridor while distant sanctuary voices echoed faintly through the walls above them.

Then softly—

with the exhausted patience of someone who hated the answer too—

“Yes,” he said.

“It is.”