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The old marks first. The deep ones. The places where the flesh healed ugly because it had no other choice.

His expression changes.

Barely.

But I see it.

The pride.

Not affection. Not recognition. Pride, like every raised line of scar tissue is proof that something he made survived long enough to come home.

My stomach doesn’t turn.

It hardens.

Because he isn’t looking at wounds.

He’s admiring ownership.

“You cut the Red Sermon from the body of faith,” he says at last. Not accusation. Almost admiration. “You silenced the mouth that taught the Gospel how to taste itself.”

The Red Sermon’s scream flashes through me—raw, offended, not from pain but disbelief. Like scripture itself had been misquoted mid-cut.

“He enjoyed it.” I keep my voice level because the truth doesn’t need my anger to cut. “That made him sloppy.”

A few of the Withmarked flinch, and I let myself take the small satisfaction of it.

The High Revelation smiles anyway, like I’ve confessed a flaw in a tool he had already planned to replace.

“He had hunger,” he murmurs. “And for a time, hunger served.” His head tilts, eyes still moving over the scripture carved into me. “You ended him before he remembered he could bite the hand that fed him.”

Cold settles behind my ribs, precise and surgical.

Lucas was right. They never meant to avenge the Red Sermon.

They meant to replace him.

And I know—without being told—that replacement was never the final step.

It never is.

You don’t raise knives just to let them rust.

“You were always the sharper verse,” he continues. “He only prepared the page.”

My fingers curl once at my side before I still them. Nails bite into my palm. Anchor.

“And the girl?” His voice lowers around the word like it has weight. “The one the Hollowborn remember without knowing her name.”

Selah.

The name hits low and hard, a weight that keeps me upright when this place tries to drag me backward through muscle and bone.

“Alive.” My voice stays low. “And still outside your hymn.”

The air curdles.

“Eventually.” I let the word sit between us. “Not tonight.”