Takes place after: Where do I begin with my hard luck?
He wondered if the cathedral sensed something in him again. It felt like the air warmed around him, the inside of the building chilly despite the summer sun. The soft hum of the organ pipes vibrating as if breathing, but Reims could convince himself that it was just a draft. He swallowed, unsure if he could ever get used to this place reacting like it knew him. Like it had expectations.
Expectations he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to fulfill.
His lion stayed just behind him, although he seemed content with stretching out across the shiny marble floor as he watched.
He drifted towards the organ, toward the small pedestal where the Code floated in its soft golden glow.
Except “floated” wasn’t how he first found it.
His body tensed at the memory.
That first time looking for the Code… That staircase hidden behind a bookshelf. Those bloody, glossy leaves that left shining red streaks on the stone. The mushrooms glowing like lanterns in the dark. The smell — not rot… but something older. Heavier. As if the cavern had been fed with blood.
It feels like death.
He hadn’t known why trees could grow underground. Why the air felt thick, pressing, haunted. He hadn’t wanted to know.
And then the slab. The altar.
He still didn’t like thinking about it — how familiar the shape of it had felt to him, the quiet, horrible certainty that it wasn’t meant for offerings but for sacrifices. That someone — some version of him, maybe — had dragged something sacred down into that place and locked it in a birdcage.
Reims’ mouth tasted like metal.
He could still see Yvoire frozen at the bottom of the stairs, pale and shaking but trying so hard to pretend he wasn’t. Reims had told him to wait there. He didn’t regret that decision.
He regretted taking so long.
The Code had been screaming at him then, or the memory of the Code had. Even if no one else could hear it. Fire, sobbing, a hand reaching out in a blessing… or a curse — all of it hit him like a wave he wasn’t strong enough to withstand. And when the vision snapped, the ground had sealed back up. As if the Wonder didn’t want him to keep seeing.
Reims rubbed his hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes, trying to shake off the way his stomach twisted just thinking about it.
He wasn’t going back down there. Not again.
And he wasn’t putting the Code anywhere near that cavern ever again, either.
He stopped in front of the organ, looking up at the metal pipes towering toward the high, vaulted ceiling. The light through the stained glass danced over them in warm reds and violets.
Okay yeah. This was better. Cleaner. Safe.
He took a moment to reach back into the memory of that day — the sick dread, the cold sweat, the cage biting into his fingers — and let out a slow breath as he looked at where the Code hovered now, free of metal, free of shadows.
No longer surrounded by death.
Reims lingered a moment, glancing toward the direction of the bridge again. He didn’t sense Yvoire. Not today. But that was okay. He didn’t have to face every dark thing together. Besides, the Code had offered him help before. He was curious if there was more it could help him with, now.
