1 The Night Blood is Shed

Flame rose to the curtains that adorned the pillars of the temple.

The vines that crept against the stone walls burned along with the scattered dead bodies of priests and priestesses who got caught up in the chaos that ensued.

In the middle of it all was a girl walking in a white robe that had golden laces embedded to the edges of her seemingly transparent dress. Her ethereal appearance displayed an eerie contrast to her surroundings, like a white lily on a pool of blood.

One of the priests laying on the ground slowly opened his eyes. He had a blunt trauma on his head, caused by the sudden explosion in the eastern side of the temple. He slowly rose from the ground as he regained his senses, knees wobbly and weak.

Everything was still a blur, but he cannot mistake that girl's revered appearance.

It was Lumi, the esteemed priestess of the Estelan temple.

"P-priestess L-Lumi? Why are you out of your cell—"

The priest's eyes widened as he saw Lumi propel a dagger forward, creating a cut on his cheek. He then jolted in response, immediately staggering to back away as the girl approaches.

Pale blond hair and blue eyes on a delicately carved face. He used to admire her before, always from a distance.

In his memories, Lumi was always following the head priest with her hair tied in a neat braid and her hands clasped to pray; her robes tightly bound into her body like the Empyrean Goddess.

But now, her hair was framing her face freely, and her hands were holding a dagger. Her delicate body was free from the constraints of her tight robes.

He stumbled as she walked even closer.

"Where is the head priest?"

It was the first time he heard her voice.

It was calm, as compared to him. The cut on his cheek dripped dark red blood, with the stinging sensation keeping him awake. The pounding of his chest was growing louder.

'How can she be so calm?' He thought—when the bodies of their brothers and sisters were spread limply across the temple grounds?

There was something wrong with the priestess.

Blood seeped through the grass and the white adorations of the temple were tinged with gore and flame. None of this could ever be calming.

The scene alone was driving him mad to the point of tears.

The corpses were like thrown dolls across the temple; limbs in irregular places, their white robes stained with red hue as they lie beneath the fallen debris.

"Where. Is. The. Head. Priest?" Lumi repeated, prompting him to snap back to his senses.

'The Head Priest… where was he? Where would he be?' The man asked himself as he tried to keep his thoughts straight.

The explosion was first heard in the west, then the north, and then the east, where they are right now.

"T-the head priest, he's… he's probably in the Hechal. Th-the Holy Place."

The Hechal is where the head priest tends to the Altar of Incense and prays for long hours to cleanse the sins of the country.

It was just a wild guess, but he was probably right. Anyone who resided in the temple for many years would have known it. But not Lumi, because she was different from them.

She was locked in the holy cell for most of her life. She wouldn't have known.

"That place, huh…" Lumi murmured.

The next thing he knew, the girl was already walking away from him. He watched as her hair fluttered against the breeze. The priest stared at his trembling hands and knelt to the ground amongst the corpses of his fellow brothers and sisters.

"Empyrean Goddess…" He whispered in between silent sobs, before shutting his eyes tight to avoid seeing the carcasses that he once called his siblings.

"Please have mercy on us…"

**

Lumi stared at the spectacle before her. Priests without heads, priestesses stacked like sacks, and bodies crushed beneath fallen pillars. Those who are alive prayed relentlessly, while some tried to use their divine power in desperation to heal those who are already on the brink of death.

Anyone could lose their mind upon seeing such a thing.

But Lumi felt nothing at all despite looking at the horrid scene. She walked barefoot to the ground; stepped to the marbled floor sticky with blood while basking in the presence of her brothers' and sisters' deaths.

Were they real siblings? They were not. However, priests and priestesses in training were taught to treat each other as such. But Lumi felt no familial attachment to any of them despite her 10 years of servitude to the temple.

Perhaps it was because she was treated differently from everyone else.

**

The temple was divided into two courts. The court of the priests and the court of priestesses. Past that was the altar, and at the very end of it all was the Hechal, the Holy Place.

She can get out of the golden gate right now—which leads outside; but before that, she must find him.

The person who took her away from her family. The person who knows the answer to her questions.

As Lumi entered the Holy Place, she was welcomed by towering, large ionic columns, and resting in the middle ground was the glorious statue of the Empyrean Goddess.

The statue of the Empyrean Goddess held a scale, her eyes were closed, and her magnificent wings shawled Lumi from the moonlight. The sculpture signified the fairness of the Goddess and her desire for balance.

Lumi rolled her eyes. 'Balance' What a joke.

As she tightened her grip around the dagger, Lumi ambled her way towards the Holy Place. Inside was the head priest praying in front of the image of the Empyrean Goddess, wrinkly hands clasped to pray.

Her footsteps echoed across the hall, heart clenching as she came nearer to the person that was the root of her demise.

"What are you doing in here?" The head priest asked even without looking at Lumi. She gritted her teeth at his indifference.

"Lead me back to my family"—Lumi then pointed her blade in the base of the priest's nape—"or I will kill you."