"You want to know about Ra?" the old priest said without turning, his voice echoing gently through the golden silence of the hall.
Nathan folded his arms. "That's not exactly why we're here."
The priest finished his sweep beneath the towering statue before straightening with a grunt. He turned slowly, eyes heavy with something more than age.
"Then listen," he said. "Because this part is not written in your reports."
He stepped toward the altar, where the sun-shaped chandelier burned faintly above their heads.
"Ra was not made. He was forged of flame and vow, from the spark of the first lie ever told."
His voice dropped lower. "He walked beside Aria. Not ahead. Not behind. They ruled together, light and dusk, judgment and silence."
Nathan raised an eyebrow. "So the gods were equals?"
"They were balance," the priest replied. "When the world still cared for such things. Together they were known as Lunaria, they looked over Lunaris, over Aerenthal."
Michael tilted his head. "What happened?"
The priest glanced toward a mural, where Ra held out a flaming scepter to a line of kneeling mortals.
"Lunaris changed," he said simply. "The people there stopped believing in judgment. They embraced shadows. Gray bled into black. And Ra's light… waned. Twilight city was created and Aria was made to rule over it"
Nathan's voice was quiet. "Because people stopped following him?"
"Because people started deciding their own truths."
The priest turned back toward them, the faint orange glow painting his robes in firelight.
"Ra is not a god of comfort. He is the hammer of truth. The flame of judgment. Where his light lands, lies burn. Oaths seal. Masks fall."
Michael was the first to break the silence. "We're not here for a sermon. We're looking for relics, Ra's fragments. Before someone gets to them."
Nathan nodded. "We don't care if he was real or not. We're here to do a job."
The priest watched them both.
"You don't care if gods exist?" he asked quietly.
"No," Nathan said.
The old man smiled faintly, as if that answer had been given by many men before them.
And always ended the same.
The priest stepped forward.
Something in his gait had changed. Like the weight of age had peeled back, for only for a moment.
"You don't care if the gods exist..." he repeated, voice low. "Of course you don't."
He walked slowly past them, dragging his fingers across the old marble pews.
"Most men don't," he said. "Until they find themselves begging something in the dark."
Nathan's arms remained folded, but his posture had shifted, tension running down his back.
Michael watched the priest carefully now, his usual ease muted beneath narrowed eyes.
The priest stopped beneath the chandelier, looking up.
"The gods are not here to be believed in," he said. "They are here to be served."
His voice echoed in the silence.
"That is the order of things. It always has been. The righteous sit above the many. The Lunaris Council. The old thrones. Even the Ash Veil. All different names for the same hunger, the need to decide what is right."
Nathan's jaw clenched slightly. "You call that righteousness?"
The priest looked over his shoulder. "No. I call it truth."
He turned fully now, eyes sharp. "You ask who's right? Who's wrong? As if the answer is waiting in a book or buried in a relic. But that's not how this world works, detective."
He raised a single, trembling finger.
"The ones who stand at the top… they decide."
Nathan's fingers curled slowly into fists.
Michael's brow furrowed deeper. "That's not how it should work."
The priest smiled, knowingly.
"That's how it always works," he said.
"The people below fight wars. They write laws. They chase relics, build churches, start revolutions. But only those who reach the summit—they write the ending. They don't ask what's true. They declare it."
He walked back to the center of the hall, pausing before the statue of Ra.
"This world is neutral," he said, almost softly now. "It does not care who you are. What you believe. Whether you serve or rebel. It only waits to see who will climb high enough to shape it."
He looked back at them.Their eyes no longer tired, but clear and cold.
"So you say the gods don't exist."
The room felt smaller.
"Well, of course they don't."
A long silence.
Nathan didn't breathe.
Then the priest raised his hand and pointed to the heavens.
"Whoever becomes a Lord… will decide that."
The silence seemed to speak louder than anything Nathan would have said
He didn't know what unsettled him more, the words, or the fact that deep down… a part of him agreed.
Michael said nothing for a moment.
Then, quietly. "We should go."
Nathan finally nodded, jaw tight.
As they turned to leave, the priest's voice followed them one last time.
"But be warned…"
They both stopped.
The priest's eyes gleamed in flame.
"If you aim to reach the top… you better be ready to burn everything underneath it."