The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1169: Banishing Darkness

In the darkness that had enveloped the formal dining room, a voice rose, strong and steady despite the cacophony of the damned, cutting through the wails and whispers like an axe splitting wood.

"Fear not the darkness, for I will light the way,

Through the endless night where lost souls stray,

I am the torch that burns against the night,

I bear the flame of hope’s sacred light."

It was Ignatious who spoke, his voice resonating with a power and conviction that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his chest, as though the words had been shaped and forged of iron conviction over countless years spent resisting the darkness.

Few people could ever truly understand how his transformation from Inquisitor to Vampire, followed by decades of torture at High Lord Hamdi’s hands, had shaped his faith and forged his conviction, but they could hear the result in his voice as he recited the words of the Great Prophet in the face of the terrifying dark wind and the anguished cries that accompanied the unnatural breeze.

He had risen from his seat, though no one could see him in the absolute blackness of the lightless underground room, and his hand was raised high above his head in a timeless gesture of reaching toward the heavens with his fingers splayed wide and curling slightly, bending just enough to grab hold of something larger than a man’s heart and even more precious.

And then, like the first star appearing in the evening sky, a light was born.

It began as nothing more than a pinprick of golden radiance hovering above Ignatious’s upraised palm, a single point of light in the ocean of darkness. But it grew swiftly, blossoming into a sphere of pure golden flame that burned without smoke and gave off a warm, gentle radiance that pushed back against the cold and the dark with quiet, inexorable strength.

The moment that first flame appeared, the voices and the wind began to recede. Not all at once, but like a tide slowly drawing back from the shore, the whispers and wails and sobs that had filled the dining room with such unbearable anguish began to diminish. They didn’t disappear entirely, but they grew quieter, less insistent, and they no longer felt distinct enough to be identifiable, as though the presence of the light itself was enough to drive them back toward the Void that they had emerged from.

The golden sphere continued to grow, expanding until it was the size of a man’s fist, then larger still, casting long shadows that danced and flickered across the walls of the underground chamber. And as it grew, Ignatious closed his eyes in silent prayer.

The expression on his face was surprisingly gentle, as if nothing that lurked in the darkness of the Void could harm him, and his heart contained neither fear of the dark nor hatred towards it. There was no defiance in his action, no resolute fury of an Inquisitor who had sworn to destroy wickedness written across his face.

Instead, he wore the look of a man who was worried for his friends standing out in the cold. A man who was welcoming them into his home, and any moment now would say, ’Hold on, I’ll throw another log on the fire,’ as the warmth of his flame spread throughout the room.

Heila had said it before, the flames of the Inquisition never truly belonged to Ignatious. Somewhere along the way, the woodcutter’s son, who helped carry firewood to the needy, had gotten lost in the vast halls and rigid dogma of the Church. The flames he’d nurtured to shelter people from the cold were used instead to burn ’heretics’, and to fight against the Eldritch who had never done anything to deserve the fury of the Inquisition’s flames.

It had taken Heila’s help for him to remember all the way back to the beginning, to reawaken the feelings in his heart that had led him to the Church in the first place. She had been the one to help him rediscover the gentle fires that cooked meals for commoners and noblemen alike, that lit candles and lamps in the dustiest of libraries where men sought knowledge and wisdom, and banished the cold of night from countless homes across the land.

The flames of the Holy Lord of Light weren’t just flames of destruction, but somewhere along the way, Ignatious had forgotten that, or rather, the Inquisition had taught him that his flames served a greater purpose when he unleashed them against those they deemed wicked. Now, however, his flames were free of the taint of hatred and fear, burning brilliantly in the dark with a gentle warmth that comforted both the body and the soul.

From the sphere of flame in his hand, dancing motes of golden fire began to spread outward like living things, drifting up toward the chandeliers that hung dark and cold from the vaulted ceiling. The flames moved with purpose, fluttering like butterflies of sacred fire searching for a place to rest. And where they touched the wicks of the extinguished chandeliers, new flames sprang to life. The flames they ignited didn’t give off the ordinary yellow-orange glow of burning oil, but rather the same pure golden radiance that burned in Ignatious’s palm.

One by one, the chandeliers came alive with light. The crystals that had been chiming like funeral bells in the dark wind went still as if the sacred glow had awed them into silence while they reflected and refracted the light of the flames, multiplying the golden glow until the entire dining room began to shimmer with a warm, gentle illumination that drove the shadows back into the corners where they belonged.

As each new flame caught and spread to the next, the voices from the Void grew quieter still. The anguished cries faded to distant echoes, the mournful wails became nothing more than whispers on the edge of hearing, and the innocent sobs that had torn at every heart in the room finally, mercifully, fell silent.

The restoration of light and warmth was not instantaneous, but it was inexorable. Like the sun rising after the longest night, the golden flames spread throughout the chamber until there was no corner left untouched by their radiance, no shadow deep enough to hide from their gentle glow. And with the return of the light came a profound sense of relief, a collective exhalation of breath that rippled through everyone seated around the table as they realized that the ordeal was finally, truly over....