"The Pope? How many divisions can he have? "Their army has reached the city, fifty-five in all, Your Majesty." - "Records of the Varking Expedition"

With the solemn and sacred bells of the church ringing through every street, the first rays of the morning sun dyeed the great city of Philemeralds golden.

It was the capital of the Papal States and the center of cultural trade in the city-state, with the most prosperous urban districts, the intellectual colleges, the noisy workshops and the towering Cathedral of Our Lady.

At the end of the day, at dusk, the theater square here is filled with sacred and solemn music, and the monks sing in unison the scriptures in praise of all that the All-Knowing and Almighty has bestowed upon the people.

However, tonight the crowd in the square dispersed early, and even the usual noisy evening market became extraordinarily quiet with the cover of night, and the whole Fei Leng Cui seemed to be swept into the sky by the scythe of death at the moment of sunset, turning into a lonely dead city, only the ravens hovering above still made a desolate chirping.

In the middle of the night, a drunkard seems to have broken the story. With a half-spilled wine glass in his hand, he staggered into the dark and empty alley, unable to remember the direction of his home for a while, so he could only grope his way forward with a drowsy head and a half-limp body.

Suddenly, he vaguely felt that there was a flickering fire at the end of the road in front of him, and his mind was dizzy as if he was listening to the sound of horses' hooves.

He found that it was the knights of the Holy See galloping towards him, the riders were dressed in cloth black robes, the horses were hung with oil lamps, and the masks on their faces showed hideous faces under the reflection of the firelight, although there were drunks blocking the way, but the knights had no intention of slowing down, and rushed straight towards his front door.

The drunk, frightened and half dead, hurriedly dodged, and one of his heels fell into the ditch on the side of the road.

"Hurry up! The people in the back keep up! ”

The knights marched in columns, in order in the midst of chaos, and their horses shuttled between the alleys, startling the rats on the road and the crows on the eaves.

When the group came to the main street, the other forks in the street were filled with similar numbers of knights, dressed in the same costumes, and they naturally converged all the way, galloping like a well-trained army through the city and toward the outskirts.

The sound of the horse's hooves was like a messy tune, upsetting people, and each accent seemed to break the Duke of Dominic's nerves, jolting him from his nightmare and quickly drawing his dagger from under his pillow, as if he had expected something to happen.

He stared wide-eyed around the dark room, where nothing unusual except for a frightened old duke, and the sound of horses' hooves had long since disappeared in his ears, as if everything was just a nightmare.

Dominic slowly calmed his breath, and he realized that the windows of his room were not closed tightly, perhaps it was just the sound of the wind that was giving him nightmares. And when he walked to the window, he found that there seemed to be a figure standing faintly in the garden of the mansion, looking up at him, and the man raised his hand and made a gesture for him to come down, and then turned away from the view visible from the window.

"Barron! Why is someone in my yard! Dominic shouted the servant's name, but received no response. Barron!? You're a man! ”

In desperation, Dominic clenched his short sword, picked up the candlestick at the bedside, and carefully pushed open the door and walked outside. He kept trying to call out to the servants, but the whole mansion was silent and only his own footsteps and heartbeat could be heard.

When he tried to go down the stairs to the foyer, the dark wind blew out the candles, and the uneasy feeling made his breath heavy, and he could only walk down the stairs in the dark from memory.

The hazy moonlight was pierced by a layer of mist, and through the windows only added a touch of coldness to the dimly lit foyer. Dominic couldn't see clearly, only that he felt like he wasn't stepping on the floor but into a puddle. He walked straight to the door, pushing the heavy door open, and the knights in black had been waiting outside the door for a long time.

"Lord Duke, please come with us." The leader saluted respectfully, while the guys beside him surrounded Dominic in a semi-arc.

"The Inquisition... You shouldn't be here, even if I do something, it's up to you, so get out of my yard now. Donimick's expression was angry at first, then he seemed to realize something, and suddenly frowned, his right hand gripped the hilt of the sword at his waist, and the bruises on his wrist erupted.

"I see, he sent you, I didn't expect him to put his hand into the courtroom."

"Don't excite the Duke, we're just doing business at the behest of the Pope."

"The Pope?" Dominic first sneered, and then roared in a low voice: "He's not the Pope!" He doesn't have that qualification! ”

Dominic drew the blade of his sword and aimed it at the throat of the man in front of him, but the deterrence had no effect. The expressions of this group of people could not be seen through the masks, and they continued to approach with their swords against their swords like a group of evil spirits who were not afraid of death.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Dominic was instinctively driven to flee back indoors, but the moment he turned around, he was shocked by the sight in front of him and froze. The moonlight poured directly into the room from the door, and he saw the servants of his mansion lying in pools of blood, never to answer his cries, and no one was spared.

And when he looked around the room, the shadows were already filled with people from the court, and the cold masks had been observing Dominic in the dark.

"You, how dare you! You lackeys! I'd rather die than give in! He raised the short sword in his hand and was about to turn around to attack, but the moment he turned around, the man who had just taken the lead struck him in the face with a punch at an even faster speed, instantly taking away his consciousness and knocking the Duke unconscious.

"Take it away." With the cold order given, Dominic was dragged out by the collar like a corpse with no human rights, and was finally thrown onto a horse and taken to an unknown place.

Not far away, in a pavilion in the garden of Donimick's house, two seemingly peculiar figures, a man and a woman, witnessed the full course of events. The man's left hand holds a full-length scepter, and he wears a white floor-sweeping robe with a touch of scarlet at the end, and his head is covered with a hood, and there is a thin veil under the hood to hide his face, which looks extremely sacred but has a suffocating sense of oppression.

The lady beside him looked like a guard, also dressed in white, but with leather protection at the joints of her body, a sword hanging from her waist, and a white mask with no facial features, except for the eyes with tiny holes.

The two looked at Dominic's tragic situation, and the man was the first to break the silence and asked in his heavy, cold voice, "In your opinion, is everything I did too cruel?" ”

"You're for the whole Emerald... In its current form, bloodshed is inevitable, and you have to make a decision after careful consideration. The lady replied cautiously.

"Don't be so inhibited, if I want to hear compliments, I'll find a better fit." His tone was so cold that the female guard couldn't help but swallow. "Say it, I know you have something to say."

"yes, I just think..."

"What do you think?" The man urged indifferently.

"Although Dominic is innocent, at least those servants are innocent, are we doing some..."

"Innocent?" The guard's words were interrupted by the man. "It's got to this point, and in my opinion, no one is innocent."

"But too many people have died this month, and according to this trend... More will die. ”

"What are you worried about? Worried about not going to heaven? Come on. You have been with me for many years, you should know my style of doing things, and the moment they provoke me, it is already doomed. Then the man looked at the Duke's mansion and said in a contemptuous tone, "May they rest in peace, hallelujah." ”

He tapped the scepter on the ground with his hand, and from the base of the scepter as the starting point miraculously ignited a ray of flame, which spread rapidly in a curved line like a python, through the garden path, over the stone path in front of the mansion, and into the interior of the house. Within a few tens of seconds, hot pillars of fire erupted from countless windows, and Dominica's mansion instantly ignited a raging fire, and the flames danced with the devil in the air, illuminating the dead night as bright as day.

"Tonight, it's just a personal vendetta between me and him."

Looking at such a spectacular sight, the man slowly left the pavilion with his scepter. "Let's go, I have an evening tea party that needs to be dealt with urgently. And you, you should go back sooner, and remember to do your part, Winnie. ”

Seeing that the man was about to leave, the lady known as Winnie did not say anything more, but bowed to his back after a brief silence. "Yes, my esteemed Pope." Then, the night returned to its own tranquility, except for the crackling of the flames.

On July 14, 4084 in the ephemeris, an unexpected fire erased the Duke of Dominica, and his family was divided over the succession of the Duke's title, leading to a series of bloodsheds that followed.

However, in July of the same year, there were dozens of such incidents, involving countless famous families and court members, and the number of people who disappeared and died unexpectedly directly or indirectly was even estimated to be as high as thousands.