The room was dimly lit—cool, dry, and utterly still. Not a library, though it had shelves like one. Not a museum, though glass cases lined the walls. This was the Sanctum Arcanorum, the Vatican’s Sanctum of Mysteries.
Some of the objects here were old. Others were ancient. All of them were dangerous.
A candlestick that burned away the user’s lifespan in exchange for time manipulation. A mirror that drained the soul of anyone who lingered in its reflection. A quill that could only write the truth—last used, according to rumor, by Torquemada, during the Spanish Inquisition, to test the sincerity of new converts. If you couldn’t sign the confession, you didn’t survive the fire.
These weren’t treasures. They were threats. Artifacts preserved not for their value, but for the ruin they could unleash in the wrong hands—which, according to the Holy See, meant any hands but its own.
Two men sat at a long table, the color of tea left to steep too long. The overhead light cast their faces in soft relief, picking out the tension in their expressions.
Pierre Arceneaux had the characteristic appearance of an aging cleric—salt-and-pepper hair curling at the temples, weariness in his posture—but there was a sharpness behind the eyes, like a knife forgotten at the bottom of a drawer: dulled by time, still dangerous.
Though retired from parish ministry, Arceneaux served as an unofficial consultant on the Church’s more arcane concerns. No one quite knew how he’d acquired his knowledge of the supernatural. But when strange reports surfaced in the southeastern United States, the Vatican called him. Always him. They gave him just enough authority to keep him useful. Just enough recognition to keep him loyal, but never what he truly wanted. They kept him wearing this figurative hat, but never the literal one he craved. Never the bishop's miter. Never the red biretta. That absence clung to him like incense in old cloth. Unspoken, but never forgotten.
Across the table sat Father Lucian Ardelean, robed in the white tunic and black cappa with capuce—the traditional hooded cloak of the Dominican Order. His hair was cut so close it barely cast a shadow, and the round wire glasses perched on his nose like a man who dissected ideas for sport. He was a statue of himself—angular, pale, and motionless except for the occasional blink. Monastic in bearing, yet unmistakably intense, he had spent years cataloging cursed relics and forbidden texts. Appointed at thirty-two, he had been the youngest ever named Praefectus Arcanorum, a distinction that once turned heads. Ten years later, it barely raised eyebrows. And he felt that.
This was a familiar dance: the waiting, the speculation, the inevitable conclusion.
“Did he say when he’d be arriving?” Arceneaux asked, his accent still thick with south Louisiana despite decades abroad.
“You know he didn’t,” Lucian replied. His native Romanian accent was almost gone, scrubbed clean by too many years in Rome. He sounded like a newscaster. American. Generic, especially against the long, French-tinged vowels of Arceneaux.
Arceneaux grunted. “It’s a long flight for a man my age, especially when no one will tell me what I’m flying in for.”
Lucian offered a dry smile. “Whatever it is, you know where it happened.”
Arceneaux scowled simultaneously. “New Orleans.”
They said it together with equal parts resignation and irritation.
“I don’t know why God doesn’t wipe that place off the map,” Arceneaux muttered.
“Maybe it’s the food.” Lucian suggested.
The laugh they shared was brief, but real. It vanished the moment the airlock hissed open, admitting a scarlet gust in human form: Cardinal Matteo Rinaldi.
Both men stood. “Your Eminence.”
“Brother Lucian.” A nod. “Monsignor Arceneaux. The Holy Father is grateful for your swift response. I trust your flight was tolerable.”
“I’ve had worse,” Arceneaux said. “What couldn’t wait for a phone call?”
Rinaldi didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he gestured to the silent man beside him—an aide in a dark suit, faceless and still. The man stepped forward and placed a slim folder on the table in front of Arceneaux.
“The seminary in New Orleans flagged a disturbance. We don’t know the seminarian’s name yet, but something happened—something paranormal. And someone, possibly faculty, is covering it up.”
Arceneaux opened the folder. A black-and-white photo. Reports. Marginalia in Latin. A page marked with discreet surveillance notes. Even an outdated emergency contact form.
“The seminary has long suspected this one of subversion,” Rinaldi said. “A Dominican friar. Michael. There are signs he may have—divided loyalties. We don’t yet know with whom. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone placed conviction above obedience.”
Arceneaux flipped one more page and paused.
“Word is,” Rinaldi continued, “a student has been missing from classes for almost twenty-four hours. This may be the one involved.”
Arceneaux’s brow furrowed. “Maybe he got cold feet. Ordination’s a heavy thing.”
“No,” Lucian said quietly. “That’s not what this is.”
“We have reason to believe he encountered something—supernatural,” Rinaldi said. “And other groups may already be aware.”
Arceneaux glanced up. “The ones near Bayou St. John?”
The Cardinal nodded. “Yes, them.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “They’re holding artifacts that belong to us. One in particular is irreplaceable.”
“And yet,” Rinaldi said, “it remains in their possession.”
“There may be a third faction involved,” he continued, voice lowering. “One that began within the Church, but no longer answers to it. They’ve become something else now—separate, secular, but not without influence. They still have people on the inside. Quiet ones. Ones who know where to listen.”
Arceneaux closed the folder. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find this seminarian. Learn what happened. Determine whether others were involved, and recover anything that belongs to us.”
Rinaldi turned. “A car will take you to Ciampino Airport for your flight back to Louisiana. You’ll be staying at the Jesuit presbytery at Immaculate Conception.”
Arceneaux stood. “When do I leave?”
The Cardinal paused at the door, his red robes catching the light like flame.
