Across the blasted ruin of no-man's-land, through the burning remnants of the Blessed Hinge, the Saint marched, barefoot, haloed in ash and fire, a naked beacon of impossible defiance.
The Heretics, who had moments before ruled the field with dark songs and blackened blades, recoiled as if scalded. Their ranks broke apart like rotted cloth beneath a cleansing flame.
The faithful surged after the fire, after the Saint, like a second tidal wave.
The counter-attack had begun.
And somewhere between miracle and madness, Aaron realized something was wrong.
The fire that had wrapped his body, that divine mantle of protection and awe, sputtered with an almost comical "pffft".
The warmth fled him.
The air grew cold.
A shiver crawled up his spine.
Aaron glanced down, instinctively, and froze.
There, illuminated by the burning remains of a battlefield and the worshipful gaze of thousands of soldiers, stood Saint Grave—
completely, unarguably, spectacularly naked.
No divine robes.
No relic-cloak.
No pants.
Nothing but a pale, scarred body, gaunt and wiry from death and resurrection, gleaming with soot and holy ash. His junk swung heroically in the chill trench wind, illuminated by the sacred fires he himself had unleashed.
Aaron's mind went blank in pure horror.
OH GOD NO.
THIS IS NOT SAINTLY BEHAVIOR.
THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF HOLY.
He wrapped his arms instinctively around himself, trying to hide his shame, but it was too late.
Thousands of eyes were upon him.
Pilgrims gasped.
Redemption soldiers fell to their knees, weeping.
Crucible Walkers dropped their relic-flamers and began to chant with fervor.
From the battered trenches, a dozen different voices rose almost at once:
"The Saint walks unburdened by mortal cloth!"
"He needs no armor — his faith is his shield!"
"BEHOLD THE HOLY PECKER OF THE GRAVE!"
Aaron's brain glitched.
He stood there, half-posed in horror, half-sagging from exhaustion, while his new army shrieked praises at his shame.
His mouth opened to say something, anything—
then closed again, mortified beyond all reason.
He wanted to die again.
He wanted to dig a trench with his bare hands and bury himself alive.
But instead, somewhere deep inside the stunned wreckage of his brain, a single command echoed:
Play it cool.
Play it cool or die of embarrassment right now.
So he squared his shoulders.
He straightened his spine.
He spread his arms wide in a pose half-reverent, half-despairing, like some reluctant, naked messiah.
And he kept walking.
The faithful screamed louder.
Pilgrims tore relics from their broken standards and waved them like flags.
Scribes scribbled notes furiously, weeping and laughing at the same time, desperate to capture every second.
Someone somewhere fired a relic mortar into the sky in sheer joy.
A Redemption sergeant, drunk on awe and adrenaline, shouted:
"He wears only the Armor of Faith!"
Another private, barely older than a boy, scrambled to add:
"And the Sword of—uh—Modesty!"
Aaron winced so hard he nearly dislocated something.
But he kept walking.
Because if he faltered, if he stumbled, if he gave even an inch to the overwhelming tide of embarrassment, the entire battle could crumble with him.
Thus was born the legend of the March of the Naked Saint.
Behind him, the counter-offensive rolled like a thunderous hymn.
Crucible Walkers reignited their relic-flamers and charged the Heretic lines with a grim, determined fury that had been extinguished hours ago.
The Redemption Corps, rallied by the sight of the Saint, surged forward in tight battle-psalms, their bayonets gleaming in the holy firelight.
The Trench Pilgrims, singing songs from older wars, lifted wounded comrades onto their shoulders and advanced as one, dragging relic banners through blood and ash.
No longer merely soldiers, they were a tide of burning faith incarnate.
The Heretics scattered before them, their cohesion shattered, their unholy hymns strangled in their throats.
Some Heretic Priests tried to rally.
They were trampled.
Some Goetic Warlocks tried to weave sorceries of despair.
The fire from the Saint's march burned their incantations from the air itself.
War Wolves turned tail and howled into the mist.
Anointed Heavy Infantry, once unstoppable engines of blasphemous war, began to backpedal beneath the weight of terror they could not comprehend.
The Saint walked at the center of it all.
Barefoot.
Naked.
An unwilling messiah leading an army of the damned to salvation.
Meanwhile…..
Far behind the first lines, buried in the twisted wreckage of trenches long since abandoned to mud and rot, Aleric fought another war, quieter, bloodier, no less sacred.
The ground trembled beneath him with distant shellfire.
Smoke curled in lazy, poisonous ribbons through the collapsed trenches.
Ash fell like snow.
But he paid it no mind.
Around him moved the Sisters of St. Cosmas, the elite battlefield medicae corps, grim-faced and iron-hearted.
They were less soldiers than living relics themselves: heavy trench armor scarred by relic-shrapnel, medical kits etched with prayers for swift hands and steady hearts, relic medicae humming with strained fury.
They moved in perfect, ritualized synchrony, their actions a sacred liturgy of life reclaimed from death.
Their gauntlets, crusted with blood and soot, never faltered.
Their voices remained low and steady, murmuring ancient surgical psalms passed down from the First Crusades.
Only the stubborn, grinding work of salvation.
Aleric, wounded and stitched roughly across the ribs with bloodied gauze, refused to stop.
Pain knifed through his body with every movement, but he drove himself forward, digging through broken beams with bare hands, clawing at the rubble with bleeding fingers, each breath coming short and ragged.
His heart hammered against his ribs with something he refused to call hope, because hope was fragile, and he could not afford fragility.
"She's under here," he barked, voice raw and sharp. "Move! Clear it! CAREFUL—!"
The Sisters obeyed without hesitation.
They set about their grim work with sacred precision, relic-saws cutting through collapsed beams, hands wrenching twisted iron aside, every action accompanied by whispered invocations to saints of surgery, to gods of flesh and steel.
The wreckage groaned under their touch, threatening collapse at any second.
Still, they pressed on.
Ash clogged the air.
The ruins stank of blood, black powder, burnt cloth, and something fouler still, the scent of prayers aborted mid-scream.
Their boots crunched over broken bones, half-buried relics, discarded rosaries.
Each scrap of timber lifted, each plank thrown aside, felt like digging into the ribcage of a corpse the size of a city.
Minutes dragged like hours.
Then—
A faint gasp.
A single, stuttering breath.
Aleric froze, one bloody hand still braced against a shattered beam.
Weak.
But there.
He bent low, teeth bared in a grin so wild it might have been a snarl.
His voice cracked like glass.
"She's alive."
He turned, half-shouting, half-laughing, tears smearing the grime on his face.
"By Saint Grave's burning arse, she's alive!"
The Sisters of St. Cosmas surged forward at once, moving with renewed purpose.
Where before they had worked with grim duty, now they moved with furious devotion.
Their relic-medicae flickered in the smoke-light, halos of pale gold washing over Trenaxa's battered form as they cleared the final debris from her shattered body.
They lifted her carefully onto a medicae slab, each Sister whispering the Psalms of Preservation under her breath.
Armor was peeled away with reverent hands, severed straps and scorched plating falling aside like dead skin.
Every wound was cataloged with brutal efficiency.
Every broken bone noted and splinted.
Sacred gauze, soaked in alchemical antiseptics, was wrapped around torn flesh.
Vials of blessed blood-plasm were cracked open and fed into her veins with trembling precision.
Relic-symbols were drawn over her sternum in ash and oil.
Oaths were sworn over her body.
Not merely of medicine, but of vengeance.
The Sisters promised her not merely life, but retribution.
The battlefield beyond might rage and crumble, but here, in this pit of mud and fire, hope was being sutured back together.
Not with miracles.
Not with songs.
With blood.
With bone.
With hands that would not falter even in the face of hell.
Aleric stood over Trenaxa's stretcher, his broken body swaying, his voice hoarse but unshaken.
He placed one bloodied hand on her brow, whispering a single vow:
"You came back for him.
We'll bring you back for us.
We are not done, Trenaxa.
You are not done."
Behind him, the smoke rolled.
The guns thundered.
The fire burned.
But here, beneath the wreckage, in the hands of iron-hearted Sisters and a bloodied boy made scribe by war, life clawed its way back into the world.
One broken soldier at a time.