The entrance to the cathedral was adorned with massive wooden doors which were miraculously intact and in very good condition despite half the building being in ruins.

They were already open and seemed as if they had frozen mid motion. The Crimson Moon's light fell across the threshold at an angle that made the interior look less like a place of worship and more like the entrance to a tomb.

Ishiki hesitated a bit and then stepped inside the cathedral. It was a little colder inside than the outside, shrouded in deep shadows.

The main hall stretched before him in all its dead glory. It was vast and hollow.

The ceiling soared overhead, supported by what had once been a magnificent network of arches and vaulted supports. Now, half of those supports were gone, collapsed in the same cataclysm that had destroyed so much of the island.

Through the gaps, he could see the dark sky above, painted crimson by the burning moon.

Moonlight streamed down through those breaks, creating pillars of red-tinted illumination that carved the interior into zones of light and shadow. Dust motes drifted lazily through those beams, giving them an almost solid appearance.

'This is so spooky...' Ishiki complained and went deeper in. He was at the very least thankful to the crimson light as it let him see clearly inside this darkness.

The floor too was made up of pristine white marble, that caught the moonlight and seemed to glow with its own internal luminescence.

On either side of the main hall stood doorways leading to what had probably been side chambers—maybe rooms for prayer, storage, or whatever rituals this place had once hosted.

The left side was a ruin.

Those doorways opened onto nothing but rubble, the rooms beyond were completely destroyed when the cathedral's western wall had collapsed.

The right side had managed to remain intact.

Five doorways were evenly spaced and their frames were carved with the same worn patterns as the main entrance. Each door was closed, the wood had gone dark with age, hiding whatever lay beyond.

'Hope I can find some books or documents containing something about the history of this place.'

As he walked in, he was mesmerized by the ethereal beauty of this place... But it was the pillars that drew most of Ishiki's attention.

One for the fact that they were simply so magnificent and secondly because they felt very familiar to Ishiki.

There were five of them, arranged in a semi-circle around another one of the pillar that was at the center of it all. Each of these pillar was massive—at least three meters in diameter, rising up to support the remaining vaulted ceiling.

And each one was broken.

They were all broken from between, the top parts were chained to the ceiling to maintain them afloat.

Then there were another six pillars just alongside the old ones. They were eerily similar to them, but thinner—with at most one meter of diameter. they were carved out from the obsidian material Ishiki had seen many in this world.

Moreover, they were decorated with various carvings too, they were words written in another language that he didn't understand.

Ishiki stopped walking.

He stood there in the center of the main hall, staring at those six dark pillars, and felt something tug at the back of his mind.

'I've seen this before,' he thought, frowning.

The sensation was strong and undeniable. It was not simple déjà vu, but a vague feeling of familiarity that was concrete, specific. He had been here before. Or somewhere very like here.

But when? Where?

Ishiki looked around with narrowed eyes trying to remember and then it suddenly hit him.

He had seen a same place in an illusion. It was easy to forget because it was an illusion mixed with his dreams.

He closed his eyes and recalled the whole illusion that was shown to him by the Lord of illusions and deceit.

In that dream he had lived his life as a lieutenant of the Inner Guards, inside the periphery of the Inner ring.

The illusion had already became fragments of a dream in the back of his mind, but it had left a very deep impression on him so there was no way he would forget it that easily.

One of those fragments had been... a cathedral.

It was vivid... too vivid and hence Ishiki remembered what he had learned from that illusion.

It was the Cathedral of Mandecium.

It had been located in the Inner Ring—the innermost circle of Aethelburg, where only the most privileged were allowed. The cathedral had been a monument to excess, built entirely of gold.

Inside the impossible structure he had seen the same scene... but a little different.

That building too had the six larger pillars and the central one was broken.

'Here... or more precisely 'now' all of these pillars are broken and the building is dependent on the smaller ones.'

One thing was clear to Ishiki... both of these cathedrals were made for praying to the same god... whose name as Ishiki remembered was Mandecium.

He was also the God that ruled over Aethelburg, he was the one who had erected these walls of gold to save this capital and.

...H was the one who was forgotten by the people of Aethelburg.

'Is the forgotten god mentioned in those vestige descriptions the same as Mandecium? Was he the Corrupted god that was defeated by the angel of hope?'

Ishiki felt like he had more questions than he ever had and the answer to all these questions was just around the corner for him to grasp.

He walked forward slowly, approaching the arrangement. Each step echoed in the vast, empty space, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the strange acoustics of the ruined hall.

Replacement,' Ishiki realized. 'The old pillars broke or were destroyed, and someone built these new ones to... what? Maintain the structure? Preserve some function?'

As he drew closer, he could see more details of the dark pillars.

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