“The Apostate’s Crown”

Part I

Leonardo Vorelli had spent most of his life studying dead languages and the myths that surrounded them. He had once believed that history was an unbroken chain, a series of recorded events with only the occasional missing link. A lie, but an orderly one.

The monastery where he stood now had no name, not anymore. Time had worn away whatever it had once been called, leaving only a shell of stone and damp, ancient corridors that smelled of mold and something worse. It had been abandoned for centuries, yet the presence of the past clung to it like a parasite.

Leo moved carefully through the crumbling archways, following the flickering glow of a torch carried by the man ahead of him. Brother Matthias. Once a Vatican archivist, now something else. His brown robes, stained with dust and age, dragged along the floor as he walked.

“The relic chamber is below,” Matthias said. “We’ve taken precautions, but the seals are fragile.”

Leo nodded. He had been given little information before his arrival—only a summons from Cardinal D’Ambrosi and a warning that what lay beneath this place had been waiting far too long to be disturbed. He had translated countless texts for the Black Order, but this was the first time he had been invited to stand at the threshold of something real.

They descended a narrow staircase, winding deeper into the dark. The air grew stagnant, heavy with the scent of damp earth and rotting parchment. At the bottom, a stone passage led to a door made of reinforced wood, its iron hinges nearly rusted shut. A sigil had been carved into the wood—one Leo recognized but did not speak aloud.

Matthias turned to face him. “You know what this is, don’t you?”

Leo did. The symbol was old. Older than the Church. Older than any faith that had ever been recorded.

“I’ve seen it before,” Leo admitted. “In fragments. But nothing whole.”

Matthias ran a hand over the carving, his fingers tracing the grooves. “No one alive has seen it whole. Until now.”

The door groaned as Matthias pushed it open. Beyond it, the reliquary stretched into the dark, lined with shelves that sagged beneath the weight of relics no historian had ever documented. The air inside was thick with dust, undisturbed for centuries. At the center of the chamber, resting atop an altar of black stone, was the Crown.

It was not Christ’s. That much was clear.

The thorns, long as needles, curved in unnatural ways, their tips sharp enough to split flesh at the slightest touch. The vines twisted through one another, forming a shape that was both circular and jagged, as if it had been crafted not by human hands, but by something that had never needed to use them.

The metal intertwined with the thorns was dark, its surface etched with pulsing sigils.

Matthias stepped forward, but Leo caught his wrist before he could reach for it.

“What precautions did you take?” Leo asked.

Matthias turned his head slightly, his expression unreadable. “Prayer.”

Leo stared at him. “Prayer to what?”

Matthias pulled his arm free and reached into his robes, producing a pair of gloves lined with silver threading. He slid them on before carefully lifting the Crown from its pedestal. The moment it left the stone, the air shifted. Not a breeze. Not a sound. Something else.

Leo felt it in his bones before he saw it—the warping. For a fraction of a second, the room was wrong. The walls seemed farther away. The shelves were gone. The air was colder, the light dimmer, the very space around them thinner. Leo blinked and it was over. The reliquary returned to normal.

Matthias exhaled, steadying himself. “It knows.”

Leo took a step closer, examining the Crown in Matthias’s hands. The thorns had drawn blood, piercing the gloves in places, and yet Matthias didn’t seem to feel the wounds.

“The Apostate’s Crown,” Leo murmured. “How long has it been waiting?”

Matthias smiled faintly. “Longer than the Church itself.”

Leo clenched his jaw, turning his gaze to the shadows at the edge of the chamber. There were no windows. No gaps for light to slip through. But he could feel something pressing against the walls, just beyond the stone.

The Crown was awake.

And it was listening.

Part II

The hall was ancient, its very foundation a mockery of the Vatican above. Hidden beneath a cathedral long forgotten by the world, this place had been built to serve a different purpose—one that existed in opposition to everything that had shaped history. The inverted crosses carved into its pillars were not for show, nor were they the sacrilegious affectations of heretics desperate to provoke the righteous. They were older than rebellion, etched into the stone long before Christ had ever walked the earth.

Leonardo Vorelli stood among the gathered, the weight of the Apostate’s Crown still lingering in his arms. The procession moved in solemn silence toward the altar of black marble at the heart of the chamber. The shadows that stretched across the high ceiling seemed deeper than they should have been, as if some unseen presence loomed just beyond the torchlight. He had spent years translating texts that spoke of this moment, yet standing here now, he felt like a blind man fumbling toward a precipice he had not known was there.

Cardinal Lucian D’Ambrosi waited at the head of the altar, dressed in dark vestments woven with sigils no living pope had ever worn. His presence commanded reverence, though there was no illusion of divinity in it—only the weight of authority and the knowledge that the man before them had orchestrated events none of them could claim to fully understand. When he lifted his arms, the assembled Black Cardinals bowed their heads in unison.

“The world turns upon its axis, as it always has,” D’Ambrosi intoned. “And yet, there are moments when the cycle strains beneath the weight of history. Moments when the path bends. When what was written may be unwritten.”

His voice carried, though he did not raise it. The chamber itself seemed to amplify it, sending each word slithering through the air.

Leo kept his gaze steady as D’Ambrosi turned toward him, his dark eyes locked onto the Crown in Leo’s grasp.

“You have seen it, haven’t you?” the cardinal asked. “You have felt its presence.”

Leo hesitated. He had not spoken of the warping—not to Matthias, not to anyone. The moment the Crown had been lifted from its altar, something shifted. It had been brief, nearly imperceptible, but he had felt it in his bones.

“Yes,” he admitted.

D’Ambrosi’s expression did not change, but the flicker of satisfaction in his gaze did not go unnoticed. “Then you understand that we stand at the threshold of something far greater than ourselves. The Church has existed for two thousand years. Yet before that—long before that—there was a lie.”

He turned to the others, the gathered Black Cardinals standing in a perfect ring around the altar. “The world remembers what it was told. Not what was true. But the moment is upon us. The deception has run its course, and the White Throne will fall.”

A low murmur passed through the assembled clergy. Leo’s grip tightened around the Crown.

At the far end of the chamber, the doors opened. The man who entered was flanked slowly by two robed attendants. He did not walk as if he was being led, but as if he had already taken his place, as if he had always been here.

Severin III—The Dark Pope.

Leo had never seen him in person. The writings described him in many ways, but none of them matched what stood before him now. His face was obscured beneath a hood, the embroidered sigils glinting dully in the flickering torchlight. His robes, deep black with crimson trim, moved as if they carried a weight unseen.

Yet it was not the garments, nor the veil of ritual, that set something deep in Leo’s mind on edge. It was the way the air moved around him.

D’Ambrosi lowered his arms, and the chamber fell into silence. The attendants guided Severin forward until he reached the altar, then withdrew into the shadows. The Dark Pope stood motionless, head bowed, waiting.

Leo felt the weight of a hundred eyes on him. The Apostate’s Crown was meant for this moment. This man. And yet—something was wrong. The thought came unbidden, rising from a place in his mind he had long since learned to ignore. He had translated the texts, studied the rites. He had walked into this chamber knowing what was to be done.

But the Crown knew. It had waited—not for the Black Order or for Severin. For something else entirely.

D’Ambrosi turned to him, expectant.

Leo took a step forward, lifting the Crown. The shadows around them did not move, yet the chamber itself felt different, as if, for the first time in history, the past was being torn asunder.

Part III

The Apostate’s Crown felt heavier in Leonardo Vorelli’s hands than it had in the reliquary. It was not the weight of its thorns or the iron woven between them. It was something else—something that pressed down upon his arms and shoulders as though the act of lifting it was an offense against gravity itself.

He approached the altar with measured steps, the gathered clergy watching with reverence and expectation. The Dark Pope knelt, his hood still drawn, his hands resting upon his knees. He did not look at Leo, nor did he move. The air around him remained distorted, as if a heat mirage separated his body from the rest of the chamber.

D’Ambrosi raised his arms once more. “The veil is thin.”

The Black Cardinals responded in unison, their voices low and rhythmic. “The hinge is broken.”

“The lie is old, the lie is old. The old world bends, The old world bends.”

D’Ambrosi turned his gaze to Leo. “Let it fall.”

Leo stepped forward, lifting the Crown higher. He felt the thorns pulse, the ancient metal humming with something that was neither sound nor vibration. He had read accounts of relics imbued with power—chalices that bore unholy blessings, bones that whispered in the dark. But the Crown was not a relic. It was a correction. And the moment it touched Severin’s head, the world would change.

He hesitated only once. The rational part of his mind, the part that had dedicated itself to the pursuit of knowledge, demanded that he step back. That he consider the implications of what he was about to do, and question why something this old had remained hidden for so long. But there was no time for hesitation.

Leo lowered the Crown. The moment the thorns pressed against Severin’s scalp, the chamber folded. The torches flickered—not as if a wind had touched them, but as if time itself had stumbled. The marble of the altar cracked down the center, splitting with a groan that echoed through the vaulted ceiling. The assembled clergy gasped, their voices breaking from the liturgy as their bodies jerked backward.

Leo’s vision warped and, for an instant, the chamber was gone. He stood instead in an empty expanse of stone, a place where no church had ever been built, where the air smelled of rain and burning flesh. Above him, the sky churned in colors that had no name. The earth beneath his feet trembled.

Then, just as suddenly, the chamber returned. The floor was intact. The torches burned as they had before. The Black Cardinals stood motionless, their faces frozen in expressions of horror or awe—Leo could not tell which.

Severin remained kneeling, the Crown atop his head. But the man beneath it was no longer the same. His fingers twitched at his sides. His shoulders rolled, his body shifting as if adjusting to itself. Slowly, he lifted his head. The hood slid back, revealing the face beneath.

It was Severin—but it wasn’t.

His features had changed—not drastically, not in the way flesh might shift under the hands of a sculptor, but subtly, wrongly. His eyes had darkened, the irises now little more than slivers of deep amber floating in pools of black. His mouth, though closed, seemed too wide, his lips pressed together with an unnatural tightness. His skin, pale before, now bore the faintest impression of something moving beneath it.

D’Ambrosi took a step forward, his expression unreadable. “Holy Father.”

Severin—what had been Severin—blinked once, slowly. He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping across the chamber. When he spoke, his voice was not his own. It was a chorus, multiple voices occupying the same space, speaking in perfect, unnatural synchronization.

“The tether is broken.”

The Black Cardinals fell to their knees, and D’Ambrosi lowered his head in reverence.

Leo did not move. His vision blurred, the edges of the chamber flickering again. Other places bled through. A world where the Vatican did not exist. A city built in its place, dark spires rising into a sky where the sun had never shone. A landscape twisted by the weight of something ancient, something that had never known a cross or a church or a savior. The past had come undone.

Leo clutched the edge of the altar to steady himself.

It had begun.

Part IV

Leonardo Vorelli did not remember moving. He did not remember stepping away from the altar, nor did he recall passing through the heavy doors of the conclave chamber. One moment, he had stood before the transformed figure of Severin III, the Crown sitting atop his head like a wound in reality. The next, he was outside, breathing air that no longer belonged to the world he had known.

The sky was wrong. He had lived in Rome long enough to recognize its scent, the weight of its history, and the way its ancient stones held onto heat even as night fell. But this place—this version of Rome—was something else entirely. The streets were unfamiliar, the skyline altered. The Vatican should have been there, its dome a constant, its presence as immovable as the past itself.

It was gone. In its place, a monolith stretched toward the sky, towering and angular, its surface dark as obsidian. It bore no windows or doors, no markings of faith or identity. It stood as though it had always been there, its presence undeniable. Leo’s mind struggled to reject it, to place the world back into the shape it had been.

It would not.

The streets were quieter than they should have been. No tourists, no murmured conversations in passing. Even the sounds of the city—engines, footsteps, the constant undercurrent of human life—had dulled, reduced to something distant. A whisper where there should have been a roar. He turned, expecting to see the cathedral from which he had emerged, but there was nothing. The entrance to the chamber, the stones beneath which the Black Order had gathered, had vanished.

This was not Rome. Or if it was, it had never been Rome as he had known it.

A tremor ran through his hands. He clenched them into fists, forcing himself to focus. The ceremony had changed something fundamental, something that had stretched beyond the coronation of Severin III. Leo had read of such things before, theories buried in the margins of forbidden texts—whispers of unwritten histories, of altered timelines, of moments where the fabric of the world could be redirected.

But this was not theory. This was real.

He turned his gaze toward the people moving along the distant streets. They walked with purpose, their heads lowered, their movements orderly. They did not rush. They did not hesitate. Their clothes were unfamiliar—elegant but strange, marked by symbols Leo did not recognize. And none of them looked toward the monolith. It was as though they did not see it.

The realization set in, slow and heavy. Its presence had not shaken them. They had not reacted to the Vatican’s absence. To them, it had never existed.

A chill ran along Leo’s spine. He needed to find someone who remembered.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice rang out.

Leo turned sharply. The figure who stood before him was older, wrapped in dark robes that bore a familiar weight. He did not recognize the man’s face, but his posture, the sharpness in his gaze—there was something about him that felt known. Recognition struck with the force of something long-buried.

Matthias. But not his Matthias.

The man before him was different. His hair was still streaked with gray, his expression just as severe, but the robes he wore bore none of the markings of the Vatican, none of the sigils that had tied him to the Church or the Black Order.

“Brother Matthias,” Leo said.

The name carried weight, but the man did not react. His expression did not shift.

“I don’t know you,” Matthias said. “But I know what you are.”  Leo’s blood ran cold. Matthias gestured toward the street. “If they realize what you are, they won’t let you leave.”

Leo swallowed hard, his mind struggling to orient itself. This Matthias was not the man he had spoken to before the ceremony. But if he had been altered, if his memory had been rewritten along with the rest of the world, then why did he recognize something in Leo?

Matthias turned, already moving. “Come with me.”

Leo hesitated only a second before following.

The people on the street did not glance at them or question their passage. Yet, Leo could not shake the feeling that something else was watching.

The Vatican was gone. The Church had never been.

And whatever had taken its place was only just beginning to reveal itself.

Part V

Matthias led Leonardo Vorelli through the unfamiliar streets with the efficiency of a man who had walked them many times before. Leo followed, his mind scrambling to process what had happened—what was still happening. The people they passed moved with an unnatural orderliness, their gazes unfocused.

This was not Rome.

Or rather, it was—but not as he had known it.

Matthias said nothing as they walked, his posture rigid, his pace brisk but unhurried. The city had changed in ways that unsettled Leo more than he could articulate. The buildings had the same European elegance, the same narrow streets, the same ancient bones, but something about them felt off. The architecture was too pristine, untouched by war or time. It was as if history had been rewritten to remove the scars.

Leo glanced toward the sky, where the monolith loomed above them, casting no shadow. It was wrong, not just in its presence but in its impossibility. It had no clear surface, no indication of how it had been built or what it was made from. And no one looked at it.

Matthias turned down an alley and stopped before a nondescript wooden door set into the side of an old stone building. He produced a key from within his robes and unlocked it. The door creaked as it swung inward, revealing a dimly lit chamber lined with bookshelves and relics. The scent of parchment, ink, and something faintly metallic filled the space.

Leo hesitated before stepping inside.

Matthias shut the door behind them and turned to face him. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes carried a sharpness that cut through the dim light. “You don’t belong here.”

Leo exhaled, steadying himself. “You recognize that, don’t you? That something has changed.”

Matthias studied him for a long moment. “I recognize that you do not fit.”

Leo’s hands tightened at his sides. “This was not how things were supposed to be.” He motioned toward the window, where the world beyond stretched in its unsettling new order. “This city. The people. The monolith. None of it was here before. None of it should be here at all.”

Matthias remained silent.

Leo took a step closer. “You don’t remember me. I know that. But do you remember what came before this?”

The flicker of hesitation in Matthias’s gaze told him everything.

“There was something else, wasn’t there?” Leo pressed. “Even if you can’t name it, you feel it. The weight of something missing.”

Matthias’s jaw tightened. “There are always remnants,” he admitted. “Shadows of the past. Things that linger, even when they should not.”

“You do remember,” Leo replied.

Matthias’s countenance darkened. “No. I suspect.”

Leo swallowed the frustration rising in his throat. He turned, running a hand over the edge of a bookshelf, tracing the worn spines of ancient texts. Some bore sigils he recognized. Others did not.

“This world was rewritten,” Leo said, more to himself than to Matthias. “The Vatican never existed. The Church never rose. Something else took its place.”

Matthias crossed his arms. “If that is true, then what are you?”

Leo hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Matthias regarded him carefully. “Then why do you remember?”

Leo’s mind reeled through the events of the coronation. The moment the Crown touched Severin’s head, the chamber had folded. The walls had flickered, the world had buckled, and for an instant, he had seen something else. A place without churches, without saints, without a Christ to have ever been crucified.

And now he stood in that world. Yet somehow, he remained untouched by it. The realization settled like lead in his stomach.

“Because I was there when it happened,” Leo replied.

Matthias considered this, then turned, pulling an old volume from one of the shelves. He flipped through its brittle pages before stopping on a passage. He angled the book so Leo could see. The script was ancient, but Leo recognized it: a description of hinge points. Moments in history where the fabric of reality could be pulled apart and rewoven. Where what was could be undone and replaced by something new.

Matthias tapped a line with his finger. “Those who stand at the hinge sometimes slip through.”

Leo inhaled sharply. That was what had happened. The world had changed, but he had not been changed with it, which meant that he did not belong in this world.

He looked up at Matthias. “Who rules here?”

Matthias’s gaze flickered toward the window, toward the distant monolith.

Leo followed his eyes. The monolith stood still. Yet, in the dim light, he could have sworn it had shifted. His stomach turned.

Severin III had not become the Antichrist. He had opened the door for something else.

And it had already taken its place on the throne.

Part VI

Leonardo Vorelli had spent his life studying the nature of power—its symbols, its rituals, the way it shaped belief and history. He had thought he understood it, had believed himself prepared to witness the unraveling of one order and the ascension of another. But this was something else. This was not a coup or a war between gods—this was replacement.

He stood beside Matthias in the dim chamber, staring at the passage in the ancient text—the words confirming what he already feared. Those who stood at the hinge could sometimes slip through, lingering in a reality that had left them behind.

Leo was one of them. And if he had survived the rewriting of history, it meant there had been others before him.

The implications churned in his mind. There had been popes before Severin III, cycles of power shifting between the White and the Black. If this was how it ended—if the Church was undone, if something else had taken its place—then was this always the outcome? Had there been another hinge before? Had this world once been something else, only to be replaced the way his own had been?

Leo wondered how many times history had been rewritten.

Matthias was watching him. “You’re unsettled.”

Leo exhaled, steadying himself. “This isn’t just about a change in power. This world is new. Entirely new. Which means that whatever sits at the top of it—” He turned, looking toward the window. The monolith loomed in the distance, its surface still unreadable, still unmarked by time or reason. “It isn’t human.”

Matthias remained quiet.

Leo took a step forward. “What do you remember of Severin III?”

Matthias’s brow furrowed. “Who?”

Leo’s stomach twisted. He had expected something—a fragment, an echo of recognition—but Matthias did not even recognize the name. Severin had never existed.

Leo turned away, his mind racing. He thought of the ceremony, the moment the Crown had been placed, the way the world had folded. That was the hinge. That was the moment when everything had been pulled apart, reconstructed into this new shape—which meant there was only one way to undo it.

Matthias closed the book, placing it back onto the shelf. “You’re looking for something that no longer exists.”

Leo shook his head. “No. I’m looking for the last thing that does.”

He turned to face the other man fully. “This world has been rewritten, but I remain. I remember.” He gestured toward the book. “That means there’s still a connection between what was and what is. If I die, that connection dies with me.”

Matthias did not react at first. Then, slowly, he inclined his head. “You believe that if you sever that last connection, it will undo what has been done?”

Leo hesitated. He did not know. But if there was even a chance—

He reached beneath his robes, fingers curling around the handle of a dagger he had carried since his initiation into the Black Order. Its blade was old, its edge keen. He had never needed to use it. Until now.

Matthias watched as Leo held the dagger over his chest. This was not about faith or salvation. It was about undoing the lie.

The monolith stood in the distance, watching. He inhaled once, and then drove the dagger forward.

For an instant, the world stilled. The walls of the chamber flickered. The torches burned with a light that was neither fire nor shadow. The books on the shelves trembled, their spines cracking, their pages turning as if caught in a wind that did not touch the air.

And beyond the window, the monolith moved. Not physically. Not in a way that could be seen—but Leo felt it. The way it adjusted, the way it considered. Then, in the breath before the blade found its mark, before the hinge could be forced back into place, he heard a voice.  Something more profound and ancient than any language mankind had ever conceived, something that had stretched across time and rewritten history before.

And then the dagger stopped.

Leo’s hands trembled, but they did not move. His body refused to obey. His mind burned with understanding.

This had happened before, and before, and before. Over and over again, since time immemorial.

And each time, the hinge had held, not because of faith or destiny, but because this was the way it was always meant to be.

The monolith stood.

And the past was gone.