The Nag Hammadi Codices are ancient heretical texts penned by the Egyptian sect known as the Sethians.

  Christians worship the Son of God, but His birth occurred centuries after the Old Testament was written—a scripture that only foretold the coming of a Messiah, a divinely chosen savior. The New Testament later identified this Messiah as Christ, claiming His arrival fulfilled the old prophecies.

  Yet some fringe beliefs, like those of the Sethians, insisted the true Messiah was Seth—Adam’s third son—and that the Son of God was merely one of his incarnations. Their heresy earned them brutal persecution.

  Egypt’s original religion had little to do with the Holy Spirit, and traces of those older beliefs lingered among the Sethians. Bishop Lorenzo’s notes revealed he’d been studying their texts—an act the Church normally tolerated. Its libraries brimmed with heretical writings, all studied in hopes of uncovering lost paths to divine ascension or taming humanity’s inner darkness.

  But Lorenzo’s collection included never-before-seen documents, and their contents cast his death in an eerie new light.

  Among them was the Gospel of Judas, a fragmentary text recounting a private dialogue between Christ and Judas. Here, Judas wasn’t a traitor but Christ’s most devoted disciple, sacrificing his master’s mortal shell to fulfill a divine plan.

  Judas: “I saw twelve priests at an altar, waiting… Some sacrificed children, others their wives—all praising one another. They called Your name in their sin.”

  Christ: “Those priests are you. Stop these sacrifices. You plant barren trees in My name.”

  The climax, though partly lost, was chilling:

  “You will surpass them, for you shall sacrifice the man who clothes Me.”

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  To the Albion Church’s mystics, this wasn’t just theology—it echoed Egypt’s fixation with death and rebirth. The texts suggested a ritual: shedding the flesh like a rotten garment to ascend into light.

  Even biblical accounts agreed Judas died first, hanged by his own hand in remorse. But the Gospel of Judas framed it as destiny:

  “You’ll be cursed, yet rise to heaven. See the guiding star? It is yours.”

  Did Lorenzo believe this? Did he arrange his own murder to replicate the sacrifice, casting off his body for transcendence?

  One scholar proposed the idea, convincing others to defy Rome and conceal Lorenzo’s remains. Secretly, they dismembered his corpse, burned the pieces, and scattered the ashes in distant marshes. Five mansions—each bearing a sigil—were built atop key sites, forming an arcane prison. The five noblemen behind Lorenzo’s death were tasked with maintaining rituals to suppress his spirit, lest he return as undead.

  Frightening the conspirators was easy. Haunted by guilt, they saw omens everywhere. Though they’d helped the king seize Church lands, none dared blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Rumors cursed those lands: misuse would bring doom. Cautious aristocrats avoided them; only desperate social climbers bought in.

  The Inquisitor assigned to the case stoked their fears with staged supernatural signs. He made the families adopt five crests, binding them to the mansions as eternal jailers. To prevent future disruptions, he banned their descendants from commerce—a rule enforced by threats of ruin.

  For 300 years, it worked. But consumerism eroded tradition. Land rents couldn’t compete with factories and banks, and the families’ scions grew restless. The first crack came when one lord sold his ancestral home—turning it into a coal mine.

  Marculase pieced this together not from a single log (which only hinted at an Inquisitor’s mission), but by combing through archives, legal records, and hidden monastic texts.

  “Disaster’s coming, meow!” He pounced onto his lazy apprentice. “Get up! We’re catching a train to HQ!”

  Meanwhile, North Yorkshire’s Feast of Fools—a rowdy Roman relic—was set to begin. Gentlemen like Oleander and Yvette, ever proper, rode to the local Anglican church.

  Yvette eyed the box in Oleander’s hands. Nobles didn’t carry their own luggage.

  “A gift for the church?” she teased.

  “Some ceremonial dagger. Folk say it killed a demon.” He opened it, revealing a rusted blade.

  Yvette’s smile faltered. For a split second, the dagger seemed to bleed.