In the interview frame, Gabriel de León tells Jean-François about Père Douglas á Maergenn, a priest whose absolute faith collapsed after witnessing the Dyvok slaughterfarms during the Ossian campaigns. Gabriel uses the story to warn that faith can shatter when confronted with horror, then turns back to the events inside Jènoah’s chapel at Cairnhaem.

In the chapel, Dior pressures Celene to explain the Esani secrets. Celene says the first vampires were not four lines but five: Voss, Chastain, Dyvok, Ilon, and a fifth line begun by Illia and her lover Tanith. Illia, once wicked and bloodthirsty, converted to the One Faith after centuries of unlife and tried to stop feeding on innocents, but her thirst drove her to kill and consume Tanith.

Celene explains that Illia believed she had saved Tanith’s soul by carrying it within herself. Calling the act communion, Illia created a doctrine that vampires could redeem other vampires by consuming them and preserving their souls until Judgment. Illia’s followers became the Illiae, then a religious order of vampire knights who gained strength and bloodgifts by drinking other kith during the Red Crusade.

When Dior asks how this concerns her, Celene connects the tale to Esan’s mortal descendants and the Aavsenct Heresy. Illia renamed her brood the Esana, the Faithful, and allied with Esan’s line against the Augustin empire and the mortal church. In response, elders from the other four vampire lines formed the Knights of the Blood under Fabién Voss, the Forever King, beginning the Wars of the Blood and turning the Esana’s legacy into the reviled Esani, the Faithless.

Celene admits she does not know why the Forever King wants Dior or how Dior is meant to end daysdeath, because Jènoah died with whatever knowledge he had. Celene proposes their only remaining lead: Mistress Maryn, eldest of the Esana, broodchild of Illia, in Dún Maergenn. Gabriel objects because Dún Maergenn has fallen, but Phoebe suddenly races into the chapel in lion form and claws a V into the floor, then many more marks, warning that the Voss have found them in overwhelming numbers.