Five people entered the hall. Three were wearing the covenant's signature attire of deep blood red scowled coats with everything else in black underneath. One, a cleric, wore a brown and red church mantle with a gold cross pinned at the center of his chest. And the last one, my colleague, a Hunter like me, Shekinah Arzaga. Unlike the first three, she left her coat and instead wore a scarlet half-caped vest exposed from the shoulder down to the upper part of her elbow where her long leather gauntlets halted its guard. I eyed her, snatching a moment to read her thoughts before the reason of this summon is revealed.

Shekinah nodded to me with pursed lips. Her silence and narrowed eyes says it all. A mission.

"Alice," the cleric, Ser Aemon, called my attention. His deep shadowy tone matches the sinister ambience of the dusty medieval hall. Only a candelabra standing at the center of the old oak table lit the room, leaving the upper half of their person a mere shadow blending with the deprivation of light--except for Shekinah who stood not too far from me. Every sound, even a simple rustle, echoes in the eerie silence. "You were sent a letter earlier this day, were you not?" He asked. 

"I was..." I slid a document on the surface before me. "A letter written by the Pope himself." The document had the Papal Seal branded in a bronze clay stamp with the Pope's signature at the center of the envelope's back. "Or so I assumed it is his indeed." My eyes lowered.

Shekinah reached for the envelope and scanned its surface for anything which may prove familiar to her... Nothing. Only one person can validate the Pope's signature, and that person is Ser Aemon himself. So she handed it to the man next to her. 

"Authentic." Ser Aemon was quick to judge. "The curve beneath his initial is perfected, and the finesse of the ... What could be so urgent that the Pope himself wrote this letter?" Looking at the others, he gently slid a finger beneath the seal and slowly plucked it out. The sound of paper unfolding was like a crackling flame, matching the wild dance of the flames of the candelabra.           

The man at the center, Ser Lightwyn, golden hair, blue eyes, a perfect physique for a knight, received the paper from the cleric. He read it silently--even I the prime recepient had not laid eyes on the contents--first to himself then to us all. "The cinders of our faith, challenged by faith to blood. The sun, bleeds in eternal pain, moon bathe in red in an everlasting night. Cometh doth who fear tis words of scholars...  emissar