Brother Diaz reaches the Celestial Palace in a state of exhaustion and humiliation, only to learn from the secretary that he is actually early because the Church routinely shifts appointments to account for the Holy City’s constant delays. His relief quickly turns into excited ambition when he discovers that Cardinal Zizka, not the Pope, has cleared her schedule to see him immediately, which makes him think he is finally being noticed as someone important.

Inside Zizka’s cramped, paperwork-choked office, Diaz finds little outward grandeur but immediately senses the cardinal’s authority. Zizka mentions that Diaz’s abbott has praised him as a gifted administrator, which encourages Diaz to present himself as a useful, obedient servant. Before he can settle into hopes of a prestigious bureaucratic role, the scarred veteran waiting outside enters and is introduced as Jakob of Thorn, a Templar whose experience, advice, and sword will be placed at Diaz’s disposal.

Zizka then explains the scale of the dangers facing the Church: schism between East and West, worldly rulers neglecting their duties, monsters and practitioners of black arts, demons, and the looming threat of the elves. She argues that the stakes are so vast that ordinary moral restraint becomes sinful, because the Church must do whatever is necessary to preserve the one light in a dark world. This speech prepares Diaz for the revelation that the familiar twelve virtues are not the whole truth.

Zizka tells Diaz about the hidden thirteenth chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Expediency, which exists to carry out tasks and use methods unsuitable for the visibly righteous. She names Diaz as its new vicar and introduces Baptiste, a scarred, irreverent operative who has assisted earlier vicars by doing whatever was expedient. Diaz tries to protest that his talents lie in accounts, libraries, and negotiation rather than violence or occult struggle, but Zizka insists that war sometimes requires using the enemy’s weapons. Realizing that he is being drawn into a secret and dangerous mission he does not understand, Diaz outwardly agrees that he joined the Church to do good, while inwardly recognizing that his hoped-for advancement has become something far more perilous.