Sard

Sard is a saint cardinal, former leader of the Violet parish, and the principal architect of the religious-political crisis that removes the Southern Church from Holm. For years he presents himself as a mild, detached prelate while concealing a private connection to the World of Souls, manipulating radicals, nobles, and enemies toward a controlled schism. His plan culminates in an attempt to seize the papacy and the revelation that he can perform God's Arrival, but his clash with Pope Benedict II destroys his body and soul while leaving the nature and fate of a strange remnant unresolved.

Biography

The secluded cardinal and the World of Souls

Sard is first known in Aalto as an old saint cardinal whose authority alone silences a room. Although he appears at the Psalm Hall and presides over important religious occasions, he has withdrawn from daily administration enough that younger cardinals govern much of the Violet parish. The distance is deceptive. Lucien Evans recognizes Sard as a threat capable of detecting sorcery that lesser clerics would miss, while conspirators assume that the possibility of his arrival makes a direct confrontation untenable. Sard's courteous demeanor and reputed faith make his absence look like seclusion rather than preparation. (Chapters 64–73, 82–86, 111–135, and 290)

Later revelations recast that period. Sard had conspired with Rhine to reach the World of Souls and deal with Tiphotidis, then betrayed Rhine during the exploration and escaped with a secret that became central to his later power. He also keeps information useful to his long plan: rather than expose Lucien's relationship with Natasha Violet to the pope, he blames Lucien for manipulating her and preserves the public assumption that their bond is a disguise. His interest is not kindness to either of them. A queen who will not report him through the royal channel gives him room to act in Holm, while Lucien's survival helps the Congress of Magic grow into a force capable of breaking the Church's regional monopoly. (Chapters 438, 503–510, 611, 637–642, and 745)

Turning Holm toward schism

When Sard becomes Grand Cardinal of Holm, he works through existing institutions rather than openly rebel. He supports Natasha's succession, crowns her after testing her faith, and uses radicals within the parish to intensify conflict between nobles and clergy. Their unauthorized killings and assassination attempts look like failures of discipline, but Sard protects selected agents, reports the unrest in ways that bring his own former assistants into the parish, and allows each outrage to make the nobles more receptive to a new balance with the Congress. He also uses Kritonia and conservative political networks, while allowing reforms and provocations that seem inconsistent enough to keep both Natasha and the Congress uncertain of his true limit. (Chapters 503–540 and 544)

Sard eventually contacts Fernando and Hathaway through a projection. He offers to surrender the Radiance Church's transmission circles and defenses after one year, persuade or neutralize the neighboring grand cardinals, and establish a reformed church in which believers reclaim the right to interpret the Cannon. In return, he wants room to preach and gather faith. He admits that his orchestration of radical pressure is designed to push liberal and conservative nobles alike away from the Southern Church. The Highest Council accepts only under mutually binding oaths, but Sard's control over his own heart of faith makes such safeguards less absolute than they appear. His promise is factually fulfilled when he opens the Radiance Church and withdraws; the evasion lies in the catastrophe he has arranged around the transfer. (Chapters 537–554 and 745)

Papal ambush and destruction

At the appointed moment, Sard lets the Congress enter the Radiance Church while the Angel King and sacrificial clerics activate Paradise on Earth. The resulting trap draws Southern Church reinforcements into a premature war and leaves both sides exposed. Sard then disappears from surveillance, enters the Nekso Palace, and tries to kill Natasha. He expects her death to remove Holm's reporting channel and clear the succession for a more manageable ruler. Instead, Natasha has prepared a direct call to Benedict II. Sard's attempted execution therefore brings the pope into the palace and turns the hidden bid for control into a personal confrontation. (Chapters 553–557)

Sard drops his peaceful mask without abandoning his claim to faith. He accuses the popes of stealing God's honor, says that the Angel King supports him, reveals peak-legendary power, and uses God's Arrival against Benedict II. The sight of two supposed representatives of divine truth invoking the same supreme judgment against each other shakes clerical faith across the battlefield, advancing Sard's schismatic purpose even as his plan fails. Benedict's clearer projection disrupts Sard's spell, and their competing arrivals consume the sky in holy light. Sard is subsequently counted among the Church's dead, his body and soul destroyed in the exchange. Rhine nevertheless senses that a mysterious thing once inside Sard escaped into the World of Souls, and later investigators cannot explain exactly what it was. Sard's personal bid ends, but his actions cost the Southern Church multiple legends, help Holm pass to the Congress-aligned religious order, and expose divine authority as something less exclusive than the papacy claimed. (Chapters 558–567, 611, and 637–642)

Appearance and personality

Sard is an elderly man with white hair, beard, and clerical dress, often including a white hat. His lowered eyelids conceal dirty-looking eyes, and his warm smile and gentle preaching manner make him appear patient and paternal. During the confrontation with Benedict II, his hair and beard stretch outward as his aura changes; using God's Arrival rapidly deepens his wrinkles, drains his skin, and leaves him resembling a dried corpse. (Chapters 64, 507, 538, and 558)

He is extraordinarily patient, controlled, and secretive. Sard speaks without visible emotion even when assigned an isolated defense by the pope, and he designs plans whose apparent mistakes become pressure on other factions. He is willing to sacrifice radical followers, mislead partners with technically fulfilled promises, and risk the collapse of clerical certainty for his own religious and political objective. Yet his motives are not reduced to ordinary wealth: he repeatedly frames faith, truth, and proximity to the Lord as the goals for which worldly authority is useful. Whether that belief is sincere, corrupted, or shaped by the entity connected to his remnant remains unresolved. (Chapters 459, 515, 537–559, and 637)

Divine powers and abilities

Sard's public identity is that of a saint cardinal with formidable divine power; his concealed peak-legendary state rests on a secret obtained through the World of Souls. His abilities draw on faith and Mountain Paradise, but later evidence shows that godhood gives him partial control over the connection between his heart of faith and that source. This allows him to cooperate with sorcerers and swear in faith without suffering the automatic holy-light backlash that would destroy an ordinary high cleric. The exact object or entity enabling his most exceptional powers is never fully identified. (Chapters 538, 558, 637–642, and 745)

Faith perception, projection, and barriers

As Grand Cardinal, Sard can examine the faith of a monarch through the Cannon and holy light, as he does before crowning Natasha. He can also send a conversational projection over distance, though the projection cannot enter every kind of magic barrier and requires Fernando and Hathaway to construct a compatible protected space. His faith senses can block and monitor the surroundings, making an attempted supernatural escape detectable. These perceptions are powerful rather than omniscient: he does not anticipate every element of Natasha and the Congress's contingency plan, and the pope can arrive through a prepared connection once summoned. (Chapters 510, 538, and 557)

Sard is also deeply familiar with parish-scale divine infrastructure. He can close the Radiance Church's barrier and surrender its transmission circle, organize clerics into the Paradise on Earth ritual, and coordinate its overlapping projections of Mountain Paradise with the Angel King. Paradise on Earth separates supernatural beings from ordinary reality, suppresses magic, strengthens aligned divine power, and protects Rentato from the immediate effects of legendary battle. It is not Sard's individual spell: it requires mass sacrifice, a network of churches, and the Angel King's participation, and it begins to destabilize under sustained legendary combat. (Chapters 553–559)

Judgment and multi-directional divine combat

In the Nekso Palace, Sard passes internal barriers with seraphic wings and attacks with Light of Judgment. The spell manifests a seven-layered Mountain Paradise in his eyes and condenses it into a beam whose judgment obliterates the target area; Natasha survives only by dispersing it with the Sword of Truth. Sard can split into four shadows and cast Light of Judgment, Vengeful Storm, Energy Drain, and Earthquake from separate directions, combining direct destruction, loss of energy, and terrain shock to overwhelm defense. He supplements the attack with space anchors that block ordinary outbound teleportation. Benedict II's arrival immediately collapses these powers, demonstrating the gap between Sard's ordinary divine combat and a demigod's authority. (Chapter 557)

God's Arrival and concealed legendary state

Sard's ultimate ability is God's Arrival, previously presented as the pope's unique supreme divine power. He reaches peak-legendary speed, evades Benedict's lock, recites the Cannon as believers join his prayer, and draws the seven-floored projection of Mountain Paradise over the sky. Infinite light then gathers into an attack capable of contesting the pope's own arrival. Its cost is severe and visible: Sard's vitality drains rapidly, his body ages, and he acknowledges that capture would otherwise mean certain death. (Chapter 558)

The spell is not equal to Benedict II's mastery. The pope's clearer Mountain Paradise disrupts Sard's gathering light, forcing him to stabilize it before the two attacks meet. Their collision destroys Sard's body and soul rather than establishing him as the new pope. The later existence of an unidentified remnant does not prove that Sard retained consciousness, access to God's Arrival, or a recoverable body, so his latest confirmed personal state remains death. (Chapters 558–567 and 637–642)

Political and doctrinal strategy

Sard's most consequential skill is his ability to turn religious procedure into political leverage. He controls what the pope hears, uses extremists to make moderates seek separation, preserves Natasha as both ruler and unwitting shield against papal inspection, and offers the Congress a promise whose surface terms he fulfills. His doctrine of direct believer interpretation gives disaffected clergy a coherent destination, while God's Arrival against God's Arrival supplies the public contradiction that makes the shift imaginable. The strategy depends on secrecy and on other actors reacting as forecast; it fails at the point where Natasha contacts Benedict directly and the Congress has prepared plans for Sard's betrayal. (Chapters 503–559)

Power progression

Relationships

• Natasha Violet: Sard crowns Natasha and uses her queenship to block papal oversight, while cultivating clerical pressure around her. She never trusts his purpose, prepares a direct appeal to the pope, and turns his assassination attempt into the confrontation that destroys him.
• Lucien Evans: Sard conceals the truth of Lucien's relationship with Natasha and anticipates that his research will accelerate the Congress's growth. Lucien recognizes the concealment as strategic, helps design contingencies against Sard, and survives the trap meant to remove him and his allies.
• Fernando: Sard offers Fernando the regional breakthrough the Congress wants and negotiates a binding cooperation. Fernando accepts the opportunity while planning for betrayal; that caution helps the Congress survive Sard's technically compliant ambush.
• Hathaway: Hathaway joins the secret negotiations and treats Sard's offer as plausible but unsafe. Her power and preparations become part of the Congress's response when his wider trap activates.
• Rhine: Rhine once cooperates with Sard to explore the World of Souls and is betrayed and trapped. After Sard's destruction, Rhine is the one who detects that an unexplained remnant has escaped, leaving their earlier discovery unresolved.
• Kritonia: Kritonia is the legendary knight Sard wins to his side and expects to control the Nekso Palace. Sard's confrontation with the pope destroys that leverage; Kritonia hesitates, survives, and later seeks to answer for crimes committed while aligned with him.