Kitava is dead. His great fucking monstrous head is sitting in the grand fountain, because no one's had the stones to move it yet. It hasn't started to stink – which is surprising, frankly. You'd expect brimstone, wouldn't you? But no; once the streets are washed clean of the charred human flesh and the literal rivers of blood and the ashes of everything the people of Theopolis once held dear, the head has all the odor of a big chunk of basalt.

Emil has been keeping busy. Even with the god dead, there's work still to do. Rebel leadership to seek out and negotiate with, now that fewer of them are possessed. Church holdouts to root out and drag to the negotiating tables with them. A few secular nobles, with enough influence to make things easier if he helps them out.

One of them recognizes him. A soft old quaestor, who had always had a fondness for Emil back when he was just a prickly youth with more political opinions than was good for him.

"I heard you had been exiled," he says.

"I was," Emil confirms. "...I came back," he adds pointlessly.

The quaestor nods. "Well. I'm happy to see you. Did your family..."

He's gone between blinks. The marble of the quaestor's doorway is scorched.