[Suzerain of Sheol]

Ignoring the girl as she clears out of the way, Thomas positions himself at the feet of the corpse, wrapping his hands around Dante's ankles.

Immediately, a biting, unearthly chill descends upon the room.

Hearing the cries of the blind man's soul, Thomas is too focused to acknowledge them. The longer this takes, the worse the trauma upon the spirit will be.

The priest measures his power, careful not to overwhelm the body with the touch the divine, and begins to spread it into the flesh, into tormented muscle and veins bloated with perverse toxins. He begins slowly, reaching into capillaries and infusing Theurgy into the very cells of Dante's body, shaping, restoring... transmuting.

One by one, the molecules touched by the outflow of blessed magicks reform, transubstantiated into more perfect structure: crystals, flawless geometry of ice, angles upon infinite angles pleasing in the sight of God.

With intimate precision, the priest turns Dante's blood to ice, a transcendental coldness, reaching through the ether, obliterating the presence of venom within his body.

The power of the ritual is twofold, purifying intoxicated flesh and binding the spirit to the healing process to cast out the Hellish poison that has seeped into the man's fundamental being.

Channeling the merciless spirit of Heaven, Thomas sets about freezing Dante's soul into perfection.

Every drop of blood, frozen; every artery transfigured into the sacred harmonious architecture of resurrection. The experience is one Thomas has never undergone, though he knows it is agony, terrifying anguish, a quintessential suffocation of the self, sealing the eternal identity of the soul into a crystalline coma, and they are aware every instant.

The priest does not relent, does waver from the euphoric invocation of his power, until the body is pristine, an effigy of the natal spirit, fresh from the womb of God. Without blemish, unstained. Ideal. An impeccable casting of the image absolute.

And now begins the difficulty of the process: reanimation. This will require fire. Reining in the thunderous pulse of miraculous possibilities within himself, Thomas begins to THAW the crystal, blessing it with flame, breathing empyrosis into cell after cell, rekindling life.

There will be screams, soon, reechoing through the firmament. Life can be so very torturous, awakening to vitality in a meticulous crawl, one organ at a time, blood gasping into energetic flow, surging up through reborn veins, washing through the regenerated heart, whispering into the lungs, rejuvenating, crashing, threatening to burst yet appallingly ALIVE.

And into the brain, igniting lightning across uncountable neurons, recreating consciousness, revivifying the mind, the presence of perspective, electrocuting Dante back into semblance.

A forced reincarnation, but under the circumstances, effective for their purposes. Not without its costs.

He can do no more.