It is done. All is in readiness, and there is naught left to do but wait for the coming of the dawn. Mentor Guillaume de Nogaret has bent the King's will to ours, and with Benedict dead at Perugia, Rome is with us as well. And yet I find my heart gripped with sudden misgivings.
Dante and Domenico assure me that this is a great victory, that we will annihilate them root and branch... but I wonder. In breaking the Templars' public façade, are we merely driving them into the shadows? Fifty years ago, the Templars thought us destroyed, after all. Vanishing from the public eye has proven our greatest strength in this interminable war—are we now granting the same boon to our enemies?