Uhhh i hate to bring the bad news but this is still a ting unfortuantly. This time i can give some more precise information on what went down. There is a thing were if you pick up a cross at the same time a heretic steps on a PB ad gets smited the PB tile is kept during the "hey am a big bad boi boss so am gonna clear all ur placed tiles" thing. This is precisely what happend here. exept i did not get the cross. Fortunatly it seems you are on the right track since it seems it is connected to heretics.
Side note: I saw youre response regarding the double score potion. I agree that is is balanced to be a one time thing. With brew mastery (i think thats what is what its called) and 5 extra slots you could theoreticly get 4^8= 65536 times your score in like 3 seconds. That would be kinda broken. Spamming chaos brew in late game to get these potions is prob the best strat rn