———Nostalgia down Tragedy Lane———
Voices stirred among the gathered villagers, faint at first, then settling into a low, uncertain rhythm. A single name had reached them—spoken once, yet already altered by the passing of tongues. It moved from mouth to mouth, each retelling adding a trace of caution, of disbelief, of something remembered.
"Rex… you heard that, didn't you?" murmured the cooper's wife, leaning close to her husband. "Sounds noble."
"Almost royal," he answered, brow furrowed. "Could be foreign, maybe?"
A shepherd leaned on his crook, squinting toward the gilded man.
"Name like that's too fine for traders," he said. "Too heavy for pilgrims, too clean for holymen."
"Maybe he's one of the emperor's bastards," someone said half in jest.
A boy whispered, "Maybe he's some sort of saint?"
"What if he's a demigod," his sister replied, eyes wide.
An elder woman, long past fear and faith alike, shook her head. Her eyes looked as though they had seen three crusades and remembered none as victory.
"Rex," she said at last. "It means king, in the speech before the Orders. I heard a priest speak of it once… best not to repeat it without need."
That warning settled into the crowd like falling dust. The name lingered in their throats—strange and dangerous, a polish not made for their tongues.
Few in Erl'twig knew the world beyond the miles of forest and mist, but all knew the texture of intrusion. The name came strange and weight-bearing—not as threat, but as riddle.
From thresholds and fences, from wells and open shutters, they looked on—curious but guarded, compelled by what they did not understand.
Everyone spoke of the travelers and their strange house—everyone except the general. Her silence held where speech faltered, commanding attention without a word. Even the Crusaders sensed it: a shift in the stillness, a compression in the air that needed no order to be understood.
Arkeia's pulse lurched.
That name cut through thought like a blade unsheathed from memory, a mark carved across centuries and through the bones of the fallen.
The name hit her like a hammer on rusted iron, sending echoes through the sealed corridors of her mind—stories whispered by candlelight, of bloodlines cursed by gods, of a house that should have burned.
These memories did not return gently, no—
it came like a lash, sudden and searing, dragging her back through years she had buried beneath duty and prayer.
Prison camps rose in her mind as clear as the dawn over the wastes of I'shal—unforgiving, endless, and cruelly bright.
It sprawled across the lowlands like a scar that refused to close. The marble quarries yawned wide beside it, their pale walls gleaming faintly even in the gloom, cut and re-cut by generations of hands that had long forgotten gentleness.
Once, those quarries had been the pride and joy of the Rex blood—a monument to their humble craft. Now, to those who toiled within them, it was no monument. It was a festering wound. A mouth that swallowed names and spat out bones.
Shanties crouched around the pit like beaten dogs, cobbled together from warped planks and rusted sheets of tin scavenged from abandoned wagons. Their roofs sagged beneath the weight of years and rain, patched with tar and prayer alike.
The ground was always damp—mud thick with lime dust and footprints that filled with water faster than they could be made. There was never clean earth, only the gray smear of survival.
At dawn, horns would sound—low and hollow, like the world itself sighing. Men, women, and children spilled from their huts in silence, faces drawn and pale beneath the crust of dust. They moved like shadows, driven not by command but by the grim rhythm of enslavement. The overseers' whips cracked through the morning mist, slicing it apart with the precision of ritual.
The lime pits smoldered day and night, filling the air with a choking haze that clung to skin and soul alike. When the wind shifted, it carried the stench of smoke and dry rot to every corner of the camp.
The sky above held a seldom blue—it burned with a sickly pallor, as though the heavens themselves had turned away in disgust.
Every sound was labor's echo—the creak of pulleys, the thud of hammers striking stone, the distant roll of wagons hauling slabs too heavy for any beast to bear. The clang of metal was unending, a kind of cruel music that buried laughter and hope.
And the blood.
There was always blood.
The copper scent of it hung in the air, seeping into the dust, into the water drawn from the wells, into the very breath of the living. A careless cut, a snapped rope, a dropped chisel—each small mistake added to the ground's slow red memory. Stains that rain could not wash clean; it only drove it deeper.
The guards of House Rex watched from their towers—armored silhouettes framed by banners of silver and crimson. The serpent crest coiled over every gate, painted on every wagon, carved into every collar of those branded for labor. Its eyes, glinting in the sun, seemed always to follow.
That was where she had spent her childhood—
and where her father had died.
She could see him still—broad-shouldered once, now gaunt, his back a tapestry of welts that never fully healed. The chains at his ankles clinked with every motion, the sound steady as a metronome of suffering. Yet his spine never bowed, not fully.
Even when bent beneath the overseer's whip, even with blood streaming down into the clay, he looked skyward.
"They can take our house, they can strip us of freedom" he rasped throughe cracked lips one night, when the guards had grown drunk on their own cruelty, "but never our names… never our souls. We remain."
His words were hoarse and slow, dragged from a chest that rattled with dust. The firelight from the overseer's brazier caught in his eyes, and for a fleeting instant, Arkeia had seen the same glint there that she now saw in her own reflection—the spark that refused to go out.
She'd been ten when she watched him fall beneath the lash. The overseer hadn't even paused; work had to continue. The stones had to be cut. The walls of Brailford's temples would not build themselves.
Her mother had been set to the sorting lines by the quarry's edge, sifting sand and rubble for usable marble. The sun bleached her skin to parchment; her hands cracked until they bled between every finger. She moved with quiet precision, her motions as careful as those of a priestess tending sacred rites. But there was no sanctity there—only the endless rhythm of labor.
At night, the slaves slept in narrow sheds, bodies packed close for warmth. The air was thick with the smell of crushed lime and old blood. Arkeia remembered lying beside her mother, tracing the calluses on her palms, too young to understand what defiance looked like when it was quiet.
Her mother would whisper prayers in the dark—words meant not for the gods above, but for the nameless many beside her.
"Mercy," she would murmur, lips cracked and trembling, "for those who serve in silence, mercy onto those who still dream."
"Who do you pray for, mother?" little Arkeia would ask, her voice a fragile thread in the dark.
Her mother would turn her head, hair matted with dust, and with a defiant smile—the kind of smile one wears when they have long since made peace with pain.
"For those who still remember their chains," she'd whisper.
And when dawn came, they would rise to the sound of the horns.
Back to the stone, to the picks and pulleys, to the overseer's bark.
That had been her youth—days measured not in years but in strikes of the whip and the tolling of the quarry bell.
It was there, in the pits of servitude, that Arkeia had learned the meaning of faith—
not the faith that prays for light,
but the kind that endures in darkness.
Another memory flooded her, it rose unbidden, it was not chains she recalled but gentle flames. Not clattering of iron, but the hush of voices gathered around the hearth.
A different time.
A moment of peace.
Before the camps—before Mar'aya had called her name—there had been her family's manor, its walls lit by the dim red of an aging flame. The scent of resin and dust hung in the air, and shadows of the hearth climbed the walls like ghosts remembering their own lives.
Arkeia blinked, and the years slipped further.
The rattle of chains became the crackle of burning oak.
The cries of the quarry dissolved into the low murmur of an old woman's voice.
And there, seated by the hearth, her grandmother waited—hands folded over a cane, eyes clouded but sharp enough to pierce through time itself.
"Come closer, child," the old woman said, her tone carrying the gravity of confession rather than story. "You're old enough now to hear what haunts our blood."
Arkeia obeyed, her small frame easing down onto the rug, the scent of smoke and lavender oil weaving through her hair.
Her grandmother leaned forward, the firelight deepening the lines on her face.
"They were a decaying family once, child. Their walls rotted behind velvet curtains, their prayers said with poisoned tongues. Yet still they dined, smiled and bore their heirs."
She spat the next word as though it burned. "Heirs... yes… That's what they call them."
The flames popped in the grate, scattering sparks across the stone.
Her grandmother's voice dropped lower.
"But they did not birth mere children. They bred monsters. Abominations. The worst of them was rarely seen… only born."
Arkeia's young voice, small and uncertain, barely rose above the fire's whisper. "Monsters, Grandma? Like the ones from Father's books?"
"No." The old woman's gaze fixed on the flames. "Those things belong to this realm. This one—this boy... did not."
The word trembled, caught between awe and disgust.
"I saw him once, when I was still a girl. He was… breathtaking. Like the moon reflected in blood—beautiful, but wrong in a way I couldn't name. There was a stillness about him, the kind that comes before a shadow moves where no shadow belongs. When the air thickened, the ground seemed to slant, and I knew—too late—that something outside the order of things had already turned its gaze upon me."
Her voice thinned to a rasp. "They said he was touched by divinity. I say he was remembered by something far beyond it."
Arkeia watched the fire twist in the old woman's eyes, watched the reflection tremble between gold and black.
"What happened to him?" she asked.
Her grandmother drew in a slow breath. "No one truly knows… he… he just vanished. They say the gods took him. I say the world spat him out... to where he belongs."
The fire sank low, its embers pulsing faintly like a dying heartbeat.
Her grandmother's hand found hers—cold, trembling, firm.
"Remember this, child…. a Rex slithers."
The last words lingered in the air like a curse too long repeated.
And when Arkeia blinked, the fire was gone.
The warmth faded.
The memory bit deep. Her thoughts didn't just ache—they bled.
The world around her swam for a heartbeat, shapes bending at the edges as her vision burned and her thoughts throbbed like struck metal. She felt the pressure of her goddess stir behind her eyes—a flare of sacred clarity demanding she act, to strike, to purge.
Her hand found her blade before she knew it, fingers curling over the hilt as if the sword itself had remembered before she did. The warmth of divinity shimmered faintly beneath her skin, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
A faint fracture touched the surface of her steadiness, the kind that begins not in movement but in thought. For the first time that morning, she felt her certainty taper, narrowed by a question she had not meant to entertain.
She might have lingered there—caught between instinct and recognition—had a voice not broken the pause with velvet precision.
"—Are you all right?"
The golden stranger's voice cut through her spiraling focus. It was soft, unhurried, laced with an infuriating gentleness that sounded like amusement wrapped in concern.
"You've been staring," he said with an easy smile. "And though I'm not opposed to admiration, I confess—it's beginning to spark a touch of worry, madam."
Her breath hitched—caught, unguarded. The world snapped back into form. Her fingers twitched once against the hilt before she forced them still.
"I'm fine," she said, her tone sharp as a drawn edge. A lie fit for battle.
He tilted his head slightly, the gesture almost feline, golden eyes studying her not as one studies danger, but as one might examine a reflection and wonder which image is real.
——Flight of the mist——
"My Apologies," he said lightly, the corner of his mouth curving. "It's hard to tell from where I… stand."
The jest was casual, harmless in tone—but there was something in the phrasing, in the deliberate pause before the last word, that hinted at a deeper amusement only he understood.
She refused to meet it. Refused to acknowledge the charm that rode every syllable like a trained hawk. Her jaw tightened. The silence between them held its shape for a measured breath before she spoke again, her tone sharp enough to cleave through the lingering humor.
"House Rex," she said, the name leaving her tongue like a blade dragged across stone. "You wear that name boldly… for one so concerned with others' well-being."
The last words carried a faint trace of mockery, just enough to be heard.
The stranger's smile didn't fade—it shifted.
A single, imperceptible alteration, like a ripple passing over still water. Too smooth to distrust openly, too fleeting to challenge outright.
When he spoke again, his voice had lowered, soft as the hush between ticks of a clock.
"Boldness," he murmured, each syllable drawn out like a vow half-remembered. "I'm afraid… runs in the family."
Their gazes met—steel to sunlight.
And the longer she looked into those gilded eyes, the more the world began to turn.
Something unseen brushed against her thoughts, a quiet hum beneath her ribs.
Her heart stuttered—not from fear, but from something stranger… dangerously close to reverence.
No…
Her instincts recoiled, yet something deeper—something beneath instinct—rose to meet it.
Every fiber of her faith screamed, stand tall, but every thread of her soul whispered, kneel.
Her goddess stirred once again, a ripple of divine defiance flaring behind her eyes.
Something's trying to rewrite perception, she thought. Something's reaching through him, something isn't right—
"—See, brother?"
The voice came smooth and low, carrying that easy arrogance of someone who delighted in being noticed.
"Look at her. I told you—your voice is an infectious aneurysm, a dagger in the mind if you will."
From the pale curtain of mist, another figure emerged. Raven-haired, sharp-featured, his dark coat bore the faint sheen of travel, edges weathered but deliberate, as if age itself had been a style he chose to wear.
The golden man sighed, amusement glinting beneath exasperation. "Aethon, please… not at this moment."
"Merely trying to ease the tension," Aethon replied, utterly unrepentant. He spread his arms with mock humility. "The air's thick enough to bottle, pardon me if I wanted a sip."
Arkeia's gaze cut toward him, then beyond—to the vague shapes lingering in the morning haze. They stood silent, patient, half-shrouded, each posture carrying that unspoken ease that only danger truly possesses.
The gilded man turned, addressing the unseen forms with a casual flick of his hand.
"Oh, where are my manners. This blasted fog has been following us all morning."
He gestured in lazy circles, wrist rolling like an afterthought.
"Galeel, my friend, be so kind as to—uhh... you know—do the thing."
A sigh answered him. The tallest of the figures stirred.
There came the sound of fabric shifting, weight moving—then the dull thud of a cloak falling to earth.
Two vast shadows unfurled behind the man—wings, each motion fluid and immense. Their sweep sent a clean gust rolling across the road, scattering the mist in a single instant.
When the fog cleared, what stood before them was not rumor, nor trick of light, but a solemn figure—broad-shouldered, ashen-eyed, his wings folded close in quiet restraint.
The villagers gasped softly, awe breaking through silence like a candle through gloom.
"Much obliged, my good man," the gilded stranger said, tipping an invisible hat with a grin that should have been too warm for the moment.
For a long, brittle heartbeat, no one spoke.
Then came the murmurs.
"A Wingman…" someone whispered from near the well.
"What's a Wingman doing on land?"
"Forget that—what's he doing in Mar'vane." another voice hissed, half awe, half disgust.
The sound of shuffling feet followed, cautious steps drawing back just enough to keep reverence and curiosity at arm's length. A handful of villagers crossed themselves with trembling hands, some clutching trinkets of faith, others clutching nothing at all.
Even the soldiers at the checkpoint faltered in their stance. The sight of the wings—sleek and real, not painted, not symbolic—seemed to hollow out the space between certainty and disbelief.
Arkeia's hand moved instinctively toward the hilt at her side, though she did not draw. Her eyes narrowed, tracing the man's form—the controlled stillness in his posture, the honed calm of someone who had long grown accustomed to being stared at.
But what seized her attention more than his wings… was the girl.
She rested lightly upon his shoulder, as though asleep, her body draped in travel-worn linen. Her hair—pale as snow-dust—spilled over his arm, and the faint rise and fall of her breath was the only movement about her.
A living weight, carried as one might carry both a burden and a vow.
The soldiers whispered among themselves.
"Is she ill?"
"She looks dead…"
"Careful what you say," another murmured. "That thing carries her like she's his saint."
Arkeia's gaze returned to the golden stranger—steady, unyielding, poised like a drawn bow awaiting its mark.
The gilded man turned, following the villagers' collective gaze with unnerving ease. "Ah, yes," he said, his voice bright as sunlight on polished brass. "She's fine—merely yet to wake, you'll be glad to know."
Aethon stepped forward, falling into his brother's orbit with effortless familiarity, his dark hair catching what little light slipped through the remaining mist. He leaned in just enough to make his presence felt, resting a lazy arm along his brother's shoulder.
His smirk was pure mischief.
"Or perhaps she finds your company unbearable, brother."
"Hmm," the golden man replied, tone light, measured. "And yet she still breathes. So I must be doing something right—aye, Galeel?"
The villagers released a nervous ripple of laughter—small, uncertain, the kind that lives too close to fear. Even the soldiers glanced between one another, unsure whether to smirk or pray.
Arkeia did neither.
Her eyes locked onto the girl draped across the Wingman's shoulder. She studied the weight of her limbs, the gentle slope of her neck, the way her head rested in that careful, unbroken stillness.
Arkeia had seen bodies carried like that before—on battlefields, after prayers had failed and only silence remained.
Her gaze cut back to the brothers, sharp as a drawn blade.
The gilded man met her stare without flinching, his calm as unnatural as it was practiced. "I can reassure you, she is well," he said softly, as though the words themselves could still the world around them.
The girl stirred.
A breath caught in her chest, a shiver running through her frame. Her lashes trembled, faint as the flutter of moth wings. Her lips parted—sleeping, but not silent.
"Galeel…" she murmured, voice distant and dream-bound. "It's not a dream… if the forest hears it too…"
The sentence fell sideways, as if the words had waited lifetimes to escape. Then she fell silent again.
A hush followed, heavy as judgment.
The golden man exhaled a quiet laugh, low and private, the sound carrying just far enough for her to hear. "See?" he said, amusement flickering beneath his words. "She's fine. I don't see what all the fuss is about."
Her gaze swept past him—past the winged sentinel and the sleeping girl—to the rest of the travelers now unveiled by the dying breath of the mist.
Behind the Wingman stood a bard. He smiled with the eerie delight of a man who had long since forgotten where mirth ends and madness begins. His eyes shimmered like wet opals—too many colors moving at once, shifting like seas.
A moth drifted down, settling upon his cheek.
He turned his head slightly and kissed it, tender and sworn, as though sealing a promise only the two of them could understand.
Not far from him stood a woman veiled in soft gray. Her stillness carried the precision of ritual—neither defiant nor submissive, but absolute. The folds of her veil caught the faintest light and held it, glinting like faint memory.
Arkeia's jaw set.
Her tone drew out like tempered steel. "And what of them?" she asked. "Are they fine as well?"
The brothers answered at once—perfectly and unnervingly in unison.
"Yes."
The single word hung between them like a shared thought, too natural to be rehearsed, too exact to be coincidence.
Aethon broke first, laughter spilling easily from his chest, "well, that was rather poetic timing, wasn't it?"
His golden-haired brother offered only a slow, knowing curve of the lips—an expression that never quite reached his eyes.
Arkeia's focus wavered at the sound of clattering metal. She turned toward the narrow alley beside the checkpoint—half shadow, half refuse—and found its source.
A rusted basin had toppled, scattering old spoons and broken pottery across the stones. A cat darted from behind the debris, tail high, its body arching with unbothered grace. Another followed, smaller, mottled gray, pawing curiously at a dangling chain. A third leapt onto a barrel and began grooming itself with serene indifference. Their movements were ordinary, unhurried—the small, domestic rhythm of life untouched by divine or dread.
Yet something in the sight refused to sit right.
One of the cats, black with a sheen like oil on glass, tilted its head toward her. Its eyes caught the light strangely—too much light, bending it in ways her mind could not map. Its mouth opened in a purr, but no sound came.
She blinked, and it was gone.
"Just cats, paladin," said the gilded man lightly. His tone was silk drawn across iron. "Awfully jumpy, aren't we?"
To anyone else, they might have seemed perfectly human.
But to Arkeia's blessed sight, they shimmered.
Not illusions, not glamours—something subtler, something more insidious. They moved as men should move, yet their shadows betrayed them, cast at angles that denied the sun. Their breaths misted in the chill, but not always in time with the wind's rhythm. Every heartbeat she sensed among them felt… negotiated, as if borrowed from the world rather than born of it.
Her fingers twitched at her side.
"Yeah, jumpy... like a mouse," Aethon drawled at last, his tone lazy but his words steeped in venom. The sound of it cut through the uneasy quiet like wine spilled over steel.
The word struck something raw in Arkeia.
She turned to him sharply—the movement blade-fast.
"You," she said. "I've known your type before. It's written on your face, plain as scripture. Every step marked by blood, the air in your lungs stolen from another. The kind who drinks heresy like wine and strangles nations with a poetic noose."
Her gaze hardened, bright with divine light. "Speak truth—what power trails you, snake?"
Aethon clutched his chest in mock agony, staggering half a step back as though her accusation had pierced straight through silk and rib alike.
"My lady, you wound me," he said, the corners of his mouth curling upward. "I'm but a noble twin, exiled from love, burdened only with charm and trauma."
"You expect me to believe that?" she said, her voice cutting clean through the air—cold, leveled, and merciless.
"I expect you to believe I've done nothing wrong," he went on, ignoring her tone entirely. "Surely you don't suspect I serve the Promised One? I serve no one, dear lady—least of all him."
"Surely," Arkeia said flatly, her voice as cold as tempered steel. " I in fact do."
Aethon sighed, long and theatrical, the sound almost a purr.
"Me? Truly?" He placed a hand to his heart and smiled as if wounded. "Well, I can't say I'm not hurt by this."
The smirk returned, slow, infectious in its arrogance.
"I'm merely a tourist following my brother's lead, if I'm honest. This whole country is just so… rustic."
He leaned slightly toward her, grin deepening. "And terribly charming."
"You sully Mar'vane with every step you take," Arkeia said, her tone sharp enough to draw blood. "I can see the predator behind your eyes."
"Oh no," he replied, voice dropping into something silken. He tilted his head toward his golden-haired brother. "I believe she's thinking of you, brother. Already in the back of her thoughts, are we?"
The grin sharpened—bright enough to catch the dying light.
Arkeia stepped forward, intent to strike with words—
—but before she could speak, the golden man's voice slid in, smooth and certain.
The smile he wore was sunrise over a graveyard: warm enough to deceive, bright enough to blind, and wholly indifferent to the bones beneath.
"Please, forgive Aethon," he said lightly, turning a sidelong glance toward his brother. "He was raised among bards and beasts. We're merely noble sons on holiday—my brother is incorrigible, yes, but harmless. No destinies. No prophecies."
His eyes gleamed, assured as morning light.
"Only mud, maps, and mediocre food."
"Holiday?" Arkeia repeated, the word leaving her tongue like a blade's edge.
Her suspicion fractured, refracting through doubt and memory like light through glass. Could this be the promised heretic she had hunted across Mar'aya's lands—or merely another Rex evil trespassing upon Mar'aya's domain?
"Yes," he said, tone easy... too easy. "Simple soul-searching. Nature. Peasant bread. Good company."
"So, you intend to mock me?" she demanded, jaw tightening. "You expect me to believe that nobles—foreign nobles of House Rex no less—wander through Mar'vane with no purpose? No guard, no banner, no carriage… just a winged man at their side, and a maiden asleep in his arms?"
The stranger's smile returned—not apologetic, but pleased, as though her mistrust was the highest form of flattery.
"Mock you? Never," he said softly. "I find suspicion… charming. The best foreplay is always verbal."
A ripple passed through the Crusaders—confusion, outrage, disbelief.
The gilded stranger only lifted a hand, palm outward, as if to soothe the air itself.
"But yes," he added, his tone laced with deliberate courtesy, "perhaps my entourage is… unconventional. My apologies."
Her gaze moved between the brothers.
Aethon's innocence was rehearsed—tailored to fit him like a fine coat worn too often in the mirror.
But the golden one—his composure was seamless, his charm so fluid it seemed less learned than innate, as though the world itself bent slightly to accommodate his ease.
She could not tell which mask hid the serpent—whose smile was the lure, whose calm the coil. Perhaps they were merely travelers, naive wanderers carrying a name heavier than they understood.
The thought settled inside her, tentative at first, a seed dropped onto soil too cold to promise growth. Doubt coiled around it, shaping its first fragile roots.
Between her and the moment, the air gathered with the heaviness of a decision not yet named.
Then came a sound—soft at first, like a ripple through tall grass. Murmurs spread from the edges of the road, threading together into a low, uneasy hum. The villagers had gathered in greater number than she'd realized, drawn by that unspoken gravity that attends both miracles and calamities.
An old woman pushed to the front of the crowd, her shawl slipping from her shoulders, her breath coming quick and shallow. She squinted through the pale haze until her eyes found the veiled figure among the strangers—then froze. Her pupils widened, her face went pale. For a heartbeat, no sound left her lips. Then the air split with her trembling voice.
"That's… that's Sister Caelinda," she gasped, her hand shaking as she pointed. "From the Shrine of Starsong…"
She fell to her knees before anyone could stop her, fingers twisting around the small wooden icon she wore on a string about her neck.
A murmur moved through the villagers, each voice adding another fragment to the tale.
"She left Erdmoore weeks ago…"
"No—she vanished. Like smoke in wind."
"I heard she stepped into the shrine during the red moon and never crossed the door again."
"My cousin in Erdmoore swore the shrine bells rang on their own that night."
"They said the light changed, too—went pale, then red, then nothing."
"Someone claimed they saw footprints leading to the threshold… but none coming out."
"And the dogs wouldn't go near the place for days."
"My neighbor insists she heard humming from inside. No one had the courage to check."
"Whatever happened, she didn't leave by any path meant for people."
The whispers wove together with careful tension, each retelling sharpening the mystery rather than solving it.
Caelinda did not move. The veil hung heavy over her, drawn low like a funeral shroud that had learned to linger. What little of her could be seen—the faint curve of her hands, the measured stillness of her breathing—seemed intentional and restrained, as if she were a blade content to remain in its sheath… for now.
"The shrine's priestess… aiding foreigners?" a voice murmured, barely more than breath, yet sharp enough to carry.
Another followed, trembling: "Is she a phantom?"
The crowd swelled in chatter. Some bowed their heads, others craned for a better look, and a few pressed trembling hands to their lips, unsure whether to pray or run. The villagers' awe thickened the air like incense, and when they turned their eyes toward Arkeia, it was not merely for guidance—it was for judgment.
Arkeia felt the weight of their expectations settle upon her shoulders like a mantle of iron. Dozens of eyes, each heavy with faith and dread, waited for her word to make sense of what none could name. Her training—her oaths—rose within her like instinct given voice.
"You," she said at last, her tone cutting through the murmurs like a blade through fog. "Sister. Why have you left your shrine?"
The veiled woman did not stir. Not even a breath disturbed the thin cloth that covered her face.
The silence stretched until it seemed alive with waiting.
Arkeia's jaw tightened. She took a step forward, the sound of her boots against stone echoing sharper than it should have. "Speak," she ordered.
The command hung there, trembling between them. The villagers' whispers died completely—mothers clutching their children, men bowing their heads as though afraid to witness what might come next.
For a long, suspended heartbeat, there was nothing.
"No." The lone word left her lips like mist—brief, unhurried, and gone before the silence could answer it.
The sound faded, leaving a silence so complete it might have been written into record. Not a cart shifted, not a door hinge creaked.
Arkeia's expression hardened. The priestess's defiance—or whatever it was—had not been loud, but it had been absolute.
And somehow, that single word rang louder than any sermon she had ever heard.
——Decrees set upon Dawn——
The village had taken a pause—utterly and unnaturally so. No bird moved in the rafters, no cart rolled across the stone, no voice carried. All attention fixed upon the silver-haired woman: the paladin's blade poised between revelation and wrath.
The stillness held, dense with consequence.
Every instinct, every vision, every fragment of her goddess's voice within her urged her to act—to strike, to cleanse, to cast judgment. The divine command burned within her, bright and merciless, demanding to be fulfilled.
And yet… they had done nothing to warrant such measures.
Not yet…
The strain of restraint cut deeper than any edge. Her hand hovered near the blade, fingers taut above the hilt—not from fear, but from the effort of holding faith against fury.
Before the moment could harden into violence, two figures broke from the line of soldiers and came to her side—Thalos and Edmun, her captains. Their armor gave a soft rasp as they moved, the sound of tempered steel brushing leather, precise and unhurried.
Edmun, the younger of the two, halted beside her and spoke low. "We came from the barracks the moment word reached us, my lady." His eyes swept the strangers, weighing posture, formation, threat.
Before Arkeia could answer, the golden stranger turned his head with practiced ease, voice smooth as lacquered calm.
"I'm terribly sorry about Caelinda," he said. "She's a touch… ill-mannered. Our latest addition, you see—still adjusting to the concept of travel and conversation."
Thalos stepped forward, dark-haired and broad-shouldered, his beard streaked with iron, his patience long exhausted. "You. Blondie."
"Gold, actually," the stranger replied without pause. "But I'll forgive the oversight. Blondie, if it pleases you, at your attention, good man?"
"Shut your trap, you gilded arse," Thalos growled.
The gilded man pressed a hand to his chest with exaggerated courtesy. "As you wish, my good man. Trap shut—temporarily." His words carried the weight of jest, but the precision of someone who knew exactly how far he could push a soldier's patience.
"Well, well, well," Aethon drawled from behind him, voice smooth as wine left too long in the cask. "Look who's finally been put in his place."
His brother turned slightly, offering him a glance that was equal parts warning and weary amusement.
"You too," the older captain said, flat as a hammer hitting stone.
Aethon blinked, hand to his chest in theatrical disbelief. "Excuse me? And what, pray tell, have I done to offend your most radiant authority—"
"Keep that mouth of yours shut," Thalos cut in, tone sharp enough to nick silence itself.
Aethon looked to his brother as if seeking divine intervention. "You hear this man?" his expression seemed to say.
The gilded man only lifted a shoulder in a lazy half-shrug, his smile faint but knowing—a quiet gesture that said just do as they ask.
Aethon sighed, defeated for show more than substance. "As you say, sir," he murmured, the words clipped short beneath a grin that gleamed just shy of insolence.
Across the way, Edmun leaned in, his voice low but steady. "General, what's the situation here?"
Arkeia drew a slow breath, deep and ragged, as though discipline itself might smother the storm rising behind her ribs. The air between thought and command felt thin—stretched taut between judgment and restraint.
Find your clarity, Arkeia.
The words did not come from her own mind.
They never did.
That voice—familiar, patient, warm as light filtered through stained glass—slid beneath her skin like scripture remembered too late.
"Umm… General?" Edmun's question hung unanswered, his concern soft but growing.
Her eyes returned to the strangers. The golden one stood calm, smiling faintly—his expression catching the light like a blade beneath water. Her hand drifted toward her sword's hilt, the weight of it grounding her to the world, to duty, to the fragile balance between faith and fury.
"General." Edmun's voice cut through at last, firmer now, the tone of a man who had seen her stray too close to divine madness once before.
"Are you well, my lady?"
Arkeia blinked once—the haze broke, snapping the world back into clear lines. The storm within her dimmed, not gone, merely contained.
Her answer came low, every syllable controlled. "Yes, Captain. I'm well."
She drew a steadying breath. "The foreigners travel with a Wingman."
Edmun straightened, the younger of the two captains, his tone clipped and formal. "That alone violates Mar'aya's decree, my Lady. By law, we are to imprison the creature and banish the rest before nightfall."
Thalos adjusted his footing, his gaze never leaving the strangers. "Aye," he muttered, voice rough with experience. "Before the law forgets itself."
"That would be the proper course," Arkeia said, her tone cooling into command. "However—" She paused, the next words pressed from her like iron through the forge. "They're nobles."
A silence followed—short, but weighted.
The older captain blinked once, slow and skeptical. "Oh… well. That complicates matters."
Arkeia turned toward him, her stare sharp enough to flay the edge off humor. "Hmm, You don't say?" The words came like steel drawn in cold air, her sarcasm clipped and precise.
Edmun's brow furrowed. Something tugged at the edge of his memory—a message half-remembered, a warning half-heard. "Come to think of it," he murmured, "we received a bird from Erdmoore not long ago. Said something about a Wingman traveling under escort."
Arkeia's head turned slightly, the motion heavy with suspicion. "And what did it say?"
Before Edmun could answer, Thalos took a step forward, his axe-hand resting lightly along the haft. His voice came rough, like gravel under weight.
"You there. Winged one."
Galeel met his gaze without shifting. His eyes were calm and unreadable.
Thalos jerked his chin toward the pale woman resting against Galeel's shoulder. "Why does the lass sleep like the dead? What's been done to her?"
Beside Arkeia, Edmun spoke low, his words meant for her alone. "The bird said the same. A Wingman and a woman—still as death."
Galeel blinked once, the motion slow and heavy—as if drawn from an age when patience was not a virtue but a law. His voice, when it came, carried the gravity of long silence made speech.
"This Wingman has a name," he said evenly. "It's Galeel, human."
Thalos's jaw tightened. "Answer the question, Wingman," he growled. "What ails the lass?"
Behind him, Arkeia leaned slightly toward Edmun, her tone low enough to blend with the sound of armor settling. "That's what I asked…"
"She dreams," Galeel said at last, his gaze distant. "Of things forgotten by name. And she sleeps because to wake would be cruelty. She is not yet ready to stand again."
A pause followed—long, uncertain, thick enough to feel like breath withheld.
Then, from the group's edge, a note of lightness broke through.
"In other words—" the bard chimed in, grinning as though the silence itself were his stage, "—she rests and sings."
The remark lingered between them, strange and almost musical—like laughter echoing through glass.
Heads turned toward the bard in near unison. He now cradled a lute in his hands—an instrument that had not been there a moment before—his fingers tracing light, absent motions across its strings. The notes that followed were thin, uneven things, neither melody nor mistake, more a sound that settled into the ear and refused to leave.
Edmun frowned, his tone measured but uneasy. "What music is that? The sound… bleeds."
The bard's smile widened in quiet pleasure. His teeth caught the light—too white, too precise to belong entirely to ease.
"It's the song Elissa hums in her sleep," he said, nodding toward the girl. "I only borrow the tune."
Thalos scowled, hand tightening on the haft of his axe. "Are you mad?"
Before the tension could find shape, the golden man stepped forward, his voice an easy balm.
"Please," he said, that faint curve playing at the corner of his mouth, "forgive Vharn. He has a fondness for riddles—and for unnerving anyone within earshot. Bards, you understand. There's no curing them."
A thin ripple of uneasy laughter followed, enough to dull the edge of the moment, but not to dispel it.
"You're all wrong," Edmun muttered. "Like paintings with the wrong colors."
"General," Thalos said, his tone even but his eyes deliberate, "I think it'd be best if they came with us. For further questioning."
Arkeia caught the look—more than just suggestion. Between them, it was code. She trusted her captain's measure of a threat.
Her voice rose, sharp and resonant with the authority of her goddess.
"Then I, Arkeia of Mar'aya's chosen, decree this: you will come with us to Fort Dawnrise for interrogation—and judgment, if need be."
"Splendid!" Aethon swept into a mocking bow,
"We've always wanted to see the inside of a holy prison."
The golden one only held his smile, warm as candlelight over a crypt.
"As you wish, Lady Paladin. We do love a trial. We would be delighted."
He bent at the waist in theatrical grace.
"There will be no incidents," he added gently. "On my honor."
"Spare me your honor," Arkeia said, the single word spat like vinegar. "A Rex slithers—always."
The gilded man's eyes flicked up, amused. "Oh? Then perhaps a promise?."
Arkeia and her captains exchanged a slow, careful look—suspicion coiled beneath the surface.
"Very well," the gilded man went on, turning the small scene into a private comedy. "Let us all… behave. No dilly, no dally—mind our manners." He chuckled, a sound of velvet breeze.
Aethon rolled his shoulders and offered a theatrical bow of his own. "Truly, brother, I am never without my… manners."
"Brother," the man replied, mock-concern creasing his brow, "as much as I treasure the sound of your voice, might I suggest—only gently—that you keep it to a minimum?"
Aethon's offended laugh came quick and bright. "Pardon, brother? To silence these blessed pipes would be to shame what mother gave us."
"Do not drag mother into this," the gilded man said lightly. "It was merely a suggestion—"
"—Cease." Arkeia's impatience snapped like a drawn wire. "Argue about mothers in your cells if you must. I will hear none of it now."
The gilded man's smile softened, the politeness of a knife-edge. "Absolutely, my lady. Mother belongs where mothers belong, aye, Aethon—"
"Yes, Brother! Cease! Cease!" Aethon barked, laughter breaking as he stepped back, hands up in mock surrender. "That is far too much."
Thalos, who had watched the exchange with a jaw like flint, finally lost patience. "Shut it. Walk." His voice was a low command that left no room for jest.
Arkeia's next words dropped like iron. "I'd have you all bound and gagged if not for your… family. Be grateful and follow. No incidents."
The gilded man lifted his hand, palm open as if swearing to an invisible altar. "No incidents," he said. "You have my word..."
Behind him, in the spaces between thought and quiet, the bard murmured to something no one else could see. Galeel's wings shifted in a faint, involuntary twitch, as if remembering air they had once commanded. Somewhere behind them, a tree gave a slow, groaning protest—though not a breeze stirred its branches.
Caelinda tilted her head, the motion slight yet deliberate. Her veil shimmered like heat over a cooling corpse.
And far away, in a shrine still deemed holy, statues began to weep red.