On the third day out from the village, Erika's convoy travelled across a relatively open stretch of wasteland. At dusk, the Guard Captain responsible for the squad's resonance slate followed procedure, pressing it against the small, portable energy sensor they carried—a weaker, mobile version of an anchor-point—to synchronize data.
The slate lit up slower than usual, its glow flickering weakly. When the message finally resolved, the Captain's brow furrowed.
SOURCE: Clerical Division - Logistics & Dispatch
TO: All En-Route Escort Units (Sector: Eastern Border)
PRIORITY: URGENT
CONTENT: Sector Alert. Multiple outlying villages reporting anomalous Deathbird swarm assaults. Energy-drain pressure spiking. Potential for delays/fluctuations in the Auric Network. All en-route units are ordered to rally immediately at coordinates [45, 89] and proceed as a combined convoy.
SUPPLEMENTAL: In light of prior combat losses and current status, all units prioritize stable personal energy-cycles. If necessary, per Purification Codex, Chapter VII, Statute 3, enact the Energy Preservation Protocol. Pre-emptively recover and redirect dispersed energy assets to ensure primary cycle integrity.
This is the final broadcast for this sector. Subsequent communications may be interrupted. May the Light guide you.
The Captain's face turned grim in the sunset light. The Energy Preservation Protocol. He'd heard of that statute. It usually meant… when an unstoppable threat was imminent, any "energy asset" at risk of capture—including believers of wavering faith, those potentially contaminated, even entire villages that couldn't be evacuated—were to be "processed." Their energy was to be forcibly harvested through a specific rite and fed back into the Network.
He put the slate away, offering no explanation to his men. "Change of course," he ordered, his voice low. "To the rally point. Pick up the pace."
A tangible urgency settled over the squad.
When they reached the coordinates, several campfires were already burning. Two other convoys of similar size had arrived first. The wasteland suddenly felt crowded—a stark, chaotic scene of reflected firelight on metal armor, different wagon markings, and soldiers' faces etched with weariness and wariness.
After a brief identity verification, the three Captains huddled together, speaking in low tones. Their expressions were grave, their nods frequent as they shared intelligence and aligned their understanding of the Protocol. The regular soldiers began making camp, tending to the horses. Despite the tension, the shared identity of belonging to the Creed allowed men from different units to quickly mingle. By the fires, the low, resonant strains of hymns praising the Golden Father and the Eternal Cycle began to rise, a brave sound against the vast, fearful dark of the wilds.
Erika was placed beside a relatively sturdy wagon. He remained silent and numb, seemingly oblivious to the activity around him, mechanically chewing on a piece of hardtack.
It was then that a slender figure, accompanied by an older nun, timidly approached him.
She was a novice, very young, her slight frame swimming in a plain white habit edged with fine golden thread. Her eyes were large, and in the firelight, they held a clarity that seemed out of place here, mixed with a poorly concealed anxiety. In her hands, she clutched a simple prayer rod, set with a small crystal.
The older nun nodded to the soldier guarding Erika. "This is Novice Anna. She wishes to offer a blessing for this 'Seed' who is to bear such glory. May the Light further steady his soul."
The soldier looked at the girl, then at the older nun, and nodded, stepping aside.
Novice Anna carefully approached Erika, kneeling before him. Seeing the emptiness in his eyes, her own filled with a flicker of pity. She raised the prayer rod and, in a soft but clear voice, began a short blessing. The crystal at its tip glowed with a gentle, non-threatening light, like the softest of stars.
Her words were different from the soldiers' hymns about Cycles and Order. Hers were a plea for "peace" and "inner guidance."
As the prayer ended, she did something unexpected. She reached out with her small hand and touched the back of Erika's hand, where it rested on his knee. The contact was fleeting, over in an instant.
"May the true light... illuminate your path," she whispered, a breath so quiet it was almost lost, the words a clear deviation from the standard text.
Then, like a startled fawn, she rose, kept her head down, and hurried after the older nun, back toward their own convoy's section of the camp.
Erika showed no outward reaction. He continued to chew, his vacant gaze fixed on the dancing flames.
Yet, deep within the frozen wasteland of his mind—in a place his conscious self could no longer reach—that gentle touch and those unorthodox words settled. A single, insignificant seed, carried by the wind and buried in the permafrost.
It was too small, too weak to change anything now.
But it was compassion. A quality long absent, and utterly foreign to the language of Cycles and Order.
At the edge of the camp, the three Captains concluded their hushed conference. Their eyes scanned the campfires, the soldiers who still knew nothing, and beyond, into the darkness that shrouded the villages—villages marked by Deathbird swarms, or worse, now slated for "recovery."
The brief security of the rally was evaporating, replaced by something colder and vaster—a choice about sacrifice and survival that was already spreading, carried on the night wind across the wastes.
The night deepened over the wasteland. The campfire crackled, its light dancing across the faces of tired, restless soldiers. The fragile order brought by the combined caravan was fraying, worn thin by the late hour and the influence of cheap liquor.
Erika remained in the shadows by the supply wagon, as still and lifeless as a statue. A few soldiers from other units, their moods soured by drink and discontent, staggered into the area. They stared at Erika's vacant, numb expression, and a mix of jealousy, contempt, and raw anger began to simmer among them.
"Hey. Look at this one," a soldier with flushed cheeks jerked his chin toward Erika. "Heard he's the 'Priest-candidate'? This is what we get?"
Another soldier snorted, picked up a small pebble, and tossed it at Erika. It thumped softly against the white robe and rolled away. Erika didn't even flinch.
"He really is a block of wood!" The stone-thrower grinned, bending for another.
"Leave it alone. He's still—" a slightly more sober companion tried to intervene.
"Is he, now?" a third voice cut in, low and angry. It belonged to a scarred veteran, his eyes dark. "While our brothers are out there getting killed and maimed on the front lines! Take Carlos's squad. Went out on a mission, hit something nasty. Wiped out, most of 'em. And then this... this whelp survives? Gets to be a 'Priest-candidate'? Gets to lord it over us later?"
His words dug at old grievances and fresh losses. The liquor made the injustice feel sharper.
"Right! Carlos's squad was on escort duty too, wasn't they? Was it for protecting 'important' cargo like this that they…?" The stone-thrower's voice rose. He abandoned the pebbles, striding forward and grabbing a fistful of Erika's white robe, hauling him partway off the ground. "Talk! What's so special about you, huh? Why do my brothers die while you get to sit here in this damned robe playing dumb?!"
Erika's body was jostled, but he offered no resistance. His empty eyes just stared at the soldier's furious, twisted face, as if watching a dull play.
The complete indifference only fueled the veteran's rage. He let go of the robe and drew his fist back. "I said stop pretending!" he roared.
The angry fist started its descent, but a thin, tearful voice sliced through the tension.
"Stop! Please, stop!"
Everyone froze, turning. Novice Sister Anna stood there. She was pale, her small frame shaking with fear, but she had planted herself between the veteran and Erika, arms spread wide like a fledgling bird trying to shield its nest.
"You mustn't hurt him!" Her voice trembled, but held firm. "He is... chosen by the Light! To harm him is to defile it! You'll... you'll be punished!" She repeated the doctrine, the words a shield for her own terror, a last-ditch effort to reason with the drink-blinded soldiers.
She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the simple holy symbol at her chest, and began to babble a prayer, frantic and desperate. "Merciful Golden Father, please calm their anger... guide the lost... protect... please protect..."
Her sudden appearance and the broken, fervent prayer froze the scene. The veteran's fist hung in the air. He could ignore a numb candidate, but not a sister of the cloth, even a novice. The other soldiers exchanged uneasy looks, the drink fading from their systems, realizing this had gone too far.
Other soldiers by the fire were watching now. The officer on duty noticed the commotion and was striding over, his face grim.
The soldier holding Erika let go with a muttered curse. The veteran glared once more at the still-catatonic Erika, then at the trembling but resolute girl in his way. He spat on the ground and turned, shoving his way past his comrades as they all dispersed, grumbling.
Only when their footsteps faded did Anna dare to open her eyes. Her legs felt weak; she nearly collapsed. She looked back at Erika. He hadn't moved, as if the violent confrontation and her protection had been nothing more than a passing breeze.
Seeing the profound emptiness in his eyes, her heart filled with a complicated mix—pity, confusion, and a strange, stubborn resolve.
She didn't speak again. Just whispered one last, complete line of her prayer. Then she pulled her hood up, hiding her pale face, and hurried away, disappearing into the deeper shadows of the camp.
The commotion in the camp was like a stone cast into stagnant water; as the ripples faded, an even heavier silence descended. Erika was moved back into the shadows of the carriage, like an object briefly displaced and returned. Little Sister Anna had been taken away by the older nuns, leaving only the soldiers' muted voices and the moan of the wasteland wind around the fires.
Night deepened, the stars dimmed.
Then—an anomalous surge of energy, far in the distance. Not a physical tremor, but something that shuddered through the senses of all who bore the Auric Mark. The Auric Guard halted as one, turning instinctively toward the same direction—back the way they had come, toward the place Erika once called home.
A moment later, everyone saw it.
On the horizon, over the land they had so recently abandoned, a dense, focused pillar of gold fell—a spear of divine judgment driven by absolute order and annihilation. It struck the earth they knew, piercing straight down from the sky.
The light lasted less than three seconds before collapsing into itself, gone.
No sound followed. No rising dust. Only a sense of absolute erasure, carrying across the distance to grip the soul of every watching soldier.
It was the Life-Extraction Protocol. Enacted upon a "potentially compromised zone." Recovery—complete.
A dead silence smothered the camp. Soldiers exchanged looks—fear in their eyes, and the bleak understanding of shared fate. They knew what that light meant. The village, every soul left behind—devout or defiant—had been unmade in an instant, refined into cold energy to feed the great machinery of the Golden Circuit.
Erika sat beside the wagon, her hollow gaze fixed on the point where the light had vanished.
That was once her home.
And for one fractured moment, deep beneath the ice of her numbness, something fine and taut—like a hidden string—was plucked by that light from home.
Her body trembled, so faintly the guard watching might have thought it a trick of the dark. Her fingers, resting on the emblem at her chest, curled inward, nails nearly breaking skin.
But it was only a moment.
That faint resonance sank, swallowed by the void inside her. Her eyes went still again, empty—as though the ruin on the horizon meant nothing at all.
She didn't even have a name for it—that sharp, fleeting pain that had brushed against her heart.