The fire had gone out.
The cold crept in again, not the chill of frost or snow, but something else.
And all around them, the cultists knelt.
They bowed in perfect unison, heads lowered, palms raised in reverence towards the boy behind her, towards Kael.
Veyra stood between him and them, her spear at the ready, her heart hammering in her chest. Not from fear, from recognition.
The voice, that impossible voice, hadn't come from any mouth. It had erupted from within Kael.
Something ancient had just spoken, and it had spoken through him.
And now the zealots of the Broken Sun, those ruthless half-ghosts that even the high inquisitors of Eramoor had difficulty dealing with, were kneeling like penitents before a saint.
Veyra didn't move, her spear-shaft resting lightly against her shoulder, though her grip had turned white around the leather. She let her eyes drift across the masked figures. Painted wooden visors in the shape of fractured halos. Robes stitched with golden threads and bone-colored embroidery, symbols she knew all too well.
The Eclipsed Flame. The Spiral Eye. The Sun-in-Shards.
Her breath slowed.
She had seen men wear those masks before, in the dungeons beneath the Sable Sanctum. They'd been chained to stone walls, screaming in forgotten tongues. The priests of Eramoor had called them heretics, aberrants, liars who dreamed in flame.
She remembered her final campaign, the heretic purges. A monastery burned in the west, where a priest had declared a newborn to be the reborn Crown. Her own soldiers had razed the village to the ground. They'd found no child, only bones.
And yet... here they were, kneeling.
One of the cultists rose, a tall figure with a cloak of pale fur and a jaw etched with red runes.
He pulled back his mask.
Veyra's instincts tensed, not from his face, but from the calm in his eyes. No madness, no wild zeal
Just a calm, deep look like a lake.
"Forgive us," he said, voice gravel-smooth. "We did not see, we were blind."
Veyra spoke before Kael could open his mouth. "What do you want from him?"
The man bowed slightly. "Nothing...not anymore. The Crown has chosen, its breath in his veins. That alone commands obedience."
"He's not your god."
"No," said the cultist. "He is its voice."
Kael stepped beside her, still shaking. "I'm no one."
The man turned to him, reverently. "You touched the heart of the sky, and it answered, You were chosen and reborn."
Veyra pointed her spear at him. "You've said your piece, now leave or die here."
The man nodded, unfazed. He gestured to the others. Without hesitation, the cultists stood, turned as one and moved silently into the treeline, their lanterns flickering out behind them.
No threats, no curses, no blades.
Just a whispered line from the last one to vanish into the mist:
"The Nine remember. The Crown returns. The world shall bow, or burn."
And then they were gone.
Veyra didn't speak for a long time.
The fire hadn't returned, the lodge stood silent, dust and ash swirling where the cultists had kneeled. Kael crouched by the hearth, arms wrapped around himself, his face pale.
"You alright?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.
He didn't answer right away.
Then "I didn't do anything."
"You did."
His eyes met hers, confused and frightened. "I didn't mean to."
"That doesn't matter."
He stared at the floor. "It's inside me, isn't it?"
Veyra turned her gaze to the doorway. The snow had started again, light, almost gentle.
"Yes," she said.
Later, after the fire was rebuilt, they sat in silence.
Veyra leaned against the wall, checking her half-healed thigh wound. She hated stillness; it always evoked memories. And memories, for someone like her, were made of flame and steel.
She felt Kael watching her; he'd said little since the cultists left, but his thoughts weighed thick in the air.
He finally spoke, "What did the church plan on doing to you when you disobeyed the order?"
She didn't answer immediately.
He already knew what she had been, General of the Third Blade of Eramoor—one of the twelve sacred weapons under the High Doctrine, anointed by oil, sworn by blood. She had ridden beneath fire-forged banners and led legions into purges in the name of a thousand holy decrees.
And then she had disobeyed.
"They call it the Chainward Gate," she said at last. "It's not a prison...not really. It's a sanctum buried under the southern mountains, where the Church sends those who remember too much."
Kael's brow furrowed. "Execution?"
She shook her head. "That would be mercy. The Chainward Gate erases people's identity. Faithbreakers, apostates, questioners... they're stripped, broken, and reforged into walking zealots. Silent, thoughtless, loyal to nothing but the High Fathers."
Kael looked shaken. "What happens to them?"
"They're reborn as Tollborn." She spat the name like poison. "Pale-eyed husks that live only to serve the Will. They forget who they were, who they loved, what they bled for. They become part of the Church's sacred engine."
Kael's gaze shook.
Veyra looked at him and continued, "And there are twelve of them, one for each Blade seat once held. The Church calls it divine balance. They don't like empty chairs."
Kaels's voice dropped. "You would've been number thirteen."
"I would have."
"But you escaped."
Veyra's eyes dimmed. The memory surfaced uninvited.
She remembered the wagon, iron bars, the silence of her fellow prisoners... most already broken. She remembered the smell of incense making blood, the way the snow had melted around the hooves of the Church's armoured riders.
She remembered the flicker of firelight and a familiar voice.
"Don't speak. Move when I say."
It was Seran, her second in command. Her most loyal soldier. He'd betrayed their post to save her, killed the guards transporting her and the other prisoners and unchained her.
They'd ridden east under the cover of darkness, with hounds at their heels; he'd died along the journey.
She hadn't spoken his name since.
Back in the lodge, Kael sat quietly, with no more questions.
Veyra pulled her cloak tighter.
"The Tollborn have no past, no thoughts of their own. I've seen what they do when loosed into rebel cities. They don't just cleanse, they're ruthless killers."
Kael stared at the fire. "Why follow me then? If the Church wants you dead."
She didn't answer for a moment.
Then: "Because the fire that burns you isn't the one I fled."
He looked up.
"You're not just a vessel," she said. "You're a warning, a prelude to something. And if the cultists kneel this early, others will rise to bind you."
She leaned forward.
"And if they can't, they'll destroy you. Piece by piece."
Kael's hand drifted to the shard in his coat.
"I don't want to be part of any of this."
Veyra smiled bitterly. "No one does."