Their quarters hadn't changed since morning, but the air felt wrong when Noah stepped inside.
Not heavier — sweeter. Faintly spiced.
On the small table between their beds sat a covered clay dish, steam still curling from beneath the lid. The handle glistened with oil, and a single sprig of green — fresh, impossibly fresh in this place — had been placed beside it like a flourish.
Abel closed the door with deliberate care. He stood still for a beat, then crossed to the table and set his spear against the wall. His fingers didn't touch the dish at first; they traced the rim as if reading something carved there.
Noah leaned against the wall, arms folded. "You expecting room service?"
Abel's mouth didn't twitch. He lifted the lid.
The smell rolled out — smoke, deep herbs, a salt tang that didn't belong underground. The meat was cut in thick slabs, its edges darkened from slow fire, and under it lay rounds of pale root soaked in the juices.
Abel didn't sit. His gaze fixed on the food as though it had spoken to him in a language Noah couldn't hear.
"What is it?" Noah asked.
Abel's voice was quiet. "Hearthfeast."
Noah waited. "That's… a special occasion thing?"
"In my homeland, yes." Abel's eyes hadn't left the plate. "It's made for the return of someone gone long. Or for the last meal before a journey that may not end." His fingers curled slowly at his side. "The seasoning… there's only one trader who sold it. He lived two streets from my family's house."
Noah's breath caught, the pieces sliding together with an ugly click. "So the Saint isn't just taking memories," he said. "He's digging in them. Shopping in them."
Abel finally looked up. His eyes were pale and steady. "This was not meant to feed us."
"No," Noah said, pulse picking up. "It's to show us what he can reach. That nothing we've lived is ours alone anymore."
The lid went back on the dish with a soft, final sound. Abel left it untouched
The lid on the Saint's gift stayed shut. Neither of them spoke for a long time. The room's only light came from the slit window, its bone-lattice cutting the false sun into pale, warped bars across the floor. Dust drifted through them in lazy spirals.
Noah sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, watching those bars bend and vanish as the hour shifted. Abel leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, the shadow of his frame blotting half the light. They looked like two people resting. They weren't.
Finally, Noah broke the quiet. "The priestess was right. We can't walk out. We can't fight our way out. Not with the sun in our heads."
Abel's gaze moved from the window to him, steady and measuring. "Then we cut the sun."
"Exactly." Noah rubbed a hand over his mouth, forcing the thought into something solid. "She's been here longer than anyone we've met. High position, trusted enough to speak to him. If anyone knows if the Saint has a weakness—or even a way to choke the sun for long enough to move—it's her."
Abel's brows drew together, not in doubt, but in calculation. "She's still watched."
"I know. That's why we do it slow. Questions over days, not all at once." Noah's knee bounced with the need to move, to do something, but he stayed put. "If we can get her to talk about what keeps the sun burning… maybe it's something physical. A focus. Something we can break."
Abel didn't answer immediately. He shifted to sit across from Noah, the bed creaking faintly under his weight. The difference between them was starker like this—Abel's shoulders filling the space, Noah's smaller frame hunched forward in the narrow band of light.
Noah gave a thin smile. "You're looking at me like I'm about to jump into another hole full of teeth."
"You might," Abel said. His voice was low, without heat. "And I'll be there to pull you out again."
Noah smirked, but it was softer than usual. "What, me? Reckless? Never." The pause after it was quieter, heavier. "We'll do this together. No heroics, no lone suicide missions."
Abel's eyes stayed on him, the kind of focus that made the air feel warmer. "Promise?"
"Promise."
They sat in that small glow of agreement for a moment. The sounds of the settlement carried faintly through the walls—boots on stone, a woman laughing two rooms over, the metallic click of a latch.
Then it came.
The Kindled Choir's chant, distant but distinct, threading through the air in even, unbroken lines. The sound filled the room's corners, wound itself through the bars of light.
Noah's skin prickled. "They don't usually sing this late."
Abel's head tilted, listening. The chant grew louder, as if the Choir were drawing closer. But the cadence didn't shift—no shuffle of feet, no echo of approach. It was as if the sound was being poured straight into the walls.
Then, as one, it stopped.
No trailing notes, no softening—just cut off mid-breath, like a throat closed by an unseen hand. The silence that followed was thick. The hairs along Noah's neck stood. Even the dust motes in the light seemed to hang still, suspended.
Abel's voice was almost a whisper. "He's listening."
Noah's hand closed slowly around the Deck at his ribs, the edges familiar and grounding. "Then we make sure we're the most boring entertainment possible."
They didn't speak again. Outside, the air stayed heavy.
The weight of it followed them when they left.
The street outside smelled faintly of smouldered resin; the kind used in the Saint's ceremonies. Lanterns swayed in their bone-cradles, shadows sliding along the walls in a way that made Noah want to check twice that they were still attached to the objects casting them.
Abel walked ahead, not rushing but not wasting time either. His presence cut a quiet path through the sparse evening traffic—settlement workers in gray shifts, two Kindled children carrying empty buckets, a patrol of warriors whose eyes never seemed to focus on anything for more than a heartbeat.
Noah kept close, fingers brushing the wall now and then as if it might change under his touch. It didn't.
"You think she'll talk to us?" he asked under his breath.
"I think," Abel said, low, "she'll tell us what she can without dying for it. That's all we can ask."
They took a narrow turn and the sound in the air shifted—no longer the muffled stillness of their quarters' corridor, but the low, constant murmur of the Womb's inner arteries. Noah caught the faint splash of water somewhere far below.
He glanced sideways at Abel. "If she knows something that could end him…"
Abel's mouth tightened. "Then we use it. Fast."
And there, in the space between footsteps, Noah thought of the Saint's voice—smooth, patient, and utterly certain. If he truly could reach into their memories, rewrite them, pull apart their loyalties thread by thread…
They had to be faster.
The priestess's quarters were ahead, a set of heavy curtains drawn across a carved arch. The bone relief above it was older than the Saint's reign—spirals, waves, the abstract shapes of rivers. Two Kindled stood to either side, young and still enough to pass for carved figures themselves.
Noah slowed, straightened his shoulders, and tried on a smile that didn't feel too sharp. Abel's hand brushed briefly against the small of his back—just once—before they stepped forward into the Saint's shadow