The forest burned like a heretic's prayer—slow, loud, and endless.
And she stood at its heart.
The Pillar of Judgment.
One of six instruments through which the Helios Empire's will was made manifest.
The voice of the Lady of the Zenith.
The light that erased shadow.
Her armor gleamed white-gold beneath the smoke, unmarred by blood or soot. The fire dared not touch her; it bent and parted around her body like reeds around a stone. Her bare feet hovered inches above the blackened ground, untouched by ash or ember. Even the air around her seemed cleaner, the heat turning soft in her presence—as though afraid to offend her.
Behind her, the Temple of the Rising Moon collapsed inward with a mournful groan.
The roof cracked. The ancient runes of Lada burned out one by one, their silver glow bleeding into the smoke.
Her soldiers—hundreds in their white and bronze armor—bowed their heads in reverence and obedience.
They did not speak her name.
They called her Lady Pillar, or the Judgment, never more.
"Fan out," she continued, her tone unwavering. "The ones who fled—the moon-children, the heretics—hunt them down. Do not wait for my signal. None must reach the valleys. None must reach the rivers."
"As you command," a captain barked, saluting with his blazing spear before sprinting into the chaos.
All around her, order took shape.
The disciplined rhythm of the Legion of Helios emerged from the ruin—marching in coordinated patterns, killing the wounded, dragging the Menari corpses into piles. A symphony of obedience. The cries of the dying were brief; no one lingered long under her gaze.
To disobey the Pillar of Judgment was to disobey the sun itself.
She walked forward, slowly, through the ruins of faith.
A Menari warrior lay near the temple steps, his arm crushed under stone. He wheezed, chest rising shallowly. His eyes found her—a child, pale and luminous amidst the hellfire—and his lips trembled with disbelief.
"You… you're no child," he rasped.
She tilted her head. Her long white braid shifted like silk across her shoulder.
"Correct," she said softly. Then she reached down, pressing two fingers to his throat.
A pulse of sunlight rippled outward.
He turned to ash without a scream.
"Mercy," she whispered, and moved on.
The forest groaned. Distant thunder rolled across the mountains, but it was not a storm—it was the sound of burning trees collapsing. Black smoke coiled skyward in thick, choking towers. Above, the sun remained half-hidden behind the haze, a dull red coin peering down upon its worshippers.
The Pillar paused at the edge of the clearing.
The ground beneath her feet was slick with soot and blood.
Everywhere she looked, faith lay shattered.
Good.
Faith that bends must be broken before it can be purified.
She turned to her adjutant, a tall officer with armor dented from battle. He waited in silence, trembling slightly beneath her gaze.
"Gather the bodies of the Menari and the fallen legionnaires alike," she commanded. "Strip the weapons, burn the rest. The Lady accepts no separation between faithful and heathen when it comes to ash."
The man hesitated—only for a fraction of a second.
Then he bowed low. "Yes, Lady Pillar."
She could smell the hesitation on him.
Fear.
Doubt.
Small, weak, human.
But she said nothing. Judgment could wait until dawn.
Her eyes lifted toward the treeline, where the night was beginning to devour the last edges of sunlight. Somewhere beyond that horizon, a handful of survivors ran through the burning forest, clutching their wounded and their prayers.
"Cowards," she murmured. "Your god can't hear you anymore."
She raised her hand.
The soldiers obeyed without question.
Flames surged higher as barrels of oil were smashed against the temple walls. Torches followed.
The ancient murals of Lada, the carvings of crescent moons and weeping saints, the offerings of woven reeds and bone—everything that held memory or meaning—was swallowed in fire.
The temple crackled and folded inward like paper.
And she watched it burn.
For the first time that night, her reflection glimmered faintly in her amulet. The golden disc rested against her collarbone, faintly pulsing with captured light. Zorya—souls—spiraled within it, like a tiny, spinning sun. The spirits of the slain were not lost; they were consumed, transformed, refined into divinity.
That was the way of Helios.
No waste. No remorse. Only purpose.
The amulet pulsed again, a new stream of Zorya slipping into it from the battlefield. The souls of both Menari and Helian soldiers—their last heat—fed her, wove into her veins, kept her eternal.
The young perish.
The faithful endure.
Her fingers brushed the amulet absently. It was warm, alive, almost breathing.
Then—
a flicker.
A faint pulse. A silver echo buried in the flood of gold.
She frowned.
It was not the light of Helios. It was colder.
Paler.
Familiar.
She turned toward the distant forest, where the smoke glowed faintly white in the night. The echo came from there, fading quickly—but unmistakable.
A god's residue.
"Strange," she whispered. "The moon still flickers."
Her second-in-command, a scarred man with sunfire tattoos, approached. "My Lady, the western flank reports resistance in the forests. Likely stragglers. Shall we pursue?"
She didn't turn.
"No," she said softly. "Let them run. They will lead us to their nest."
The man hesitated. "And the temple?"
She looked back at it—the flames reflecting in her golden eyes. The roof had collapsed completely. The moon's altar was a charred ruin.
The smell of burned incense still lingered beneath the stench of death.
"Leave it," she said. "The sun judges what remains."
Then, as if remembering an afterthought, she added: "Send riders to the nearest outpost. Tell them Judgment requires reinforcements. This land resists longer than expected."
"Yes, Lady Pillar."
She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them again, she was alone among the fire.
No fatigue. No fear.
Only focus.
A girl's body.
A woman's soul.
A weapon's purpose.
The world around her crackled and groaned like an ancient thing dying—and she stood unmoved, a figure of golden serenity in the ruin of faith.
Above her, clouds parted just enough for the sun to glance through—a final ember of daylight piercing the dusk.
The light fell over her face.
She smiled.
"The Lady watches," she whispered. "And I judge in her name."
The battlefield had quieted, but only in sound.
Its pulse still throbbed beneath the ash.
The Pillar of Judgment moved through the ruin as if through a cathedral — slow, graceful, deliberate. Her presence parted the smoke like wind over still water. Each soldier she passed straightened to attention, trembling not from exhaustion, but reverence.
She stopped beside a cluster of wounded legionnaires.
One clutched his chest, the breastplate bent inward. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, red spilling from between his fingers.
She knelt.
Her hand hovered over his wound, and the air itself seemed to heat.
A thin beam of golden light streamed from her palm, soft and sterile. The soldier's wound sealed before his eyes — flesh knitting, pain fading into awe. His eyes widened.
"Mercy," he whispered. "Thank you, my Lady—"
Her voice was flat. "Gratitude wastes breath. Serve well. Fight better."
She stood, already moving past him before he finished saluting.
In her mind, the echo of her goddess's voice lingered — the voice that had shaped her since the day she was chosen.
"Mercy, child, is not weakness. It is discipline. A soldier fights harder when he believes his god remembers him."
She obeyed even that mercy like a weapon.
Every kindness was calculated.
Every act of grace, an instrument of fear.
She moved on. Around her, the soldiers fell into formation again, rebuilding the discipline of the Legion out of the scattered remnants of battle. The phalanxes reformed. Banners were repaired. The wounded were dragged to a central point for treatment or execution, depending on their ability to walk.
The Pillar's voice cut through the night.
"Catalog the dead. Every name, every insignia. Send the record to the Archivum when the sun rises."
"Yes, Lady Pillar!"
"And the survivors?"
Her adjutant bowed. "We believe a dozen Menari escaped into the woods. Scouts are already in pursuit. We've found traces—blood, footprints—heading northwest."
"Good. Double the search parties. None must reach the valleys. And the strangers?"
The man hesitated, pulling a blood-stained cloth from his belt. On it, three rough sketches—faces drawn by trembling hands. One with long hair, one with a blade, one with a staff.
Her eyes scanned them.
Then stopped at the third.
Pale hair. Silver eyes. Unmistakable.
The boy.
The one who had faced her and lived.
A quiet hum rippled in her chest — not anger, not admiration. Something between curiosity and hunger.
She spoke softly. "The blonde. The one blessed by the old god that died here. He fought like a frightened animal and still escaped me. Curious."
The adjutant said nothing. He had learned better than to speak when she was thinking aloud.
She continued, "Perhaps the dead moon still breathes in him. A last echo, refusing to die. How quaint."
A faint, almost amused smile crossed her lips.
"I wonder how long that power will last. If he truly is special… perhaps I'll keep him. A gift for my Lady when I return."
The adjutant bowed deeper. "Shall we mark him as high priority?"
"Yes. But do not kill him. I want him breathing. The other two—dispose of them."
"As you will."
She turned to leave, but paused mid-step. The air shimmered faintly around her — Zorya still rising from corpses, drifting like ash, drawn toward her amulet. The relic pulsed gently, its center swirling with radiant light. A faint silver thread glimmered within the gold.
Not Helian.
Not divine in the right way.
But divine nonetheless.
She raised her hand, and a sheet of parchment appeared in a burst of solar light, edges glowing like molten metal. The air hummed with quiet reverence. When she spoke, her words etched themselves in liquid gold across the parchment's surface.
"To the Holy Empire of Helios, and to the Radiant Throne of the Lady of the Zenith,"
"The Judgment reports victory in the northern forest. The heretic temple is destroyed. Resistance broken."
"However, anomalies persist. A fragment of divine residue was detected—lunar in nature, unregistered by our archives."
"Three entities involved. Unknown allegiance. Potential god-touched or heretic relic bearers."
"I request reinforcement and authorization to purify the valleys before the next full moon."
"I will continue to collect Zorya for transport to the Sanctum of Dawn."
When she finished, she drew her finger across the bottom of the parchment, marking it with her sigil — a burning sun pierced by scales of judgment. The parchment curled inward and ignited, burning without smoke until nothing remained but a whisper of light.
The message was gone, carried on divine channels back to the heart of the Empire.
"May the Lady see and know," she murmured.
The adjutant saluted. "What are your orders, Lady Pillar?"
"Pull back the forward divisions. Rest and rebuild. The forest will be ours. We march through the valleys in a week. I will remain here for now."
He nodded and left her.
She stood alone once more among the bodies, surrounded by faint heat and whispering embers. Her gaze drifted to the pyres that had been erected — tall piles of wood and flesh and armor, ready for purification.
The priests came at her signal — six in total, wrapped in robes of gold thread and white silk. Their faces were veiled with masks of hammered bronze. Each carried a torch and a bowl of ash. Together, they formed a circle around her and began to chant.
The air trembled.
The pyres ignited in unison.
The light that bloomed was blinding — not red, not orange, but pure white, the fire of Helios. It devoured everything without smoke, without shadow. The screams of the dead melted into nothing.
The Pillar closed her eyes and raised her hands.
"Lady of the Zenith," she whispered, voice nearly tender. "Your light consumes. Your will redeems. Accept this offering — the unworthy, the faithful, the forgotten alike. All return to you."
The amulet pulsed against her chest.
Zorya streamed toward it — hundreds of souls, threads of radiance drawn from the pyres. They swirled into the relic in rivers of gold, flooding her with warmth, with strength. For a heartbeat, her body trembled. Her breath caught. Her pulse raced.
So much power.
Too much.
It clawed at her, burning up her veins, whispering promises. More. More. More.
Her vision dimmed, edges of the world blurring into feverish gold. She could feel the greed of it, the intoxicating hunger of the light. Every drop of Zorya screamed to be devoured.
Her lips parted—
and then she remembered.
"Control is what makes you holy," the Lady had said once, smiling as she placed the amulet upon her neck.
"Power is given to all who kneel. But mastery — mastery is what makes one divine."
The Pillar exhaled sharply, forcing her body still.
Her fingers tightened on the amulet. The gold dimmed, steadied, and finally stilled.
The hunger quieted. The light settled back into obedience.
She opened her eyes.
The pyres had burned out.
Only embers remained.
Around her, the priests knelt in silence.
None dared look at her.
Her expression was unreadable. Her gaze lifted toward the sky, where the clouds parted just enough for one distant star to peek through the smoke.
"Your will is done," she said softly. "Soon, the moon will disappear."
Her words carried no malice, no triumph—only inevitability.
She turned and walked away, the night bending around her, the faint scent of ash and sanctity trailing in her wake.
And above, the heavens remained silent.
Only the faintest whisper of silver light lingered—watching her go.