——And the Lost Sheep——
The heavens had no eyes.
Nor ears—only the raw sensation of the impossible.
And across realms unseen by mortal ken—where time itself lay fettered beneath ancient oaths and law-bound memory—the Pillar Gods attention turned in dreadful unison toward a single place:
Fort Dawnrise.
The phenomenon traveled swifter than light, older than thought.
It was not a sound, nor a sign, but a recognition—
a truth so corrosive it seeped into the frame of eternity,
etching fractures through the once-perfect geometry of creation.
It moved like blasphemy wearing the mask of revelation.
A tremor through the lattice of all law.
Twelve thrones of principle, carved from the raw flesh of Existence.
Twelve Orders, sworn to uphold the eternal symmetry.
Twelve great laws, each a chain fastening the cosmos to its continuity.
And now—
one throne groaned beneath invisible weight.
one Order blurred, its banners dripping into ink and shadow.
one Law bent, reshaped into something alien, something aware.
The symmetry faltered. The Great Design wavered.
The universe forgot, for the briefest instant, which direction was forward.
And all of them felt it—
The Old, dreaming in their chains beneath the first silence.
The Outer, watching from the bleeding edges of the Null Sea.
Even the damned shadows, and the cold pandemonium gnawed at the roots of meaning—
all halted in the same breath, in the same impossible recognition.
They felt the world tilt toward a single axis.
They felt the Promised One move.
And in that motion, the bound and the free, the divine and the lost, the sane and the broken—
all heard the echo bloom across the firmament.
It did not stop at heaven's gates.
It trickled downward—through sanctuaries and cathedrals,
through temples and shrines,
through the trembling hands of priests and the hollow eyes of prophets.
It slid like a whisper through every prayer half-finished,
every oath unkept,
every faith built upon fear.
And where it passed, incense soured.
Holy water wept crimson.
Statues of gods blinked once—
and in that blink, remembered what they feared to forget.
The heavens, for the first time since their making,
trembled not in wrath—
but in doubt.
In the roving sanctum of the Lumenward Pact—a cathedral of stained glass and song, mounted upon iron wheels and hauled across the plains by beasts stitched from hymn and fang—the sermon died before its final Amen.
A prophet fell to his knees mid-verse.
The scroll in his grasp blackened; the ink hissed and slithered, abandoning the parchment as if the words themselves refused to witness what came next.
He gasped—a sound brittle as breaking glass.
"Her wings… have halved," he stammered. "And… multiplied."
A hush swept through the sanctum like wind through graves.
The knights of Mar'aya's Crusade—radiant in their sigiled armor—stiffened where they stood. Hands hovered uncertainly above sheathed blades, for it was not steel they feared, but the unseen thing that stirred their faith.
Even the living glass of the church-floor shimmered uneasily, reflecting faces that did not quite match the ones above them.
At the altar's end, Commander Thessen stepped forward.
A man carved of vows and years, his voice steady but low.
"Prophet Gregory," he said. "Speak clearly. What wings? Whose wings?"
Gregory clutched his head, fingers digging into his temples as if to hold his mind inside.
"I don't—feel—well," he gasped, his voice trembling like a candle's flame in wind.
"Something's… wrong with the light."
His knees struck the glass with a crack.
His eyes rolled white—then whiter still, until they glowed.
A single tone echoed through the sanctum, not from his throat, but from everywhere: a note that made bone remember its birth.
Then came silence.
And from that silence, a voice not his own.
It spoke through him as though the air itself borrowed his lungs.
"Balance is no longer balance.
She walks beside herself.
They kneel before the One who kneels to none."
The words fell heavy, like verdicts chiseled into the marrow of faith.
A gasp rippled through the congregation—then the break of discipline, outrage, fear.
"Blasphemy!" one knight shouted, backing away as if from contagion.
"Seal the sanctum!" cried another. "He speaks in tongues!"
But Thessen raised his gauntlet. "Hold your peace!"
His eyes did not leave Gregory's motionless body.
The prophet's mouth hung open, blood on his tongue, but his voice—
his voice came still, gentler now, but echoing in two tones at once.
"She watches… She weeps… She is divided."
The living glass of the floor began to crack beneath him, light leaking upward in spectral veins.
"Commander," whispered one of the younger knights,
"what does he mean? Who… kneels to none?"
Thessen's face, once carved in faith, now looked carved in fear.
He stared past the prophet—toward the horizon where Fort Dawnrise lay shrouded in distant stormlight.
"The promised heretic," he murmured.
Malkom stepped forward, his heavy boots thundering across the glass floor.
"Hark, Crusaders!" he bellowed, his voice raw as iron struck on an anvil.
For a moment, the entire chamber turned toward him. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
"Brothers! Sisters! Heed not these tainted words!" he roared, gesturing to the fallen prophet. "This—this is the work of the Princes! Do not falter. Mar'aya remains mighty!"
The words fell like hammers on uncertain hearts.
From the other side of the sanctum, Revonna stepped into the wavering light of the altar flame. Her armor shimmered with pale reflections—the luster of faith, strained but not broken.
"Don't be a fool, Malkom," she said, her tone low and cutting. "Heed the prophet's warning. We cannot ignore the weight of this revelation."
"Revelation?" Malkom barked, advancing toward her. His shadow stretched long, devouring the cracks in the holy glass.
"Sister, you'd call that regurgitation of tainted filth a revelation?"
He stopped only a step away from her, heat and fury radiating from his frame.
"Have you gone mad, Revonna? Usually it's I who speaks nonsense."
She did not flinch. Her eyes, bright as hammered gold, met his.
"And you speak it now, Malkom," she replied, her voice calm, yet sharp enough to draw blood.
The argument echoed through the sanctum, bouncing between the murals of saints whose painted eyes refused to watch. The Crusaders shifted uneasily, the weight of doubt thickening like fog.
Then, from the edge of the gathering, a tremor of a voice broke through:
"The Promised One… is a myth," whispered Harllow, the youngest among them. His helm trembled in his grip. "He isn't real. He… he can't be."
All heads turned.
Sir Erven, the eldest knight besides Malkom, stepped forward—stern and steady, his voice measured like scripture recited too often.
"Steel yourself, young Harllow," he said. "Brother Malkom speaks true. Mar'aya remains mighty."
Harllow straightened at once, trying to swallow his fear. His knuckles whitened on his sword hilt.
"But the prophet," he said, voice cracking under the weight of his doubt, "he—he saw something, didn't he? I just—"
"Steady, lad," Erven cut him off, the words striking with the precision of a practiced blade.
"If you can't believe it—then don't, boy."
The silence that followed was taut as drawn steel.
Harllow drew a breath, his voice trembling yet rising.
"In Mar'aya's light," he declared, "all bend to her judgment. Promised One or Prince—none could ever fell her grace!"
The conviction in his tone trembled, but it was still faith, still flame.
And then Malkom laughed—not in mockery, but in desperate, echoing defiance.
He thrust a gauntleted fist skyward.
"Listen to the boy!" he thundered. "He remembers what we are! We are the flame that does not break!"
The roar broke into a dozen smaller storms—steel scraping on scabbards, prayers colliding mid-syllable, oaths thrown like stones. Brothers and sisters snarled across the aisle like starved dogs at a single bone. Reason thinned to a thread; no one could catch it.
Revonna raised both palms, voice cutting through like a silver bell. "Please—listen to reason, brothers!"
A gauntlet slammed the glass floor.
"Quiet." Thessan's word was a fallen gavel. The living glass rang and then obeyed. No helm lifted, no tongue dared wag under that old commander's stare.
He surveyed them—Malkom bristling, Erven stone-still, young Harllow trying to breathe like a veteran—and then turned to the crumpled prophet. "Let the prophet finish," Thessan said, the iron in his tone meant for both mercy and order. "I would hear his vision. Go on, Gregory—speak your truth."
Silence expanded, a bowl waiting to be filled.
Gregory's true voice crawled back into his throat, thin and raw, as if dragged over thorns. "I saw them," he whispered. "She with the five wings… mirrored by the one she once commanded."
The words fell like ash.
"A blasphemy of halves," someone muttered.
"A sign," someone else breathed.
Harllow couldn't hold his question. It burst out, wrapped in fear and forged in duty. "And the Promised One?"
Gregory did not answer with speech.
His hand—still shaking—rose. He pushed back his sleeve.
The chamber leaned forward as one body.
There, burned deep into the meat of his forearm, glowed a glyph—no script of the Orders, no sigil from any altar. Lines that refused to be still, geometry that argued with the eye: the mark of the Cult of One. Not ink. Not brand. A fact.
The glyph pulsed once, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to the man wearing it.
A hiss sluiced through the Crusaders. Several stepped back as if the light could leap. Others reached instinctively for talismans, rosaries, the small comforts of recited miracle.
"When did you take the brand?" Malkom growled, already half in a lunge, already sentencing.
Gregory shook his head, tears hot with confusion. "I… did not." His voice broke. "I do not know when it came. Only—" He swallowed, as if the next words were a cliff. "Only that it had always been."
The chamber absorbed that impossibility and found no place to put it.
Erven's jaw flexed. "Heresy writes itself in flesh now?" he said, more to Thessan than to Gregory. "Commander, this is the work of the Princes—"
"Is it?" Revonna cut in, fierce but steady. "The Princes mark their cattle with chains and flames. This is… not that." She looked at the glyph and could not make it fit any catechism. "This is a claim."
"The One claims nothing," spat a veteran in the rear. "The One un-claims—unthreads, unbinds—"
"Enough," Thessan said, softer, and the word hurt more for its gentleness. He knelt by Gregory, old plates creaking, and studied the living mark from inches away. It did not smell of sear or char. It smelled faintly of cold rain and new ink. A fresh page, already written.
"Tell us exactly what you saw," Thessan said. "Not what it means. What you saw."
Gregory closed his eyes. The vision took him like a tide and he let it.
"A sky of balances," he whispered, "and each balance had a twin. Scales to either side, both true, both lying. She walked among them—five wings, two bright, two veiled, one torn and healed wrong—and beside her… herself. Not shadow, not reflection. A second will wearing the first light."
He shuddered.
"Between them stood… him. Not crowned. Not chained. He was a question that made answers kneel. Where he stepped, the balances bowed—not in fear, but in faith."
The last word trembled the way a bell does after a storm.
"In faith to what?" Harllow asked, barely audible.
Gregory opened his eyes. "To promise," he said. "To the promise of truth beyond truth."
A murmur rippled—fear to awe to anger and back—until Thessan's raised hand flattened it again.
"Commander," Erven said tightly, "if that mark remains upon our prophet, the Inquisition will call for his body and his soul both. We must decide now whether to shelter him or surrender him for trial."
Malkom's gauntlet creaked. "We burn brands like that. We do not cradle them."
Revonna's reply came quick. "We are not gaolers first. We are keepers of truth. If truth offends our habits, that condemns our habits—not truth."
Thessan weighed all three, the way only old soldiers do—by cost, by oath, by tomorrow.
"Gregory stays," he said at last. A rumble of shock. He raised his voice over it. "Under watch. Under care. If this is a snare, we will spring it with eyes open. If it is a message, we will read it with our hands unshaking."
He rose, joints complaining, faith refusing to.
"And hear me: no tongues wag beyond these walls. Not to chapels, not to mess tents, not to ears hungry for rumor. Until the heavens speak plainly, we will speak carefully."
He turned to Harllow, who stood rigid, young face set like wet clay deciding what statue it would be. "Lad. You asked of the Promised One. If he is myth, your courage will hold. If he is not, your courage must hold harder. Can you do that?"
Harllow swallowed, then nodded. "Aye, Commander."
"Then start by guarding our prophet," Thessan said. "Not from us—from what this mark might invite."
As Harllow moved to Gregory's side, the glyph gave a gentle, traitorous pulse, as if pleased to be attended. The boy flinched, then squared his shoulders and stood his post.
Above them, the sanctum's living glass shivered with a faint, high music—like scales sliding on a judge's hand.
The Crusaders did not roar this time. They breathed as one. Waiting.
Outside, clouds gathered without wind. Inside, faith learned a new posture: not collapse, not triumph.
Attention.
——The Conclave of Gods——
Across the face of Neva'mor, pandemonium reigned.
Temples cracked. Altars wept. Holy lands once bound in serenity now shuddered under unseen weight.
From the highest heavens of Neva'mor, where mortal sight fails and air itself bends under sanctity, the Pillar Gods gathered in Ha'von. Their thrones of law—once distant, unmoving—burned now with agitation.
The Eternal Palace awaited them, a colossus of gold and geometry suspended above the void. Its halls hummed with the sound of divine arithmetic—laws made music, music made judgment.
Within its heart stretched the Hall of the Conclave, an endless circle cut into the weave of creation itself.
There stood twelve seats—each carved from the essence of its bearer's Law: Hate in molten bronze, Empathy in translucent pearl, Reflection in mirrored glass, Love in crimson flame, Motion in silver chain, Stars in radiant crystal, Death in obsidian bone, Rot in green decay, Mind in thought-metal, Growth in blooming jade, Dominion in blackened gold, and Balance—empty, its marble split by light and shadow.
Only eleven thrones burned with presence.
And so the Fourth Conclave of the Third Myr began.
The divine air in the Eternal Palace grew heavy—sacred light bending at the edge of heat, like glass near its melting point.
Twelve thrones encircled the Hall, and though the heavens themselves waited in silence, the gods did not.
Amo'rae, Pillar of Love, rose first. Her voice, soft yet searing, carried the scent of myrrh and sorrow.
"I'm sure," she began, "we need not question why we gather. Mar'aya has been… corrupted, changed—perhaps even undone. I know not the nature of this blasphemy, but I know this: it is unlike the Seven."
Her words rippled across the hall like a stone dropped into a still sea.
"Speak not of those traitors!" barked Des'orm, Pillar of Hate. His voice was a hammer upon law itself, molten words spilling like slag from a forge. "They could not bear a Pillar's weight—do not give them the satisfaction of thought."
Before the echo could die, Nuu'ton, Pillar of Motion, shifted in his seat. The air itself seemed to pace.
"Settle down, Des'orm. Amo'rae only said what we're all thinking."
Des'orm's burning gaze met him, and the flame of his contempt leapt higher.
"What you were all thinking, perhaps. I, however, refuse to believe in this 'Promised One.' Learn to speak for yourself, before the wind blows your conviction away."
Brun'dyn, Pillar of Mind, rose next—her robes a tapestry of thought itself, woven from script and memory.
"Mar'aya has been warning us for millennia," she said, voice ringing with certainty. "And now she's fallen. What more evidence do you require to believe?"
Des'orm sneered, flame dancing along his brow.
"For millennia she searched and could never provide proof. I believe what I see, Brun'dyn. And what I see are devils and tyrants of chaos—foul, festering filth. We sit here, bound by our own reason, while the Upper Five's madness festers beneath our feet. Spare me your fables of 'the Promised One.'"
Brun'dyn's composure cracked; for once, reason wavered.
"Are you honestly expecting us to believe a NuGod has the capability to split a Pillar God's soul?" she said, half pleading, half trembling. "I didn't even know that was possible!"
Ast'mos, Pillar of Reflection, tilted his mirrored helm, catching her panic in a thousand refractions.
"Get a hold of yourself, Brun'dyn. You sound like one of them—panicking like a mortal before a storm."
The sting was deliberate, and E'mala, Pillar of Growth, rose to her defense, her form blossoming with new colors mid-motion.
"Always acting above it all, Ast'mos," she said, voice honeyed and dangerous. "Always choosing the same. Never choosing change. Tell me, how do you keep your ego from collapsing your spine?"
A ripple of celestial laughter spread through the thrones like distant thunder.
Ast'mos smiled faintly, his reflection flickering through dozens of faces at once.
"My ego?" he said, the word glinting. "What of your constant reinventions, dear E'mala? Every century a new hue, a new shape, a new costume. Truthfully, no one cares. You are growth without direction—vines choking themselves in search of the sun."
E'mala tilted her head, chuckling low. "Have I bruised your vanity? Your reflections seem dimmer today."
The mirrored god's grin sharpened. "Vanity? Hardly. Tell me—have you found your walking twig yet? I'm sure Gia has."
Gasps echoed—divine, scandalized amusement.
Grum'urn, Pillar of Rot, groaned from his throne of decay, mushrooms sprouting from his shoulders in boredom.
"Cease," he rasped, each word dripping spore and patience worn thin. "You digress. Enough chatter and preening. Let us hear what Xan'durr thinks of this."
The laughter stilled. Even the air bowed.
All eyes turned to the High Throne of the grand hall—raised above the circle, where dominion itself reclined.
Four angels stood at its base, wings spread wide, each bearing a different weapon of dominance. Between them sat Xan'durr, Pillar of Dominion, robed in sovereign light. He lounged in divine poise and terrible ease, drinking from a chalice filled with liquid radiance—honeyed rays drawn from the first sunrise of Neva'mor.
When he finally spoke, the hall's geometry shivered.
"I do not yet know what I think," said Xan'durr, his tone balanced delicately between jest and judgment, "but I know what I see—and that is what I know."
The Sanctum Eternal breathed as if alive, the very light of heaven flexing around his words. Marble veins pulsed with slow radiance; the high vaults of the palace bowed in reverence to the one who sat upon the highest mantle.
When he spoke again, it was quieter—each word falling like law etched into time.
"Mar'aya is no longer Mar'aya. She is no longer whole… but somehow, more."
A stillness followed that could have lasted a mortal century. The conclave's gathered divinities stared upon him, and for the first time since creation, the Twelve Pillars of Law found themselves thinking.
How can less become more?
No one answered. The thought itself was blasphemy.
Finally, Xan'durr leaned forward, fingers steepled like golden chains interlocked.
"Furthermore, my colleagues," he continued, "Mar'aya is not fallen."
A sound—half scoff, half thunderclap—burst from Des'orm. He rose, the fires of his armor guttering in fury.
"What in the bloody abyss are you saying?" he roared. "You speak in riddles, Dominion. If she is not fallen, what is she? You make no sense!"
His words struck the chamber like hammer blows, and before the echoes could fade, I'shala, Pillar of Empathy, stepped into the wake, her voice a silver thread laced with sorrow.
"I concur," she said softly, yet it carried like song through glass. "We all felt the shift—the wrench in the fabric of being. That sensation has only ever followed a fall. We know its pain too well."
Amo'rae placed her hand upon the edge of her own throne, its crimson sigils bleeding faint warmth into the air.
"This is different, I'shala," she said, her tone both defiant and pleading. "When As'mod fell, reality itself frayed—veins of discord spread through every realm until my predecessor took his seat. But now…" Her eyes met I'shala's. "I feel no such strain. Do you?"
A murmur, sharp as steel, cut through her words.
"You dare speak that name," Des'orm hissed, "the name of Lust, within the Eternal Palace? You stain this sanctum with filth."
Before his fury could rise to violence, Xan'durr raised one languid hand, a king dismissing a child's tantrum.
"It's fine," he said, with a half-smile that never reached his eyes. "The Angels will mind it not. But let us not make it habit, shall we?"
Laughter, brittle and uneasy, ghosted through the circle.
Then Ka'rona, Pillar of Stars, spoke—her voice like a night wind drifting through dying constellations. "My stars remember such epochs," she said. "Amo'rae speaks truth. This moment bears no scent of instability. The Pillar remains whole, and—strange as it seems—still functional."
The words unsettled the air itself. Divine light flickered uncertainly, shadows trembling across the radiant walls as if recoiling from implication.
Then, slowly, deliberately, Xan'durr began to clap.
Once.
Twice.
The sound echoed not as applause but as thunder made mockery.
"Ka'rona, Ka'rona," he said with amusement too sharp to be kind. "So insightful. Bravo."
He rose from his throne, the light of Dominion wreathing him like an eclipse, and descended the steps toward the center of the hall. His reflection stretched across the divine floor, distorted, too tall, too many.
"Yes," he said, his voice lowering to something heavy enough to shape the air itself. "The Pillar remains intact. The Law of Balance stands, immaculate and eternal…"
Then his tone darkened, iron beneath silk.
"Without the need of a God."
A silence as vast as space itself crushed the chamber.
Even the Angels guarding the sanctum—seraphs made of hymn and iron—shifted uneasily, their wings folding in disbelief.
"What are you implying?" Brun'dyn asked, voice sharp, almost fearful.
Xan'durr looked up toward the empty throne—the split marble seat of Balance.
"That the foundation of all symmetry," he said, "has changed its definition. The Law no longer requires a keeper."
He lifted his chalice, letting the liquid light within swirl and fracture like a dying sun.
"The Pillar of Balance has been altered. Not broken. Not usurped. But… rewritten."
The last word tasted like prophecy—and poison.
No god spoke after that. Even Des'orm, ever the hammer, found no anvil to strike.
Only the faint hum of the cosmos could be heard, like the breath of creation itself holding in dread anticipation. The Sanctum Eternal—that endless cathedral of law—seemed to hesitate between heartbeats, unwilling to resume the pulse of reality until the gods decided whether existence should continue.
Time itself flinched.
For a moment too long to be called a second, the universe stood still. Then—
A single voice broke the silence.
"Not possible…"
The sound was like stone cracking beneath the weight of a world.
The conclave froze. Even Xan'durr straightened from his throne of sovereign ease, his cup of liquid sunlight forgotten midair.
"You speak?" he said, almost smiling in disbelief. "I have not heard a word from your lips in centuries, Mor'tyz."
The god of Death sat motionless upon his throne of bone and shadow. His form was not skeletal, but hollow—his robes the texture of absence. When he finally raised his head, the hood revealed eyes like candleflames burning within glass skulls.
"I speak," he said, "when needed."
The words slithered across eternity. They were not loud—but everything else was quiet because of them.
Brun'dyn, ever the scholar, found her voice first. "Then… if Mar'aya remains, and her Pillar still functions, perhaps it can be retaken. Reclaimed."
"That could be a possibility," added Nuu'ton, his voice restless, like wind on a battlefield. "A rotation reversed may still return to its origin."
Ast'mos, mirror-faced and unreadable, leaned forward. "You speak of reclamation, but we neglect the pressing matter. The Promised One. What do we do with this thing? If it can distort a Pillar's law, then what, precisely, do we suppose we can do to it?"
A dry, guttural chuckle escaped Grum'urn, Pillar of Rot. His breath smelled of soil and endings.
"I suppose smiting him is out of the question."
The flames on Des'orm's pauldrons flared. "This is no time for jests, you rotting whale!" He nearly leapt from his throne, each footstep cracking the marble of law beneath him.
"I agree," I'shala said, cutting through his fury with steady grace. "But he's right in one regard. I doubt smiting will do a thing to this… critten."
"Then I'll 'assess' the vermin myself," Des'orm snarled, gripping his sword's hilt—an obsidian blade that burned like hatred given shape.
"Don't be a fool," Ka'rona snapped, her constellation eyes flickering in warning. "One of us has already fallen to his prowess. Be you of lesser mind to risk the same fate?"
Des'orm turned, his rage a living thing. "Then we overwhelm him together."
"And leave our domains unguarded?" E'mala said sharply, vines of living jade curling from her hands. "You know the Upper Five would seize that moment. They circle us already like carrion birds."
Xan'durr swirled the light in his chalice lazily, unbothered. "Let them circle," he murmured.
"I never took you all for cowards," Des'orm barked, "but if you're so concerned for our well-being, perhaps we summon a Nova."
The chamber flinched. Even the angels stirred—feathers shivering at the name.
"Denied," Xan'durr said immediately, voice cutting the still air like divine steel. "Summoning one of the Nine is far too drastic—for now."
"Then perhaps a Harrowed Saint?" Des'orm suggested, half jest, half hope.
"Denied," came the same calm answer.
Des'orm threw up his arms, flame scattering like sparks into the vaulted dark. "Then there is no pleasing the Conclave! Perhaps we should gather the mortals next, hm? Let the ants clean up the gods' mistakes!"
A stillness followed—and then, strangely, nods.
"That," murmured Ast'mos, "is the best idea you've ever offered the conclave."
"Agreed," said Brun'dyn, adjusting her luminous veil of scripture.
Des'orm blinked. "Mortals?! You're sending the mortals?" His face contorted in disbelief and rage.
"Yes," said Xan'durr, his tone final as decree. "We send our mortals."
Des'orm muttered under his breath, "Yes, have them throw themselves at the flame and pray they extinguish it. A brilliant strategy."
He looked up, scowling. "Do we even know what it looks like?"
Brun'dyn's eyes flared with a thousand memories. "All accounts are myth. Rumors, dreams. A laughing boy. An undying savage. A smiling stranger. A golden madman."
At that last phrase, Mor'tyz twitched—so slightly that the seraphs standing guard shifted uneasily, as if Death himself had just exhaled through them.
"So we have nothing," Des'orm sighed, defeated for once.
"Nothing," Xan'durr corrected, raising his chalice, "except his current location."
The light within his cup shimmered, reshaping into a sigil—a map of a single point burning in the firmament.
Fort Dawnrise.
The name rolled across the chamber like thunder.
And in that instant, even gods felt a sensation to what mortals call fear.
Xan'durr let the chalice's light pool into his palm and harden into decree. "Then we task our Divine Bands with investigation. Their first waypoint is I'shal. Their objective: Fort Dawnrise."
I'shala's hand tightened on the armrest; her voice was cool. "You would make my country a staging ground for your Bands?"
"Yes," Xan'durr said, unbothered. "I would. Do you object?"
A long beat. I'shala's eyes flicked to the other thrones, measuring oath against duty. At last she gave a small curt nod. "For the Design," she said, the words a blade wrapped in velvet. "I will house your crusades."
A rustle of assent rippled through the circle.
"Agreed," murmured E'mala, vines tightening at her gauntlets as if in salute. "For the Design."
"Aye," replied Grum'urn, his voice rolling like damp earth shifting underfoot.
Xan'durr's gaze swept the thrones. "Return to your domains and hold the line. But three will not leave the sky. Brun'dyn, Nuu'ton, Ka'rona—the Promised One is now your shared horizon. Find its vector, its pattern, its cost. Make it thorough. Make it meticulous."
The Pillars of Mind, Motion, and Stars inclined their heads in perfect sync, the cadence of orbit and axis. "As you say, Xan'durr," they answered together.
I'shala rose again, each movement a slow verdict carved in stone. "My domain borders Mar'aya's fracture—I will not let that wound fester. The Bleeding Choir marches at once: they will sweep Mar'vane's roads and garrison its watchtowers, seize the signal posts, and pry testimony from every mouth. If this corruption bleeds, I will feel its pulse."
Ast'mos's mirrored mask tilted, catching every god's reflection in a single cold surface. "Then the Mirrorbound will follow in echelon. They will set up thematics across your Choir's encampments—reflective wards, double-sight lenses, truth-echo cells. If heresy whispers in your ranks, I will make it answer itself."
I'shala met his gaze without flinching. "Do so—behind my lines, not ahead of them. My people will not be surprised by their own reflections."
"Noted," Ast'mos replied, tone smooth as polished glass.
Brun'dyn unfurled a scroll whose letters wrote themselves as she spoke. "The Silversign will compile a living ledger of all rumors, prophecies, and battlefield anomalies. Every report from Fort Dawnrise passes through my Censorium. Falsehoods will die there."
E'mala's lips curved. "The Verdant Sanctum will not march; it will seed. We'll lace the approaches to Dawnrise with growth-veils—green corridors that swallow spies and feed allies. If the Promised One breathes there, the roots will remember the direction of his steps."
Grum'urn rumbled. "The Blightwrights will keep to the rear… and to the wells. Not a plague—a pressure. We'll sour food stores only where heresy nests. If the rot rises, we'll see who eats with it."
Amo'rae's voice was soft and steady, grief kindling like coals behind her eyes. "The Heart-Scorched are few, but they will move with the pilgrim's pace—no banners, no fanfare. Where they pass, fear will ease, courage will steady, and mercy will be offered before flame. If we meet the Promised One's shadow, love will not turn away first."
Des'orm leaned forward, fingers drumming his sword pommel. "The Ember Chorus goes light and fast. Forward outriders only—purge-parties to cauterize cult-nests along the Mar'vane's borders roads. I will not wait for heresy to flower."
Ka'rona, eyes filled with constellations that rearranged as she spoke, added, "My Astrum Vow will not tread soil until the sky allows it. But I will hang augury-beacons above Shadan'urm. When the stars incline, my captains fall like meteors. Not before."
Nuu'ton tapped a knuckle against his greave, every tap a measured beat. "The Vorticial Tribunal will keep the roads moving. Waystations every forty miles, messenger relays every ten, supply wheels never stopping. Attrition is a river—we will teach it to flow the way we choose."
Xan'durr's lids drooped like a curtain. "And the Crowned Wound?"
"Already tightening," came the reply—soft, precise. "Not blunt conquest, but chokehold: we will close trade routes, seize tolls, and thread oaths through every court like iron nooses. Governors who stall will find their treasuries bound, their heirs pledged, their councils empty of friends. Puppet kings bend quicker when the purse-strings and the law both strangle; Dominion will wind the rope until obedience breathes again."
Across from him, Death's hood inclined—almost approval, almost warning.
"Are all in accordance?" Xan'durr asked, voice filling the dome like a bell.
One by one—Amo'rae, Des'orm, Nuu'ton, Ka'rona, Brun'dyn, Ast'mos, E'mala, Grum'urn, I'shala—each gave the old assent. Even Mor'tyz let a single word drift from the quiet within him.
"Aye."
The four seraphs at the inner dais stepped down and spread their wings. Feathers drank the light and returned it as command.
"Then it is settled," intoned the captain, his voice both many and one. "The Fourth Conclave of the Third Myr is adjourned."
The doors of the Eternal Palace did not open; they understood and moved. Thrones emptied. Mantles vanished from sight. And far below, on the crust of Neva'mor, mass formations erupted from the living hearts of each divine domain: processions of banners, wheels and wagons, pilgrim columns, monk-caravans, silent mirrors, burning scrolls, seed-carts, plague-mules kept leashed and merciful, chains borne on velvet, choirs that bled and loved and bled again.
It was a sight the world had not seen in millennia. Cities lifted their eyes. Forests held their breath. Even the seas listened.
Each domain stirred, no longer in deliberation—but decree.
They would not strike directly.
Not yet.
But the Hunt had begun.
However, the world is vast—
and even divine intent must cross the silence between stars.
And so—
while the heavens conspired and the faith-forged marched,
somewhere beyond their sight, the earth itself held its breath.
Far from the marble vaults of gods and the barracks of their obedient faithful, Balfazar sat at the edge of a cliff.
Below him sprawled the drowned forests of Shadan'urm, their canopies veiled in gold-streaked mist. The setting sun broke itself upon the swamp's glassy pools, each reflection birthing not one sky, but twelve—as though mocking the thrones that trembled above.
His black robes, woven from void-feathers, whispered in the wind.
The Promised Eye slept—closed, yet aware.
Across his bare chest, the Triad Runes pulsed faintly, rhythmic as a second heart, alive with the residue beyond divinity.
He tilted his head toward the horizon—
that eternal theatre of war and worship—
and smiled into the dusklight.
A slow, almost tender smile—
the kind that could curdle peace into prophecy.
"Ah," he murmured, his voice carrying like a hymn spoken backward, the syllables bending the quiet air around them,
"Chase as you may."
The sound was half amusement, half reverence—something between a prayer and a provocation.
Beside him, Voidstor stirred from his coil, the cosmic kitten stretching with a languid ripple that warped the air itself. Its form shimmered, momentarily unfurling into the suggestion of a thousand tails and eyes before condensing once more. Stars blinked within its fur, winking in and out like uncertain constellations. When it yawned, the sound was soft but infinite—like galaxies remembering their birth and sighing at the memory.
"You always loves the chases," Voidstor said, its voice both feline and celestial, folding purr into language. "But what will you's do's when you catch them, my Lord? Will you's eats thems—or teach thems?"
Balfazar smirked, lowering a gloved hand to scratch the creature behind the ear. "Why not both? One teaches best at the precipice of being devoured."
Voidstor's eyes narrowed, twin stars flickering in feline mirth. "Balfy, Balfy, Balfy, evers the philosopher, evers the gluttons."
"Guilty," Balfazar admitted, his tone a pleasant hum, as if he'd just recalled an old melody.
The wind shifted. It no longer carried the scent of rain or moss, but of names—unspoken, unborn, inevitable. They whispered around him like ghosts rehearsing futures, threads of destiny unraveling themselves to be heard.
Then came a voice—two-fold, harmonious, and heavy with mirrored grace.
"They move."
He did not turn.
He did not need to.
Behind him stood two figures, radiant and terrible: the Dawnborne Dyad—Arkeia and Mar'aya—twin flames of balance reborn, mirrored beauties of mortal and divine, fused by his unholy design.
Their five wings each burned from within—one set feathered in light, the other in shadow. The glow between them bled together, forming a trembling halo that fractured the air.
"They stir," said Arkeia, her tone reverent yet unsteady, the mortal cadence of her voice still haunted by memory. "The Pillars send their faithful to hunt us."
Balfazar rose slowly, letting the robe of void-feathers sweep across the stone, its texture whispering like paper burning in reverse. He looked toward the horizon, his smile faint and knowing.
Let them," he said softly, his tone smooth as dusk settling over water. "Gather our forces within the fort. Have them ready for my followers' arrival, I have a feeling—" his gaze flicked toward the horizon, eyes half-lidded in thought, "—you'll need the manpower."
Arkeia inclined her head, wings folding with silent precision. "The Duskstar's guard already stirs," she replied evenly. "The banners are being raised, and the faithful await your word."
Balfazar's smile curved, faint and knowing. "Good. Law must chase its shadow —it's how law remembers it's alive..."
Mar'aya tilted her head, her face half-illumined by divine fire, half-shrouded in mourning light. Her eyes were no longer only eyes, but lanterns through which perfect imbalance of the cosmos peered, trembling.
"And what of mercy, my Lord?" she asked, her voice calm yet edged with venom. "Will you leave none for them, as you left none for me?"
His laughter came like the creak of a door that had never been opened. He turned his gaze to her—not cruel, but inhumanly entertained.
"Mercy," he said, "is for gods. You'll find I operate differently, dearest Mar'aya."
He paused, smile sharpening like a blade drawn from honey. "Besides, what lesson was ever learned without pain?"
Arkeia's brow furrowed, her mortal heart still daring to ache.
"And what lesson do we teach, then?"
Balfazar looked to her and grinned—the kind of grin that births cults and unravels civilizations.
"We are the answer to a question they never had the courage to ask."
The wind gathered, heavy with unseen promise. The Dyad's wings unfurled slightly, their radiance rippling against the dying sun. For a heartbeat, the cliff seemed to dissolve beneath them, the world bending away from their combined divinity as though unwilling to bear their weight.
Voidstor stretched again, tail flicking in rhythm with the distant pulse of creation.
"The world trembles, Balfy," it murmured. "They mistakes it for faiths."
Balfazar chuckled under his breath. "Then let them keep trembling."
His gaze turned to the far-off glow of Fort Dawnrise, burning faintly through the dusk like a candle cupped in a storm's palm.
His voice dropped to a whisper that rippled across the horizon.
"The gods have moved," he said, almost fondly.
"But so have I."
He looked then to the Dyad, to Voidstor, to the vast and listening sky.
"And the game," he breathed, "is already older than their laws."
The last light of day shattered into motes around him, scattering like broken halos. The twilight folded upon itself, and somewhere—
high above, in the Eternal Palace—
the throne of Balance trembled, ever so slightly.
The Pillar Gods took no notice.
But something older did—
something that watched, smiling through the cracks between their truths,
as if amused to see them all dancing upon his board.