02:50 p.m. - At High Temple Inquisition Hall, Dawnspire.
A wet pop. Flesh tore like rotten bread.
Cassian Morrow's arm came apart at the elbow in one terrible, bright motion. Blood arced and painted the carved rail. The scribe's quill shivered and fell, a white-feathered ghost beside a tipped inkwell. Incense braided with iron. The smell of raw meat slid along the stones and made the candles sizzle in answer.
The hall froze. Stone held its breath.
They all saw Ryan. He stood where Cassian had bowed—hands limp at his sides, face pale, a thin streak of oil across his brow. Cassian's blood struck his cheek and clung there like proof. Ryan's skin stayed whole. No cuts. No tears. The wet red on his face gleamed like a damned badge.
A chant rose. Low at first, then steady as a drum.
Crowd (chanting): "Demon in a man. Demon in a man."
Not a call to fight. A prayer for fear. The room read accusation until the words were hard.
Pope Thaddeus moved as if the room were a map he could still fold to his will. His smile stayed in place—silk over steel—but his thumb found the small silver sigil hidden inside his collar and would not let go. He looked to the west door—just a glance—but the look was a compass reading, not a comfort.
Pope Thaddeus (commanding): !(("By oath and name, by the Staglord's light, we bind this soul to trial of fire. The Temple will know what hides beneath flesh."))
The priests answered with ritual precision. A brass brazier appeared. Acolytes bore chains and a bowl of blessed salt. An iron harness—a warded frame used for holy tests—dropped from a ring and hovered like an obedient animal. It moved without touch, sliding under Ryan's feet by the tug of a gravity-weave, and cradled him on a bed of cold iron. The harness did not touch skin. A ward held the gap.
Marcelline watched from a step away, tall and pale as bone. Candles nearest to her guttered when Ryan turned his head. Her face was a blade. Her eyes did not leave him.
Marcelline (quiet): "Do not touch him. Use the warded harness. Keep holy distance."
No hand came near Ryan. No one dared that. They would not risk holy touch on unproven flesh. The priests maneuvered the harness with quiet ropes and murmured prayers, closing the sacred circle. The oil smudged on Ryan's temple, a priest touched it with a blessed glove and pulled his finger back as if the skin might move on its own.
Aidan stood behind Ryan like a nailed post—ledger tight in his hand, jaw set. He watched the harness lower, watchful and small.
Aidan (grim): "We hold the books. I signed the gates. I saw the men working."
(They saw blood on my face. They saw a man explode. What else matters when the eye itself swears it saw it? The Mandate is a tool. Tools make errors in the hands of angry people.)
The crowd pressed forward like a tide. Odrik smiled too wide. Varena's eyes measured everything and offered nothing. Baldric called for signs. Someone shouted for an arrow soaked in sanctified pitch—the simple solution for a fearful town.
Baldric (loud): "Show the mark of the Staglord! If he is blessed, let the light show!"
Pope Thaddeus's voice stayed velvet, but a thin tremor lived in the room.
Pope Thaddeus (soft): !(("Order will stand. Let the rite show truth. Let the flame be brief and holy. We will not punish without proof."))
There was reason beneath the silk. His thumbs had tightened on that hidden sigil. It was not mere caution. If word reached the wrong ears—eyes beyond the city walls—he could be undone. He had not said it aloud. He did not need to. The Temple had enemies that wore crowns. A single wrong move invited a blade sharpened by fear.
Marcelline stepped forward and the harness rose with her will. It ferried him to the center of the hall where the brazier waited. The priests read the old words and the ward hummed like a tightened string. The crowd pulled back, forming a ring of whispered hunger.
Ryan kept still. The iron cradled him an inch from the stone like a suspended coin. He could smell incense and iron and too many eyes. He felt the thin, absurd comfort of his choices half-answered and half-ignored.
(Ryan thinking): (Safe from Doubt does not hold here. Safe from the Red Moon—if it acted, I did not order it to. I only woke it with a choice long ago and now something answered on its own. I cannot go to the Space House until—no. I cannot. Not until I am at the edge of death after the seven-day cycle. I cannot check the log. I have no quick escape. I have only words in my head and strangers' blood on my face.)
The priests lifted their hands as if to light the brazier. A hush leaned forward with them, waiting for a sign—miracle or punishment, quick absolution or slow dread.
Cassian's body stilled into a lesser form of words. The smell of blood swallowed the rest of the hall's small noises. For the first time, wide mouths in the crowd forgot the neat stories that made their lives and began to make new ones.
Pope Thaddeus (formal): "Under the Temple's charge, Master Ryan Mercer will be held until further inquiry. Detainees of urgent nature are to be bound by sanctified chain and held beneath the cathedral. This is for the people's good."
The harness lowered. Enchanted manacles clasped the iron frame. They would not touch his flesh. They would not need to.
Ryan made no sound. His breath felt thin as a wire. He looked once at Aidan. Aidan did not answer the look. He looked then at Marcelline, she watched him with a cold that could shape men. He looked at the Pope and saw silk over a muscle that feared more than he let on.
(Ryan thinking): (Thaddeus touches that sigil like a prayer for restraint and also as a warning. He thinks words from beyond the walls might punish rashness. He thinks of a name that tastes like ash—Malakar. If the Temple believes Malakar ordered caution because of me, then I am more than a rumor. I am a lever. But I cannot check the law now. I cannot go to the Space House until—unless I die after the week. I cannot die. I cannot risk that. So I must find another path.)
A servant guided the harness toward the side door. The crowd parted. Eyes followed like knives. They left him with a taste: the city that feeds on stories had found a fresh and terrible one.
05:30 p.m. - At Cathedral Dungeon, Dawnspire.
The dungeon smelled of vinegar, wet stone, and old prayers burned thin. A single slit of light drew a narrow band across the floor, the rest was cold and shadow. Runes were carved into the walls—funerary words that smoked at the edges where priests had recited burial rites until their throats were hoarse. Chains hung like weathered stories from the ceiling.
They set the warded harness in the center of the cell. It held him steady while two clerks read names and stamped seals. The chain they used to lock the harness had letters burned into it that said plainly, "No living trade within." The sound of the bolt clicked like an answer to a prayer asked too late.
He lay there suspended, iron at his back, his face still marked with Cassian's dried spray. The ward hummed in a low tone that made the teeth ache slightly. The air was thick with the smell of oil and old metal. The world outside turned on, somewhere, but here time bent inward.
(A prison is the cleanest place to think. People leave a prisoner alone in a way they do not leave the accused in the open. They let him measure the hole he has fallen into.)
Aidan came alone. He closed the heavy door and his boots made three measured sounds on the stone. He looked little like a man who owned a factory and large like an apprentice who had been chosen for an impossible task. There was a stamped pad in his hand and a weariness on his face that had nothing to do with labor.
Aidan (stops): "I had to see. I still think the pages tell it different."
Ryan (soft, to himself): "I didn't do this. I didn't—"
His voice stuck in the stone and scattered. He had been a man of rules, of logic and checklists. Now the world had shifted into shapes that did not fit any ledger.
(Ryan thinking): (Safe from Wounds. Safe from the Red Moon. Safe from Doubt. I chose those labels and they answered somewhere else—places I didn't stand. Choices are rules. Rules have cracks. I am finding them and I cannot fix them by sleeping in a house that will not accept me. The Space House is beyond reach. Not until I am near death after the seven-day cooldown. I will not tempt permanent death by hoping. If the Mandate acts on its own, I need witnesses and a mage. I need Aemond.)
He tried the Mandate again in the dark, the way one turns a key in the lock to see if it will still open. He reached with the thought that had become a habit, a small ritual of his own: make them doubt. Make the ledger hold. He pictured the mail form, the two-of-three switch, the quiet click of a choice enshrined.
Nothing answered. The ward hummed, but the world did not bend where he wanted.
(Ryan thinking): (It works like weather. It changes the far and the anonymous. It smooths rumor for people who hear of something later, around hearths. But when a dozen eyes saw a face split and a man fall, the Mandate is a whisper against fire. My coin of authority is thin under heat. And I cannot check the receipt now. I cannot see the exact wording I picked. I have to work with consequences and with other people who can read ritual, not with the house that keeps my logs locked behind death.)
Aidan watched, and Ryan saw the calculation move across his face—the numbers pressed against the grain of human fear. He had always been the tidy sort, the man who could make machines keep time. Now he had to weigh the small things that keep men fed.
Aidan (low): "My men are scared, Ryan. The apprentices whisper. Some say they won't work for a man who draws death like a storm."
Ryan (closes eyes): "If they leave, Technologia dies. Not just the pens. The apprentices, the wages, the roofs. My failings could cost more than me."
(Ryan thinking): (Authority without access is a liability. Even if the Mandate saved me by stopping a vampire, the city will not see a clean miracle. They will see a danger. They will choose self-preservation over truth. How do you show mercy when mercy has the shape of an unexplained death? I cannot fade into the Space House and read logs. I cannot touch my own evidence. I must build it through others—mages, craftsmen, the Temple's slow instruments.)
He walked through the list in his head. Each Mandate like a coin with two faces.
Safe from Wounds: he felt it in how his skin did not split under Cassian's gore. But it had not prevented the corpse. It did not make him a saint, it made him uncanny.
Safe from the Red Moon: the thorn that worried him most. He had ticked that box once without seeing the full consequence. If Cassian answered the Red Moon—if he was a thing bound by that name—then the Mandate could act without his conscious command. It could make someone's curse fail at the wrong place. That prospect sat cold in his belly.
Safe from Doubt: he had tried to use it in the hall and in the cell. It moved the anonymous gossip of markets and taverns, swelling belief where sight was thin. But it could not outmatch a room full of witnesses and freshly broken bones.
(Ryan thinking): (Selecting Safe from the Red Moon was supposed to be protection. I thought it would shield me. Instead, it intervened where some creature met me and made a violent thing happen. I did not flip that switch in the moment. It acted on its rule. That means the Mandate can act without my will when certain categories trigger. If that is true, then I am more dangerous than I realized.)
Aidan stood a while and shifted his weight from one foot to another, the man of action trying to find a reasonable move. He did not speak of exile or sheltering, only of the immediate—a ledger that could keep their shop alive.
Aidan (measured): "We keep the books. We keep the lines. I will not ask men to work where they feel their lives are bought like candles. If the Temple decides to close the docks, we will take hits we cannot fix."
Ryan (soft): "Tell the apprentices what to expect. Tell the furnaces to dim. If they must leave, we will pay what we can. But first—help me find Aemond. He's the one who reads law and warding. If anyone can make sense of a Mandate that answers like weather, it's him. He knows the old rules and the new phrasing."
Aidan hesitated. He had always been Ryan's pragmatic anchor, the one who turned ideas into schedules. But now he answered as a man with mouths to feed and a ledger to balance. He was being practical with the softest thing left to him—loyalty.
Aidan (quiet): "I'll keep the accounts. But I will not blind the men to risk. If the Temple pushes too far, I will protect the shop."
Ryan (mutter): "I don't expect heroics. I need minutes—someone to read the parchment of ritual and tell me how the categories behave. I can't get into the Space House for the log. Not until the week ends and I am at the point of death. I refuse to get to that point."
(Ryan thinking): (So: no House. No quick audit. I must think like Aemond thinks: test, not assume. Find Cassian's marks. Let a mage read them. Make the Mandate answer in a controlled way—if possible. Or at least find proof that Cassian was Belmara's spy. If that truth exists, it will cut two ways: the Temple may be afraid for different reasons, and the city may see the killing as a blessing. I need allies who can read old rites. Marcelline is dangerous, but she knows ritual. Aemond knows the law. Aidan can hold the floor. That is the team I have.)
A guard passed water through the slot and the world kept to its small trades: food, complaint, rumor. Outside, the cathedral lived in a way the dungeon did not. Candles were relit. A thousand small domestic economies would be rearranged by the morning. Inside, beneath the stone, Ryan catalogued the choices and their holes.
He counted the names he had chosen at the Space House like penance and a plan.
Ryan (to himself): "I cannot go home to read my own words. I cannot make the Mandate explain itself by staring at a screen. I must make the world speak the way the Space House would. I will make detailed tests. I will ask Aemond to run ritual probes. I will ask Marcelline questions in private—I may need to trade balm for knowledge. And I must keep the shop afloat until I can make a plan that does not depend on dying."
(Ryan thinking): (I am not a god. I am not even free. I am a man who chose rules and must now live with them. If the Mandate took action without me, that is part of its nature. I will learn its nature by other means. That will have to be enough.)
The ward hummed. The chain sang its old song. The stone kept its mute counsel. For a man who had once solved bugs by reading logs, there was work waiting—work that would cost him sleep, reputation, and maybe more. He let the list sit like a new tool on the bench and tried to shape his next move.
Outside, the city told itself stories. Inside, the only truth for now was a chain and a harness and a man who had learned that choices make wildly different shadows when the sun is bright and many eyes watch.