Everything was white. Not bright, not hot, not cold. Just white without walls. I tried to move and my hands felt slow, like they were learning me again. Sound came next. Not words. A road in the rain. Rubber on wet ground. A far horn. Plastic rustling. A voice that almost had a name in it. Be… The rest broke like foam and went flat.
Then breath returned and with it weight. Stone under my back. Smoke in my throat. The white pulled away all at once and became a ceiling I knew.
The chapel.
I rolled to my side and pushed up on my elbow. Wax had spilled in wide tears across the floor. The colored windows had lost their color. They were gray and pale like old skin. The mirror stood where it always stood, but its surface was dull and wrong, like metal left in rain. In the wood of the frame a thin line still shone, not moving, a seam that had not decided if it was closed.
Brother Hale lay near the first pew. His eyes were open but unfocused. Sister Maren knelt beside him with blood on her sleeve. The blood looked dark on the wool.
"Lucian," she said. Her voice was hoarse from smoke. "Stay where you are. Are you hurt?"
I checked my hands. They shook. My chest felt sore, as if I had run in cold air. The mark under my shirt hummed softly, then quieted. "I do not think so," I said. My words sounded too loud. The chapel made them bounce.
Brother Hale sat up against the pew with a slow wince. He looked at me like one looks at a candle that might be burning too close to a curtain. Not angry. Careful. "What did you see?" he said.
"I do not know," I said. "I heard a voice."
"What did it say?"
"It said it found me."
He swallowed and glanced at the mirror. Sister Maren's mouth tightened. She pressed a folded cloth to a scrape along Brother Hale's hairline. "Do not look into the glass," she said to me without turning her head. "Not now."
"I am not," I said. I was not sure it mattered. Even without looking, I felt the mirror the way a hand feels another hand near it. The seam in the frame held like a thin held breath.
We sat in the wreck of the silence for a time I could not count. The candles along the walls were all lit, though no one had touched them, and every flame was white at the heart. The air smelled like hot iron and ash. When I stood, my knees shook. I found the broom closet on habit and brought wet cloths and a pan for wax. I did not ask if I should. It felt like something to do that obeyed a rule.
We cleaned without speaking. Brother Hale refused to rest and kept moving as if stopping would let something catch him. Sister Maren wrapped the stained cloth from her sleeve over the scrape at his temple, then scrubbed soot from the stone with her other hand. I wiped the spilled wax. The pieces came free in shapes like frozen water. When my fingers touched the spot before the mirror, a small sting ran up my arm and bit my shoulder. I pulled my hand back. The seam in the frame gave a faint pulse and went still.
"Leave that," Sister Maren said. It was not sharp, just final.
In the front pew, the small wooden piece lay where she had set it. I saw the spiral worked into its face. I wanted to touch it and did not. I wanted to hide it and did not. Sister Maren lifted it and wrapped it in the cloth again and tucked it close under her shawl where I could not see it. Her hands were steady. Only the line of her mouth told me she was afraid.
The door opened behind us. Boots on stone. The sound of people who knew where they were going. The air changed the way it changes when a door opens in winter. Three figures entered the chapel. Two wore white armor with gold bands on the sleeves. Radiant Knights. Their boots were clean. Their faces were unreadable in a trained way. Between them walked a man in a long coat the color of milk, cut plain, with a narrow chain at his neck. He was not old or young. The chain held a small plate of polished bone.
Brother Hale stood without wavering. He gave the short bow of a host. "Welcome to Saint Vale," he said. His voice did not show he had been on the floor minutes before. "You have come quickly."
"We were already on the road," the man in the coat said. His eyes swept the room and did not pause long on any one thing. "There was a surge."
He said it like one might talk about a storm, not a prayer. His eyes found the mirror and held it one heartbeat longer. He looked at Sister Maren. "Sister," he said. "You should have sent word sooner."
"We sent word when we had something to send," she said. She did not bow. She stood with her hands folded over the small wrapped bundle. "And he is a child."
The man in the coat did not answer right away. He looked at me last. He did not look surprised. He did not look kind. He looked like a man taking an inventory. "I am Auditor Vels of the Purity Council," he said. "These are Knights Arix and Sorna. No one is here to harm you."
He let the words sit as if they could do the work on their own. They did not.
Brother Hale set his jaw. "We will step into the refectory," he said. "Lucian can sit. We can give an account."
"No," the Auditor said. "Here." He touched the plate at his neck and then took a small tool from his coat pocket. It looked like the broken instrument from last night had looked before it broke, but simpler. The crystal on its end was dull. "We will not touch the mirror," he said. "We will only ask questions."
"Ask," Sister Maren said.
The Auditor looked at me again. "Name," he said.
"Lucian," I said.
He gave a shallow nod. "Age."
"Nine," I said. It felt like a guess even though it was not.
"Describe what happened. Plain speech."
I tried. I started with the man in the yard, the cut, the heat in my hands. I told him the thought that rose, the way the cloth flared, the sound in the air. I did not speak long. The Auditor did not write anything down. He seemed to be measuring me with his face.
"Then the night," he said. "When you came here."
"I could not sleep," I said. "I came to the chapel. I touched the glass."
"Why did you touch it?" His voice did not carry blame. It did not carry anything.
"I thought it wanted me to," I said. It sounded foolish when I heard it. I kept talking because stopping felt worse. "It did not show me. It never did. I wanted to know if it would."
"And did it?"
"It did not show my face," I said. "It showed light. A seam."
"Did you hear words?" he said.
"Yes."
"What words?"
"Found you."
At that, the two knights looked at each other for just a breath. Almost nothing. The Auditor did not move. He lowered the small tool in his hand and then raised it again. "Hold out your hand," he said.
"Do not," Sister Maren said quietly.
The Auditor looked at her. "This device measures heat and resonance at a distance," he said. "We used it in the road as we approached. We will not touch him."
Brother Hale nodded once at me, slow, the way you nod at a horse to calm it. I held out my hand. My palm was dirty with wax dust and ash. The Auditor raised the tool. The crystal remained dull. He brought it closer. At a hand's width it glowed, faint as frost. The Auditor's eyes changed in a way they probably never changed when he wanted them to. He told them to do nothing and they did a little something anyway.
He shifted the tool toward my chest without speaking. The glow grew. Not bright. Sharper. He stopped and drew it back as if he had reached a fence he could feel but not see.
"That is enough," Sister Maren said. "You have your reading."
The Auditor put the tool away. "We have a problem," he said to Brother Hale, though he was speaking to both of them. "There was a registered surge two valleys away last month. We dismissed it as a false return. We were wrong. There is pattern in the noise. It points here."
"Pattern is not guilt," Brother Hale said.
"Pattern is duty," the Auditor said. "This is no longer a village question. The boy must be brought to Sanctum Solaris for examination. Quietly. We will provide a carriage. Two days at most."
"No," Sister Maren said. She said it the way a door says no when it will not open. "You will not take him."
The knights did not move, but the room felt smaller. The Auditor did not raise his voice. "Sister," he said. "You have served the Order. You know what happens when anomalies are left to burn in the dark. No one wants that here."
"He is not an anomaly," she said. "He is a child."
"He is both," the Auditor said. "One truth does not cancel the other."
He was right and I hated that he was right. My hands smelled like ash. My chest hurt in small pulses that made me want to curl in on myself.
Brother Hale spoke very carefully. "Auditor Vels," he said. "This boy belongs to our care. You will not remove him under smoke and fear. If he must go, he leaves in daylight, in company, on a path agreed by his guardians. And he will not be alone."
The Auditor studied Hale's face and then mine and then Sister Maren's wrapped hands. He seemed to weigh something and put it down again. "Dawn," he said. "We leave at dawn. Knight Sorna will remain in the chapel until then. The door will be watched." He looked at me. "You would do well to sleep."
He turned without another word and went to the door. Knight Arix followed, their steps echoing softly against the stone.
Only Knight Sorna remained. She stood guard about three steps from the mirror, visor lifted and helmet held under her arm. Her gray eyes stayed open and alert.
When the door closed behind the others, the chapel fell quiet again. The silence felt heavier now, broken only by the soft clink of Sorna's armor as she shifted her stance.
Sister Maren let her shoulders drop. The breath she took sounded like she had been holding it since before I woke. She set the little wrapped bundle on the pew again and pressed both hands flat on the wood, as if steadying herself and the world at once.
Brother Hale leaned on the back of a bench with both palms. "We should feed you," he said to me. "Then you will lie down."
"I am not hungry," I said.
"You should eat anyway," he said.
We ate in the refectory with only a single lamp lit. The room was gray with morning that had not arrived. The bread was hard and the stew was thin and I ate both because Brother Hale handed me a bowl and said please. Knight Sorna stood in the chapel doorway and did not look away from the mirror. When I finished, the bowl shook in my hand. I was wounded in a place that did not bleed.
Sister Maren took me to the dormitory. Most of the boys slept through everything. Two had sat up on their beds and stared with big eyes and said nothing when I passed. She drew the curtain around my cot and sat on the small stool she used when a child was sick. She touched my hair with her knuckles the way she did with the very young ones so they would not think it was a touch if they did not want it to be.
"You will try to sleep," she said.
"What if I dream?" I said.
"Then you will wake," she said. "And I will be here."
I lay down but did not close my eyes. The candle by my wall was not lit. I waited for it to decide otherwise. The room breathed around me. Somewhere outside, a night bird called twice and stopped. A soft patter began on the roof and grew into steady rain. My chest eased a little at the sound though I did not know why. Plastic rustled at the edge of my mind again. A bag in a hand. A door chime. A card reader beep. Be… The sound thinned. I pressed my palm to the place above my heart. The mark was warm.
I slept in small pieces. Each piece held water.
In one, I stood in a long narrow hall lined with tall shelves made of metal, their ends marked with strange symbols that glowed pale white. The air hummed with a low, steady light that came from no candle.
In another, I stood before a pole that carried three circles of colored fire - red at the top, gold in the middle, green at the bottom. The red burned steady. People waited in rows beside long black paths that shone like wet stone. Strange carriages of glass and metal passed by without horses, hissing softly as they went.
In my hands was a small flat stone that glowed faintly, showing a picture of my own face blurred by falling water. I wiped it with my sleeve, and the light inside it trembled.
A sharp sound - like a horn calling too near - filled the air and the ground pulled away beneath me. I fell forward and woke with my hand closed on the blanket.
"Breathe," Sister Maren whispered from the stool. She had not slept. "In. Out. Again."
I did as she said until the tightness let go.
Later, somewhere between rain and dawn, I heard footsteps in the hall. Not Knight Sorna's. These were soft and quick. The curtain moved and Sister Maren's face was very close. "Get up," she said. Her voice was low but sharp with choice. "We are leaving."
"My things," I said.
"You need only shoes and your coat."
"What about the Knight?"
"She is looking at the wrong door," Sister Maren said.
We moved like shadows.
Brother Hale waited near a narrow wooden door at the end of the corridor. He held a lantern that was not lit.
"This way," he said softly.
He opened the door, and a faint smell of damp air came through. Inside was a small storeroom stacked with empty crates and old tools. In the corner, half hidden beneath a loose board, a narrow stair led downward.
Hale knelt, lifted the board, and the cold air rose up from below, damp and heavy.
"You have an hour at most," he said quietly. "The rain will hide your prints until the sun finds them."
Sister Maren touched his wrist. Their eyes spoke a language I did not know.
"Thank you," she said.
He nodded once. He looked at me with the same steady look he used when teaching me to carry hot kettles.
"Do not run fast," he said. "Run sure."
We went down the narrow steps behind the storeroom. The air changed as we descended - thick, cool, and smelling of earth. The smoke scent from the chapel was gone.
The space below was dark, a low tunnel built long ago beneath the monastery. Its walls were rough stone, damp and cold to the touch. Sister Maren moved ahead, careful and sure, like someone who had walked this path a hundred times in her mind.
Once, the tunnel narrowed so tightly that we had to turn sideways to pass. Water dripped somewhere above, slow and steady, echoing off the walls. I counted the drops to steady my breath.
After what felt like a long descent, the passage leveled and opened slightly. Ahead of us, a faint square of night appeared - a patch of loosened bricks at the far end. Sister Maren pressed her hand against one, and it slid outward with a soft scrape that sounded far too loud in the stillness. She paused, listened, then pushed out two more. Through the gap, the dark garden waited, blurred by falling rain.
It's the outer garden wall," she whispered. "Beyond it is the orchard."
She pushed the last brick free, opening a narrow hole near the ground.
"Go," she said.
I crouched low and crawled through the gap, feeling the cold mud catch my hands as I pulled myself out into the open air. The rain hit my face like small stones. I stood and looked around. The monastery garden looked familiar but wrong - as if I had stepped into a memory I wasn't supposed to see. The rows of herbs were drowned in puddles, the air full of rain and silence.
Sister Maren followed right after, sliding through the opening and setting the loose bricks roughly back into place behind her.
"We'll follow the outer wall of the garden east, until the stream," she said. "There's an old millhouse there. It's usually empty. We can cross behind it."
We started moving. Not fast - just steady. Mud swallowed our steps and gave them back. The rain blurred everything, turning the world near us sharp and the world far away faint. My chest ached, but it found a rhythm with my breathing.
When the sound of the stream began to rise ahead of us, a sudden light flared behind.
Not lightning. White. Still.
I turned. Beyond the wall, the chapel roof showed dark against the rain. The tall window at its center was no longer gray. A hard white grew behind the glass.
Light poured through the glass.
At the same moment, in the orchard, thin white lines lifted from the wet ground and linked together, drawing a wide circle around us, like chalk taking fire.
A ward. Hidden until now. It woke as the chapel blazed.
The air shook. For a heartbeat the rain hung in place, then fell hard, all at once.
Sister Maren gripped my arm.
"Run," she said.
I tried. My foot hit the edge of the circle and heat caught my ankle, tight as a rope. The glow in the orchard swelled. From beyond the trees, Knight Sorna stepped forward, visor down, sword at her side. Two more figures followed, fast and silent in the rain.
Sister Maren pulled me back from the bright line. The ward hissed where the water touched it. The stream beside us roared louder than a stream should. Somewhere behind us, above the chapel, a bell should have rung.
It didn't.
The light did.
-- End of Chapter 3 --