The first thing Kaelith noticed was the absence of sound.
Not the soft hum of Lux or the distant murmur of the city below. Not even the wind stirring the ash in Soltharion's ruined outskirts. Here, beyond the radiant borders, beyond judgment and decree, there was only the weight of the world itself pressing against him. A pressure so dense it did not merely surround him—it became part of him.
He did not flinch.
He had anticipated it. He had felt it in the Plaza of Clarity, in the archives, in the trembling pulse of the first man he had saved. But anticipation was different from reality. The true weight of bearing sin—the concentrated burden of morality compressed into a single vessel—was a sensation he could not name without inventing a new language.
It was Sinbind.
He walked through the ruins of the Ashborne Outpost, an abandoned fortification at the edge of the eastern plains. No one lived here anymore. Lux could not maintain it, and Umbra had no interest. Yet it was perfect. A place to test what had never been tested: the capacity of a man to carry everything the world refused to bear.
Kaelith knelt and placed his hands on the ground.
The soil shivered beneath him. Not with life—but with possibility.
He closed his eyes. Reached inward.
At first, nothing.
Then a tremor.
A memory—not his own. Pain not suffered by his body. Regret not felt by his mind. He felt it anyway. Carried it. Absorbed it.
A village burned by overzealous knights. A farmer executed for minor heresy. A child left alone in a city that claimed to protect it. A priest who forced an innocent to confess sins he never committed.
All of it flowed into him at once, not like water, not like wind, but like the crushing tide of a world that refused to admit it had failed.
And he smiled.
Not because it was pleasant.
Because it worked.
Sinbind was not power.
It was responsibility.
Every sin, every misdeed, every moral compromise that the world hid beneath banners of virtue could now be contained. And every time he took one, a fracture in reality healed slightly. A pillar of Lux stopped trembling. A citizen survived where otherwise they would have been erased.
Every atrocity committed by the so-called righteous left its stain here—inside him—rather than on the world.
Hours passed. Days, perhaps. Time lost its meaning.
Kaelith cataloged each burden, naming them silently. Some were small, some immense. Some were joyous, cruelly twisted.
A laugh he did not recognize echoed in the chamber of his mind.
"Do you understand now?"
The voice was neither feminine nor masculine. Neither young nor old. It was Null, aware, probing.
"I understand enough," Kaelith replied.
"You carry it," Null said. "And yet you are not yet broken. Why?"
"Because the world cannot survive if I am broken," Kaelith said. "Because someone must hold it. Because someone must be the monster."
Null stirred beneath him. The pressure around reality itself vibrated, testing his resolve.
"You are arrogant," it said.
"I am necessary," Kaelith replied.
He rose.
The first consequence of true Sinbind was clear. He could not reverse it.
Once absorbed, a sin did not disappear—it became part of him. Every misdeed, every death, every betrayal he carried would remain. Shaping him. Changing him. Slowly twisting his body, his soul, his name.
He would be remembered as evil.
He would be hunted.
He would be feared.
And he would do it anyway.
The first test came sooner than he expected.
A courier arrived from the east. Uniformed emissaries of the Radiant Dawn, bearing a sealed proclamation from the Conclave.
"Kaelith Veyr Ashborne, the Black Mercy. Your crimes are judged. You are hereby commanded to cease all activity in borderlands or face immediate eradication."
Kaelith read the message and smiled faintly.
"Eradication," he whispered. "So kind of them to offer me purpose."
He crushed the seal in his hand. The parchment dissolved into ash as though it had never existed.
He would not flee. He would not hide.
Because Sinbind required choice, not cowardice.
And the first choice was clear.
A small village sat nearby, untouched by the Radiant Dawn. Kaelith approached, careful, observing from the tree line.
Smoke rose from the farthest end. He walked forward.
A band of knights had arrived. Young, idealistic, armed with radiant weapons. They spoke of purity and justice, of cleansing blights. They did not see the villagers as people—they were problems, errors, corruptions to be excised.
Kaelith did not stop them.
He watched.
He calculated.
Then, as the knights raised their swords against the children, he stepped forward.
Not with violence. Not with magic. Not with power.
He simply spoke.
"Stop."
The air itself obeyed, bending. Lux faltered. The knights froze. They looked at each other, at the villagers, at the ground, at the sun. Nothing made sense.
Kaelith stepped fully into the clearing.
"Take your sins," he said softly, "and let them rest in me."
A hush fell. The first knight, the most brash, stepped forward. "What—what do you mean?"
Kaelith lifted a hand. A faint glow began to shimmer beneath his skin. Shadows pooled around him, dense and heavy, as if the very earth had bowed to his will.
The first sin entered him.
Pain ripped through his chest—not unbearable, not paralyzing, but absolute. Memory. Emotion. Regret. Every small cruelty committed by the Radiant Dawn that day, every violation of innocence, all became part of him.
And then, all at once, the knights collapsed to their knees. Not dead. Not unconscious. Changed. Shaken. Empty in a way only Sinbind could manage.
The villagers stared. Children clung to mothers, wide-eyed, whispering words Kaelith did not hear but understood.
He looked at them and bowed slightly.
"You are safe," he said.
And in the distance, the wind whispered the first truth:
The Black Mercy walks among them.
The sun set behind ruined spires. Shadows lengthened. Ash drifted like snow.
Kaelith looked at his hands, feeling the weight of dozens of sins already. He did not flinch. He did not complain. He did not hesitate.
Because someone had to hold the world together.
And that someone… was him.