Smoke lingered in the air like a ghost that refused to leave.
The town had no name anymore. Whatever it had been called was burned from memory, reduced to blackened wood and ash-choked fields. What remained were charred beams, ruined stone, and the bitter scent of fire long since dead. A pyre still crackled faintly near the center square—its flame weak, but proud, like a sermon echoing in an empty chapel.
Kael stood at its edge, cloaked in ash-dusted linen, watching it burn.
The bodies had long been reduced to bone. Piled together, nameless. The flame devoured the guilty and the innocent all the same. That was the Church's way. Purify all. Leave judgment to the Light.
He adjusted the wrappings around his left arm, where the cloth-bound relic pulsed faintly beneath layers of hide and silence. It didn't burn. Not like fire should. Its warmth was steady, humming like a heartbeat beneath the veil. When he stepped too close to the Church's sacred flames, it pulsed colder. Louder. A reminder. Something about the fire in this town felt different. Not divine. Just… desperate.
"Heresy." The word clung to the ruined walls like soot. It was always heresy. Belief misplaced. Relics unregistered. Villagers forgetting to kneel. A passing priest who didn't like the way someone looked at him. The reasons didn't matter. What mattered was obedience. Faith. Flame. And Kael had neither.
A bootstep crunched behind him. Heavy. Patterned.
He didn't turn.
"Inquisitor's not going to like you poking around," came the voice—gravel and arrogance wrapped in polished steel. "This is a sanctified site."
Kael didn't answer. The wind shifted. A flicker of movement in the edge of his vision—more boots, forming a half-circle behind him. There were four. Armed. Trained.
"You deaf, stranger?" the voice barked again.
Kael's eyes stayed on the pyre. One of the skulls had cracked under the heat. The split ran across its brow like a lightning bolt. A woman's hand—delicate, fingers curled—lay just outside the reach of the flames. She hadn't burned all the way through.
"I'm not here for the fire," Kael said.
His voice was calm. Distant. Like someone speaking from beneath water.
"Oh? Then what are you here for?" The lead soldier stepped forward, lowering his halberd. The steel glinted, etched with the Flame's Mark—three tongues of fire converging into a single beam of light. "This place is under Church protection. Only authorized Flamebearers can—"
"Authorized to kill?" Kael cut in.
Silence.
The soldier's face tightened. "Watch your tongue, heretic. You think you're the first to question the Flame? This town reeked of doubt. That's why it burned."
Kael finally turned. His cloak fell back just enough to reveal the hilt of a dagger at his waist—simple, worn. Not made for show. Not glowing with any divine ember. The relic stayed hidden. One of the younger soldiers shifted, uncertain. "He's not branded," he muttered to the others. "No soulmark. No flamebrand. He's not even Blessed." The leader scoffed. "Then he's nothing."
Kael's eyes flicked to the speaker—just a boy. Seventeen, maybe. His armor was too big for him. Hands trembling on the hilt of a sanctified blade.
"They send boys to protect holy ground now?" Kael asked.
The leader growled and stepped forward, halberd raised. "Last chance. Identify yourself. Show your mark, or submit to purging." Kael didn't move.The relic pulsed once beneath the wrappings. A low hum, like a storm behind stone.
"I told you," he said. "I'm not here for the fire."
The halberd came down. He stepped aside. The strike hit stone, splitting the earth where Kael had stood a second ago. The force cracked through the bricks like bone. Kael's hand moved—not fast, not flashy. A flick of wrist. A twist of cloth. The relic emerged just enough for air to taste it.
The wind stopped. The flames in the pyre flickered—then recoiled, shrinking as if afraid. The soldiers staggered. One dropped his weapon, eyes wide. The boy gasped and clutched his chest, his soulbrand sputtering like a dying candle. The leader's halberd lit with Churchlight—pure white, searing, holy.
"You—what are you?"
Kael didn't answer. His eyes were shadowed. Not angry. Not cruel. Just done.
The relic's light wasn't fire. Wasn't even light. It rippled like memory. Like silence turned physical. And when Kael stepped forward, the flamebrand on the lead soldier's chest cracked down the center.
He collapsed before his weapon hit the ground. The other soldiers ran. Kael knelt by the fire. The relic's hum faded as he rewrapped it beneath cloth and silence.
"Still too loud," he murmured to it.
The skull by the fire had stopped smoking. He stared at it for a long time. Then stood.
A voice called from behind him again—but not from the soldiers. A girl, maybe sixteen, half-starved, one eye covered in soot. She'd hidden behind the broken fountain.
"You're not… from the Church."
"No," Kael said.
She hesitated. "Then what are you?"
Kael looked down at the ruined pyre. At the cracked earth. At the false flame still flickering in the name of purity.
He didn't answer her. Instead, he turned toward the road east, where the woods swallowed light and old shrines whispered to things older than saints.
The girl didn't follow. Not yet.
Far above, from a scorched cliff overlooking the ruined town, a figure in white armor knelt.
His armor was etched in gold. A long crimson cloak billowed behind him, untouched by the wind. His eyes glowed faintly—not with light, but with certainty. The kind that had burned cities. That had slaughtered in the name of love.
High Inquisitor Ravien Sol knelt beside the corpse of his subordinate and touched the cracked flamebrand on the body's chest. He exhaled. The breath came out as steam, even in the warmth.
"He absorbed the Light," Ravien whispered.
Another figure stepped from the shadows. Thin, robed in silver and pale lace, eyes covered by an embroidered blindfold.
"Light does not fear the unfaithful," the woman said. "But this… this was not heresy. This was blasphemy."
Ravien stood.
"Send word to the Council," he said. "We've found it."