Bone knocked against bone, each clack a morbid beat that echoed through the dull landscape. Lucien laid the last body on the pyre with a grunt and a muttered curse, then stepped back. He wiped his palms on his thigh and eyed the results.

They had built the funerary pile several yards off the road, where the scrub parted and the soil turned stony, far from the scorch marks and gore that had marked the initial carnage. Wind worried at the stacked branches and tugged at the dead pilgrims’ torn cloaks, raising the faint, sour reek of dried blood and fear gone cold. The demon-wounds that had wrecked the pilgrims’ bodies had already crusted stiff in an ugly, ragged, and familiar pattern.

“Maybe we should, you know…” Lucien rolled his hand toward the stacked wood and bodies and added, “say some words. Do you think?”

“Probably,” Gideon replied.

Silence mingled with the smoke from Gideon’s torch, while somewhere out in the scrub a carrion crow cawed, impatient with the delay.

“Well?” Lucien said.

“Well, what?”

Lucien jutted his chin at the stacked wood. The gesture took in the pilgrims’ broken faces, the makeshift bindings across chests and throats. He and Lucien had done what they could to prepare the bodies in a hasty attempt to give them a bit of dignity after ruin, but the results were less than these poor souls deserved.

Gideon flicked his eyes from the mess to Lucien and pushed at the air with his torch.

“You’re the newly ordained Deacon.”

“Well, yes,” Lucien replied, “but last I checked, Bishop outranks Deacon every day of the week. Twice on Rites Day.”

Bishop.

Gideon had yet to hear the word without the urge to look over his shoulder. Somewhere in the labyrinthine halls of Sanctuary’s High Citadel, in a chamber that probably smelled of polished wood and old incense, some fool had scratched his name onto vellum. And somehow that made it so.

Gideon Holt, Bishop of the Faith, Keeper of Sword and Sigil.

There were days he wondered if the High Council had simply drawn lots from a helmet; others he suspected the truth was far uglier, that some clerk had mistaken survival for virtue in the tally. But Hallowed Ridge still wrote itself in his sleep, those few nights when sleep actually came . Three hundred bodies piled by necessity, and somehow that counted as merit.

What a Saint’s-damned joke!

The wind picked up, tugging at the hem of his mantle, snapping it once against his greaves.

Lucien lifted his unlit torch from the ground and made a sound from somewhere deep in his throat. Gideon braced himself.

“Saints watch you,” Lucien said toward the bodies. “Or at least send someone along who knows which end of a ward-stone is up. You walked too far on bad advice, in bad weather, and worse luck. We will try to make the road safer for the next fools.”

Lucien looked to Gideon, waiting for something more, some approval perhaps. When it became obvious Gideon had nothing more to add, he bent his torch to Gideon’s until it caught with a sullen cough. He pressed the flame into the cradle of kindling under one pale hand. Resin hissed, and the dry brush seized the fire, passing it greedily from twig to branch.

Gideon stepped to the other side. Flame bled across the pitch, warm against his knuckles. He drove the torch into the gap beneath one pilgrim’s torn shoulder and stepped back. The tattered cloth blackened and curled, then bloomed orange. The fire licked along wool and skin, climbing until it swallowed everything into anonymity.

Heat pressed at his face, and he rushed through crossing himself in the sign of the shield.

“Into the Flame, and out of the dark,” he murmured before turning to the horses waiting near the road. Lucien’s mount, Sasha stamped and tossed her head, her silver mane catching stray sparks of light. Bastion answered with a low, disapproving snort, pawing once at the ground as if he meant to dig his own trail away from this place.

Lucien tucked a thumb into the edge of his belt and fell into step beside Gideon.

“Where do you think they were headed?” he asked.

“Not sure.” Gideon eyed the packs they had salvaged from the bodies. There had not been much, a few bolts of homespun wool and strips of cracked leather. The food had gone spoilt days ago from the looks of it, and nothing bore any merchant stamps. “ Deepford , maybe.”

Lucien reached Sasha first and caught her by the reins. “Too far to walk with nothing but bad sandals and worse sense. Sorry bastards should have taken the river.”

Gideon half-turned. The pyre already stood a head higher, flames knotting into one another, smoke drawing a dark line against the washed-out sky.

“River takes more coin than most have out here,” he said.

Lucien was already in the saddle, Sasha dancing sideways under him. Gideon caught Bastion’s bridle before the stallion could decide he had better places to be. The horse rolled an eye at him, ears laid flat, but he took Gideon’s weight without a stumble when Gideon swung up.

They nudged their mounts back onto the rutted ribbon of road. Hooves found the familiar grooves left by countless wagons and poorer feet while the fire crackled, then roared as the wind leaned in behind them. The previous day’s rains would keep the fire from spreading, or so Gideon hoped.

“Doesn’t explain why we aren’t taking the river,” Lucien said when they had settled into an easy, ground-eating pace.

Gideon kept his gaze on the road ahead where the plains broke against a distant smudge of stands and hill. “Afraid of a couple of Night Howlers?”

Lucien laughed, short and genuine. “No.”

“Then stop whinging .”

Lucien clicked his tongue at Sasha, drawing her slightly ahead, then let her fall back alongside Bastion again.

“I just thought, you might be a little eager to get to where we’re going.”

“I don’t think it’s going to pick up and move.”

Lucien’s eyes rolled upward. “I’m only saying…” He shook his head and sighed. “This is your home we’re talking about.”

Home.

The word slid under his armor, slicing at bone and marrow.

Ahead, the land rolled out in scrub and low, tired grass. No walls had appeared yet, no crooked chimneys, and no bell tower leaning at the sky like a drunk. Yet the memory of them hit him somewhere just under his sternum, which was worse.

Twenty years had passed since he had last ridden this way. A life time gone since he had watched River’s End shrink behind him in the dull light of early morning, Sabine’s figure small and solitary atop the gate’s watchtower. Two decades of other roads, other keeps built from the same blue-gray stone, other chapels with the same cracked steps and muttered prayers.

To Gideon, home was a diary full of unfinished sentences. The house that no longer stood. The parents whose faces he remembered only in brief flashes he dare not trust as truth. A boy’s youthful certainty that leaving meant becoming something else.

Could memory survive his return?

People changed; even if streets did not. Corvan was still there, still coiled around the church like a patient sickness. Sabine would be…. What? Married? Moved on? Worse? His absence left too many pages for other stories.

The wind shifted, carrying a last, thin strand of smoke from the pyre. Bastion flicked an ear, then stretched his stride, as if eager to outrun the scent.

The road narrowed ahead, dipping between low rises, the sky flattening to a pale, hard blue. Somewhere beyond the next day’s horizon waited ward-stones and watchtowers, the Stonereach’s slate ribbon, and the squat, familiar angles of a keep that would not care how long he had stayed away.

The last stretch of road into River’s End had been broader once, but generations of use had thinned it to little more than a long, worn seam that snaked through the landscape. The steady roll of merchant wagon wheels had carved it into deep ruts, and the floodwaters that followed demon storms had sheared their edges into uneven scars. Stones, pale and jagged, jutted through the packed earth like the knuckles of a buried giant.

It was a road meant for traffic and trade. A road for pilgrims, once.

Now it carried less of all three.

Gideon kept his eyes on it anyway.

It was easier than looking ahead.

As the road angled downhill, a faint metallic scent of forge soot and rotting fish left too long in the sun rode the breeze, announcing River’s End’s presence before it showed itself. The smell settled in the back of his throat like something half-remembered.

When the town emerged as they turned the last bend, the first thing Gideon noticed was the familiar tilt of the rooftops huddling together under smoke rising from chimneys in thin, stubborn trails. Everything sloped toward the Stonereach river, its current moving slow and silt-heavy toward the Farwater miles downstream.

Towns like River’s End leaned on their rivers for safety as much as for survival. Running water was the one barrier Demons did not cross, and River’s End had lived under that protection for generations. Walls jutted out from the river on either side to form a lopsided square that  surrounded the town. But it was the river everyone depended on.

Gideon’s gaze lingered on the dun-colored water with its promise of protection.

What did that promise matter when the other three sides were exposed?

Beside him, Lucien whistled a mangled hymn, half-reverent, half-inappropriate, with the ease of a man who wore humor like a second skin. After a few more measures, the man let the tune die in a single flat, disappointed note.

“Place looks like a shit pit with aspirations,” he said, letting the reins of his mount go slack. His crossbow bounced at his hip as if it, too, had opinions.

Gideon let out a huff that threatened laughter but never quite made it.

As the two of them got closer, Gideon strained to pick out the town’s ward-stones, short pillars of black-veined rock etched with sigils that ringed the town in a loose perimeter. Some still flickered with the faint pulse of Templar magic, while others had dulled to a weak glimmer of old blessing. They were all upright and in their proper places, though, tended just enough to offer the hope of protection.

Prayer cloths, the thinner, weaker cousins of true warding, stretched between the stones in slack, yet unbroken, lines. Sun-bleached ribbons contrasted with crisp, new ones all patched together in a line that fluttered in the rain-promise breeze. The air between them trembled with the barest thrum of guarding.

Gideon pressed his lips thin and nudged his heels into Bastion’s flanks. The horse’s gait hiccuped two steps forward then settled back into an obstinate, meandering walk. Gideon did not bother to press the subject and accepted the delay.

The north gate ahead stood much as he remembered it, timbers bowed but holding, its iron chain rusted but intact. Two watchtowers flanked either side, bearing burn shadows from storms and demon attacks long past.

As they passed the first set of ward-stones, a stiff brush passed over Gideon’s spine. He felt the ward-line’s paltry divine current slip through marrow and memory.

“Line’s about as powerful as a hiccup,” Lucien murmured beside him.

Gideon shifted in his saddle and tightened his grip on Bastion’s reins. “I know,” he growled.

The steed snorted its own opinion, and Gideon patted the horse’s neck with a gloved hand, though it was his own balance that needed bracing.

The streets narrowed between uneven rows of houses as they rode deeper into the town. Faces peeked out, curious, cautious, and some hopeful, others not. The elderly looked longest, recognition flickering and fading in their eyes, as if they were not sure whether he was memory or mistake.

The more he saw of the place he had called home for sixteen years, the more River’s End appeared a place held together by a kind of spiteful persistence. Wattle-and-daub walls stood patched with boards scavenged from older buildings while their roofs dotted the sky in checkered panoramas of slate shingles replaced one at a time as need required. Scorch marks lingered, but here and there someone had scrubbed them down to ghostly smudges.

Survival was never pretty, but it could be damned stubborn at times.

They passed a broken handcart outside a shuttered weaver’s shop. For a heartbeat he was ten years old again, breath clawing the back of his throat while talons scraped circles across the boards. A garbled sound bubbled up, and Gideon struggled to keep it down. He blinked twice and gripped at Bastion’s reins, too tight. The scraping sound came again as Bastion faltered, hoof grinding against stone.

Just a horse’s step. Nothing more. Get ahold of yourself.

When they came upon a goat tied to a post, it turned its head to assess their passing for a moment, then returned to chewing its cud with a bored flick of the ear.

“Bad sign when even the livestock judge you,” Lucien said.

Gideon adjusted his mantle. The fabric seemed too crisp here, the etched scripture on his breastplate too bright under the wan light.

They soon reached the market road, which passed for the town’s central artery. Stalls sagged with produce that had survived demon storms but not much more. An old man with a scar across his temple paused mid-step, his mouth forming Gideon’s name before thought overtook impulse.

Lucien nudged him. “Old ones are staring.”

“Garret Jordan,” Gideon said. “By nightfall, he’ll have half the town convinced I can raise the dead.”

“There are worse accusations.”

“Name one.”

“Gossip.”

They passed a smaller, chipped ward-stone, set at the intersection of two streets, Gideon knew there were more. Seven to pull the Flame. Seven for the breath that answers it. The Templar catechism rose without effort.

He spared a glance backward as they cleared the market square. People lingered, their silhouettes blurred by distance.

“Come tomorrow,” he muttered, “they’ll have rewritten me three times over.”

The climb toward the Templar garrison keep was steeper than memory, or perhaps his bones were simply older now. The keep itself rose atop the crest of a man-made hill within the town’s makeshift walls. Its stonework clean in a way the town was not. Prayer cloths stretched taut from tower to tower here, fresh oil glinting in every sigil.

Lucien whistled. “Well, someone’s been polishing their piety.”

As they crossed through the keep’s main gate into the outer courtyard, the silence broke in the ringing of steel and strained voices.

A semicircle of knights, young and veteran alike, drilled beneath the open sky, their practice blades thudding against padded dummies. Their movements were clean and synchronized. Every swing rose and fell with ceremonial precision, forming patterns meant for procession grounds, not demon threats.

Gideon felt his jaw tighten, the old instinct of command sliding into place .

Lucien tipped his chin toward the edge of the yard closest to him, drawing Gideon’s eye. Well away from the others, a slender figure worked at a battered practice dummy as if the world depended on each strike. Dark hair fell into his eyes with every swing, sweat plastering the strands across his brow. He was chanting under his breath as wood met straw:

“Shield the meek. Strike the wicked. Guard the Faith. Revere the Saints.”

Each line punctuated by another blow, another perfect, useless form.

Lucien leaned closer. “Devout… or being punished with style.”

The attempt at humor did not help. If anything, it made the pressure behind Gideon’s teeth sharper.

These forms would not keep any of them alive, not against the demons that prowled beyond the wards.

He forced himself to look away.

The ward-stones along the courtyard pulsed and then faded with their passing, as if recognizing him even when the living did not. He dismounted, boots sinking into the hard-packed earth and sending up small plumes of dust to curl around his leg. The keep’s tall windows stared down at him, dark and patient.

A stableboy sprinted from the far side of the yard, skidding to a halt with a bow that was more nerves than grace.

Gideon handed Bastion’s reins over but kept a firm grip as he leveled a look at the boy.

“Mind yourself. This one’s mean.” He clicked his tongue in command. Bastion ignored him with the slow disdain of a creature who had long since decided he answered to no one.

Lucien handed off Sasha’s reins with a cheerful smile. “If she bites, bite back. Establish dominance.”

The boy’s Adams apple bobbed once with his nod, then he took both sets of reins and led the horses away with the cautious steps of someone guiding lit fuses.

“So,” Lucien said, “this is home.”

Gideon looked past the walls to the town beyond, at its patched rooftops, crooked chimneys, and the bell tower with its permanent lean. Everything here waited for someone to attend it. Someone who had not come back until now.

“No,” he mumbled. “Just the place I started.”

Lucien stepped beside him. “Well, at least the drinks are sure to be bad and the politics worse.”

The smallest ghost of a smile touched Gideon’s mouth. “Do you have a comment about everything?”

“It’s a gift.” Lucien clapped him on the shoulder. “Off to meet the local tyrant. What’s his name again?”

Gideon exhaled once. “Preceptor Corvan.”

Lucien grimaced. “Preceptors,” he muttered. “Never liked their kind on principle.”

Together, they walked toward the keep’s doors. The tension in Gideon’s chest drew taut, settling into something steadier, something belonging to the man he had trained to become, not the boy who once ran these streets. River’s End needed a firm hand now, not memories.

The interior of the keep was immaculate in the way of places that cultivated safety in the form of judgment. Stone floors carried a scrubbed, bone-bare sheen, and banners hung with monastic precision, black cloth marked by the silver-and-crimson sunburst of the Order, as untouched by wind as by doubt. Even the silence felt curated, as if noise itself required absolution before entering.

Beneath that sanctified hush, Gideon caught the faint static tang of spent wards. Corvan had poured his strength into sealing these walls, weaving sanctum protections thick as pride while the town was left with whatever protections could be cobbled together from old rituals and newer fears. The imbalance soured the back of Gideon’s throat.

Lucien’s boots echoed too loudly, a deliberate intrusion into the quiet he clearly enjoyed.

Two young acolytes swept the corridor ahead. They dipped their heads with the reflexive reverence drilled into them, but their eyes flicked away from Gideon with a skittishness that settled like dust.

Lucien tore a piece of waybread from his pouch and bit into it with a crunch meant to reassure, though it only made one boy flinch harder. “Easy lad,” he said around the mouthful, “No sin to be hungry.”

Gideon walked on without slowing.

The inner vestibule shifted into marble, pale and veined with gold, polished to a shine that reflected ambition more than humility.

Gideon inclined his head toward the tall double doors ahead, bound in etched iron and glazed with dried consecration wax. The sigils shimmered faintly, eager to prove their piety. “Knight Commander’s office.”

“Subtle,” Lucien murmured.

Gideon rapped his hand on the wood once and pushed the door open without waiting for an answer.

Inside the antechamber, a single bench stood against the far wall while a narrow desk perched against another, closest to the opposite door. A young man in acolyte white sat hunched at the desk, scribbling with the desperate urgency of someone transcribing his own sins. He did not look up until Gideon spoke.

“Bishop Gideon Holt.”

The quill froze mid-stroke. The clerk’s eyes darted up and then down again, escaping the moment as quickly as possible.

“Preceptor Corvan is in meditation,” he said, his tone careful and thin. “He would ask your patience.”

Lucien sat on the bench with a creak that made the brazier’s flame shiver. “Or the censer smoke isn’t quite choking enough, yeah? Depends on the translation.”

The clerk offered no retort, and Gideon let the silence settle, the weight of it expanding until the room felt smaller.

The door ahead was thick and a little too proud of itself. Behind it waited a man Gideon had long thought he had left in his past, one who had lectured him as a child about faith and discipline from the safety of a vocation that would not risk the battlefield where such discipline mattered. A man who had built his authority on unquestioned faith and the comfort of distance. Years had done nothing to temper his opinions about Corvan Jareth.

Lucien leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “You know that’s your office now.”

Gideon did not reply, but he flicked his eyes toward Lucien, a slight gesture urging silence without granting the satisfaction of saying so aloud.

Lucien refused to take the hint. “Could just…” He mimed a quick kick with one foot. “Take it,” he murmured. “Would save time.”

The idea brushed Gideon like a spark, dangerously tempting, and just as quickly dismissed.

The door finally opened, its hinges releasing a long, ceremonial groan. A different clerk stepped out, precise and over‑rehearsed in his movements, and drew breath to offer Gideon the formal greeting owed to a superior.

Gideon did not wait for it. His stride hit a sharper rhythm, shoulders angling just enough to force the clerk aside. He cut through the space between them without a word, the dismissal unmistakable in the way he never broke pace.

The office held its own constructed severity, softened only by a stained-glass window that filtered sunlight into deep reds and muted golds. Incense hung thick enough to taste; beneath it, parchment and old ink offered the only honest scent in the room.

Corvan sat behind a broad desk, like an icon arranged for veneration. His robes were immaculate, black and crimson, without a single fold out of place. His hands rested lightly on a leather-bound codex, fingers poised with the care Gideon associated with men who handled ideas more often than steel. A ceremonial longsword stood upright beside the desk, gleaming from disuse.

Corvan lifted his gaze with slow deliberation. His face had thinned with age, cheekbones sharpened by self-denial and too many fasting days. His eyes were pale and washed clean of warmth. They fixed on Gideon with a measured judgment, as though cataloging flaws.

“Brother Gideon,” Corvan said at last. The pause surrounding the title carried more weight than the word itself. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Preceptor,” Gideon answered, the greeting dry on his tongue.

Lucien stepped lightly into the moment and took up residence against the windowsill. “It’s Bishop now, technically,” he said, voice smooth as oiled leather.

Lucien’s tone was playful; the reminder wasn’t. For all his ritual power, Corvan still answered upward. And while he may have matched Lucien in rank if not in temperament, neither sat above a Bishop .

Corvan’s eyes flicked toward Lucien in a brief flash before returning to Gideon.

“I trust the road from the capital treated you kindly?”

The politeness scraped at him. Small talk, now? As if either of them cared for pleasantries.

“Kindness wasn’t in season,” Gideon said. “We found a group of pilgrims on the plains. Demons reached them before we could. Had to perform the rites without witness.”

Corvan released a breath shaped to sound empathetic, the type of soft sorrow he wielded like a tool. “Tragic. Yet the Saints teach us that even the best of us , ” he said, gesturing faintly at Gideon. “Cannot be everywhere. Our limitations temper us.”

A hot, rushing roar crowded Gideon’s ears, swallowing everything else, but his face remained locked in stone. He pulled a folded parchment from his breast and set on the desk with a care so precise it skirted the edge of mockery. “I carry orders from the High Council.”

The change in Corvan was subtle: a tightening of fingers on the codex, a single breath drawn more sharply than the last.

“Orders,” he echoed.

“Effective immediately,” Gideon began. The pleasure of saying it nearly curled a smile at the edge of his mouth when he added, “I assume command of the River’s End garrison.”

The silence that followed held a deliberate, musical note, as though Corvan were composing a piece before Gideon’s eyes with every potential reaction considered and discarded until only the least revealing remained.

“This is… unexpected,” he said.

Lucien’s smile thinned to almost nothing, his voice dropping low enough that only Gideon caught it. “Obviously,” he muttered.

Corvan’s expression barely shifted, though a small muscle near his temple strained against composure. “And the Council finds this reassignment appropriate?”

“They find it necessary,” Gideon replied.

For a heartbeat, Corvan’s gaze skittered, a quick, nervous flick Gideon recognized too well. The man was grasping for footing, for any scrap of authority he might straighten back into place. Gideon caught the stutter of calculations behind the man’s eyes, each stumbling before it found shape. Watching him scramble for dignity was like watching a man try to gather water in his hands, inevitably futile, and for Gideon, somehow strangely satisfying.

Corvan inclined his head in a gesture that might have read as obedience if one didn’t look too closely. “Of course, I serve at the Order’s pleasure.”

“I’ll need status reports for the transition,” Gideon said. “And the current whereabouts of Marcus Thorne.”

Corvan’s brows rose with controlled surprise. “Thorne? He is… diligent, though hardly seasoned. Less than a year knighted. Are you certain?”

“I have my reasons.”

Gideon let the comment land and sit between them. He held Corvan’s gaze in a silence just long enough to make the man feel it, and when it no longer interested him, Gideon released the moment.

“Thorne?”

“In the yard,” Corvan said, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle along his sleeve. “Reflecting. Much as he’s been all week. I find instruction takes deeper root when written into the body as well as the mind.”

I remember well.

Gideon turned toward the door without further comment while Lucien peeled himself off the windowsill.

“Bro... Bishop Holt,” Corvan said, his mouth chewing each syllable of Gideon’s new title like something foul in his mouth.

Gideon paused.

“River’s End is spiritually delicate. I do hope your presence will not disturb the balance we’ve labored so long to protect.”

Gideon met his gaze. “Oh, I imagine it will,” he said, then he stepped out, letting the door whisper shut behind him.

Neither he nor Lucien spoke until they had exited the outer antechamber and were well out of hearing.

Lucien let out a low whistle. “That was about as warm as a crypt wind.”

Their steps moved in rhythm across the polished stone, the keep stirring around them, doors shifting, distant voices rising, incense drifting like a memory.

“Could have gone worse,” Gideon said.

“How? With a duel?”

Gideon huffed with the faintest edge of disbelief in it. “He’d have to ask permission to even make the challenge.”

The thought carried its own absurdity, and before he could stop it, the rest followed. An image of Corvan, solemn as ever, trying to lift that ceremonial sword, let alone wield it. A quiet laugh slipped out, low and genuine, easing the weight on his shoulders if only for a breath, just long enough for his hand to push at the keep’s main door.

Outside the keep, the training yard’s clatter reasserted itself. The crossed the expanse, eyes hunting the yard for the young knight. There had been little change in the shape of the space since the day Gideon had first crossed it as a child of no more than six. The walls still slumped against the keep proper, forming a long, walled perimeter interrupted with boring regularity by the knights’s barracks building, the stables and other outbuildings. It all weighed heavier now that it was under his command, but the vines and sagging sandbags did not matter. The knights did, their neat, human-focused forms still wrong. Gideon’s gaze tightened, marking what would have to be unmade and rebuilt.

Lucien folded his arms, studying the yard with a sideways, knowing tilt of his head, and pointed to the brown-haired youth they had noticed when they first arrived. “Ten silver says that’s the one we’re after.”

Gideon veered in the boy’s direction, gravel shifting under his boots.

“I’d lose,” he ground out the words as if the boy had offended him in some way.

Gideon studied the boy’s form once more, the useless pattern of the strike, the stance a breath too narrow, his cadence too slow. He was focusing on the words too much.

“Shield the meek.” Whack! “Strike the—”

The sword blade slipped on a warped seam and ricocheted off to one side, putting the boy off balance. He hissed and nearly dropped the sword. But he recovered, reset, and kept going.

And he kept adjusting, small and instinctive corrections each time the blade bit poorly. Back in Sanctuary, when he had accepted this command, Gideon had wondered why Brother Benedict had recommended one so young; now he understood. That stubborn willingness to learn through failure was rarer than talent.

With the right training, the boy could be useful, Gideon allowed. If the world did not kill him first.

The young man noticed them late. He turned sharply, sword half-raised in pure instinct rather than readiness. His armor was clean but with the worn edges of gear passed down through too many hands.

“Sir!” the boy barked, snapping into a salute, sword lifted, hilt at his chest, blade angled skyward. His hand jerked wrong at the last second, bringing the edge far too close to his own face. If the blade had been properly sharpened, he might’ve carved the tip of his nose clean off.

“At ease,” Gideon said.

He lowered the blade and straightened.

“Marcus Thorne,” Gideon said.

The boy blinked. “Y-yes, sir.”

Gideon nodded once. “I’m your new Knight Commander.”

Marcus froze. A flush crawled up his neck. He snapped back to attention, but not fast enough to hide the shock. Gideon could see it plainly, the disbelief that a commander would know his name.

Gideon continued, “Bishop Gideon Holt.”

Marcus’s mouth fell open. He didn’t speak, but Gideon recognized the look. The awe shaped by rumor. The expectation that came with it. It pressed close and unwelcome. Gideon hated it. Hated the stories. Hated the place whose name he refused to utter.

To Marcus’s credit, he managed to smooth his features quickly enough for Gideon to pretend he never saw the questions most young knights would have been stupid enough to ask.

Lucien gestured lazily at the dummy. “So? Which is it? Devotion or penance?”

If Lucien had meant the diversion as a means to relieve the tension, he only half succeeded.

Marcus swallowed. “Penance, sir. I uh… may have uh…” The boy’s chin drooped to his chest, making the rest barely audible, “set the Preceptor’s copy of the Book of Vigilance on fire.”

Lucien blinked. “You what?”

He winced. “It was an accident, sir. Truly. But there was wax and candles…” He shuddered, “Then poof.”

A second passed before he remembered who he was speaking to, and he quickly returned to a straighter posture.

Gideon did not waste the moment. “As of today, you’re reassigned. You’ll serve as my field aide. Direct support, reports, coordination, shadowing missions.”

“I…sir …“ Surprise tightened into something close to fear. Then his brow creased and his eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

Gideon held the boy’s gaze in silence, long enough for Marcus to come to the horrifying realization of his mistake on his own, but didn’t make the boy suffer too much. He remembered being this boy once, stunned and trying to make sense of a world where anyone, much less his Knight Commander, knew his name. Gideon recognized insolence when he saw it—his eyes fell on Lucien out of habit—this wasn’t it.

“Templar tradition,” Gideon offered, the only explanation he cared to give.

Marcus drew in a quick breath and squared his shoulders.

“I won’t let you down,” he said, too fast, but steadier for the effort.

“You’ll report to me daily after combat drills, mid-watch, operations review. I call for you—even if I don’t—you are there. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” Still eager, still too tight. Gideon would have to work on that.

“You’ll start briefings with me tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lucien will run you through briefing and formation protocols.”

Lucien clapped Marcus on the shoulder, knocking him half a step off-balance. “Don’t panic. Only one aide ever passed out on the first day.”

Marcus stiffened.

Lucien softened just enough to steady the moment. “That was a joke.”

As he turned away, Gideon heard Lucien behind him, muttering in mock solemnity, “First rule: never quote scripture in the middle of a sword fight. Second: always know where your commander keeps his patience. Hint: it’s never on his person.”

A faint smile tugged at Gideon’s mouth.

He did not let it linger too long, and by the time he found his feet on the path to the keep’s chapel, all trace of it was gone.

The chapel sat where it always did, behind the keep in the far western corner. In every keep, every memory; same chapels, same training yards. No imagination, just doctrine; as familiar as a scar.

The stone arches loomed ahead, their stained-glass windows dulled with centuries of grime. The doors yawned half-open, shadows spilling out like something sacred and spent.

Inside, the pale stone walls held the midday light in muted bands of crimson and gold.

He had come, because tradition demanded it. He felt the duty, if not the zeal, and let habit guide him.

His boots found soft echoes on the worn flagstones between the half-dozen pews that slouched in tired rows before a simple, stone altar. Scripture swept its surface, hand-chiseled, now worn and uneven. Prayed into silence.

Someone occupied that silence.

A knight knelt before the altar with hands clasped and head bowed. The hushed whisper of prayer emanated from him, though his lips barely moved. His great sword lay unsheathed across the stone in offering, a black-threaded set of prayer beads looped neatly over the hilt.

Gideon had not expected to find anyone here so late. He paused, caught between an unwillingness to intrude and an eagerness to be gone from this place. Duty tipped the balance.

He cleared his throat softly as he stepped forward. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

The knight’s hands fell slowly to the altar.

“The Saints are patient,” the knight said, eyes opening. “I am… learning.”

The man rose in a single deliberate motion and turned. Dark eyes flickered to the sigil of his office on Gideon’s armor and then back up to meet Gideon’s.

The knight offered a nod with crisp discipline. “Brother Broderick Hale.”

Gideon returned the gesture. “Bishop Gideon Holt.”

Broderick’s gaze settled on Gideon with a mix of respect and appraisal. No doubt measuring the man against the myth.

“You have traveled far,” Broderick said. “Your reputation proceeds you.”

Gideon suppressed a wince. “Reputation rarely travels accurately.”

“Often. But perhaps not so with yours.” Broderick’s tone carried certainty without no flattery.“ Your actions at Hallowed Ridge were decisive.”

And there it was. Spoken bluntly, without hesitation. The certainty that rubbed raw and sharp against years of distance he had tried to build between him and the place name he never wanted to hear again.

Gideon’s jaw tightened. “You speak of it as though you were there.”

But that was impossible. He knew every name of every survivor.

Broderick Hale was not among them.

“I have studied the accounts.” There was a subtle shift in his posture to something straighter, bladed. “Few men could have held that rift. Fewer still could have made the choices required.”

Annoyance pricked at Gideon, sharp and unwelcome. Did this man have any idea of what he was invoking?

Gideon studied him a moment longer, the set of his jaw, his shoulders, steady and unwavering, solid as a brick upon which one might built a Saint’s damn church. Broderick knew exactly what he was doing, and he was not doing it lightly.

“It was an impossible mission; we did what we had to do,” Gideon said.

“ So the records say.” Broderick’s fingers flexed once, reining something in. “Sacrifice is not often clean.”

Gideon nodded toward the blade on the altar.

“You pray with your sword drawn?”

“The sword guards the soul, as the body guards the Flame,” Broderick said by rote. Then, a flicker of dry, almost hidden humor: “Old habits die hardest in places like this.”

The corner of Gideon’s mouth twitched despite himself.

“Have you come for prayer?” Broderick asked, with a hint of something hopeful in his voice.

“Tradition,” Gideon replied. “Reflection, not prayer,”

Gideon turned toward the arched exit before he might register Broderick’s reaction. “I should not keep you from yours. May it serve you well.”

“You as well, Bishop Holt.” Broderick’s voice followed him, measured, unreadable. “River’s End has need of your strength.”

Gideon paused long enough to absorb the weight of those the words. A warning, perhaps? Or a simple truth spoken plainly? He could not say.

Outside, the light struck sharper, cooler. Memory rode in with it, with names he carried, and those he could not.

He descended the chapel steps slowly. The sounds of River’s End and the keep returned: practice swords and hammering, a child’s cry, cloth snapping in the wind. Life pressing on and indifferent.