CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I do not come to you lightly. I am no revolutionary. I am not strong. But I am not blind. Enclosed is a ledger. It contains names. Records. Rotting secrets. It is the only thing I have managed to smuggle out piece by piece over the past five years. I do not ask for justice. Only for light. For someone to see. If nothing else—let my name be cursed, let it be forgotten—but please, let the screams stop.”
Witness name redacted. Sealed court proceeding on Lord Eramus Steeples. 985 NE.
The boy tugged weakly at the ropes biting into his wrists. Every inch of him throbbed from the beating, but it was the ribs that screamed the loudest. Sharp pain flared with each shallow breath. He slumped in the corner of the barred wagon, staring through the wooden slats with sullen eyes.
Abruptly, the wagon creaked to a halt. There was an exchange of distant words ahead from his captors.
Boots approached with a crisp thud. The reason for their stop wore a cloak so white it seemed to glow in the gloom. Steel polished to mirror brightness gleamed on his shoulders and chest. It must take him an hour each day just to keep it that spotless. The boy squinted. That face... Exodio? Yes—Child Captain Exodio. How did he know his name and face?
“You stand accused of grave crimes, boy,” Exodio intoned, voice as cold and precise as his armor. “They tell me you assaulted a Child of the Light. A crime punishable by death. And yet... you are young. And already bloodied.” His gaze lingered on the bruises. “Repent, and the Light will surely forgive.”
“I repent nothing, my Lord,” the boy said, chin lifting despite the pain. His voice was brittle, but his eyes flared with defiance. That gave Exodio pause.
“There is mercy in the Light for those who seek it,” the Captain said, his tone sharpening. “I offer you a path to redemption. Will you not take it?”
“I understand, my Lord,” the boy said. “But I have no regrets. I struck no man without cause. Your Child was threatening a younger boy—barely ten. It was a child’s game, nothing more. But your soldier took a naked blade to it. I stepped in. I stand for the weak. Do the precepts not say ‘The shepherd must tend to even the runt of the flock.’”
Exodio’s brow arched at the audacity of this boy quoting scripture to him. His jaw flexed. “You may not know the full story, child.”
“What more do I need to know? I was there.” the boy snapped. “The Child drew steel over a game of make-believe. He didn’t ask a question, didn’t give a warning. Just swung. Who else would stop him?”
Exodio was silent for a moment, parsing what had not made it into the reports. Convenient omissions, no doubt.
“You overstepped,” he said at last. “A civilian intervening against an officer—it’s reckless. And dangerous.” He gestured at the boy’s battered frame. “You could have been killed.”
“These bruises aren’t from him. I gave him better than he did.” the boy muttered, forcing himself to stand despite the pain. “They’re from the others. His friends.”
Exodio’s lips thinned. “Some among us are... overly zealous,” he said, almost grudgingly. “Sometimes, innocents are caught in the blaze we call justice. That is not the Light’s will. I’ll speak with the Child in question.”
The boy bowed his head, just slightly. “As the Lord wills. Am I free to go, then?”
Exodio studied him. “You’re not from this town. What brings you here?”
“I came to join the Children of the Light.”
That caught the captain off guard. His brows rose, lips parting slightly. “You came to join us—and your first act was to brawl with one of our officers?”
“Yes, sir.”
Exodio folded his arms, his tone suddenly more curious than cold. “Why?”
The boy didn’t hesitate. “Because it was the right thing to do.”
For a long breath, Exodio was still. Then—unexpectedly—he laughed. A dry, rasping sound like iron scraping leather.
“Well,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Perhaps we do have a place for you after all.”
Halfhand awoke to silence.
For a fleeting second, he believed he was dead—drifting in that liminal stillness between worlds as his life flickered before his eyes. But then the pain came, dragging him back like hooks in his flesh. Burning ribs, a twisted knee, the raw ache of muscles torn and bruised. He gasped.
The memory struck like a hammer.
The battle. The witch. Jena’s dead eyes. The flames. The void.
He tried to rise, but agony surged through him. His arms shook with the effort. He pressed a hand to his side and stifled a groan, bracing against the sharp stab of broken ribs. With a ragged breath, he forced himself upright.
And then he saw her.
Jena.
Alive.
Sitting just feet away.
His breath caught in his throat. No. No, that couldn’t be right.
He remembered her body on the ground.. He had felt her life flicker and vanish like a candle in the wind.
But here she was. Breathing. Pale, yes—gray-lipped and sunken-eyed—but undeniably alive.
He stared at her, uncertain if his own blood loss had finally cracked his mind.
She met his gaze. Her expression was blank for a moment, then curled faintly at the edges. “You look awful, Lord Knight.”
His throat worked. He swallowed the lump. “You should see yourself.”
Her laugh was thin. Hollow. Her voice was distant and strained.
Halfhand looked down. His armor was gone, stripped away and left in a twisted heap beside her. His body was a mess of cuts—long, clean lines where the shattered steel had carved through flesh. Jena must have peeled the armor off him while he was unconscious. They looked like metal scrap now.
How long had they been lying here?
He searched and saw Viellain sitting slumped near the horses. He didn’t look up, but his head inclined slightly to acknowledge Halfhand’s awakening.
“The House is gone,” the Inquisitor said quietly, nodding to the smoldering ruins on the hill. “Burned through the night. Even the pine bones. Nothing left.”
A black scar now marked where the Sleepless House had once stood, coals still glowing in the daylight like the last embers of a funeral pyre. Smoke clung to the landscape, sour and greasy, as if the place itself had resisted being unmade.
“I’m out of weapons,” Viellain muttered. “Out of tricks. We lived. All of us….somehow.”
There was no victory in his tone. Just exhaustion.
Viellain stood slowly, revealing the eschar of burns on his body. He looked down and then commanded Halfhand. “You need to check my Cage.”
Halfhand approached. The familiar haze of burnt flesh and scorched fibers lingered heavily around the Hand of LIght. Halfhand brushed away the soot caking the man’s back. The hard black ink was still there—twisted runes and iron-black lines, etched into flesh like chains. Despite the battle, the flames, and the force that had nearly killed them all, the Cage remained whole.
Halfhand’s finger traced the pattern over the angry red flesh. No interruptions.
“It’s unbroken.”
“The Light blesses and curses me,” Viellain said, moving stiffly towards the horses.
Jena watched from where she sat. Her voice came soft, uncertain. “What was that?”
Viellain didn’t answer.
Halfhand did. “A soul-cage. Inked deeply with founder’s iron. It's meant to keep things out. The Power, possession, corruption. For those willing to pay the cost.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Does every Hand of Light have one?”
“No. Only the ones who’ve seen too much. The ones willing to give up their place in the Wheel for a sliver of control. It works just as well as keeping things in.”
She looked disturbed at the implication. “If he dies, his soul is trapped?”
Halfhand nodded. “Bound. Rotting alone in eternity. No hope of rebirth. It’s... a permanent end to their thread in the Pattern.”
Jena turned away, visibly shaken.
But the mention of souls twisted something in Halfhand’s gut.
Because he remembered.
He remembered the moment Jena died. The clarity of it. Her breath failing. Her chest still. Her soul departing like a thread severed. He had felt it—known it.
And yet... he’d done something.
Instinctively. Desperately..
He had placed his hand on her and called—not with words, but with will, with the silent scream of his conduit. Something passed through him—his life, his flame, his essence.
And something had answered.
She had drawn breath again.
Now she sat here, quiet and pale, like a reflection in still water.
Alive.
But how?
He didn’t know. No one in the Children of Light could be trained for that. The soul was sacred. Resurrection was heresy—blasphemy. The Light gave and took in its time.
But Halfhand had... broken that.
And he didn’t know how.
He studied Jena’s movements, each blink, each breath. She looked like herself. Sounded like herself. But still, something within him crawled. As if she cast two shadows when no one else did.
And deeper still—beneath bone, beneath thought—he knew something in him was gone.
He reached down, touched the earth, and reached with his will through his conduit.
Pain exploded through his chest. Blinding. Raw. He gasped, staggered.
The conduit of his soul was severed. Dead. His link to his inner Light’s flow had been burned away.
The cost of what he had done was starting to manifest.
He had given her a second life.
But at what price?