The Hunt: The Illian Desecration --- &RPaward

[halfhand]

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?

[halfhand]

Chapter Sixteen
“I tried to speak to Loria again. My old maid. She just shook her head and wept. Later that night, she was gone. I hear her sometimes beneath the floorboards. Scraping. I think I’m forgetting how to talk to people who aren’t afraid of me. Or who don’t look at me like I’m already a ghost.”
-Illian journal. Author unlisted.

Doubt. It has been time since Halhand felt true doubt. Faith has always provided him clarity and purpose. Since joining the Order, he has not felt his faith shaken thus.

He had acted with Jena with impulse and emotion and now the voice of Light had abandoned him. This was on him. A failure as a Knight and Acolyte.

He flexed his hand of sacrifice and felt it as it truly was. A physical deformity of a cripple. His price for his abilities, but just a reminder of weakness.

But when he looked upon Jena, he could not say he regretted it. Even in the pain of his doubt, he still felt in his core that it was the right thing to do.

But no, he must move on. His soul was just wounded, he decided. Torn. It will heal. There was nothing else that would make sense to him. To drag his heavy beaten body forward into his quest again with or without his abilities.

It was a day’s meager reprise before they were packed up for the journey again. Packing was not hard. Their belongings were significantly lighter than when they started their journey.

Viellain had lost all of his hard ordinances in the battle with the Levianthan, but he still had a apothecary’s worth of medicines, which he emptied out on their extensive wounds. Both Children were slathered in pungent unguments and balms, and almost every surface wrapped in bandages. Jena seemed to have escaped with the least of the visible wounds. Viellain had stitched her lacerations with catgut, bandaged her wrist tightly and prescribed her two weeks of iron pills. Her clothes were still most intact and just required a rinse in the river. Meanwhile, Halfhand and Viellain were now dressed in a hodgepodge of piecemeal clothes barely covered by their ragged traveling dusters. They looked and smelled like a troupe of vagabonds.

Viellain released their last messenger pigeon. It flew off north in the direction of Murandy, where it will hopefully find the Child of Light reporting station. It carried their last potential message from this forsaken land, a cry for help into the void.

“Where’s the houndslayer? ” Viellain asked as he watched the pigeon disappear into the gray. “We too should leave soon.”

“I saw her by the Sleepless carcass. I will fetch her.” Halfhand went.



Jena was kneeling by the charred foundation of the Sleepless House, arranging the last stones of a simple cairn. The wreath she laid on top was woven from stalks of purple lion’s mane—wild, delicate blooms that seemed almost too gentle for this scorched ruin.

“Her favorite flowers,” She explained quietly.

Halfhand approached, frowning. “Whose?”

“The Lady. Her name was Meria.”

He stiffened, instantly alert. “You know her name. And why build a grave for her? She killed you. Almost.”

“She was sick,” Jena murmured, eyes still fixed on the flowers. “Sick in the mind. Poisoned by the land itself and its people. She too is a victim of Him.”

Halfhand’s voice turned hard. “Her poison killed countless men and women. Don’t romanticize madness, Jena.”

“She didn’t mean for me to see it,” Jena said, softer now. “But when she drank my blood, she took my memories. And... I took some of hers.”

“That’s dangerous,” Halfhand snapped. “Mind-hazards aren’t truth. Whatever you saw, it was bait for corruption.”

“No,” she said, eyes haunted. “There was honest purity in her pain. Raw and unvarnished.”

She stood slowly, voice steady, but laced with sorrow.

“She was married off young. Too young. Barely older than I am. They called her strange, fey-touched, but she was beautiful—beautiful enough to catch a lord’s eye. Lord Steeples.”

Halfhand wanted to interrupt her but her words flowed with a relentless cadence that could not be stopped. There was something compelling in her voice.

“He was a monster. But clever. Handsome. Charming. He never laid a hand on her—not directly. She wasn’t his toy. She was his trophy. A rare bird in a gilded cage, watched, displayed, and never allowed to fly. Anyone who got too close to her—maid, guard, servant—they vanished. Into his dungeons. Into his cruel games.”

“Isolation,” Halfhand said. “A torture of its own.”

“Worse than that. The people began to fear her as much as him. She was the monster’s pet, the only one untouched by his wrath. A curse in human form. She was blamed for things she never chose. Her only true companion was the weaver spiders in her empty opulent room, the ones who seemed to spin for her.”

Jena’s fists clenched.

“But she wasn’t blind. She wasn’t broken yet. Over the years, she gathered evidence. Names. Schedules. The truth. And she smuggled it out, piece by piece. Eventually, it reached the capital. The army came like the stories said.”

“And the Lord?”

“Dead before they broke the gates. Poisoned himself in his study. The coward’s way.”

“And so she was free.”

Jena shook her head. “The army left the estate to her. Her freedom. But the servants didn’t see her as their savior. Only as the wife of their tormentor. His curse. And they turned on her.”

Halfhand knew what happened next. He knew enough of the base psychology of the masses.

“She had delivered them from evil. And they made her pay for it.”

“Everything the Lord did to them, they did to her. Fivefold. For months. And she endured it. Silent, alone, believing she deserved it.”
Her voice cracked.

“She repressed those memories. Tried to forget. But they’re still there. Gnawed and mangled, but alive. You can’t imagine the things I saw.”
Halfhand looked away, not able to meet the pain in Jena’s eyes.

“She was... shredded. Not just in body, but in soul. Torn down until there was nothing left but instinct. And then—at her lowest—she reached out. And that Power reached back.”

“She channeled?” Halfhand asked, quietly. “Better she had died there.”

“She awakened. Not from training, not with guidance. Not through joy or need. Through agony. Her first weave was a scream of her sundered soul.. And when it was done... the manor was painted in the blood of tormentors and innocent alike.”

Jena’s voice grew quieter.

“She didn’t run. She stayed. With her spiders. The only ones who understood her. She lived with the broken silence. For years.”

“But she wasn’t alone forever,” Halfhand guessed the rest of the tragedy.

Jena nodded. “She never called him by name. But he came like a whisper through the rotting halls. He came like Death. His skin was thin as paper. His voice—like dry leaves. Eyes glowing like starlight. He traveled in the company of another who was masked in leathers.”

“She tried to kill him the moment she saw him by reflex or by recognition. Her weaves lashed out—but he didn’t even flinch. He snuffed her strongest attempts like candlelight."

Jena’s gaze turned hollow.

“Even in her broken state, she tried to refuse him. But he was persuasive. His will was indomitable. He filled the broken cracks of her psyche with his poison. He told her the world had stolen from her. That she had bled for it. That it owed her. And he taught her how to take back.”

Halfhand whispered, “Blood curse.”

She nodded. “He taught her to drink the memory of blood to quench her emptiness. To draw strength from others' pain and take their humanity. He called it justice. But it wasn’t. He twisted her, stitch by stitch, until she wasn’t Meria anymore. Just hunger in silk. He took the last pieces of her and made them useful to him. The same as her prior Master.”

She looked back at the cairn.

“She wasn’t a monster until He came.”

Halfhand was silent for a long time.

Jena continued, voice low. “I think he’s why the darkhounds never came here. I think he’s the Wendigo. The one that feeds on the flesh of grief and ruin.”

She stepped back from the cairn, brushing dirt from her knees.

“She died long before we met her. But no one else will mourn her. So I will.”

Halfhand stood quiet next to her. He did not grieve or mourn for a dead witch, but he gave her the moment of silence. As the two turned away to the horses, Halfhand simply said “Do not tell Viellian” and Jena simply nodded.

Behind them, the ruins of the house still smoked, the ashes carrying the last remnants of a broken soul into the wind.