The disciple landed in a clean thud, letting the undying embers of radiant dust scatter around him. The tall man simply straightened up, head tilting beneath the hood as he took in the ritual chamber Sol had stumbled himself into: a strange chapel in the midst of nowhere, carrying the hymn of strangeness within itself.

  Sol's instinct surged despite the numbness in his limbs as he braced his legs and raised his hands. The first would come from the disciple without doubt, he thought. The wound along his ribs pulsed in terrible synchrony with the carvings on the walls. The red threads tightened around the notebook at his feet that he had abandoned upon the arrival, coiling around his ankles like something trying to anchor him to earth.

  The disciple raised a hand holding a blade.

  "Step back," the disciple said, as if addressing a dangerous relic rather than a human, a living boy. "You were not meant to touch that. Not meant to be here."

  Sol's jaw locked in fury. His entire body trembled from exhaustion, fear, and the sudden, nauseating clarity that flooded him at the words. "Then why," he protested, breath ragged, "is it always found under my feet, in the wake of my steps?"

  The disciple paused only for a heartbeat, but Sol could not see the expression, though it was without doubt flat, emotionless as the voice had been. The cloaked figure did not answer either, and silence engulfed the room.

  "You were supposed to die in the Trials," the disciple replied like matter-of-fact. "Your survival complicates the situation. Step away." His voice was mechanical, like each word was rehearsed a hundred times until evened out, flattened out of all emotions.

  Sol did not move, he did not bother heeding the warning. The radiance of flames in the disciple's palm brightened to coat the weapon in Sun's blessings.

  "Do not force this," he warned. "You are interfering with the future."

  Future.

  The disciple stepped once forward. Sol braced harder, ready to strike, ready to flee, ready to die, whatever the fate held for him.

  "No. You answer me! Why does the Cathedral hunt me? What do you want from me?"

  "You need to leave that now," he repeated. He pointed at the notebook with the tip of the blade.

  Sol straightened, exhaustion sharpening into something else, into anger.

  "Maybe I don't," he mocked the disciple, "Maybe, that's why it found me."

  Without heeding the words of the boy, the Disciple charged with a flaming blade slicing through the air, and the boy dodged it pathetically, slowly. Lifting his gun, he shot blindly at the cloaked figure. The disciple recovered instantly from the missed bullet, and pivoted into position, going in for another killing strike with his blade thrusted forward.

  Sol felt the air split beside his ear as he lurched backward, boots skidding across blood-slick wood. His lungs burned. His legs wavered. But the disciple pressed forward mercilessly, and the second arc of the blade clipped, burned, his shoulder. Pain rippled down his arm and shoulder as he staggered sideways, breath punched from his lungs and his nostrils flared for air.

  He was not fast enough to fight a sun-blessed soldier.

  "Do not resist," the man ordered in an apathetic tone. "Die."

  Sol barely ducked the next slash. Burning steel melting the stone of the chamber's wall, letting sparks scatter upon friction, carving a glowing line into one of the blood-etched shapes, breaking the moon.

  The disciple did not halt his relentless attacks. And Sol threw himself backward, crashing into a pillar with all his effort, and the blooming pain made his vision blurred, blood dampened his bandages. He lifted his arms too late as the disciple's armored fist hammered into his ribs— into white agony.

  "Gah!" He collapsed to a knee, breathing torn out in a strangled gasp. Another strike came down; Sol rolled blindly, feeling the wind of the blow skim his skull. He scrambled up, clutching the gun with shaking fingers, stumbling, scurrying across the blood-slick floor like a trapped, cornered animal.

  He could not see anything, he could not aim. He stared into nothingness helplessly, as the disciple advanced towards him.

  "This is not execution," he warned sharply. "This is the mercy of the Sun."

  "What—" Sol coughed blood, "a joke."

  "You do not understand what you carry."

  Sol's voice tore out of him in desperation, "Then tell me!"

  "A disbelief in the Sun's authority," he answered.

  A low hum rose from beneath the floorboards, vibrating up through Sol's body, into his bones, up into his clenched teeth. The ritual circles scorched themselves darker as if they were absorbing life within the room.

  The disciple froze mid-stride as he felt reorientation. The journal beneath the fallen boy's hand fluttered open on its own, pages flipping in a violent exhale until they settled on a diagram he had already traced in the dirt days ago.

  Sun and Moon.

  A red flare of slithering red threads burst from the ledger, streaking up Sol's arm in a cold caress. He gasped at blistering-hot but strangely painless, threading itself beneath his skin like molten ink.

  He clutched his ribs, the wound burned.

  The disciple lunged to stop it, screaming with a voice strained in raw horror. "He carries it—he carries the mark—" He cried in his very first emotions.

  A violent shockwave blasted outward from the journal, hurling the disciple across the floor. His armor and cloak slammed against the far wall with a metallic clutter, cracking stone on impact. He slid to the ground, completely stunned, one arm trembling as he tried and failed to push himself upright.

  "S...stop. They sent us to contain you, to stop you—An anomaly."

  Sol stood up, clutching the ledger in his hand as he walked over to the fallen man.

  "Contain me...?" He asked. There was fire burning within him. Sol could no longer tell whether he was standing in a forgotten ruin or the heart of something that had been waiting for him. There was a surge of energy within him, letting him stand over the fallen cloaked figure.

  "You carry the fragment of the Sun." That was not the voice of the Disciple when he spoke. "A hurdle to the promise of a new world!"

  Sol froze, heart thundering, as the red threads coiled beneath his skin like serpents awakening to a new power. The air thickened, humming with the same scarlet energy that had slashed the disciple across the chamber. Dust and ash swirled violently around them, and the stench of blood grew stronger.

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  The disciple struggled to rise, but he did, armor now scuffed and burnt faintly from the shock.

  "You don't understand—he's... he's the one!" The disciple spat.

  Before Sol could respond, the disciple lifted his hand, gripping the blade in tightly. The motion seemed slow, but the shadow that erupted from it moved with unnatural speed. And he charged alongside it, like an after-image. The marionette!?

  Sol slid back with a dodge, spotting his fallen gun in the corner of the room. He let the shadow charge at him, and with another weak dodge, he rolled over to his weapon, clutching the ledger to his chest. He could feel the pull—the threads that were fluttering with each movement, tugging at his flesh, his thoughts.

  "It's mine to command! I—I am the conduit! Not him!" The disciple shrieked in terror, and anger both. It was words that confused the boy, but he paid them no interest, focusing of the fight instead. It had become two against one, and he could not possibly keep up with the Sun's Disciple. The man had gone man, he assumed.

  The marionette lunged. Its fist, larger than any human's, swung down towards Sol. He dove aside. The ledger flared red again, red threads snapping outward to meet the strike, and the marionette recoiled slightly, hissing as if scorched, but did not relent.

  Sol scrambled for footing, but the weight of his wound slowed him. Every step was agony; every movement, a struggle.

  The disciple stumbled forward in desperation, trying to maintain control of it’s own being. "It... It bends to him! Stop him!"

  Sol knew he had to strike along. He hurled the journal like a battering ram. The marionette absorbed the impact, smoke coiling along its shadowy limbs as they burned it's arm, then swung a leg in retaliation. Sol barely rolled aside, feeling the force brush past his arm, knocking him into the wall. Pain tore across his ribs. He gasped in agony once more.

  The notebook was gone, but he had the gun in his hands again, fingers closed around the cold steel of the gun tightly and firmly for he could not afford to lose it again. The marionette turned to him, shadow flickering like a live thing across its form, and eyes glowing unnaturally like eclipsed suns.

  It vanished, moving unnaturally as the disciple and it's marionette charged towards the boy, one fist colliding with the ground where Sol had just crouched. The impact sent shards of brick and mortar scattering across the basement's floor, teeth clattered together such as Sol’s. He rolled backward, gasping, every step slicing pain across his ribs.

  He needed a moment to aim. Sol fired again, and the flaming bullet grazed the arm of the disciple.

  He ducked as the shadow tore through the air, brushing past his shoulder. Sparks of red flared where the mark in his skin connected with the notebook's lingering threads in his mind, and Sol felt a sudden surge of energy. He turned around, shoved the gun forward, fortifying himself, and fired directly into the marionette's chest.

  The shadow convulsed, but survived.

  No. Sol gritted his teeth in frustration. It was a puppet after all.

  The disciple screamed, falling to his knees, unable to control the puppet anymore. But dashed to the boy, the marionette was stunned, so he put his entire focus on the disciple. He was slower and weaker now, Sol observed.

  He rolled towards a loose beam, using it to vault himself over the man's next swing, kicking him in the jaw. The figure parried, sliding back for just a moment. Sol took his chance as another shot cracked the air, bearing the final bullet, the flaming bullet of his gun punctured through the mass of the armor. The disciple against the far wall, bricks splintering under the force, and slid down lifelessly.

  With a significant effort to hold his body up, Sol stood in the ruins, staring down at the fallen man. The marionette nowhere to be seen had meant he was gone. And finally, the basement fell silent, save for the rasping of his own breath, every motion reminding him of the wound he carried, every shadow at the corners where the torches’ light did not reach whispering of the Cathedral.

  But why?

  Why?

  Why?

  Why?

  "Why do you dream of Old Solthar, when it has burned from history?"

  "Should you summon an eclipse over Solthar, I will never let it burn me away!” He screamed to the puppeteer, and blacks out.

  When he had woken, it was still in the damp and desolate basement, with remnants of battle surrounding him, and the dead man in the corner. An unknown amount of time had passed, it could’ve been a few minutes, hours or even days, Sol couldn’t grasp the passing of time. He scrambled around at the sight of his own doing and promptly escaped the chapel.

  · ? ·

  The city folded and twisted like a fever dream as Sol staggered through Solthar's crooked alleys, body still broken from the clash with the Sun's Disciples. Every rib throbbed, each breath a knife dragged and stabbed down his chest. His nostrils flared, and the sweat clung tightly to his skin.

  But what unsettled him more was the way the red threads didn’t really sleep anymore. They were glowing beneath his skin, tugging him awake when he tried to rest, whispering like veins full of fire. He could only see them if he squinted, and he could only feel them if he stilled. But they were there, like an ugly stamped carved into his body as if it were some wood. If he was distracted, busied himself with anything else, they would slowly disappear from his sight, as if slipping into their own reality.

  He prowled the streets half-limping, half-haunting, and everywhere he looked, the city showed signs of strangeness. Passing by the once familiar market square, he saw merchants doubling prices, their voices cracking as they argued with desperate families who clutched coins that suddenly meant nothing.

  But they give in because they buy with no desire, just need.

  And to that, Sol looked away, blind as everyone else, knowing these cracks were not random for he experienced the same. Their reach threaded through it all. Against just one of them, his victory meant nothing. His threats were ever empty, for he could not touch them or their reach.

  Sol’s steps carried him to a door he recognized: a narrow workshop hidden behind the marketplace. A little lonely, concealed in the shadows. Loen had led him here once, as if a lifetime ago, to Ioannis' Workshop. Here, the warmth of oil and iron dust with their hint of familiarity reached for him as he stepped through; those greatswords, and weapons were hung on the walls, calling out to him to be wielded.

  "You look like... you lost to a mule," Ioannis commented when Sol stepped in. He didn't ask why Sol was still alive. He didn't need to. Because that gun in Sol's pocket spoke louder than any words that could be exchanged.

  The boy lifted the faintly gleaming weapon and set it down on the counter, and it remained there rather unremarkably. He muttered back nothing, taking a seat by the counter and breathing for the first time in a while. His hands lingered there, before falling to his lamp.

  Ioannis took it with surprising gentleness. His hands wordlessly traced the steel, fingers sliding over the worn etchings to read incomprehensible letters. "Why bring it here? It's too perfect to be broken." He squinted closer, turning the chamber to the light. "An archaeologist... pulled it from Telmoria years ago. He said it was one of the ancient weapons... something forged before even the Cathedral had existed..."

  "And you gave it away for free?" Sol scoffed tiredly.

  "Priceless, it is."

  As he spoke, for a heartbeat, the metal glowed faintly of gold in an answer, it's veins of fire threading across the chamber. Ioannis hissed and almost dropped it, but Sol's hand slammed down, steadying the weapon.

  "No, it's not broken… it’s me." His curse and his weapon had been bound together. A promise he could not let go of his fate.

  Ioannis rubbed his hands on his apron. "Be careful where you point it. Weapons like that... they don't miss... Can't be broken, either… Don't know what happened to it, either." He fumbled with it again, tinkering with it's working, before Sol slid it back into its holster, feeling the weight anchor him once more. "But I've fixed… what I could."

  He dropped a few extra copper coins as payment, Sol looked through his savings running dry slowly but surely. The bit of coins he had earned here and there were not enough to last him much longer. He sighed, pocketing the remaining. He had to find something to eat, the marketplace was not an option, as unsafe as ever with the men in white patrolling around.

  Before leaving, he turned to ask, "You heard anything from Loen?"

  Ioannis frowned at the question. His eyes flicked to the door, then back, like he didn't want to say it. "Missing, he is. Chased by the Disciples... The boy's gone." He answered truthfully.

  For a moment, the red threads restlessly quivered inside Sol, like they wanted to tear through the walls, mimicking his feelings as much as he wanted to ignore them. He gritted his teeth.

  "Oh..." His throat felt raw as he whispered to himself. "Both of them are gone."

  Loen, vanished. Marguerite, swallowed by her own mirrors. His friends—if he could still call them that—were only there for a moment, bickering amongst each other, before disappearing like another memory.

  Sol stepped out into the night again, gun heavy at his side, the threads alive in his veins. The alleys felt emptier now. The city was unraveling, and with every step he took, he wondered if fate was dragging him to the same end as Solthar itself.

  He had to find someone, but this time, he let the tugs of threads guide him completely.