Somehow—by divine miracle or sheer dumb luck—they made it to the farmlands without further disaster.

  Caelus was doing his best to block out the ongoing exchange of war crimes and cheerful murder anecdotes echoing between the orc and the necromancer behind him. He’d tuned them out somewhere around “and then I used the spine as a stir stick—” and hadn’t looked back since.

  Perhaps Aurenos had finally shown mercy.

  Perhaps the stars had heard his prayers.

  Or perhaps his suffering had just reached a point of divine comedy.

  But the Veil Breaker loomed in the distance now—an obsidian monolith jutting into the sky, framed by fields of golden wheat that swayed in waves beneath it.

  It could’ve been beautiful. Majestic, even.

  If not for what lay in front of it.

  A farming settlement—or what was left of it. Scorched. Burned down to its bones. There were no bodies. No blood. No signs of battle. Just a graveyard of ash and silence.

  He felt something crack inside his chest. Something dark and hot.

  And Caelus snapped.

  “This is your fault!” He barked, wheeling on Sol the second they stepped foot onto the land. “We’re late! We’re late because you dragged us through every ridiculous detour like this was some leisurely family vacation!”

  Solferen said nothing.

  Caelus was pacing now, fists clenched, his voice rising. “If we had come straight here like we were supposed to—if you’d acted like this mission mattered instead of playing house with your deranged circus—maybe, maybe, we could’ve stopped this!”

  Still no answer.

  “They’re gone! Burned to ash! And we were too busy letting the necromancer window-shop for candied pears and pretending this whole thing isn’t a joke!”

  The others exchanged glances. Bella blinked, clutching her bag a little tighter. Anders bit his tongue. Even Rish whistled low under her breath. But no one interrupted.

  Caelus rounded on Sol, voice cracking now with frustration. “This was a village full of innocent people, and you—you wasted our time. You act like nothing matters. Like everything is some game to you. And now they’re gone.”

  Still nothing.

  Solferen just watched him. Calm. Quiet. Unmoving.

  Ten full minutes passed.

  The knight’s voice finally hitched to silence, breath heaving, face red with fury. He looked like he wanted to punch something. Or scream. Or both.

  Only then did Sol speak.

  Low. Even. Icy.

  “You really think that would’ve changed anything?”

  Caelus stared at him, unblinking.

  Sol’s eyes narrowed. “This place was scorched before we stepped foot out of your fucking church.”

  The silence that followed was a blade.

  Caelus barked a bitter laugh, stepping forward. “Oh really? And how would you know that? Just another one of your wild guesses? Visions?”

  Sol tilted his head slightly. The barest trace of a smile played on his lips. “I sent Varg to scout the moment we got back to camp.”

  Caelus turned sharply, his voice a hiss. “What?”

  Sol folded his arms. “The second you dragged your righteous ass back from the Pope’s lap, I had him running routes to every town on our path. Including this one. That was three days ago.”

  The knight’s blood ran cold.

  No.

  No, he didn’t—

  “You…” Caelus’ voice dropped. “You already knew?”

  “I suspected. Now I’m sure.” Sol shrugged, unbothered.

  Caelus just stood there. Staring. Mortified. The realization crashed over him like a wave of acid. He had come here bristling with righteous fury, ready to crucify Sol in front of everyone for negligence—only to find out the bastard had taken the mission more seriously than he had.

  And hadn’t told him. Because he hadn’t needed to.

  Because Sol had already handled it before he even thought to ask.

  A sharp breath, and Caelus’ teeth snapped shut painfully around the curse forming in his mouth.

  Sol turned away, already walking toward the ruins.

  “Now that your tantrum’s over,” he called back without looking, “shall we begin?”

  The others followed him.

  “Sooo… what are we doing here again?” Rish asked, squinting at the ruins. She looked entirely unbothered, as though she’d followed them into the apocalypse on accident and was only now realizing it.

  “In short?” Solferen said, tone far too casual. “We, or rather I’ve been hired by the Church to investigate some nonsense.”

  Rish turned sharply, dragging out every syllable. “You? Hired. By the Church?”

  “Aye,” Sol nodded with a lazy wave. “This one’s the proof.”

  He jerked a thumb toward Caelus, who glowered like it physically hurt him to be acknowledged.

  “Been tailing me for a week now,” Sol added with feign resignation. He made it sound like a burden.

  Rish squinted at Cael. “Ah. That explains.”

  Cael didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “And this place?” She turned back to the ruin.

  “Supposed to be a bandit attack,” Sol said with a shrug, as if it wasn’t the worst lie he’d ever heard.

  “Bullshit,” Anders muttered, kicking at the soot-covered ground. “No bandits did this.”

  The scorched earth crunched beneath their boots. The scent of burnt wood still lingered faintly in the air. The place hadn’t yet realized it was dead.

  Bella, who had been quiet for a few minutes now, finally spoke.

  “The vibes,” she said softly, eyes scanning the blackened ruins, “are awful.”

  Rish nodded, arms crossed. “Yep. Bad vibes.”

  “No,” Bella corrected gently. “I mean… really awful. There’s nothing here. No bodies, no spirits. No one died here.”

  Caelus turned sharply. “That’s not possible. It’s a burnt village.”

  She tilted her head, expression serene but unnervingly professional. “I’m a necromancer, Ser Knight. I’d know if anyone died here.”

  She presented it like it was a weather report. Blank. Final.

  Necromancer.

  The word hit like a rotten fruit to the chest.

  He'd slept twenty feet from that?

  He didn’t argue.

  They wandered deeper into the ruins, stepping over charred beams and shattered pottery. A few collapsed walls, a fallen roof, blackened like bone. Whatever had happened here—it wasn’t a normal fire.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Anders muttered, his magic already swirling faintly around his fingers. “Something’s wrong.”

  “I like it,” Rish added. “Feels honest.”

  Caelus scowled. “We’re here to gather evidence. Not commentary.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Oooh, so holy,” Rish cooed behind him. “You gonna smite the ash too?”

  Sol, naturally, wasn’t listening. He crouched near the remnants of what used to be a storage shed. His fingers brushed the edge of something dark embedded in the ground. A rune. Faintly pulsing.

  “Oi, shiny!” Rish drawled, peeking over his shoulder. “What’s this?”

  She was already moving toward it.

  “Don’t—” Sol started, but alas.

  She picked up a heavy stone marked with the sigil, turned it in her hand once, and slammed it into another burnt plank nearby.

  It cracked. The rune fizzled. Smoke hissed up from the break, curling in veins of shadow into the air.

  “Oops,” Rish said, completely deadpan.

  Everyone stared.

  Nothing else happened. Thankfully.

  “…You broke it,” Anders noted.

  “I sure did.” She nodded eagerly.

  The mage crouched beside the remains of the rune, squinting. “These are Tower sigils.”

  No.

  Caelus straightened. “That’s not possible.”

  Anders kept studying. “No, I’ve seen these. Back when I was still in the Tower. They use them for wards—magical control, containment, stuff like that.”

  Cael’s stomach dropped. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The world tilted—just slightly, but enough to make him doubt his footing.

  “You’re wrong.” Caelus’ voice was sharp. Cold. “The Towers are sanctified. They’re built to suppress magic, not spread it. This—” He gestured to the scorched ruins, to the blackened sigils carved into the stones—“is not their doing.”

  A beat of silence.

  Bella looked up. Quiet. Almost guilty. Her eyes flicked toward Sol.

  Sol didn’t even look up from where he crouched, just hummed. “Are you aware Blightreach is entirely the Tower’s doing?”

  Caelus blinked, lips parting. “What did you just say?”

  Sol stood, brushing ash from his gloves. “There’s a spire—Calverath. Right in the middle. Back when I built the camp—fourteen years ago—it wasn’t even half as cursed as it is now. Then the Crown and the Church got involved.”

  He scowled. “Shit got fucky.”

  Caelus’s face darkened. “What in the Rot did you just accuse the Pope of?”

  Sol turned slowly, eyes gleaming. “You heard me.”

  Caelus stepped forward—too close. “You think you’re clever. You think just because you’ve survived this long, you get to mouth off like you understand the world. But you’re a walking blasphemy with a backwater cult and a martyr complex.”

  Solferen didn’t flinch. “Oh, I’m sorry—does the leash chafe, little pup?”

  Cael’s voice sharpened. “At least I stand for something.”

  “Oh, you stand,” Solferen hissed, stepping into his space, “right at the edge of your own ignorance, waiting for someone to push you off.”

  Their faces were inches apart now. Breath sharp. Rage boiling in the air.

  If looks could kill, the air between them would be thick with the smell of corpses.

  “Do you want to run that past me again with your teeth still in?” Caelus spat, lips curling between a smirk and a scowl.

  “Which part?” Sol’s grin was all teeth and no mirth. “That your Pope plays god and eats the crumbs of demons, or that you’re too far up his ass to notice?”

  A sound scraped from Cael’s throat—somewhere between fury and disbelief.

  “Boys,” Rish called lazily from the side, hands spread in a gesture of theatrical confusion, “are you married or just homicidal?”

  Neither moved.

  But the tension broke. Not with violence—

  With rustling.

  A low, uneven shuffling in the tall grass.

  Everyone turned.

  The fight was over. For now. But the fire was not going out.

  From the field, a man stumbled into view. Clothes torn. Face smeared with soot and blood, eyes wide, unfocused. He looked half-starved. More of a ghost than a man.

  Caelus turned just in time to see the horror step into view—mumbling about stars, about songs, about shadows that breathe. He didn’t notice them right away. Just kept muttering.

  “They came down,” he whispered. “The stars. They sang—kept singing. Wouldn’t stop. Shadows in the corn. No faces. No hands. Just teeth—just teeth—”

  Caelus stepped forward cautiously. “Sir?”

  The man’s gaze snapped to him. Wild.

  Then he looked past them. Eyes landed on the Veil Breaker.

  “No,” he gasped. “Not again. Not again. Not again—”

  He bolted. Straight into the woods.

  “Hey—!” Caelus shouted, but he was gone.

  Silence fell.

  Cael watched him vanish down the trail, heart thudding in anticipation of pursuit—but none came. No one shouted. No one cared. The absence of order was louder than panic. And for a moment, it made his skin crawl.

  But what did he expect…

  Sol knelt by the fractured remains of a rune, the scorched ground around it still warm. He retrieved a piece of parchment, carefully sketching the curling sigils with a precision that felt too practiced.

  Anders crouched beside him without a word, his own charcoal moving with quick, elegant strokes. The boy didn’t ask what the runes meant. He knew better than the rest.

  The others spread out across the blackened remains of the village. Ash clung to their boots, soft as snow, but it coated everything—walls, ground, even the air. It was the kind of quiet that settled in after something terrible, too heavy to disturb.

  They worked in near silence. Comparing marks. Sketching lines warped by fire. Some runes had melted into nonsense, the magic twisted and half-erased. Others were untouched, glaring from scorched beams as if daring them to understand.

  Sol paused once, fingers brushing over a sigil carved deep into stone. His expression didn’t shift, but something in his jaw tightened.

  Caelus lingered near the edge of the group, watching—not the runes, but the way they all moved around them. Like this was routine. Like they’d done this before.

  A long breath broke the stillness. Sol folded his parchment, brushing soot from his hands. “We’ve seen all we need.”

  No one argued.

  Still, no one moved.

  The air clung to them—hot and bitter. Anders stood with his sketch still half-finished in his hands. Even Rish didn’t joke. The silence had shape now, thick and waiting.

  Then someone muttered, almost too softly to hear—

  “Let’s go.”

  Boots crunched on ash. A quiet shuffle of movement. And then, like waking from a spell, they turned their backs on the ruins.

  The wind stirred. Smoke rose faintly from the scorched bones of a home that no longer existed.

  The walk back was quiet. Quick.

  No one spoke much. Even Anders, usually first to break tension, had his gaze fixed on the horizon, the bundle of rune sketches clutched tightly in his hand, his gaze glazed with memories.

  Farrowstead’s shape returned slowly, hazy in the distance until it reformed into buildings, fences, and faint plumes of chimney smoke. Early evening sun bleed gold and orange across the sky.

  The road felt different. Heavier. As if something had shifted in their absence, waiting.

  By the time they passed through the gates, the stables were already busy with motion. Villagers gave the party a wide berth, probably because of the orc. Whispers followed them like shadows.

  Sol didn’t pause. He walked straight toward the tree line, whistling once—

  —and the beast emerged.

  It came with the grace of a phantom and the menace of a storm. Muscles rippling beneath dark skin, its long fangs glinted in the light. Hooves hit the ground with uncanny silence.

  Rish went rigid mid-step, pointing. “What is that?”

  “My horse,” Solferen said casually, patting the creature’s shoulder as though it wasn’t an omen on four legs. The beast huffed, curling around him akin to a loyal dog.

  He mounted with a single, fluid motion, not a whisper of effort. The creature was made for him.

  Rish was visibly fangirling.

  Caelus stormed up as soon as Sol finished his little performance, barely waiting for the beast to still beneath him.

  “You’re coming with me to the Pope,” he said—sharp, commanding, grasping for the last thread of authority he had.

  For a moment, Sol only stared down at him. The sun caught the edge of his eyes, gold flickering around a slitted pupil.

  “No.”

  No rise. No venom. Just rejection, as effortless as breathing.

  Caelus gaped. For a second, he actually felt winded.

  The rejection settled in his chest as a bruise. It wasn’t the first time he had been told ‘no’. But this one felt like it echoed.

  The air between them seemed to shift—heat prickling beneath the skin, the weight of something about to snap.

  Caelus blinked. “What?” He breathed the word out.

  “I said no,” Sol repeated, not even looking at him. “You’ve been insufferable all day, and I’m not about to waste my breath dragging two of your holy assholes into another church tantrum.”

  Caelus’ blood boiled.

  “You don’t get to decide that.” It came gritted from behind his teeth. Forceful.

  “Oh, I do,” the elf said, leaning backwards slightly on his beasts bare back, his tone ice-cold. “And I just did.”

  “Then I’ll go alone.” Caelus bit out, voice cracking slightly.

  “Do that.” Sol closed his eyes, unimpressed, already turning his beast toward the road.

  The others had stopped laughing. Anders tilted his head. Rish nodded, entertained. Bella just raised her brows.

  Caelus stared after him, something bitter and searing lodging in his throat. He wasn’t sure what stung more—being dismissed, or being humored.

  Sol smiled without warmth. “But know that nobody’s picking you up, pup. No caravan’s gonna hold your hand into the Blightreach. And I sure as Rot won’t be sending a welcome party.”

  He turned now, slowly, gaze sharp as a needle.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and make it through. Maybe you’ll go greet your old squad—y’know, whatever they turned into.”

  Caelus glowered, biting down on restraint, teeth pressing the inside of his lip raw. His self-control was fraying at the edges.

  Sol looked him dead in the eye, unbothered, “And I’m sure your Pope will be thrilled to learn he lost his favorite little bootlicker.”

  Each word was a slap. Too fast. Too precise. Every syllable aimed to wound.

  Caelus nearly drew his sword. Nearly.

  Instead, he mounted, yanking the reins hard. His horse snorted in protest, and trotted ahead to put space between them before he said something unforgivable.

  Behind him, the chaos resumed like nothing had happened.

  Rish had climbed onto Bella’s horse, and the two were already giggling as old friends.

  “You’re dangerous,” Bella laughed, holding tight to the reins as Rish smirked behind her.

  “I could be more dangerous,” Rish teased, her voice low and amused. “What’s a sweet little thing like you doing single, anyway?”

  “Oh, I’m not!” Bella chirped. “I’m already dating someone!”

  The entire party froze.

  Anders choked. “WHAT?!”

  Sol actually turned on his seat, stunned. “What do you mean, dating someone?!”

  Bella blinked innocently. “What? I’ve mentioned him before. He’s not from the camp. But he’s lovely! You’ll all love him. I’ll invite him over sometime.”

  “You’ve been dating someone this entire time?” The mage gasped, personally insulted.

  Sol muttered something about re-evaluating every conversation they’ve ever had.

  “Girl,” Rish leaned in, not offended—intrigued. “You had me out here flirting with a committed woman?”

  Bella giggled, bright as ever. “You’re amazing, but taken doesn’t mean blind.”

  Rish smirked, satisfied. “Good. I like a challenge.”

  Anders groaned as if he’d just aged five years in one second. “I hate this dynamic already.”

  Sol, from somewhere ahead, just called back “Get used to it, it’s gonna get worse.”

  The boy looked absolutely betrayed.

  In front of them, Caelus seethed—silently, utterly alone in their laughter.

  The absurdity of this group—their bond, their joy, the laughter rolling from their chests as they rode away from a cursed ruin full of forbidden runes and unanswered questions—it made him feel like a waif in a play he never agreed to join.

  He sat tall in the saddle. Rigid. Silent.

  Not a part of the joke. Not a part of the family. Not in control.

  And worst of all—

  He didn’t know if he wanted to be anymore.