"I shall be the river. You shall be the water. As water follows the slope without question, you shall follow my light without deviation. For the river knows what the droplet ignores."

  — Words of Solar?s, I

  Revealed to Thérion the Veiled, Year 1 of the Day without End

  CHAPTER I - PART 1

  In the winding alleys of the Outer Quarters, a furtive shadow moved with silent grace. Beneath her hood, her hair of such deep black barely brushed her shoulders, and her light armor of dark leather, worn by years but bearing the solar emblem, hugged her curves and movements perfectly. Her steps seemed to skim the stones without producing the slightest sound, her breathing remaining imperceptible.

  Since the third chime—the Call of Dawn, marked by the vibrant melody of bells announcing the beginning of the diurnal cycle—Mei, woman of the Noohrikane clan, had been following three suspicious figures on behalf of Siegfried Vaan Hart, her squad leader. Beneath their threadbare cloaks, these men bore the marks of destitution: hunched backs, features hollowed by perpetual famine. Yet their gait betrayed fierce determination, and their eyes carried a spark of rebellion. They did not submit to the will of Solar?s—they conspired.

  She tracked them through the shadows cast by buildings and stretched fabric of the Southwest I zone, territory belonging to the Na?gaz clan, until she stopped at the corner of a decrepit courtyard. This square space, surrounded by ochre walls with edges eroded by time, sheltered at its center a basin that had run dry ages ago. Its cracked basin contained nothing but ashes and frail bones, silent testimonies to the ambient desolation.

  Under a patched canvas stretched between two walls, a hundred forms pressed together in suffocating proximity. Their ragged clothes, soaked with sweat, clung to their silhouettes emaciated by privation. Even the air trembled with palpable unease, laden with resignation and contained anger.

  At the center of this clandestine gathering stood a lean, dry man, dominating the hostile assembly with his natural presence. His worn tunic revealed on his shoulders the marks of ancient punishments. Gray strands plastered against his sweat-dampened forehead. With a weary gesture, he pushed them back with his left hand, then swept the crowd with his sea-blue irises so clear, where burned an indomitable flame.

  A woman with silver hair raised a thin arm, eyes filled with rage.

  "My little boy..." she murmured, tears tracing furrows in the grime of her cheeks. "He was barely six when he died at the—"

  "He didn't die!" her husband cut her off with anger. "They killed him at the Wells of the Great-Small. They killed him for three sips! Only three sips. And the clerics..."

  He bit his lips until they bled.

  "Those good-for-nothings. Those shaved sandal-wearers told me about divine punishment. They left him to wither three days in full sun to make an example of him!"

  Raising his arms toward the implacable sky where no cloud ever appeared, the lean man continued his speech in a carrying voice.

  "Divine punishment? That's all they ever say. Yes, the Sun saved us from Nihibell, that's true. We owe it our survival. But tell me..."

  He swept his gaze across the crowd.

  "Did saving humanity give the descendants of the Ten Thousand the right to reduce us to slavery? To treat us as if we were nothing?"

  Murmurs ran through the assembly.

  "They hide behind the sacred light," he continued bitterly. "They claim to govern by divine right. But look around you! Look! Who works in the Orchards? Who forges their swords? Who builds their golden temples?"

  He pointed an accusing finger at a poor woman.

  "Us! And yet, we're the ones dying of thirst and hunger!"

  "There's Lord Ha?ne," called a hesitant voice in the crowd. "They say he pleads our cause before the Council of High-Fire. That he wants to abolish the water tax..."

  "Ha?ne?"

  A bitter laugh burst from another side.

  "Don't tell me you believe that nonsense?! That noble is exactly like all the others. He's doing it to buy our support, nothing more! He wants to be elected First Hand of the King, that's all. And once in power, he'll forget us. Remember the Fallacious! Do you have short memories or what?!"

  "Maybe. But I believe in him! At least he's trying something!" the first voice retorted. "What will a revolt bring us except reprisals? It's you who's lacking memory. Must I remind you how many died during the Purge of the Unfed?"

  "So what?" the other replied vehemently. "At least they had the guts to face our executioners! They died wanting a better future. Apart from talking, what does Ha?ne do? Huh? And explain to me how someone born up there can understand what we're living through?"

  Tension rose in the crowd. Some nodded, others shook their heads in disgust.

  Rahn exchanged an almost imperceptible glance with one of his soldiers. Immediately, a strong voice rose from the middle of the crowd.

  "What this man just said is true! Ha?ne is just ambitious! The nobles are worse than him!"

  He raised his fist.

  "Only someone from the Outer Quarters will free us. Only the Eclipse is on our side!"

  A stunned silence fell. Several people instinctively made the sign, tracing the solar circle on their chests.

  "Are you mad?" someone hissed. "Speaking of the Eclipse is heresy..."

  "Heresy?" The man planted his gaze in the crowd. "But who told you it was heresy? Those who let us die while they gorge themselves! All of us here know what the Eclipse does for the people."

  Whispers were heard from all four corners of the assembly.

  Rahn raised a calming hand, but Mei noted the satisfied smile that briefly touched his lips.

  "Calm down, my friends. What our brother means is that the Eclipse dares to do what no one would even think. We must act."

  "Act, you say. But how?" called a robust woman with arms marked by burns. "We're only thousands against their knights, their clerics!"

  "Only thousands?" Rahn asked ironically. "We are millions, madam. We are the blacksmiths, the builders, the farmers, the water carriers. Without us, their golden empire collapses."

  "A blockade," someone murmured with a glimmer of understanding.

  "More than that," said Rahn. "A general strike. A clear message."

  Mei, still crouching in the shadow, observed attentively. This fury made sense—she had grown up in these same alleys where the complaints of the starving vanished beneath the chime of golden bells. She understood them. But a rebellion, even organized, defying the Order was doomed to fail because the Order tolerated no insubordination.

  While Rahn continued his speech, she saw the three silhouettes discreetly slip away through a narrow alley to enter a warehouse not far away. She followed them. The imposing building, two stories high, mixed wood and rusted iron. Its flanks were whitened by years of dust and sand, and its pierced roof let filter golden rays of light that striped the dusty ground.

  No sentry seemed to watch the place, so without noise, she climbed the lateral fa?ade up to the first floor and took a quick look through a half-open skylight. Inside, dozens of gaping chests piled up, their boards notched by impacts. A smell of cold metal and moldy wood floated in the air, tinged with a hint of sulfur. Suddenly, voices resonated. She pressed against the wall, crouched in the darkness, her fingers instinctively brushing her twin blades, straining her ear to the muffled murmurs rising from the ground floor.

  "The weapons are in there," said a man with a shrill voice. "Ten full crates. Enough to equip about fifty fighters."

  "The powder too?" asked another, cautious.

  "Yes, everything's there," the first replied, sure of himself, before continuing. "We just have two or three small things to finish preparing and we're good."

  "We... we... we have to hurry," stammered a third man. "If we haven't finished before the Melody of the Vigil, it... it... it will delay the... the mission."

  "You don't need to worry, Bebegue," a woman with a surprisingly soft voice reassured him. "Everything will be ready well before his arrival. You can trust me, my friend."

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  In the distance, the bells of the Index of Solar?s resounded—four crystalline notes marking the fourth clarity. Time was inexorably running out.

  Mei decided to slightly lean her head to sweep the scene below where twelve silhouettes bustled in this confined space. At the center, the three men and the woman she had heard discussing surrounded a rickety table covered with crude sketches—old maps yellowed by the incessant glare, scribbled with lines and black circles tracing itineraries through the Outer Quarters of the capital. Their rough, stained hands seemed to follow the lines with feverish tension.

  Further in the back, four other rebels sorted disparate gear: cudgels with blackened heads, crossbows with worn strings, hatchets with split handles—tools of uprising born of scarcity. Two sentries watched the main entrance, a massive leaf reinforced with oxidized iron, their patched armors faintly reflecting the oblique glimmers. In a dark corner, two larger figures, wrapped in long dark hooded capes, exchanged murmurs, their upright attitudes exuding discreet authority.

  The Noohrikane drew a polished mirror from her belt and oriented it carefully. A beam of light crossed the air, ricocheting on a neighboring roof where a brief gleam responded—R?chard was ready. She put away the object, her fingers grazing the handle of one of her daggers, its coolness contrasting with the torrid atmosphere. Her breathing remained calm, a controlled rhythm in this agitated furnace.

  Much higher, on a neighboring roof, the young archer who had been following her since the beginning of their mission leaned against a low wall. Taking advantage of its meager shadow, he adjusted his longbow, carved from light wood and reinforced with black metal, slightly reduced to suit his size—that of a child barely fourteen years old, but of deadly precision. His thin, agile fingers gliding over the wood with fluid ease.

  Unlike his teammate dressed in black, he wore a scout's outfit in the colors of the Guard—an ensemble of reinforced beige leather and light white canvas. The white fabric covered his torso and arms in a fitted tunic that didn't hinder his movements. A right shoulder guard in matte bronze, engraved with the symbol of Solar?s, served as a perch for Feather, his golden-beak. His forearms were protected by two tanned leather bracers, reinforced with thin bronze plates on the outside—robust enough to parry a blow, flexible enough to draw his bow without constraint. He wore no cape, only a light hood to protect himself from the Sun, as he claimed it prevented him from climbing well. His blond, silky hair partially veiled his irises of a blue as clear as the sky, where gleamed a predator's light.

  With a mechanical gesture, he brought his hand to his neck to touch the family time-keeper that hung against his chest. The artifact, relic of a bygone age when technology rivaled wonders, was embedded in a bronze sphere with patterns of unequaled finesse by today's artisans. Through its transparent crystal portholes, he observed for a moment the golden sand flowing in the small hourglass suspended at the heart of concentric rings that pivoted silently.

  He put it away while a fleeting grin touched his thin lips.

  "Hmm? Only twelve? And I bet they're still just idiots who don't even know how to fight," he breathed as an arid breeze slightly moved some of his blond locks. "I'll never understand why he accepts all the missions they offer us."

  The boy left the shadow of the wall and jumped with a silent leap onto the warehouse roof, his soles barely grazing the tiles with feline quickness, then crouched near a crack to observe the forms below. He took out a piece of paper where he wrote what he had seen and took a thin arrow from his quiver located on his right shoulder blade.

  "Will it be different from other times? Of course not," he muttered with a semblance of weariness while wrapping the message at its point. "The specter will slash in the shadow, I'll shoot down most of the heretics, Juuh'ma will protect Sieg and him, like any Vaan Hart, he'll cut them in two without saying anything. And after, he'll order us to clean the place without even congratulating us."

  Then, with a sharp gesture, he turned and shot his arrow which cut through the air, crossing the Alley of the Deaf without touching a single passerby to stick in the ground at the corner of one of the alleys where his chief was waiting.

  His imposing stature was draped in a bronze cuirass perfectly molded to his torso, shoulder guards and bracers. All of it was layered over a white veil—this sacred fabric, proper to the knights of the Solar Order, served both as protection against the heat and as a visible oath. Some of his metal protections were struck with the symbol of Solar?s, a circle of radiating gold engraved with almost religious precision.

  Around his neck and head was tied a white turban of which a part fell along his left shoulder. The fabric, designed to face the furnace of the burned plains, absorbed sweat and cut the gusts of heat, while the free ends mixed with the veil that ran under his armor.

  The beige leather straps firmly held the superimposed plates to the white fabric visible along his torso and arms. The ensemble gave his silhouette an appearance at once martial and ascending, that of a solar paladin.

  At his right hip always fell his half-cape of ashwolf skin, attached under his belt. A gift from his mentor—one of the rare to have slain such a beast—it constituted the only wild note in the middle of his disciplined equipment.

  He bent to the ground to seize the projectile that had planted itself not far from his high leather boots, reinforced with light plates under which the white veil still showed. The movement made slip some coppery locks, stuck to his moist forehead. His eyes of a green as deep as verdel?ne lit up deciphering the note attached.

  "Twelve targets. Armed," he said in a low voice.

  At his side, Juuh'ma, his brother in arms and soul, adjusted the heavy gold chains wrapped around his robust forearms, their grave tinkling resonating in the air. He was a N'zonki, or a Stoneskin as they are so often called—a clan of Istalith whose kindness, honesty, loyalty, strength, solidity, size, resistance to heat and skin color characterized them. This giant easily exceeded two meters twenty, with skin dark as ebony that shone under the Sun, his white hair cut short, almost shaved, forming a striking contrast. His eyes of such deep and calm amber shone in the light.

  The N'zonki were not in the habit of wearing armor, not that none fit them, but simply because their skin was so hard it could withstand the blows of the sharpest swords. The colossus therefore walked dressed in simple white bottoms as white as his hair and a pair of boots rising to his calves.

  Another thing characterized the Stoneskins: their attraction to gold. All N'zonki wore gold jewelry everywhere, and Juuh'ma was no exception. A golden ring pierced his nose, several necklaces adorned his powerful neck, bracelets circled his massive biceps. At his waist hung a wide belt that captured the light with each movement.

  Finally yes—he was the only one of his clan to wear heavy gold chains wrapped around his forearms, a gift from their common mentor upon his integration into the Order, memory of an oath he had made when younger.

  "I'll go first, Sieg," he declared in his heavy voice to his chief, but above all brother.

  Nodding briefly, knight Siegfried Vaan Hart raised his right hand to indicate with his two fingers a street further up.

  "Let's take that alley and go around the back. At my signal, you smash the door. This will serve to give the green light but also create a diversion for Mei and the kid."

  Juuh'ma soberly nodded in approval.

  Inside, the rebels had gathered around the table, their muffled voices vibrating with contained ardor. A frail man with hollow cheeks marked by hunger tapped a map with his ink-stained finger.

  "If Rodd and his men succeed their move, they'll give us enough time to act. That madman guaranteed me he'd create the biggest mess of his life."

  "And you really think that'll be enough?" questioned the woman.

  The man placed his finger further east on the map, laughing.

  "With what he's planned? The sentries will be forced to divert their attention, believe me."

  Another man, stocky, shoulders bent under a patched tunic, furrowed his brow. His eyes scanned the assistance with mistrust.

  "You talk as if it's already done, but I remind you we're talking about Rodd and especially the Orchard. It's a bastion. How can you be sure that madman's plan will work? If he fails like last time, they'll drag us to the Index to consume us in front of everyone, like pariahs or worse, like Abom—"

  "Stop your... your... your nonsense!" Bebegue interrupted him. "It wasn't... wasn't my bro... bro... brother's fault, okay?"

  Placing her hand on the stutterer's shoulder, the woman comforted him with a soft voice.

  "Don't worry, this idiot is the only one who thinks that. All of us here know it wasn't his fault."

  With severity, she planted her eyes in those of the stocky man.

  "What would you have done in his place, huh? Can you tell me?"

  She paused but no answer came.

  "That's what I thought. When there's a suicide mission, he's always the first to volunteer, so you'll have the right to criticize him when you've done half of what he's accomplished."

  "Tha... Tha... Thank you Kathy."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," the man muttered. "But if we get caught with our cargo, you know very well what will happen."

  "So what?"

  A low but assured voice rose from a dark corner, immediately making the man lower his head.

  "Everyone here knows the risks. You knew them too, right? If you're afraid, you can leave. We won't stop you and we'll manage without you. If you want to abandon, Hans, it's now or never to go home."

  He didn't move an inch. Despite the fear, in his eyes burned unwavering determination.

  "There, I prefer that."

  The hooded man slowly emerged from the darkness to come position himself at the end of the table.

  "Latest news, we do as planned."

  His index slid on the map while he detailed the plan.

  "As soon as we see the signal, we place the powder in the three evacuations near the West ramparts as they explained to us, we enter and we empty their stocks of everything we can carry. With that, we'll sustain our people for months and we'll make them taste emptiness for once."

  The stutterer nodded, a bitter grin on his lips.

  "Exactly... exactly... exactly, and it's not just about provisions, it's a si... si... signal for the High-City. They've let us die under their cursed glare for far too long, but when they see their Orchard stripped, when they scra... scra... scrape their plates like us, they'll understand that their star doesn't save everything."

  Kathy leaned slightly to meet her superior's gaze.

  "And you really believe this powder can break metal?"

  "Certain," he replied, simply nodding. "One of the Eclipse's guys showed me and I can assure you nothing could resist this alchemy. We just mustn't put too much in the satchels, otherwise we risk blowing up with it."

  Perched on her beam, a fleeting gleam caught Mei's eye—a luminous reflection dancing on the adjacent wall. From the corner of her eye, she perceived the signal: the polished mirror her chief was manipulating from his position, hidden in an alley sheltered from the eyes of passersby strolling in the street. She turned her head imperceptibly.

  Below, in the shadow of a recess, the knight stood motionless, his small mirror in hand. With a measured gesture, he formed the agreed signs: open hand then closed in question. – "Do you have the information?"

  She responded with a sharp, precise movement: closed fist raised once, then two fingers stretched downward. – "Yes. We can intervene."

  Siegfried quickly put away the mirror and acknowledged receipt with a nod. At his side, Juuh'ma stood ready, his muscles tensed in anticipation. The knight raised his eyes toward the beam where his spy was hiding, then signaled the archer to get in position with a hand gesture—index and middle finger stretched sweeping laterally.

  He turned to the colossus and ordered in a firm voice.

  "Break down this wood for me."