The cathedral was full again, full of movement, full of whispers, full of everything that had nothing to do with her.Gemma sat near the window, where the pale morning crept through the cracks in the stained glass and painted thin colors on the floor. The others were talking around the long table, parchment spread, maps pinned with dull knives. Plans. Always plans.

  She could hear Talon’s voice cutting through the noise. Calm, assured. The voice of someone who believed the future could still be shaped by men with enough conviction. She almost envied him.

  Aros had been ten days without waking. Ten days of stillness. Ten days of her trying to summon the Light that refused to come.

  She rubbed her palms together, felt nothing but the cold. Sometimes, at night, she thought she heard Esyra’s voice humming, softly, almost kind. Lately it had turned into screams.

  The doors opened. The noise in her head broke like glass.

  The man who entered was older than anyone she had seen in years. His back bent as if the weight of his robe alone was too much, and his face was a parchment map of every wrong the world had done to him. But his eyes...his eyes were sharp. Too sharp for someone so near to the grave.

  The moment he stepped across the threshold, Esyra shrieked inside her. The sound tore through her skull, electric, unbearable. Gemma pressed her hand against her temple, trying not to gasp.

  Talon rose from the table to greet the man. They exchanged words she couldn’t hear, a handshake too friendly for her liking. Broko bowed his head slightly; even Candriela, distant and restless, watched with curiosity.

  When the meeting ended, the old man walked out as quietly as he had come. Gemma waited until the echo of his steps faded before pushing herself up and crossing the hall.

  “Talon,” she said, her voice tighter than she meant it to be.

  He turned. “Gemma?”

  “Who was that?”

  “A guest,” Talon said. “He’s gone now.”

  “Who?” she pressed.

  “Lexordo,” he said at last, as if the name cost him little. “He was the one who arranged the soldiers that came to our aid in Sbelto.”

  Gemma’s stomach turned. “That man is not good, Talon.”

  He gave her a small smile that wasn’t really a smile. “I know he’s of the Valval Priesthood.”

  She stared at him, speechless for a moment. “What?. He could be an infiltrator, someone sent to destroy us from within.”

  Talon’s calm didn’t falter. “He’s a man of the Light, Gemma. Perhaps fallen, perhaps compromised, but he still serves its purpose. We need allies where we can find them.”

  “Stop talking like that,” she snapped. “You don’t know anything about the Light. None of you do.”

  Her voice echoed, and every head in the cathedral turned. Talon’s expression didn’t change; he simply waited for her anger to tire itself out.

  “I don’t claim to understand it,” he said quietly. “But I know how it moves through people. And I’ve seen what happens when it’s absent.”

  Gemma shook her head. “You’ve seen faith. You’ve seen obedience. The Light is not obedience. I could feel it, once. It burns and breathes and sings, and none of you even hear it. You talk about it like it’s a thing you can hold, but it isn’t.” Her voice trembled. “It isn’t yours.”

  Talon sighed, not unkindly. “Then perhaps it will speak through you again. Until then, let me lead the men who still believe.”

  He turned back toward the table, signaling the end of the conversation. The others followed his lead, their focus sliding back to maps and lines and the next battle.

  Gemma stood alone in the hollow of the cathedral. The silence felt heavier now, thicker with something she couldn’t name. The Light inside her was gone, replaced by a pulse of emptiness so loud it drowned her thoughts.

  She walked out into the courtyard. The air was cold enough to bite. She sat on the low wall by the well and pressed her hands together again, hoping for warmth that never came.

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  “I can’t do this,” she whispered. “

  Gemma remembered the look in Jori’s eyes the last time they’d spoken. The strange, calm certainty when he’d said he could help her reclaim what she’d lost. She had doubted him then. Feared him, even. But fear was a small price compared to helplessness.

  She thought of Aros, pale and still, a breath away from death. If she had her power, he’d never have needed to save her. He wouldn’t be bleeding out in a tent while the others planned their next righteous cause.

  She pressed her palms harder, until her knuckles whitened.

  No one came after her. No one asked where she went when she disappeared into the dark corners of the camp. Maybe they thought she was praying. Maybe they’d stopped caring.

  She wasn’t praying.

  She was deciding.

  When she finally rose, the night was falling. The cathedral windows caught the last light of day and turned it into thin red veins crawling across the stone. It looked like the walls themselves were bleeding.

  Gemma looked toward the forest beyond the hill, the place Jori had said he would wait.

  Her voice came out small, but steady. “If I can’t be part of the Light, I’ll take it back.”

  She started walking.

  The night had settled over Preta like a bruise. The last light of the torches outside the cathedral guttered in the wind, thin and nervous, and Gemma’s shadow flickered with it as she moved. Her mind was already made up. The forest waited, black, endless, whispering like something that had always known her name.

  She didn’t pack much. A cloak, her bow, a small pouch of dried bread she would probably never eat. Her hands trembled only once, when she passed the tent where Aros lay. She stopped, listened for his breath. It was faint, but still there.

  “Forgive me...I'll come back, i promise” she whispered, and kept walking.

  The air was colder away from the fires. The trees stood like silhouettes of judgment, thin spears against the stars. She had the sense that if she walked long enough, Jori would appear, as if the forest itself would offer him to her.

  But she didn’t make it that far.

  “Snowy.”

  The voice came from behind her: soft, but steady. Gemma turned.

  Candriela was leaning against a post, arms crossed, her expression unreadable in the moonlight. Her hair was loose for once, catching a streak of silver from the sky.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” Gemma said quietly.

  “Neither should you.” Candriela pushed off the post and walked closer. “I saw you leave. You think no one notices, but you move like thunder in an empty sky.”

  Gemma swallowed. “I have to go.”

  Candriela studied her for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was calm, but not gentle. “You think I don’t understand? You’ve been breaking apart since Sbelto. I can see it. We all can. But running into the woods after a voice in your head isn’t how you fix it.”

  “It’s not just a voice,” Gemma said. “It's my powers, it's who i am. Maybe Jori can help me control it again.”

  Candriela looked at her a long time, jaw tight. “Jori,” she said. “The boy who killed twenty people? That’s who you trust?”

  “I don’t trust him,” Gemma said. “But he understands the Light. He’s part of it. I have to know why it left me.”

  Candriela sighed, the sound half a laugh, half a wound. “I can’t stop you, can I?”

  Gemma shook her head.

  “Then tell me one thing before you go.”

  “What?”

  Candriela stepped closer. Her eyes caught the moonlight, dark, sharp, desperate. “Tell me the truth. What does the voice say about Virea?”

  Gemma froze.

  “I know she speaks to you,” Candriela continued. “Don’t lie. You see her. You hear her. I’ve watched your face when her name is mentioned.”

  Gemma opened her mouth, but no sound came.

  “Please,” Candriela said, the word breaking at the edges. “If she’s alive, if she’s suffering, I need to know where. I’ve waited long enough for ghosts.”

  Gemma lowered her gaze. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Candriela stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “Don’t do that. Don’t talk to me like you talk to the rest of them. I can tell when you’re lying.”

  The pressure of her hand was almost painful. Gemma met her eyes, and for a moment, neither of them breathed.

  Finally, Gemma spoke. “The voice of Virea… it’s close to the Valval Priesthood.”

  Candriela’s grip loosened. “What?”

  “I felt it,” Gemma said. “ The Light that the Priesthood uses, their power, it’s not some divine secret. It comes from her.”

  Candriela’s face twisted, first in disbelief, then in anger. “That’s not true. Don’t say that.”

  “You asked for the truth,” Gemma said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t want to tell you, but she’s tied to them somehow. Maybe she didn’t choose it, but she’s there. She’s helping them. I think… I think she’s the reason the Light still answers their prayers.”

  Candriela took a step back as if she’d been struck. “No. Virea would never...she hated them.

  Silence.

  Candriela looked away, her eyes glistening. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter than before. “Where?”

  “The Sanctum,” Gemma said. “That’s where she is. I can’t explain it, but I know.”

  Candriela laughed once, dry, bitter. “Of course. The heart of the Light. Where else would they keep her?”

  She rubbed at her face, forcing composure that wasn’t there. “You’re still going, aren’t you?”

  “I have to.”

  Candriela nodded slowly. “Then go. Before I remember that I’m supposed to stop you.”

  Gemma hesitated. “Candriela…”

  “Don’t,” she said softly. “Just...don’t look back, Snowy. If you do, I’ll follow you. And one of us will die for it.”

  Gemma’s throat tightened. She wanted to say something kind, something that could make it easier, but no words came. So she only said, “I hope you find her.”

  Candriela’s voice was steady again, though her eyes were not. “I hope you find yourself.”

  They stood there for a moment longer, two silhouettes caught in the trembling dark. Then Gemma turned and walked into the forest.

  The trees closed around her, swallowing the faint light of the camp. Her heart beat faster, not from fear but from something like recognition. She knew he would be there, Jori, waiting, smiling that strange, knowing smile.

  Behind her, Candriela stayed on the edge of the path until the sound of footsteps vanished. Only then did she let her knees bend, pressing her palms to her face. She didn’t cry. She just breathed, ragged and small, like someone trying to hold a broken thing together with air.

  Somewhere far away, the first owl called. The forest answered.And Gemma did not look back.

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