Caelus sat on his cot, still in armor.

  Still burning.

  Still breathless from the run.

  He hadn’t looked back. He didn’t dare look back.

  The image carved itself behind his eyelids—silver water, sculpted shoulders, the glint of moonlight trailing down flesh like falling stars.

  But it wasn’t that.

  He clenched his fists.

  Lowered his head.

  He kept scanning his mind for the sin. For the moment it all went wrong. But all he could find was warmth, and a voice that sang as though it remembered him.

  “He’s going to trick you,” Caelus whispered aloud, voice raw. “He’s going to test your faith. Stay true to the Light.”

  The words were not his.

  He clung to them like to a rosary in a storm. But it wouldn’t go away.

  The scar.

  It was real.

  He’d seen it.

  Not an illusion. Not a dream.

  It was there.

  Where he had felt it.

  A phantom wound still pulsed beneath his ribs.

  “An abomination,” he breathed. “He didn’t die because he’s not—he’s not normal. He can’t be.”

  His chest heaved.

  “He can’t be.”

  But if that part was real…

  Then everything else—

  The visions.

  The voice.

  The massacre.

  The altar.

  The god—

  No.

  Absolutely not.

  He bit the inside of his lip, hard enough to taste blood, skin raw and stinging under his teeth.

  His pulse still raced.

  It wasn’t because Sol was beautiful.

  That had nothing to do with it.

  He had seen countless naked bodies in his life.

  Bathhouses. Temples. Fellow soldiers.

  Bodies were bodies.

  This was about the scar.

  The scar.

  Nothing else.

  Definitely not the eyes. Or the mouth. Or the way the water had clung to his—

  He punched his pillow once. Just to feel holy again.

  Then flopped back onto the cot like a dead man falling from the gallows.

  The tent creaked faintly around him.

  He thought so hard, he didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep.

  The sound of his pulse became waves against the shore. His breath slowed.

  The vision came soft.

  No pain this time.

  No chaos.

  Only warmth.

  Light, golden and slow-moving, poured like honey through the air.

  He stood in it—not a battlefield, not a temple, not a nightmare.

  Only light.

  Something called his name.

  Gently.

  A hand reached for him.

  Warm. Radiant.

  It touched his chest.

  He looked down.

  No wound.

  Only the glow.

  And the feeling—

  Peace. Healing.

  He woke with a gasp. Heart hammering.

  The tent was quiet, shadows stretching long across the canvas.

  He pressed trembling fingers to his sternum.

  Nothing there.

  And yet—

  The skin tingled.

  Like someone had touched him and left something behind.

  He lay still for a long time, breathing shallow, staring at the tent’s dark canvas as if it might part and show him the heavens.

  It had to be divine. A sign. Aurenos had answered his prayers.

  He... he must have.

  Right?

  But then why…

  Why Solferen’s scar?

  Why that exact place?

  No. That warmth—that light—it touched his soul.

  Of course.

  It was the Sun. Aurenos.

  Obviously.

  Not because of Sol.

  Definitely not.

  That was just… coincidence. Symbolic. The light meant to reach the heart. That’s all.

  And yet, the warmth from the dream felt too much like the warmth of his hands.

  Something wasn’t adding up.

  And Caelus hated that his soul knew it—

  Even if his mind refused to say it out loud.

  Outside, someone was singing. Low and haunting.

  Familiar.

  Uncomfortably familiar.

  It started soft. Wordless. A hum carried on the breeze.

  But it was unmistakably Mercenary King’s voice.

  At first, Caelus thought it was a dream again. A lingering echo from the vision.

  But the sound was too purposeful—each note carried the weight of memory, of grief not yet buried.

  The lyrics drifted in, low and trembling at the edges of the firelight.

  “He fell in flame, in ash, in blood,

  A crown of sun across the flood,

  And when the light had left his brow,

  We sang, we wept—we grieve him now.”

  Caelus froze.

  The melody was ancient. Not written by any hymnal of the Church.

  But familiar, painfully so.

  As if someone had taken the bones of Aurenos’ gospel and carved it into something older.

  Something purer.

  Sol’s voice never lifted. It wavered like a candle in wind—fragile but refusing to go out.

  “He walked in warmth, and healed with flame,

  His hands the sun, his breath our name—”

  And then, without warning, the words shifted.

  The song continued—but in a language Caelus didn’t know.

  Something fluid.

  Round.

  Wound in vowels and breath, too soft to cut, too old to name. The same way Sol spoke to his cursed unicorn.

  The foreign lyrics wrapped around the firelight like thread through gold.

  Caelus felt them more than heard them.

  A lullaby.

  It sounded as something a mother would sing—

  If her god had died, and she still wanted her child to believe in the light.

  He shouldn’t have felt it.

  But the ache crawled up his chest, dug into his spine, sat heavy on his ribs. It reached past his mind. Past memory. Like it was written into the bones of the world.

  He hated that he could feel it in his core. Hated more that it felt like it was meant for him.

  Because the voice outside didn’t belong to the smirking beast that pushed his buttons and spat flirtation like a weapon.

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  It belonged to someone else.

  Someone ancient.

  Someone grieving.

  Someone who remembered what it meant to be loved by something divine.

  And Caelus listened.

  Frozen in his cot, hand pressed flat to where his heart stuttered.

  Where the scar should’ve been.

  Where the sword had gone in—through him, through Sol.

  It made no sense.

  He didn’t expect it to feel so… real. Nor did he expect the way it made something beneath his ribs flutter—soft and unexpected as a moth in his peripheral.

  He whispered the Pope’s words like a mantra.

  “He is not mortal. He will trick you. Test your faith. Stay true to the Light.”

  But he couldn’t deny how real it all felt, the scar, the thing, the voice, the warmth on his chest—

  Too real.

  He pulled the blanket over his head like a child.

  Eyes clenched shut. Took a deep breath.

  Still, the song threaded through the seams of the canvas.

  And somewhere in the night, the elf kept singing in a language no one else remembered.

  Except for him.

  Cael stayed awake longer than he meant to.

  The lullaby lingered, slow and solemn, tapering off into humming—low and distant.

  He didn’t want to like it. Didn’t want to feel that strange warmth still humming under his ribs.

  But it held him.

  Long after the melody ended, Caelus lay still, eyes wide in the dark.

  Listening.

  The camp had quieted. Only a few soft sounds remained—the breeze teasing the canvas, the faint crackle of dying fire and…

  Footsteps. Gentle. Barefoot, perhaps.

  Caelus didn’t move.

  Whispers. Soft enough he almost missed them.

  A voice. Familiar. Low. Tired.

  Killeon.

  “…You should sleep.”

  A pause.

  Then Sol’s voice replied, rough-edged and dry.

  “Can’t.” A long sigh. “The red bastard keeps showing me memories I don’t want to see.”

  Cael’s stomach dropped.

  He shouldn’t be hearing this. But he couldn’t not listen.

  There was a stillness to Sol’s voice now. No smugness. No playfulness.

  Just raw truth—quiet and terrible… exhausted.

  Killeon was quiet for a beat.

  Then he murmured, “It’s been three days already. You want me to ask Dal?”

  Another long pause.

  Then, softer—barely audible, “Maybe tomorrow. He’s asleep already.”

  The faint sound of breath exhaled.

  Killeon didn’t answer.

  There was no sound of comfort. No words of sympathy. Only a shifting of fabric.

  The brush of a shoulder, maybe.

  Someone sitting down beside someone else.

  The silence stretched.

  And in that silence, Caelus realized…

  This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

  He pulled the blanket tighter over his chest.

  And when he closed his eyes at last, he couldn’t stop seeing the bruised shadows under Sol’s eyes.

  They suited him, honestly. Made him look even more haunted.

  But from that night on—

  Caelus started noticing when they darkened.

  And when they didn’t.

  The morning came loud.

  No mist, no birdsong—just the grind of steel and the slap of boots against dirt.

  Voices overlapped across the camp. Someone barked orders near the forge, Ysilla cursed over a spilled crate of dried herbs. Pots clanged. A child laughed somewhere behind the tents. A trader argued with Rish about the price of honey.

  The world hadn’t ended. Apparently.

  But the clearing said otherwise.

  By the time Caelus stepped outside, the scent of blood was gone. So were the corpses.

  All of them.

  No drag marks. No broken twigs. Not even a stray tuft of fur.

  Just flattened grass where something inhuman had died the night before—and where nothing human had dared step since.

  No one spoke of it.

  No one needed to.

  It was handled.

  Handled by what? He didn't ask.

  Instead, he found himself avoiding the Mercenary King with all that he had.

  Unfortunately, the camp was circular. Nowhere was safe.

  By noon, the Abomination had located him at last.

  Caelus sat in the furthest corner of the camp he could find, sharpening his blade with templar-trained precision. His back was pressed against a tree, posture taut. The blade hissed against the stone.

  Over and over. Over and over.

  His thoughts kept circling the same shape. Same voice. Same scar.

  Even the quiet wasn’t safe anymore.

  Then—

  “You’re pretty when you don’t open your mouth.”

  A voice. Right next to him.

  From above.

  Caelus jerked violently.

  The sharpening stone flew one way. The sword another.

  He didn’t reach for either. Just dropped his face into his hands with a growl of pure suffering.

  “Bright mercy—” He hissed. “Do you have to descend from trees like some accursed jungle spirit?”

  Sol flopped beside him, entirely unbothered, stretching like a satisfied cat.

  “I thought I was avoiding stepping on your feelings.” A pause. “Didn’t work, huh?”

  Cael didn’t look at him. “Go haunt someone else.”

  “Already did. You were just next on the list.” Sol tilted his head, watching him with far too much amusement. “You know, I’m starting to think you enjoy this little chase. It’s practically a ritual.”

  Cael finally turned to glare. “You are begging for a fist in your face.”

  “Better a kiss with a fist than none at all!” Sol flashed teeth.

  Cael’s ears turned red. He scowled harder, shaking his head in disbelief. “You disgust me.”

  “So you show up to gawk at me in the lake, and then get angry when I say hello?” Sol placed a dramatic hand over his heart. “Caelus Moraine, I feel used. Emotionally ravaged.”

  “You’re emotionally deranged.” Caelus spat back at him.

  “And you,” Sol purred, “are a stack of milk crates held together by church guilt.”

  Cael stood. Fast. His boots bit into the moss.

  “Pardon me?!”

  “I said what I said.” Sol remained lounging, unbothered and vaguely pleased.

  “You’re unstable.” Somehow he managed to make it sound as a flirtatious innuendo instead of an insult.

  Cael pointed at him, finger shaking with fury. “You kiss kittens, let children braid flowers into your hair, then SLIT YOUR OWN DAMN THROAT the moment someone challenges your ego—” A sharp inhale, palm slapping over his chest plate loudly, “AND I’M the unstable one?!”

  Sol lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Look, we all spiral. I just do it deliciously.”

  Cael stormed over, grabbed his discarded sword off the ground with unnecessary force.

  “Try one more word and I swear, I’ll send you right back into death. Since you enjoyed it so much.”

  Solferen blinked up at him, shit-eating grin stretching on his face, slowly.

  “…Kinky.”

  Caelus sneered. “I will END you.”

  But Sol just grinned wider.

  “You know,” he said thoughtfully, resting his cheek in one hand, “I will say… you run quite fast for someone in full armor.”

  The knight stiffened. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Sol mused, waving his hand. “Just an observation.”

  He tapped his chin, eyes glinting like they knew far too much.

  “Though, I do wonder what could make the great Knight Commander flee the like a sinner from confession.”

  Cael’s entire body burned.

  Before he could make good on the threat—

  “BOSS.”

  Varg’s voice cut clean across the camp. Serious. Loud.

  Sol was on his feet immediately.

  His entire posture changed.

  The grin vanished.

  He turned, sharp-eyed.

  “What is it?”

  “Refugees. Edge of the forest. Half-dead. Might be fleeing something.”

  No more jokes.

  Sol’s expression darkened like a stormfront.

  “We’re moving then.”

  No hesitation. No flair. Just a statement.

  And Caelus followed, heart still thundering from rage. Still gripping his sword.

  They moved swiftly through the camp. Solferen grabbed his spinning discs on the way, discarded carelessly on some bench.

  “Rish, darling!” He called out, that usual playful tone leaking through the edge of urgency. “I might need your sword.”

  “FINALLY!” She roared, bun still in hand. She launched from her spot as a boulder out of a catapult, sprinting toward her oversized, single-edged sword as though it was a long-lost lover. Way too excited by the opportunity to inflict violence.

  Caelus scoffed under his breath. Orcs.

  “Killeon?” Sol cooed, glancing over his shoulder. “And fetch Dal for me, please.”

  “Sure,” the younger man replied calmly, already moving. No questions asked.

  Sol nodded. “Grab your gear, moving out in ten! On foot!”

  It dumbfounded Caelus, how quickly chaos fell into order in this place. The mercenaries, especially some of them, looked like a sorry lot. Incapable of being anything but disorganized. Incompetent, even.

  No uniform. No ranks. No salutes.

  But the moment their King spoke—they followed.

  Not like an army. No. With personality. Freedom. But the execution was polished to perfection in its own, messy way. Even Rish fit.

  And she has been her for what? Two weeks?

  They let Sol guide, not out of duty or obligation or even fear. But willingness. They followed because—gods forbid—they respected him.

  For what? Relentless mocking and attitude? His arrogance?

  Cael scowled at nothing in particular.

  Within minutes, the party assembled.

  Sol emerged in black leathers, cutting a sharper figure now—he’d finally decided to take something in his life seriously. His chakrams hung at his belt glistened under the sun like jewelry.

  Rish bounced on her heels, practically vibrating with bloodlust. Stretching as if she was about to compete in a murder competition.

  Varg adjusted his bowstring with meticulous focus.

  Killeon stood silent, unreadable as always—absentmindedly rubbing at the sickle-shaped scar curving beneath his golden-green eye. It cut through his brow like a crescent moon carved into skin—too close to the lid to have been anything but personal.

  Then there was Dalimor.

  He appeared mid-stride, mid-annoyance, mid-doing everything himself again, tying glittering stones to his belt without looking. The elf didn’t look particularly thrilled about the whole outing ordeal. He brushed strand of his white hair back where it belonged.

  Even in a rush, he looked pristine.

  Sol clapped once, loud enough to draw full attention.

  “Alright, people—let’s move out.”

  And then, a rare sight.

  He gestured toward Varg. A small flourish.

  “After you.”

  A gesture of respect, not command.

  They stepped into the trees. Deeper into Blightreach.

  The air shifted. Not in sound—but in weight. The movement of the branches felt eerily quiet today. Caelus didn’t know if it was the presence of something worse, watching from the dark, or just the fact that he was walking beside the something worse already.

  None of the others looked nervous.

  Not even slightly.

  He adjusted his grip on his sword.

  One thought stayed with him.

  This was not a team.

  This was a hunting party.

  And they were hungry.

  The woods thickened around them. Varg took the lead, boots silent on damp moss, movements ghostly in their precision. His bow was already strung.

  Dalimor trailed not far behind, eyes narrowed, hands brushing across the pouches at his waist.

  “How many?” He asked, voice clipped. Professional.

  “Bout’ a dozen,” Varg replied.

  “Injuries?”

  “Some. Non-life-threatening, I think.”

  “Pursued?”

  Varg’s expression didn’t flicker. “Most probably. They looked rushed. Shaken.”

  Killeon cut in, interested in moss more than them. “This is Blightreach. Could be nothing. Literally.”

  Sol snorted softly. “I doubt it. Even the clearing got visitors.”

  Killeon’s brows arched slightly. “Fair enough.”

  “Stay sharp,” Sol added.

  Nobody nodded. Nobody acknowledged. Nobody changed pace.

  And yet Caelus noticed—nothing changed because they already were sharp.

  Their steps didn’t falter. Their breaths didn’t shorten.

  It wasn’t a shift into alertness.

  It was the default.

  He watched them walk, and wondered—was this what being always-ready looked like? Or did they simply not care?

  The forest curved ahead, and—

  They saw them.