He peered down at it. "It's a runestone. That one's Flame."

  "What does it do?"

  "Slot it into armor, you get Fire Resistance. Slot it into a weapon, you add fire damage. There are different types—Flame, Frost, Lightning, Poison, and many more. Certain combinations, in the right order, create named weapons or armor with abilities far beyond what the individual stones should give you."

  I leaned forward. "That sounds useful. Where do I get more?"

  "The Church hands them out. They say Stvora creates them to reward his most devoted servants, sharing his divine power. The most powerful combinations are closely guarded secrets."

  “Why don’t people just keep swapping and rearranging them to see which combination gives what?”

  “You can remove them,” Vasil said. “But the extraction destroys the runestone, and all others slotted in the same item.”

  I frowned. "Why would that be a thing?"

  "It prevents experimentation," he said. “Otherwise the knowledge of combinations would have spread. As it is, only the Church can afford to lose stones to failed attempts.”

  "So Stvora just makes them?" I asked.

  "Stvora can, supposedly. But I’m fairly certain the concept predates Stvora himself. From what I understand, they're just stones enchanted with magic formulas, sealed with blessed or divine blood."

  I looked at the little flame rune sitting on the floor. "Wait. Does that mean there are combinations that aren't created by the Church? Ones that still exist outside Stvora's whole… thing?"

  "Almost certainly," Vasil said. "But good luck finding anyone who remembers them.”

  So that was how it worked. The Church handed out the stones. The Church dictated the combinations. The Church decided who got strong and who stayed conveniently weak. It was a pretty good racket they had going on. This way the chances of anyone getting strong enough to oppose them would be significantly smaller.

  "Not even any ideas where to look?" I asked.

  Vasil thought for a second. "People won't be open about secrets like that. Maybe old wizards or mages would know something. Elite crafters, perhaps—the kind who work with enchantments professionally. And there could be ancient scrolls or books that somehow survived and haven't been found yet." He paused. "So yes, the odds of finding older combinations are slim."

  "Do you know any?"

  "A few basic ones. There are some combinations most people are aware of. But..." He hesitated. "There is one secret combination that's been in my family for a long time."

  I perked up. "Really? What does it do?"

  "I'll tell you when you have the stones for it," he said. "No point getting your hopes up if we can't use it."

  I narrowed my eyes at him but let it go. Fair enough.

  I thought about the library in the cathedral. All those ruined books. There could’ve been some filled with ancient runestone combinations. If the Church of Stvora had their combinations, why wouldn’t Bies?

  I hadn't exactly checked them all—the ones I'd seen were moldy and falling apart, so I hadn't bothered looking closer. But maybe some survived. Even if there weren't long lost runestone secrets, there could still be interesting information in those old books.

  "Maybe I should ask Skelly to check the library," I said. "See if anything survived. Maybe they will even contain forgotten runestone combinations."

  Vasil nodded. “Good idea.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Interesting stuff, these runestones. We didn't have anything like that in Graecia. At least, not that I'd ever heard of. The gods there preferred granting blessings directly, in the rare occasion that they did so. They didn’t grant power through obscure puzzles.

  Speaking of blessings… Something didn’t add up.

  Stvora handed out runestones. Stvora handed out classes.

  If Stvora was the only god here, how did anyone get witch classes at all? In Graecia, every class traced back to a god (or two in my case). You didn’t just get them because you felt like it. They were granted, though obviously most people still got to choose from what was offered.

  So if Stvora handed out all the classes... why would he give people classes he wanted to hunt down? Why create witches just to burn them? That would be insane. Even gods weren't that stupid.

  How were there witches in a land with only one god and a system designed to choke everything else out? Was he just bored and liked to stir things up? Or was this all part of some masterplan to create fake opposition to show just how big and strong and all knowing and all seeing he was?

  That still didn’t make much sense to me—he would look better without any heretics.

  I realized I didn't actually know that much about how things worked in Silesia. I'd been here, what, a few weeks? And most of that time I'd been trying not to die, hiding in a swamp.

  “Vasil,” I said slowly. “How do people even get witch classes if Stvora’s the only one handing them out?”

  He was quiet for a beat. "Witch classes are extremely rare in Silesia. Then again, any class not sanctioned by Stvora is rare."

  "So who is handing out these classes?" I asked.

  He hesitated. "Sometimes… people who pray to certain saints receive classes that appear to be... related to those saints."

  "Okay, so why is Stvora allowing this?"

  "Officially, all saints serve under Stvora. They're part of his divine hierarchy, extensions of his will. And you’re not supposed to pray to them."

  I frowned. "So how can they give out classes he doesn't approve of?"

  "Officially," Vasil repeated.

  I tapped my chin. "But if he knows this, wouldn't he just kill them?"

  "He would."

  "I thought he was all-seeing."

  "Is anyone?" Vasil asked.

  "If this is common knowledge, wouldn't he figure it out eventually? I mean, if you know this, other people must know too."

  "The people who know don't talk about such things. For obvious reasons."

  I threw up my hands. "Come on. Stvora can't be that stupid. Anyone would get suspicious if random unauthorized classes keep popping up. How can he not know?"

  I considered that for a moment. "Or is it just the Church that bans the classes and Stvora doesn't actually care either way? …Oh."

  Vasil said nothing.

  "So Stvora either doesn't know, doesn't care, or can't do anything about it," I said. "And the Church is the one doing all the witch hunting because they want control."

  "That," Vasil said carefully, "is a dangerous thing to say out loud."

  "But I'm right."

  "Perhaps. Either way it helps both Stvora and the Church."

  I sat back. So the Church was just using Stvora's name to justify killing anyone who got their class from the wrong source. Just another way to control people’s growth. Just like the runestones. One thing still didn’t make sense to me: why would anyone pick a class if they knew they were going to get killed for taking it?

  "So if you knew you'd be killed for taking one of these classes, why would you do it?" I asked.

  Vasil cocked his head. "Why did you take [Gunwitch]?"

  Fair question.

  I had thought I might get killed for it. I thought my mother might kill me, even. Or exile me. I guess I did get exiled in the end, just not by her.

  In fact, if I hadn't taken that class, I probably wouldn't even be here. And Perry would still be alive.

  Damn.

  Then again, I didn't feel like I had a choice. It was there. Calling my name. Begging me to take it. Like it had been made for me and refusing it would've been... wrong. And it had been made just for me. Taking something else would have been wrong.

  "I see your point," I said. “How come you know this? Did you get one of those classes? Is that the real reason they turned you into a [Frogbag]?”

  "No," he said quietly, looking at the floor. "Not me. My class was ordinary. Unremarkable. There was nothing dangerous about it."

  He looked back up at me. "My daughter chose one of those classes."

  That caught me by surprise. "I didn't know you had a daughter. You never mentioned her before."

  "Her name was Zofia… Zosia we called her. It wasn’t a witch class, but still unsanctioned. She tried to hide it. She really did. But she kept stepping in, fixing things, helping people. Eventually the wrong people noticed." He paused. "That's how it goes for girls like you."

  He took in a deep breath. "The Church came for her shortly after. That was a long time ago."

  I didn't know what to say. His hatred for the Church made a lot more sense now. His willingness to help me, too.

  “Vasil… I’m sorry.”

  "For what?" he said. "I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have known. I could have protected her. I could have guided her."

  "Like you're doing with me?"

  "Yes," he said quietly. "Like I'm doing with you."

  "Thank you. For helping me."

  "Don't thank me yet. Save it for after you’ve killed Menekrates."

  Silence hung between us for a few seconds.

  "The runestone," Vasil said, looking at the flame rune still on the floor. "Keep it safe. If you find the right combination..." He paused. "Some of those old runewords are more powerful than anything the Church hands out now."

  "Like your family's secret one?"

  "Especially that one."

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