Chapter 21

Pyre planted his feet and stayed there, breath steady, gaze forward, ready to meet whoever the Shepherd had called into the room. Whatever this was, whatever these people represented, he refused to give them ground.

He was greeted first by Tallow, the man still using Pyre’s form.

Seeing himself standing there, posture mirrored, red hair catching the light the same way, unsettled Pyre once again. It was like looking at a version of himself stripped of hesitation, stripped of doubt, reduced to surface and instinct.

Next to Tallow stood a dwarf with a blond mullet and a belly that pushed out beneath his cuirass. He didn’t look imposing at first glance save for the armor, which was well-fitted and expertly joined, built for use rather than display.

A tall, beautiful woman with pointed ears took her place beside the dwarf, her auburn hair clipped to one side. She wore a fitted suit, dark and precise, with the chain of a pocket watch attached neatly to a vest button. She looked entirely out of place and perfectly at home all at once.

And then there was the last figure. Or rather, the absence of one.

A vibration in the shape of a woman stood slightly apart from the others, her outline warping and blurring like heat off stone. Pyre caught only hints of her face, the edges of her form slipping whenever he tried to focus; looking at her for more than a few moments made his eyes ache.

The elven woman with the pocket watch spoke first. “Sura Thenn,” she said, her head tilting slightly as she looked at Pyre.

For a moment, Pyre thought she was gazing at him with interest—something warm, something personal—but then he realized her gaze was aimed just over his shoulder, at the Shepherd.

“Ronark,” the dwarf told Pyre with a groan. “Is this what you woke me up for?” he asked Tallow.

“I told you there was a young man here,” Tallow began.

“I can bloody well see him, and I don’t want to see two of you!” The dwarf pointed a finger at Tallow. “And don’t you dare take the form of my brother. Be yourself for once.”

Tallow grinned. “Why be myself when there are so many lost souls here in Aevum?”

“Lost souls? Not that horseshite again. Don’t make me—”

“As you wish,” Tallow said, his form changing yet again, flames licking off his body as the wax melted down and reshaped into the body of a white cat. “I’ll just be here,” Tallow said as he sleeked away, where he eventually curled up on a threadbare pillow, golden eyes watching them lazily.

“I am Irix of the Ninth Echo,” the vibration told Pyre, her voice calm and strange, each word arriving with a soft echo, as though several voices were speaking just out of sync. “Welcome to our current state of being.”

“A bed is where I’d prefer being,” Ronark grumbled. “And don’t tell me, Tallow. I’m well aware I don’t technically need rest, but that never stopped me nor anyone else in the Nether from getting a little shut-eye.” He glared at Pyre. “So if there’s nothing else, I’m leaving.”

“Before he shows you his Sigil or tells you his story?” the Shepherd asked, his tone patient and practiced. This was clearly not the first time he’d managed Ronark’s temper.

“Fine, fine, but just the Sigil. You can tell us the story later, Shepherd,” Ronark said with the wave of his hand. “What’s the kid got?”

“You want me to—” Pyre snapped his mouth shut.

Every eye was on him now. Even Tallow, lounging in feline form, watched with obvious curiosity.

Instead of finishing his question, Pyre produced his Sigil.

The sensation rolled through his palm first, heat and pressure kindling outward as the broken black sword tore itself into existence. Flames twisted along the fractured edge, climbing and curling without consuming it. The weight settled into his grip, familiar and unwelcome all at once. And beneath it all, as there had been before, came a subtle whisper.

“I thought you said he was new,” Ronark told Tallow, confusion lifting his brow.

“I did!” Tallow called to him.

Irix buzzed with hesitation. “Yet his Sigil is solid.”

Sura stepped closer to Pyre. The elven woman leaned forward slightly, one hand still resting on the chain of her pocket watch, eyes scanning his Sigil with clinical intensity. “That can’t be yours,” she concluded.

“It’s his now,” the Shepherd said. “Believe it or not.”

“How did he get that?” Sura asked him.

“Stripped from an angel of the Heavenly Host.”

Ronark burst out laughing. “Like hell he did!”

“No, I think the Shepherd is being serious,” Sura told the dwarf.

“When am I not serious?” the Shepherd asked.

“You’ve had your moments,” Ronark muttered.

Sura leaned in even closer to Pyre’s weapon, then shifted her gaze to him, the distance between them suddenly intimate, invasive. “You are Unclaimed, yet your Sigil, taken from an angel, is fully formed.”

“And broken,” the Shepherd added. “Anyway, I thought you all would like to meet Pyre of Farreach.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve met him,” Ronark said dismissively. “I’m off to bed. Wake me before the next collapse that’s worth the trek through the Forlorn Plain. Come on, Tallow.”

The white cat hopped down and followed after the dwarf without a backward glance.

What do they want me to do? Pyre wondered as Sura finally stepped back. Irix remained where she was, her vibrations barely visible, the strange woman impossible to read. Are they trying to get me to join them or something?

“Um…” Pyre began.

The Shepherd cut him off. “Like I said, you all have met him now. Sura—”

“Yes?” she asked enthusiastically.

“Please take Pyre back to Aevum. You know where to drop him off. I believe he’s had enough fun for the night, and if we’re being honest, so have I. One more thing,” he said, turning toward the vibrating afterimage of a woman, “please stay for a moment, Irix. I want to get your take on something.”

“As you wish,” she said.

Pyre turned back toward the massive old man, weapon still drawn.

“Put your Sigil away,” the Shepherd said, gesturing toward the door, “and go with Sura.”

Pyre held his gaze as the broken sword dissolved.

“Now,” the Shepherd told him, his patience thinning.

Annoyance flared in Pyre’s chest, but it faded almost immediately under Sura’s attention as she approached and gently placed a hand on his elbow.

“Come with me, Pyre,” she said brightly. “I’ll take you back.”

All this just to show them my Sigil and then be sent on my way? Pyre thought, yet he did exactly what Sura said as he followed her out of the study, his awareness still buzzing from the encounter.

Once again, the massive front door opened on its own once more, the hinges silent.

“I hope you remember the way back to the manor,” Sura said as they passed through the front gate and turned toward the city center.

“Why would I come back here?” Pyre asked, the edge in his voice unmistakable. “The Shepherd didn’t invite me back.”

“That is generally how his invitation works. If you ask me, I think the Shepherd likes you. I wish he liked me; I’ve had a crush on him forever, you know. He is too curmudgeonly and wrapped up in his own work to see it.”

Why is she telling me this? Pyre wondered, baffled by how casual Sura was being with him considering they’d only met a few minutes ago.

They passed a pair of demonic souls in white, their clothes darkened with dried blood. Pyre remembered them from the recruitment earlier that day. The Butcher’s Court, one of the factions interested in Marrowsven…

Footsteps sounded ahead and behind them as they walked on, other souls passing in small groups, each moving with their own purpose. Somewhere overhead, a bell rang once, its tone fading into the city’s broader noise.

“You sure are quiet, Pyre,” Sura told him with a playful laugh. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m pretty certain that wasn’t an invitation to return,” he said, still reliving what had just happened.

Sura stopped walking. “Turn with me.”

He did, and she gestured back toward the Shepherd’s manor. From this distance it looked half-swallowed by shadow, its silhouette jagged against a darkened sky filled with other realms.

“Yes?” he asked, not certain of what she was getting at.

“That is what you must find later. It could be tomorrow night or an eon from now. But you have been invited to join us. Conditionally, of course. The Shepherd doesn’t recruit.”

“Then why would I go back to his manor?” Pyre asked, his eyes drifting toward the hills beyond Aevum, their mist-wreathed outlines barely visible. “Why would I join you?”

“So you can learn the truth.”

“Everyone has their own truth,” he said, paraphrasing something that Kesh had told him earlier.

“In that case, so you can be trained.”

“Which implies I’m being recruited.”

“Were you a soldier when you were alive?”

“I was in the militia.”

“Good, that will help you. And believe me, Pyre, the Shepherd has his ways. Is he contradictory? Yes, often. Is he loyal to a cause? Depends on the cause. Did he used to be kinder and more hopeful?” Sura placed her hand on the chain of her pocket watch, thumb brushing the metal absently. “Undoubtedly so. But that’s the way things are at the moment,” she said at last. “To find the manor, to find us, head toward the Hollow, don’t go anywhere near it, and come to this road.”

“And there are more of you? Or is that it?”

“You mean in our group? Yes, there are more, but they come and go. What’s important to remember right now is the manor’s location.” She pointed to it in the distance. “You should be able to see it at some point if you continue toward the hills.”

“The hills,” he said, going with a question he had earlier. “What is beyond Aevum, exactly?”

“The Outskirts, where you’ll find Domain-born monsters.”

Domain-born monsters? Pyre thought. “I don’t understand,” he told her.

“Think of them as what remains of the shattered souls that failed their Domain Trial.”

“They don’t go to the Hollow?”

“No, they do not. They end up in the Outskirts, which separate the city from the Forlorn Plains, a place populated with Gray Souls that didn’t survive Shriving. You would recognize them if you saw them.”

“So the ones that did survive Shriving, but later broke in Aevum, end up in the Hollow.”

“Correct,” she said. “You’d think they would tell the Unclaimed this on the first day, but there’s a lot to process.”

“Some of them already knew,” Pyre admitted. “I seem to be the only one that didn’t expect any of this.”

Sura offered him a kind shrug. “Discovery is underrated, if you ask me.”

“And beyond the Outskirts and the Forlorn Plains? What then?” Pyre asked as he walked with her again the glow of Aevum growing closer with each step.

“Well, if you journey through the Outskirts and then through the Forlorn Plains, you will end up in the Deep Nether, where fragments of fallen realms reside. Maybe that makes all of this clearer now.”

“How so?”

Sura looked at him and smiled, not unkindly. “Everyone here is lucky to be dead. They live in a place where eternal souls congregate, where they can break free and ascend, or work toward rebirth, shredding their impurities in the process. It’s not as bad as it sounds if you think of it like that, or, better, if you visit some place like the Outskirts.”

“So you believe in Aevum then and the pantheons, its factions and their wars?” Pyre asked.

“I believe in it only in the sense that it is to be believed as a real thing. I don’t agree with it, no,” Sura told him, “and that’s why I joined with the Shepherd so long ago. Ages, really. Stop.”

She halted abruptly. Pyre did the same, turning to face her.

“Do you remember how to get to the manor?” she asked, the question tumbling out too quickly.

Pyre raised an eyebrow at her. “East past the Hollow, continue until I find this road, which looks like most of the other roads around here.”

“True, but you’ll start to see differences once you get accustomed to it. Luckily, all roads heading toward the Outskirts should bring you to a place where you can find the manor. But this is the fastest one.”

“I’ll remember it. I’ve always been good with directions.”

“So then you will return?” Sura asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

She winked at him. “I can see what the Shepherd liked about you.”

“I still don’t know how you interpreted our interaction as him liking me in any way, shape, or form.”

“Because he wouldn’t have brought you back to the manor if he didn’t. And he certainly wouldn’t have invited us to meet you. Intention is a powerful thing,” Sura said as she started walking again. “If one can read it.”