Chapter 18

Kesh drank from the bottle of wine with theatrical appreciation, smiling at it as though it had accomplished something noteworthy. He lowered it, examined the blank label as if expecting to learn something of its origins, then gestured toward Pyre with a loose, sweeping motion.

“Yes, yes, yes, the already lackluster effect seems to be lessening to some degree,” the bard reported, “but old habits die hard, and we also died hard—well, not me, but some of you—and now we’re here, where we’re not fully wanted, but not exactly tossed into the Hollow either. So there’s that.” He sighed. “So there’s that.”

The mention of the Hollow tightened something in Pyre’s chest.

He took the bottle from Kesh without comment, poured himself a glass, and then offered it to Lyra. She shook her head before he could finish extending his arm.

“I’m fine,” she told Pyre. “And really, Kesh, there’s nothing to be upset about. Sister Halcyon reminded us afterwards that sponsorships at this stage are helpful, but not always the best way forward, not until we’ve completed our Domain Trials.”

“Yes, but the factions have ways to speed up that process,” he reminded her. “She said that in the end. Strange as to why they don’t have something like that here for us, but I suppose the balanced approach, while boring, is always best.”

“Personally, I’d much rather be attuned and have access to a fully formed Sigil before I make an important decision like joining a faction.”

“I never said I was upset, Lyra,” Kesh replied easily. “But it would be nice to be out there in Aevum with the others getting courted. That’s all.” He sighed again. “I do like being courted. Really.”

“Do you, now?” Lyra asked, turning toward him, a grin forming on her ash-smeared face.

“Why, of course, I do,” he told her simply. “Nothing like being the evening’s curiosity.”

“And what do you know about it?”

“Plenty, my dear. It is better to be wanted, even if you are wanted poorly, than to be forgotten.” Kesh reclaimed the bottle of wine from Pyre and took another drink. “But we will all have our chance. Urosh, as well,” he added, gesturing with the bottle toward the closed door that led to Urosh’s quarters. “I do wish the big man would join us some time, but I suppose we all have our ways.”

The room went quiet for a moment, the space filled with the low ambient hum of Aevum bleeding through the walls. Pyre stared into his glass, watching the surface ripple as if the liquid itself were uneasy. “I’m not interested in any of the factions,” he said finally, voice flat.

Lyra turned toward him. “Oh? At least one of them seemed interested in you today.”

The memory surfaced immediately—the woman’s dismissive tone, the word wrongness, the way it had landed and stayed lodged in him. “The Farbound Delegation has already shown their true colors to me. And you should feel similarly, Lyra. They spoke to you as well.”

She set her fork down with deliberate care. “They did, but what do you mean? How should I feel similarly?”

“Your realm is gone, taken by the Hunger. Right after mine, according to them.” Pyre said. “And like mine, yours has been pillaged of resources. So that’s what I mean. I don’t care about the factions, or the pantheons for that matter. I care about the truth.”

Kesh laughed softly, not mockingly, but with genuine amusement. “The truth! Now there’s an ideal I can get behind, well, depending on whose truth we’re discussing. Everyone has one, you know, even our worst enemies. The factions certainly do.”

“I am aware of what happened to my realm, Pyre,” Lyra said, her tone measured. “They made that clear.”

“And you feel nothing for your people? Whoever supported you in this endeavor to ascend? Your brothers or sisters, family? The pantheon that abandoned you?”

“It is through my ascension that I show my appreciation to all of them,” she told him bluntly.

The answer made Pyre’s jaw tighten. The words that followed spilled out harsher than he intended. “Maybe so, but I guarantee you would feel differently if you had to watch everyone around you die.”

Kesh’s expression softened. He tilted his head slightly, studying Pyre.

Pyre felt the room constrict around him. Rather than answer, he pushed back from the table, chair legs scraping softly against the floor. “I’m going out.”

“Was it something I said?” Kesh called after him. “Because that wasn’t my intention, Pyre.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said, breath unsteady but controlled. “And you’re right in many ways. Both of you are,” he added, looking to Lyra. “We all have our truths. Mine may be no more important than anyone else’s, but it is crucial to me. And I meant what I said: I don’t care about the factions or their resource grabs or the pantheons. I don’t care about the politics here, nor do I care about this stained, mercenary landscape that is the Nether, its wars, or even Aevum, the city on a hill with the Font of Eternity anchoring its core, while countless souls rot in the Hollow and in whatever lies outside the city.”

Kesh considered this with a short nod, started to finish the bottle of wine, and stopped. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak so succinctly. A walk, then. That is your plan?”

“We are able to leave?” Lyra asked.

“Yes,” Pyre said, answering both their questions. He hesitated, glancing between them, on the verge of inviting them along, then thought better of it. “I’ll be back later.”

Pyre headed down the stairs alone, descending into the meeting foyer where they had been gathered earlier. The space was empty now, the wide floor unmarked and freshly swept, the air still. He crossed it without slowing and passed into the adjoining hall, its length lit by the same pale crystal glow he had grown used to.

The hallway opened onto a small cluster of doors, and Pyre went through the same one Balefor had led them through the night before.

Beyond it lay a courtyard, washed in a pale light of the Nether, where he took the nearest gate and stepped out into the streets of Aevum, the city greeting him with quiet motion.

Souls moved through the thoroughfares in loose currents, some alone, some in clusters, some watching from balconies carved into impossible angles of crystal and stone. Above him, the void sky stretched endlessly, realms drifting like constellations overhead.

Pyre turned toward the nearest square, the Font of Eternity dominating the horizon despite the tall, otherworldly buildings. At a distance, he could still feel the Font, an inexorable pull, subtle but insistent. The light rose skyward in a perfect column, radiant and serene, unmarred by the suffering it overlooked.

The sight filled Pyre with bitterness.

The Font represented everything he despised: power hoarded, judgment deferred, salvation rationed. A divine answer that came too late, or in his case, not at all.

And yet…

Despite himself, despite his feelings for Aevum, for the pantheons and its factions and fictions, his feet carried him forward.

Toward the light. Toward the thing he hated most.

Without companions beside him, without conversation to soften the edges of the moment, the presence of the Font of Eternity pressed on Pyre fully. The energy radiating from it was no longer an abstract pull or a distant pressure. It was immense. Dense. Monolithic and oppressive. It felt like standing near the heart of a storm that never moved, the vertical column of power anchoring the city.

Its light did not flicker, it did not waver.

It simply was.

Pyre slowed as he reached the outer edge of the gathering around the Font. The ground beneath his boots hummed faintly, the vibration carrying up through bone and muscle alike. The sensation reminded him uncomfortably of Shriving, not the pain, but the quiet certainty of being measured.

He lingered there, caught between awe and resentment at the spectacle of power rising before him, when he became aware of Sister Halcyon.

She stood a short distance away, hands folded behind her back, posture relaxed yet attentive, eyes fixed on the column of light. Here, she looked less like an instructor, her authority muted by the scale of the Font.

The woman glanced sideways as Pyre approached, her expression unreadable. A moment passed, then a faint smile touched her lips. Pyre understood it at once, not as an invitation or a command, but as permission.

“Do you know what you’re looking at, Pyre of Farreach?” she asked after a long pause, one long enough that he wondered if he should have stayed where he was.

“The Font of Eternity.”

“And do you know what it is?”

The question caught him off guard. Pyre opened his mouth to answer and stopped. He realized then that while he knew the Font’s name, while he understood its symbolic weight, he did not truly understand its purpose. Not fully. Not in the way Sister Halcyon was asking.

“Not all who survive Shriving become ascendants,” she said slowly. “Some choose the alternative.”

“Which is?”

Sister Halcyon gestured toward the Font, to a line of people moving toward it. “Rebirth. If you are strong enough to walk directly toward its heart, you too may rejoin the cycle of creation. Some are able to take the Long Walk quite early on. Others choose to pursue Ascension first until they can no longer make progress, or their burdens become too heavy. Either way, there are options.”

Options.

The word settled into place with unsettling clarity.

Pyre’s gaze shifted to the line of souls extending toward the Font’s inner perimeter, something he had noticed the night before but had not understood. Now, he saw it for what it was: not a queue of worshippers, but candidates. Souls standing at the threshold of erasure and beginning.

“So that’s an option—rebirth,” Sister Halcyon said quietly. “Perhaps one for someone like you, who seems poised to defy the ways that the Nether operates.”

Pyre did not miss the way she angled her head slightly at that, studying him anew.

“And the people of the Hollow?” he asked, no longer able to interpret her gaze. “Can they be reborn?”

“No. The Hollow is specifically for broken or incomplete souls, which negates their ability to approach something as powerful as the Font.”

Pyre’s chest tightened.

He thought of Farreach. Of the people who had never known ascension, never known of the preparation, never even had a choice beyond survival when something like the Hunger existed.

Rather than press this point, he went with a different question.

He swept his hand outward toward the gathered figures, those kneeling in quiet reverence, those meditating with eyes closed, trembling on the edge of emotion as tears streamed freely down their faces. “So the people, erm, souls gathered here are preparing for rebirth?”

“Not exactly. The ones in line are preparing for rebirth, but most are simply bathing in the font’s power, be it to replenish their Anima or for Domain Attunement, which is a lesson we will touch on soon. There are many of them,” Sister Halcyon said. “And I count myself among them. Explore if you can. The most powerful souls are normally gathered near its edge, before the Long Walk. You never know who you may find.”

She did not look away when she finished. The silence stretched between them, her gaze steady, expectant, as though she were waiting for Pyre to reach a conclusion she already knew he would.

“The Shepherd?” he asked.

Sister Halcyon shrugged lightly, neither confirming nor denying, as if the answer hardly mattered.

Pyre remained where he was, watching as a soul stepped out of the line and crossed the unseen threshold. The light gathered around the figure, brightening until their outline blurred, until body and radiance became indistinguishable. There was no struggle, no final gesture. One moment they were there, and the next, they were simply gone, as if they had never been.

“Thank you, Sister Halcyon,” Pyre finally told her.

He stepped closer to the Font, and as he moved on, a single thought followed him, steady and unwelcome, as if whispered by the pillar of energy itself: Rebirth is an escape. Ascension is a choice. And Defiance fits neither path cleanly…