Morning came white and thin.
36 hours spent. 24 hours left on the "private tutorial." Enough to sharpen; not enough to wander.
"Today," he told the quiet, "we spend what's left like coin that won't be minted again."
The captain found him under the gatehouse eave, measuring the yard with a soldier's eyes. He let a beat pass—long enough to pretend disinterest, short enough to mean the opposite—then asked, "Stranger. Your name?"
He noted the timing and filed it. Gave it a night to look like courtesy. Hiding interest. Sensible.
Nameless wouldn't do. Emperor, less so.
"Meles," he said, laconic.
The best lies sit inside a truth. Trim a piece off what you are and let it pass as whole.
The captain's mouth twitched, as if the name completed the odd ledger of a half-Ratiol out of nowhere. He didn't press.
Before the pause could grow legs, Nameless cut it short. "North ridge," he said. "Below a mound with brush at the crown. There are wolf carcasses on the scree—four bodies. Fresh enough. Send hunters with hooks and sacks. The cold held; rot hasn't won yet."
The captain's eyes shifted, a slow calculation that ended in surprise he didn't manage to hide. Direwolves were trouble for a wall with men on it. Four alone was the wrong kind of math.
"You dropped… four?" he said, voice flat to keep it from sounding like fear.
"Three together on the scree," Nameless answered. "A fourth farther down the ravine."
The captain's mouth tightened—half caution, half respect that didn't want its own name. He looked at Nameless as if the ledger had added a column he hadn't priced.
He let the moment breathe, then tipped it where he wanted. "Your name," he asked, almost idle.
"Roland," the captain said.
A step of intimacy first; then the question with edges.
"Roland," Nameless said, as if tasting it for weight. "Have you seen hooded men near the village? Odd hours. Masks that aren't masks."
Thirst in a courtesy cup. Proximity wearing a question.
Roland's reply snagged in his throat. "Why—did you see some? Here?" The worry was quick, unpracticed.
He watched the flinch, then let the pressure off. "Not here," he said, and left it there.
Roland rubbed a thumb along the gate's grain, decision settling. "Not in the yard," he said low. "Not in the open. If we speak of that, we speak with Father Aldric. Under a roof. With a bar."
He didn't wait for agreement. He signaled a watchman with two fingers and led Nameless across the yard to the small chapel tucked behind the storehouse. The door sighed; wax and scrubbed stone breathed out. A guard stepped in after them, drew the bolt, and set the crossbar like a man setting a bone.
Father Aldric arrived as if he'd already been walking that direction—hands wiped clean, eyes not pretending at sleep. He took in the room, took in Nameless, took in Roland, and closed the inner door with the same quiet the outer had learned.
Roland stood square to the little altar, then turned. "You asked about hooded men," he said, voice kept for confessions. "What we say here doesn't leave this room without the priest's say."
Father Aldric folded his hands, the old habit of a man who knew words had edges. "Then we'll say it," he murmured. "All of it."
The chapel held its breath as the secret the village had practiced not telling finally found a place to stand.
Father Aldric did not waste words.
"I serve the Church of the Unknown God," he said, voice low enough to be kind to the walls. "Montanum's church. The Empire's church. You've heard what the last months have been—unquiet, and making men unquiet. In such weather, cults sprout like fungus. Masks travel easier than faces."
He folded his hands, eyes steady. "Even here. Remote as we are, we were not spared. The pallet you took—wasn't empty long. The man who slept there left after Midwinter. We believe he went to them. There are reasons."
Roland cut in, clean and blunt. "He hated the priest," he said. "Hated the word 'no.' Wanted weight in the village. Over me, over Aldric, over all of it. Climbers climb; some climb on throats."
His jaw worked. "So why not run with hooded men who promise ladders. That's my read. Whether he's breathing, I don't know."
Silence found a place to sit. Wax smoke drifted like a thought someone regretted.
Nameless let the pieces settle, then let the light in his head tilt.
A chapter called "Lights," he told himself. Or how men fall in love with them.
Power glitters. It throws shadows the way stars throw night. Men see the shine and imagine a sun inside themselves—heat without fuel, crowns without weight. Cults sell that. Peel off the name of God, paste on your own, call it radiance.
He tasted the irony and kept it. Light of your own? That's the story they buy. But fires don't ask where their spark came from. If they want to burn, I can stand close enough to warm my hands—walk a line in their glow and make it mine for a mile or two.
Not belief. Leverage.
His gaze went to Roland's worry, to Aldric's weariness, to the bolt on the door that was trying to be enough.
Opportunity is a light, too, he thought. Careful—bright things blind.
He began the arithmetic he trusted: routes the cult might use; hours when watch grew thin; the way rumor moves faster than hooves; what a village owes a stranger and what it sells him for. Bread, roof, bell. Names, debt, noise.
"Ladders," he said inwardly. "If they're building one, I need to know which wall it leans on—and whether I can move the wall before they look up."
He let the thought burn down to a coal he could pocket.
Use their shine. Don't become it.
"I'll warn you of anything I see," Nameless said at last. "No rumors—only sign. I know their creed enough to be careful with it. Not a believer; not a fool. I won't chase shadows, and I won't let them use yours."
Roland's shoulders eased a fraction. Aldric's mouth thinned into something like thanks.
"If they're near," Nameless added, "you'll hear it from me first—under bell and eye."
He left the chapel into the white that passed for day and let the door click behind him. The watch-house sat where it always had, third pallet on the left, — a gap where someone else's sleep used to live.
Culum, then. It fit too neatly not to try the key. "He's been bothering people; it's in his nature."
The captain's tone had carried the shape of the man as well as the words. Ambitious, thin-skinned, hungry for weight he hadn't earned. Easy to flatter, easier to point.
"An initiate," Nameless thought. "And thinking himself apex already." Leave the village to prove disdain, take a hood to prove devotion, learn a knife to prove purpose. Operative who believes he's the top of the chain because someone let him stand on a rung.
Patterns wrote themselves if you'd seen enough endings. Initiates circle back. They salt their tracks with fire. They make a show of severing the old life so the new one has witnesses. Stores burn. Doors jam. Bells die first. If there's a priest, he's ash by morning; if there's a captain, he's a lesson on a hook. Not because strategy demands it—because theater does. Classic.
"Time's enough," he measured, eyes on the pale horizon. Midwinter to now gave a man room to be found and taught and sent back with an errand. If he returns, it won't be to talk. It'll be to erase—names, debts, the soft places that remember him. A cultist without a past sinks deeper into the penumbra. No tracks. No mouth left to say his name wrong.
He filed the thought where grim truths live and don't argue. "Expect it," he told himself. "Prepare for it. And if the light wants to lie, use the fire it brings."
He shut the door behind him and let the quiet come to heel. The habit followed: slow breath, eyes half-lidded, the inward turn.
"The sheet," he told himself, "then the day."
It rose inside the skull, pale as breath on glass.
[INT +1] [WIS +1] [STR +1] [PER +1]
Numbers turned where they needed to.
INT 8 · WIS 7 · STR 4 · PER 5 (DEX 1 · CON 1 · STA 1 · WIL 3 · CHA 1 · PRV 2)
HP: 65 · IP: 61 · Breath: 29
[Skill Points: 3] — held.
He let the overlay fade and glanced at the three cold lights that refused to spend themselves.
"Soon enough," he said, almost amused. "I'll put you to work."
He ran the map in his head before he opened his mouth.
If you wanted a village to break, you didn't knock on the gate with a sermon. You sent weight first. A Razorback that had no business this far east, pushed down the gully to make the bell ring late and the fence fail early. In the smoke, the mask arrives, and what used to be a man finishes his speech with fire.
An initiate wouldn't be higher than Level 7… 9, if he'd been lucky or cruel. Strong enough to swagger. Not enough to take a wall that knew its own name. So he'd borrow a monster and call it courage.
If he left by the mound, he'll return by the same thought. Theater loves its stage.
He found Roland at the rail. "Two questions," Nameless said. "Last direction he was seen. And his name."
Roland's jaw worked once before the answer came. "Name's Mathis." A beat. "Northwest. Past the gully bend. Toward the scrub below the ridge—the hump with brush at the top." His eyes flicked, remembering. "Same place you pointed hunters, near enough."
The line in Nameless head snapped into place like a string under tension. The mound. Of course.
"Then he'll use it again," he said, mostly to himself. "Routes teach habits. Habits write endings."
Roland's mouth thinned. "You think he dragged that boar in?"
"I think he learned the trick," Nameless answered, flat. "And I think he'll try to sell it to you as fate."
"Plan?" Roland asked.
"Working," Nameless said. "If I'm wrong, we lose some hours. If I'm right, we keep a village."
He glanced once toward the northwest—ridge, gully, mound—and filed the day into two halves: walk the corridor he'll favor, then set the stage he thinks is his.