The slope fell away into a wound in the hill. From where he stood, half veiled by brush, Nameless let the sight speak first. The mouth yawned at an angle, too low for dignity, too narrow for comfort—a throat of earth that swallowed without haste. Each novice bent to enter, spines bowing not from reverence but necessity. The ground itself forced the gesture. A ritual without needing words.
Inside, the shadows played their theatre. Drops fell from the roof, slow as beads of a rosary, landing into bowls placed with precision: one carved pale, chalked with lime; the other black, sheen of obsidian.
Light flickered next: twin candles, one white, one dark, flames no different save for their wax. Both drew from the same oil, both hissed alike when touched by the cave's damp. And yet the rite demanded a third—lit from both, its flame a child of contradiction. The officiant's voice rolled against the stone, doubling itself: "Light and darkness do not exist alone; one breathes from the other…" His tone made doctrine sound inevitable, as though the cave itself nodded in assent.
The words grew harsher with the third act. Each novice, pale under the light, forced the phrase from his throat: "I confess the Two. I deny the One." The echoes carried it deeper, multiplying denial until the walls themselves seemed to chant. The cave's mouth devoured the words and spat them back, more corrupted than before.
Finally, Manis appeared—or one who bore his mark. He pressed chalk-white coal into right hands, smeared ash-black into left. His voice turned ceremonial: "Your right hand carries the light in bondage; your left, the dark in command." The cave fell silent after, as if the sealing needed no applause.
Nameless lingered at the ridge, eyes narrowed behind the mask. He did not stir, did not breathe more than the trees required. He watched the liturgy as one reads a cipher: the bowing spines, the bitter bowls, the twin flames feeding one lie, the words inverted, the hands bound in parody. He stored each piece in silence, not yet moving. The throat had not swallowed him. Not yet.
He let Perfect Sight open across the hollow. Numbers sharpened, clean as a ledger. At the centre: Manis, human, Level 15, mask carved half white, half black, his presence rehearsed, every pause weighted like punctuation. Around him moved the auxiliaries—two acolytes by the bowls, Level 8, their hands steady in drilled precision; a torch-bearer pacing the stone, Level 7, a body more than a will; a watcher near the entrance, Level 10, staff etched shallow with cuts, his gaze sweeping too shallow, never enough to pierce the brush. Five novices bent like saplings, Levels 2–4, bowing spines not from reverence but because the throat of earth forced them low.
Water dripped from the ceiling into bowls, one white, one black. Each novice stooped to drink, wincing at the bitterness. Two candles burned—white and black, flames the same, oil the same. From both, each novice lit a third, flame of mixture, doctrine turned fire. The cave returned the line louder than it was spoken, as though the hill itself became accomplice. Finally Manis pressed chalk into their right hands, ash into their left: "Your right carries the light in bondage; your left, the dark in command."
Nameless did not stir. He watched, mask tilted, each gesture written down in the silence of his skull.
He withdrew from the ridge as the rite concluded, steps noiseless among brush. He did not linger to drink or bow; the mouth had spoken, and he had read it well enough. The throat swallowed novices whole, spat them marked. That was lesson enough. The rest would be ledger.
He bent thought into plan. "A throat that devours can also choke. If it eats too much, it gags." His eyes flicked to the trees, their trunks narrow, their branches brittle in late summer's drought. Fuel waited. He chose four, then six, then more, cutting with strokes that kept rhythm short, efficient. The steel whispered through bark; the trunks shivered, bent, fell.
One by one he dragged them, arms and back slow but steady, until a heap gathered at the cave's lip. He stacked them slantwise, crosswise, a lattice of kindling and boughs. Each was pushed close to the mouth, as if feeding a beast. Leaves still clung; twigs still whispered.
Then his hands turned flame. Sacred Flame crawled down each palm, thin veins of gold burning clean across the gloves. He pressed both into bark, once, twice, until sap hissed, until resin bled and caught. The first log flared, then the second. He set others on top, feeding them, building not a bonfire but a barrier. A wall of fire where the throat began.
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 17 → 5)
Still he did not breathe deep. He stooped, gathered smaller branches, scattered them like seeds. Some rolled into the mouth itself, catching on the damp floor; others he flung sideways into brush, so that sparks leapt outward, eating leaves, setting undergrowth hissing. He placed a stone against each log, then rolled them forward with calm insistence. One log at a time. One weight after another. The mouth began to choke.
Flame spread slow at first, then quicker, the smoke thickening into black coils that twisted back into the cave. The air grew red, alive with the hiss of pitch and resin. It was not wild fire, not chaos—it was arithmetic. Each log a digit. Each spark a sum.
Nameless climbed then, boots pressing soil soft with ash. He ascended the slope, circling until the ridge bent into rock. There he slid behind a cavity, a hollowed stone, his cloak drawn close. He stilled himself—breath shallow, heart quiet, mask rigid. No sound betrayed him.
From above, he watched.
The disciples broke first—shadows stumbling in smoke, eyes wide, hands grasping. The throat spat them back out, choking on its own breath. Their robes caught ember, edges curling. One screamed, staggered against stone. Another tried to crawl, cloak aflame, hair lit like straw.
The fire pressed them. Sacred Flame did not roar; it burned clean, judging as it spread. Flesh blackened, cloth curled, bones cracked faint under the weight of heat. Some ran forward, only to trip in the lattice of branches, catching and kindling at once. Some turned back, only to find smoke thicker, darker, filling the cave like tar.
Nameless remained behind the stone, mask tilted, gaze fixed. He did not flinch. The fire did the speaking.
"Sacred Fire proves," he thought, ledger settling with precision. "What is impure flees, what is false burns. A throat can swallow men—but a throat of earth cannot swallow flame."
Below, the mouth writhed in its own fire, and the disciples learned what it meant to inherit ashes.
The first—Level 2—stumbled forward, cloak catching in the lattice of branches. He fell chest-first into ember, his scream brief before the flame drew it flat. The ledger marked him before his body stilled.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (L2)]
[XP +110]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +2]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 8/10,000]
The second—Level 3—tried to follow, but panic drove him into the wall. His sleeve caught, hair curling to ash, eyes seared before he reached the threshold. He dropped where stone met flame, half inside, half out, body twitching until smoke silenced him.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (L3)]
[XP +185]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +2]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 10/10,000]
The third—Level 4—rushed with more strength. He clawed past the burning lattice, but his skin blackened as he crawled. He made it into the clearing, dragging himself on ruined hands. He lived only breaths longer before collapse took him.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (L4)]
[XP +400]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +3]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 13/10,000]
Two more figures staggered after.
The fourth—Level 2—rolled clear, cloak smoking but flesh spared. He writhed on the soil, coughing blood, alive but useless to himself. His bar flickered low, yet not empty.
The fifth—Level 3—emerged last, eyes wild, half his hair gone, one arm blistered raw. He stumbled clear, fell to knees, then lurched upright again. He lived, shaken, but his strength was not spent.
The novice, still breathing when the fire reached him, tried to crawl deeper into the cave, as though darkness could save him. But the throat had no mercy: the air within was already ash. His breath broke, his body convulsed once, then slumped where stone glowed faint.
Nameless narrowed his gaze, ledger settling: three dead, two alive. Smoke still billowed from the mouth, feeding skyward like incense. The throat had coughed most of its children out, but the rite of fire had claimed its portion.
From above, the ridge glowed faint, the air trembling with heat. Smoke rolled upward in black veils, streaked with yellow where resin hissed. The mouth had become a furnace. What entered as initiation now returned as sacrifice.
Inside, the logs Nameless had pressed with stone collapsed one into another, pushing the fire deeper. The cave itself drew breath, pulling flame inward as if thirsting. The hollow glowed red at its edges, each rock sweating black pitch before cracking.
The bodies burned slow. Cloaks first—the fabric curling, shrinking tight across spines. Then hair, snapping in white sparks. Fingers stiffened, bent backward until bone showed. Smoke clung to them, and when they writhed, it was not as men but as shadows jerking on fire's strings.
The cries thinned quickly. What remained was the hiss of fat feeding the coals, the soft crack of marrow breaking in heat. Flames rose pale-gold, less like torches than like lines written across flesh. Each body became geometry—black ribs drawn clean, skulls hollowed white, spines bent as though in final prostration.
Behind the rock he watched, mask steady, letting the fire speak. The cave groaned once as stone split, echoing like a cough from the hill's chest. Ash rolled outward, lifted by heat, veiling the ridge in grey.
Then came another sound—not the novices. A tread heavier, paced, not frantic but deliberate. From within the furnace a shape moved, shadow against gold. The throat had not devoured all. Manis stepped from the glow—cloak blackened at the hem, mask half-white half-black gleaming where fire refused to eat. He did not stumble; he walked as though the fire were stage-light, and he its actor.
From the furnace-mouth the figure strode, fire bowing from his path. Manis raised one hand, palm spread, voice low but heavy with cadence:
"Darkness."
The word fell like a stone into a well. At once the flame recoiled, not quenched but smothered, as though swallowed whole by night itself. The lattice of logs hissed and died, their embers strangled in silence. Smoke thickened, but no light pierced it. The mouth, once furnace, now yawned black again, its throat lined with char and bone.
From above, Nameless did not stir. His mask tilted, eyes narrow. "So. He has reached it. Listener. Not novice." The fire had been proof, and the proof answered itself.
Below, Manis turned, cloak trailing ash, the half-white half-black mask gleaming pale against the void he had made. His gaze slid to the acolytes at the rear, their hands still stained with chalk and soot. He spoke not loud, but the cave carried him double:
"The worthless cast themselves out. The throat has no need to spit. See how refuse burns, then flees. The hollow keeps only what is chosen."
His tone bent both ways at once—half lament, half scorn—so that it was never clear if he mourned or mocked. The acolytes bowed, their eyes lowered, as though the words had stripped choice from them.
Nameless, from the ridge, let silence ledger it: the proof of fire, the power of darkness, the doctrine of contempt. Listener indeed.
The smoke thinned just enough for sight to return. The two who had escaped lay at the cave's lip—one crawling, skin split and blackened; the other staggering, cloak half-burnt, eyes wide with terror. They had survived fire, but not judgment.
Manis did not speak at first. He crossed the stone slow, his cloak whispering ash. Then he stooped, one hand gripping the novice by the jaw, the other pressing flat against his skull. The mask gleamed white on one side, black on the other. His voice cut low:
"Doubt."
The word fell twice, from both hands at once. The novice convulsed, eyes rolling back. A crack of light split through his head, then burst outward—bone, blood, thought scattering like shards of glass. What crawled a breath before became pulp, steaming in the dark.
The second tried to cry out, but Manis was already upon him. He seized the boy's temples, lifting his face upward as if to force him to look at heaven.
"Doubt."
The cave answered with a thrum like thunder. The skull burst under the pressure, fragments spraying against stone. The body dropped headless, twitching in refusal to admit it had died.
The hollow stank of blood and char. Manis let both corpses fall as if they weighed nothing, brushing his hands against the black hem of his cloak. He did not look back, did not mark their names, only spoke once more—voice flat, final:
"The throat keeps nothing impure."
Above, behind stone, Nameless watched the ledger settle.
[Kill Assist — Human (L2)]
[XP +55]
[Kill Assist — Human (L3)]
[XP +90]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +4]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 17/10,000]
His thought remained cold, almost amused: "Saturn devouring his children. A rather pretentious Listener from the upper echelons indeed..."
The mouth now held only ash, bone, and silence.