Considering who the temple had been built for, and how devoted the people who built it claimed to be, it was underwhelming. Perhaps they simply preferred a simpler style.
Kael took a candle from a bucket near the entrance. Yellow, like most things around him. Apparently yellow was the colour they had chosen to represent Serene Moon Demon Paragon.
He snapped his fingers and lit it before continuing deeper.
Light pressed through the cracks in the bamboo walls, adding to what might have been a grand atmosphere if the scale had matched the ambition.
"You're here to offer a light to Serene Moon?"
A bearded man appeared beside him.
"Yes. Could you guide me through it?"
It wasn't that Kael particularly wanted to pay tribute to Serene Moon. But he had always been interested in history and old belief systems, and this was simply another way to learn something. The ritual itself was the thing worth understanding.
"Follow me."
The two moved toward an altar at the far end. Oak chairs lined the space and chandeliers hung at intervals overhead, the combination slightly at odds with the bamboo walls around them.
They waited for two devotees to finish their offerings, then took their seats before the altar.
A golden statue looked down at them. Hooded, with one hand extended outward and downward, as though offering to help someone up from the floor.
"Just do as I do." The man said.
As expected from such a recent tradition it wasn't complicated. They shared some words and quietly asked Serene Moon Demon Paragon for guidance. Then they blew out their candles and dropped them into a fist-sized hole in the ground.
"Where does it go?" Kael glanced down into it.
"Serene Moon taught us that no light offered in faith is ever lost. The hole represents his embrace, where every flame is gathered and kept safe from the darkness of this world."
Kael looked at it more intently.
"Don't try to use sensory motes on it." The man whispered. "It's bottomless."
'... or is it just another entrance to the Depths?'
He wasn't sure whether it was frequency illusion or something else, but his first encounter with the Depths had felt so singular, so improbable, that it had seemed like the kind of thing that could only happen once, to one person, through an extraordinary combination of misfortune and circumstance. Now he knew four entrances. The cave, island, the original fall in Sole. And now possibly this.
It made sense when he thought about it properly. The Depths weren't constructed. They were geological formations. Natural formations that appeared wherever the conditions produced them, which meant entrances existed everywhere the right conditions had been met. It's just that the Royal Noble families had the resources and the motivation to keep most of them hidden from the world.
Kael pulled his gloves back on as he stepped outside. The wind carried a mineral scent and the particular cold freshness of this climate.
He looked around. 'Where to now.'
Wet snow crunched under his boots as he made his way past the spring, where Yvette bathed somewhere in the mist.
"Feeling the Paragon's power yet?" He asked, crouching down near the water's edge.
Yvette flinched before recognising the voice.
"Yeah. I can feel newfound power coursing through my veins." She said with a lighthearted laugh.
"Not bad." Kael replied, and kept walking.
He reached the last sight worth seeing around the spring.
"Another old tree..."
He walked around it slowly.
It was a spruce centuries past its natural lifespan. The old sap caught between its bark had begun to harden and crystallise, preserving itself in its own resin.
He activated the Datum mote and walked upward along its towering crown.
"How boring."
After everything, the most interesting thing about this place had been the choice of decoration. And even that wasn't worth mentioning.
Just as he was about to deactivate the mote a distant howl that bordered on a scream reached him from the north.
He turned toward the setting sun.
There, half a thousand steps away, a wall of kicked up snow moved toward them like a hungry beast, consuming trees and hills as it went.
Kael dropped to the ground, made his way to the spring and stopped at the first devotee he found.
"What's coming?"
The young woman looked up at him, confused.
"A massive cloud of snow and howling is coming this way. What. Is. It?"
"No… It can't be." The colour drained from her face.
Just as she started to crawl away toward something Kael grabbed her robe and pulled her close.
"Tell me what it is or I'll kill you."
She flailed her arms, terror washing over her. Not from Kael. From whatever she couldn't seem to spit out.
"The— The Pale Ones. They're coming!" She tried to break free from his grip. "Release me!"
"They shouldn't appear for more than five years. What are you saying?"
She gritted her teeth, her eyes reddening with tears threatening to form.
"I don't know. I must warn the others!" She screamed, kicking him off.
She stumbled to her feet and ran toward the temple.
Kael gathered Yvette's clothes before stepping onto the spring. He walked across the water until he found her.
Her coat hit her face before she could react.
"What?! What is it?"
"Something is wrong." Kael said, eyes narrowing toward the north. "Get dressed."
He gave her barely any time before grabbing her arm and starting to walk upward with her.
"What's going on, Valerian?"
"The Pale Ones."
Yvette froze.
Everyone knew about them. One or two wasn't a problem for a Luminaire. But they never came alone. They moved like a plague of cicadas over a wheat field. Endless. That was one of the main reasons in the west continent why cities existed around noble territories in the first place, to protect mortals and low ranking Luminaires when the wave came. And even then, what reached the cities tended to be a fraction of what had started. They always started in the north. Started exactly where Kael and Yvette currently were.
"What? The Pale Ones aren't supposed to come for years yet."
"I know." Kael murmured. "That's what I thought too."
Any doubt she might have had vanished the moment her eyes found the wall moving toward them.
"My God. We have to help the people down there!"
Kael looked at her with cold eyes.
"No. There are too many. We might be able to defend ourselves for a time but there's no way we can help them."
"But—!"
"There's nothing we can do."
Yvette looked around desperately, searching for something.
"Rosalie then?"
"She'll survive. The Royal Noble family wouldn't have put her out here without accounting for that."
Those words seemed to settle something in Yvette.
"So what, we just wait up here for them to pass?"
"Hopefully we'll—"
He suddenly dropped Yvette.
His arms shot up on reflex to cover his face.
Swishhh.
The air left his lungs as something dark blue crashed into his chest. With a sound like shattering glass the Datum mote collapsed and deactivated and Kael shot backward like a released string.
Bamboo and oak exploded into the air as he tore through the temple wall. His head whipped back as he smashed into the golden statue's embrace.
He pushed himself off and stumbled, one foot catching in the offering hole.
"What…?"
He clenched his jaw and moved his eyes in slow circles until they found focus.
The Pale Ones were beasts. Brainless things driven only by the need to consume. None of them should have been able to target him in the air. None of them should have been capable of hitting that hard.
All around him devotees ran in blind panic, no real combat experience between any of them.
Kael unbuttoned his military cape and sent it to the Stone Coffin.
Not far away, in a corner, a devotee was staring at him with wide eyes.
"Soul— Soul pathway?!"
A card slipped through his throat a moment later and he folded to the ground.
Another devotee a few steps away watched in horror.
Kael cursed under his breath.
He looked around the temple. Devotees still running, panicking. Still completely useless in any practical sense. And now all of them had seen him kill one of their own.
It was a simple problem with a simple solution he didn't have time for.
Seems like everyone in this building had to die.
He rolled his neck and picked up a card.