Location: Grand Shrine of the Twin Flame, Armathane – Midgard Time: Day 124 After Alec's Arrival
The Grand Shrine of the Twin Flame was quiet.
Too quiet for a city whose soul burned beneath banners of progress, industry, and reformation. The silence here wasn't holy — it was watchful. A breath held, a pause before the voice of old power cleared its throat.
The sanctuary glowed softly under amber glass, refracting sunlight through twin arches: one shaped like the rising sun, the other like a crescent moon.
At the base of the sanctuary's dais stood Bishop Orsian, cloaked in layered ivory and dusk-grey, his hands folded behind him. He was tall, nearing sixty, with sharp shoulders and a sharper memory.
He had occupied the post after his predecessor passed twenty years ago. Being elevated from Archprior to Bishop was a rare thing in itself. He was the one of the few it has occurred to.
Maybe he was blessed by the Gods themselves.
He stared up at the gilded mural of Auron and Velistra, depicted in eternal balance — flame and shadow, discipline and grace.
He had once believed balance to be divine.
Lately, he feared it was fragile.
"Again," he said without turning.
He had been listening to a reading of the quarterly reports on happenings and developments in the duchy.
A young cleric standing beside the pews cleared his throat and re-read the parchment.
"He does not kneel. He does not invoke. He builds in silence. And the people cheer louder than they do for any blessing."
Orsian closed his eyes.
"The duchess remains still. Her daughter watches him with something close to admiration. Her court bows when he enters. The nobles whisper of fear, but the laborers speak of awe."*
The cleric hesitated.
"Some call him blessed. Others call him… inevitable."
Orsian turned.
"That last word again."
The cleric swallowed. "Inevitable, Your Grace."
Orsian stepped forward, robes whispering along the polished floor.
"You understand what that means, don't you?"
The boy nodded slowly.
"It means they believe he rises outside of divine order. That the Light did not shape him. That the Moon did not guide his fate. That he is not named — but simply... is."
"And if they believe that?"
"Then... the path to blasphemy begins."
He thought of how he should react to this. React now or keep monitoring the situation.
Orsian exhaled through his nose. "Prepare a clean scribe. We are writing to the Seat."
"Call a meeting with the upper clergymen " he told the cleric.
By dusk, four senior clergy were gathered in Orsian's private chamber — a domed room beneath the sanctuary itself, paneled in ashwood, lit by flame-crystal lamps.
A half-dozen parchments lay on the table — reports, rumors, copied baronial letters, even a scribbled sermon fragment where a village priest openly praised Alec's grain reform as a "miracle of mortal minds."
Orsian tapped it with one ringed finger.
"Ignore this and we invite chaos."
"Perhaps," said Archprior Lurein, the county-level steward of Oslo. He was younger, calm-eyed, and politically slippery. "But the man has not spoken against the Church. Nor denied Auron or Velistra."
"He hasn't acknowledged them either."
"Does he need to?" Lurein said. "The duchess supports him."
"Because he builds," said Priest Kalra, a stern woman from Halstrad. "Not because she believes in him. She uses him like a tool."
"That doesn't matter," Orsian said. "Because the people do believe in him. They follow his decrees, obey his ledgers, trust his vision. And none of it comes from ritual. From rite. From the divine order."
"He does not wear the sun," Kalra said. "He does not pray to the moon."
"And the duchess," Orsian added, "has offered no feast-day in his name. No temple blessing for his projects. She keeps him outside our rites."
"Strategic," Lurein muttered.
"Dangerous," Orsian corrected.
The room fell into a stillness laced with doctrine and dread.
Then Orsian spoke, slowly:
"We have seen this before. When kings grew proud. When temples emptied. When names not given by the Flame were spoken in reverence. Always it begins this way — not with heresy, but with replacement."
He motioned to the scribe.
"Write."
The young man dipped his quill, hands shaking slightly.
To His Eminence, Cardinal Bastien, Keeper of the Solar Flame and Lunar Reflection, Astana
From Orsian Tal, Bishop of Midgard
Your Eminence,
I write to you not in alarm, but in faithful unease. A figure has risen in Midgard — Lord Alec, granted title by Duchess Vaelora, under whose authority he now shapes a great portion of our infrastructure and civil design.
He speaks no heresy. But he offers no faith. He neither prays nor invokes. He acknowledges no celestial guidance in his works.
And yet, Your Eminence… the people cheer.
He commands not with miracles, but with results. He heals not with moon-blessed hands, but with ledgers and roads. And in this absence of divine invocation, the common folk whisper that perhaps this man needs no gods to lift nations.
Already, some priests have bent their sermons to praise him. Already, some barons have shifted their tithes to fund his projects instead of our sanctums. And already, I see the shape of something forming that was not birthed through rite nor shaped through Light.
I ask, humbly and with all reverence:
What is our doctrine when a man moves the world without the gods?
What is our duty when silence does not mean doubt, but alternative belief?
And how shall we act — if not now, then when he truly begins to lead?
Your guidance is sought. Your word, awaited.
Bishop Orsian Tal, Midgard, Grand Shrine of the Twin Flame
The room was silent as the wax was melted.
A black seal, impressed with the double-disc of Auron and Velistra, was pressed into the still-hot wax.
Lurein broke the silence.
"What will they say?"
Orsian looked at the candlelight flickering across his gold rings.
"That depends," he said, "on whether they fear him…"
He met the eyes of each cleric present.
"…or envy him."
The letter left at dawn.
It would reach Astana in twelve days.
And when it did — the gods would be watching.
Or at least... those who claimed to speak for them.
He had done his part.