They didn't announce their departure, nor did the amphitheater crowd beg them to stay.
But they were noticed.
The woman who walked with Eliah? She told her grandchildren.
The young scribe on the edge of the crowd? He copied Eliah's words onto parchment.
And one boy—barely twelve—began fasting secretly each morning, trying to understand what quiet light feels like.
—
By the riverbank, Eliah and Mariam tended to a wounded deer. They weren't healers. Just kind.
That's when they heard it: the hesitant steps of three figures emerging from the woods.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," said the first, a scholar with ink-stained fingers. "I followed you. From the gathering."
"You walked far," Eliah replied calmly.
"Your conviction…it didn't try to prove anything. It just was."
Mariam smirked. "We're not very good at dramatic entrances."
—
The scholar bowed. "My name is Eron. I used to teach scripture—before it became marketable."
Behind him, a quiet man named Thao knelt to pet the deer. "I don't speak much," he said. "But I remember how real faith used to feel."
The third figure stepped forward—a girl no older than fifteen.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she blurted. "But when you walked with that old woman, it made me want to stop pretending I'm okay."
Eliah smiled gently. "That's a good start."
—
By dusk, they had their first campfire as a group. No name. No title. Just stories.
"Are we followers now?" Eron asked.
"Not of us," Mariam replied. "But maybe of something we all remember."
Eliah added, "We're not forming an order. We're just walking the same way."
—
And far beyond the trees, in chambers carved from shadow, the Fallen Wing stirred.
"We found them," whispered one cloaked figure. "But they are multiplying."
"Then we must distort," said another. "Before the truth becomes too visible."