The forge smelled of iron, ash, and sweat.
When Min Min returned to the toolsmithy, his master barely looked up, only gesturing impatiently toward the unfinished work at the anvil. Without a word, Min Min set to it. The hammer rose and fell in rhythm, striking red-hot metal that sparked and hissed when cooled in the trough.
The shapes he worked on were chisels, hooks, nails, the things the clergy demanded in bulk for their endless construction and rituals.
His hands moved with certain swings, but his mind was not in the moment.
When the last tool was quenched, he set it aside without comment. His master muttered something about finishing late tomorrow, but Min Min barely heard.
He returned to his small room. A shelf leaned against the wall, bowed under the weight of nothing but dust and a single book. Beside it, an old bed sagged on its straw frame, but compared to the peasants crammed into earth-floored huts outside the town walls, it was luxury.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at the book. Finally, he pulled it into his lap and opened the cracked leather cover. Inside were lines of lullabies, scrawled in his mother's gentle hand, the only fragment of his parents left behind.
The sun bled into the horizon, shadows stretching long through the town. Min Min rose, tucked the book back onto the shelf, and stepped into the cooling air.
The chapel loomed at the town's heart, its spire rising like a spear. The shadow of its walls stretched furthest now, cast long and dark across the muddy street. Min Min followed the shadow to its end and when he found the place where it fell longest, he stopped.
"All Gods fall," he whispered, and then paused as if hesitating, but it was too late to turn back now. "The Eye remains."
The words had scarcely left his lips before the shadow shifted. A figure pulled itself out of the dark as if born from it. Min Min thought for an instant it was her, the woman from the tavern, but no.
This one was taller. It was most likely a man, but with a face hidden beneath a deep hood, Min Min couldn't say for sure.
"Don't ask any questions," the figure coldly said.
The figure turned, and Min Min followed. They slipped around the chapel's side, through a narrow backdoor, and into a stone corridors. They passed closed wooden doors until at last one was opened. Inside hung rows of white cloaks, each with a pointed hood.
Min Min pulled the cloak tight, the rough cloth scratching his neck. The hood dropped low over his face, hiding him in shadow.
The figure said nothing more, only led him onward.
The stairs twisted down into the earth, stone walls damp and close around them.
At the bottom of the stairs, a clergyman waited. He held a torch in one hand, the light dancing over his pale face, and in the other, a string of bone beads. His eyes were sharp, watchful.
For a moment, Min Min's breath caught. He thought the man would stop them, ask who they were, demand proof.
But the clergyman's gaze rested on their white cloaks. He gave only a small nod, stepped aside, and let them pass.
That was all.
So easy.
Min Min's heart pounded. He walked past, close enough to smell the smoke of incense clinging to the man's robes. His shoulders tensed, waiting for a hand to grab him—but it never came.
The corridor opened into a massive chamber.
At its center stood a massive grey block of metal, large as a house. The torchlight slid over its surface, dull and cold.
Around it, peasants sat in a perfect circle, twenty, maybe thirty of them. They were cross-legged, their bodies still, their heads slightly bowed. Their eyes were shut.
Their chests rose and fell, slow and shallow, as if they were asleep.
However, the strangest of all, from each of their chests a thin stream rose into the air. It wasn't smoke, and it wasn't liquid. A pale vapor, thick as liquid but weightless as air, drifted upward. The streams twisted and curled, meeting above the large block. There, they spun together into a slow, turning turbine.
The turbine sank downward, its entire flow being pulled into the top surface of the metal block. The block did not glow, did not move, but it consumed everything fed into it.
"Walk without stopping," the hooded figure whispered. "Follow me."
They moved past the great block and descended another stairway cut into the stone beneath. The steps were steeper here.
At the bottom, another chamber opened up.
Here, another circle sat. Not peasants this time. These were men and women clad in the same white cloaks and pointed hoods as the one Min Min now wore. The Clergy. Their posture was perfect, their hands resting on their knees.
From the ceiling above them, the strange substance poured downward—thicker now, a river of pale smoke made solid. It turned in the air like a slow spiral and then split into many strands, each strand sinking into a figure's chest, piercing the fabric and vanishing where the heart should be.
Min Min froze. His breath caught.
The hooded man at his side suddenly thrust an arm out, stopping him. "Don't move an inch."
Before Min Min could ask, the man pulled a dagger from beneath his cloak and leapt forward with no warning.
He aimed straight for the throat of one of the seated clergy.
A figure across the circle shifted, white hood snapped up. A sword flashed into being in her hand as if summoned from air. But instead of cutting down the attacker, she turned and cleaved into the man beside her.
Her blade swept wide, tearing through two more cloaks in the same strike.
Another clergy from the far side surged up, his sword hissing as it cut at the woman—but before it could land, the hooded man who had led Min Min here lunged in.
His dagger found the man's throat, cutting him down in a spray of red.
The circle was broken. The sound of tearing flesh and clashing steel erupted.
Min Min, pressed against the stair's last step, could only watch.
The woman and Min Min's guide moved as one, cutting down the stunned clergy before they could rise from their circle. Blood splattered their white cloaks.
But speed had its price.
A blade meant for the woman glanced off her guard and drove instead into the man's side. His body jerked, the dagger slipping from his hand as blood poured dark and fast.
Snarling, the woman pivoted in a blur. In a single sweep she carved through the last of the circle, her strikes too swift for the eye to follow.
Silence followed, broken only by the crackle of torches and the ragged breath of the dying.
The man slumped, knees hitting stone. His hood fell back, and for the first time Min Min saw his face—young, far too young, his eyes were wide, but it wasn't fear, it was acceptence and satisfaction.
Blankly making one of the Clergy's order.
The woman crouched beside him, her voice low but steady. "Leon... I'll remember this deed," she said. Her hand gripped his shoulder once, firm, then let go.
His head sagged forward, and he was still.
She left Leon's body to rest where it fell, then rose and turned her gaze toward Min Min. Slowly, she pulled back her hood.
"It's you," Min Min whispered, his voice hollow. "What… what happened here?"
Her eyes held his, steady and unflinching. "Those are Monoliths," she said, nodding toward the grey blocks. "They gather the life-force of men. The clergy drain it to prolong their own lives. And the impure are just those whose life-force is no longer useful. So the clergy cast them out. No need to feed what cannot be harvested. The god you pray to is nothing more than a greedy bastard."
The words broke something in Min Min. His shoulders sagged, his head bowed low. He thought of every prayer whispered, every day lived in fear of impurity, every lie swallowed whole. Sinners, they had called them. And he had believed.
Then the woman's tone shifted, sharper. "Finished despairing?" she asked. "Good. You came to me, that saved me the trouble of finding someone myself."
She stepped closer, holding the blade side of the sword. "Time to prove yourself useful."
Her sword rose, the hilt aimed at his head. Min Min barely flinched.
But before the strike could fall, a large, wrinkled hand closed around her wrist, halting the blow in mid-air.
The hand gripping her wrist belonged to a man. He wore a flat, worn hat, and his voice was hoarse, rough, almost like dry leaves scraping.
"Little Lady, you will leave this one to me."
Without hesitation, she lashed out with her sword.
Steel flashed at him, precise and lethal, but her strike was caught not by a block or parry, but between two of his fingertips.
Her eyes went wide in shock.
"I do not mean to hurt you," he said calmly, almost gentle, though with authority.
Then he held out his hand. A sudden force surged toward her. It pulled her forward and the air itself had turned solid and tight. In an instant, she was sucked into a single, pinpointed spot.
Where she had been a moment ago, there was nothing but the faint ripple of air. She had vanished.
Min Min sat frozen, eyes wide, staring at the empty space where she had vanished. His knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the stone steps, clutching them as if holding himself together.
He looked up at the old man.
Underneath the flat, worn hat, his irises flashed a sharp, unnatural, piercing yellow.
Then, the man's hand fell, knocking him unconscious.
...
In the Tower, Ragnar's eyes snapped open.