Evin did not wake to mercy.
He surfaced in pain—layered, consuming, intimate. It wrapped around his body like a second skin, every breath dragging fire through his chest. The world returned in fragments: the smell of scorched cloth, stone dust, iron.
And voices.
"—He's alive."
"He shouldn't be."
"Quiet."
Hands pressed against him, firm but careful. Someone was praying. Someone else was swearing under their breath.
Evin tried to move.
Agony answered.
He screamed.
The sound tore out of him, raw and animal, echoing off the stone walls. The praying stopped. A sharp command followed, and something cool was pressed against his burned skin. Light flared—not holy, not warm, but clinical. Containing.
"He's stabilizing," a voice said. Older. Tired.
"Barely."
Another voice—young, shaking. "You said they wouldn't let this happen."
Silence.
Evin forced his eyes open.
The ceiling above him was not the cathedral's vaulted glory. This place was lower, darker. Unadorned stone. Utility over reverence. The saints had been replaced by cracks in the mortar.
A face leaned into view.
"Evin—Evin, don't move. Please."
Lysa.
Her hair was loose, eyes red, hands trembling as she hovered uselessly near him, afraid to touch what fire had ruined.
She'd been the only one to sit with him during orientation. The only one who hadn't laughed when his evaluation had failed.
"You came back," she whispered, relief breaking through terror. "I tried to stop them. I swear I did."
Evin's throat burned too badly to speak. He swallowed and tasted blood.
"Why…" The word barely made it out.
Lysa's eyes flicked away.
A third voice answered instead.
"You were deemed… non-essential."
A priest stood at the foot of the cot. No ornate robes. No gold trim. Just gray cloth and a symbol stitched in white over the heart—Administration.
"The examination chamber is not a place for disorder," the priest continued. "But conflict among the summoned is… inevitable."
Evin stared at him.
The priest met his gaze without flinching.
"The Church does not interfere unless doctrine is violated," he said calmly. "No doctrine was violated.
Lysa spun on him. "He was burned alive!"
The priest inclined his head. "He survived."
Evin laughed.
It came out broken, wet, half a cough. Pain flared in response, but he couldn't stop. The sound scraped something loose inside him—something brittle, something close to shattering.
Survived.
"Will he recover?" Lysa demanded.
The priest considered Evin like a damaged tool. "That depends. His body may heal. His usefulness is… uncertain."
"Usefulness," Evin rasped.
The priest turned to him again. "You have been summoned into service. Ability or no, your life no longer belongs solely to you."
Something shifted.
Not in the room.
In Evin.
Back home, pain had been temporary. Injustice had an end. There had been teachers, rules, consequences—even if they came too late.
Here, the truth was clean and cold:
This was not cruelty.
This was policy.
The priest gestured to the attendants. "Keep him alive. If he regains mobility, he'll be reassigned."
"Reassigned to what?" Lysa asked.
The priest paused at the door.
"Support labor. Cleansing detail. Or testing."
The door closed.
The sound echoed longer than it should have.
Lysa sank onto the floor beside Evin's cot, hands pressed to her mouth. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I thought if I stayed quiet, if I didn't draw attention—"
"It's not you," Evin said. The words hurt, but he meant them.
She shook her head. "They're watching. They'll watch everything now."
Evin stared at the ceiling.
His body throbbed in time with his heart. Each beat reminded him he was still here—still breathing in a place that had already decided he did not matter.
"What about Kade?" he asked.
Lysa stiffened. "They praised him."
Of course they did.
"He showed 'initiative,'" she continued bitterly. "They said conflict sharpens the faithful."
Evin closed his eyes.
Behind his lids, fire bloomed again. Not the chaotic blaze Kade had wielded—but something darker. Quieter. An image of ash drifting downward, settling, refusing to disappear.
"I don't want to be here," he whispered.
Lysa leaned closer. "Then survive," she said fiercely. "Whatever that takes. Just… don't disappear."
Evin did not answer.
Because somewhere beneath the pain, beneath the fear, beneath the suffocating weight of holy stone—
Something listened.
Not a god.
Not yet.
But something patient.
And for the first time since the summoning, the silence did not feel empty.