By the time she reached the base of the canyon, night had swallowed the world whole.
Not like a blanket.
Like a blade—sharp, final, drawn across the throat of the sky.
Her mount had been left behind hours ago, unable to descend the crumbling path carved into the cliff's skin. Reneta had gone the rest on foot. Steady, unyielding. Every step sent stones tumbling into the vast black below. No echo followed.
She'd stopped expecting echoes.
They belonged to those who needed answers. She didn't. Not anymore.
⸻
The cave mouth appeared without warning.
Two pillars flanked it—cracked, vine-choked, half-devoured by time. No names. No sigils. No warnings.
Only the faint suggestion of a forgotten gate.
She passed between them.
The air shifted.
⸻
Inside, the world narrowed to a corridor of wet stone and dripping silence. Roots hung from the ceiling like veins pulled too low. Some glowed faintly—sick green, pale blue—but it didn't feel like magic.
It felt like rot.
Old rot. The kind that remembered.
Reneta kept walking.
She didn't touch the walls. She didn't reach for her Threads. She didn't speak.
But her fingers brushed the hilt of her sword-whip out of habit—a motion more reflex than thought. The weapon, half-coiled like a sleeping serpent, hummed softly beneath its wrappings. It was a relic, not an imperial issue. Older than the House War. Forged for binding, not just killing.
She didn't trust it.
She didn't trust anything.
But it had never failed her.
⸻
The silence grew heavier the deeper she went. Thicker. Not just the absence of sound—the presence of something that had replaced it.
Even her breath felt like trespass.
She walked slower.
Felt the pulse in her fingers.
Felt the weight behind her ribs.
Then—light.
A faint seam of it bleeding through a fractured wall. The tunnel opened.
⸻
The chamber beyond was vast. Circular. Domed. Pillars ringed it like melted bone, warped by time and Thread-radiance long since faded. Pools of still water mirrored starlight bleeding through a jagged crack in the ceiling.
The air smelled of stone and ash and old iron.
She paused.
It was a temple.
Not imperial.
Not hers.
But a temple, still.
No altar. No guards. Just a low, flat platform at the chamber's center, ringed in worn floor etchings—a broken circle of invocation, now mostly swallowed by dust.
The only untouched parts were the statues.
Seven, carved into the wall.
Blindfolded. Arms bound behind their backs.
She didn't move toward them.
She didn't look away either.
She stepped forward—toward the platform.
Her boots left no sound.
⸻
The flat stone was cold beneath her feet.
She didn't kneel.
Something told her she should. That others had. That perhaps none ever rose after.
But kneeling wasn't her way.
Not anymore.
Her coat clung to her sides, still stiff with dried blood from the Hollowreach front. Her bones ached with exhaustion she hadn't admitted yet. She hadn't eaten. Slept. Dreamed.
She only moved forward. Always.
She exhaled.
"I don't know why they've sent me here," she said.
The sound of her own voice startled her. It rasped like rusted hinges.
"I followed the order. I came."
No answer.
Of course not.
There were no Threads to bind in this place. No war. No war cries. No death.
Only her.
"I bled for them," she murmured, quieter now. "They called this a pilgrimage."
Her jaw tightened.
Her mouth twisted. A smile—brief, bitter.
They never gave her reasons. Only orders shaped like honors.
But she knew what it was. Not devotion. Not duty.
Disposal.
Not the kind with blades and trials and spectacle—but the quiet kind. The kind reserved for those who didn't fit anymore. For those whose usefulness no longer outweighed their danger.
They dressed it up in ritual. In sanctified myth.
But this was exile with a ribbon tied around its throat.
She wasn't a threat. Not yet.
But she was close.
The war had made her visible—too visible. Her unit had been the first to breach the Ashline, the last to retreat from Hollowreach. She'd killed without needing to be told. She'd survived what Command had written off. And worse—she'd questioned why they'd been sent in the first place.
And when her blade struck too true, when her instincts outpaced the Commanders' designs—they promoted her.
As a warning.
They gave her ribbons. Not answers. They told her her strength was necessary. Not welcome.
Now she walked ancient roads with no escort and no map, tracing paths through graves and half-forgotten rites. They called it a pilgrimage.
But she knew the tone beneath the words.
We are watching.
We do not trust what you have become.
And deeper still—unspoken:
We don't know who you are.
That part stayed with her. Clung like coal-dust beneath the skin.
Because she didn't know either.
"I know what that means."
It meant exile without the insult. It meant: Go where we don't have to look at you. It meant: You've grown too much for their comfort.
She looked up.
The stars were visible only in thin shards, barely piercing the ceiling's cracks. Cold light in a dying mouth.
They told her her bloodline traced back to the border clans. Witch-blood, diluted. A liability, they once called it. Then—after the Ash Trials—a symbol.
She was never told more.
Not about the names burned from the records. Not about the vanished branch that the relics still answered to. Not about the strange dreams she'd had since childhood—dreams of bone-wreathed flames and songs sung by people with her face but not her name.
She had asked once. A younger officer. Naïve, still looking for belonging.
And Ida had smiled, soft and cold, and said,
"You are what the Empire makes of you. Nothing more. Nothing less."
Reneta had never asked again.
But silence didn't erase questions. It only sharpened them.
What if the pilgrimage wasn't just punishment?
What if it wasn't exile?
What if it was a test?
Or worse—
What if it was a key?
Her hands drifted to the floor. She sat.
Not to pray.
Not to obey.
Just… to be.
The floor pressed into her palms. Rough. Honest. There was something comforting about it.
The silence didn't accuse.
It didn't forgive either.
It just allowed.
⸻
"I don't believe in fate," she whispered.
No echo.
No judgment.
She breathed. In. Out.
And something in her chest—tight since the war, since the promotion, since the child with the name-flame on his throat—uncoiled.
Not healed.
Not mended.
But seen.
⸻
Eventually, she rose.
Her legs resisted, but obeyed. She turned—not to leave, not yet—but toward the statues.
She approached the nearest.
Its face was eroded by time. But its shape was unmistakably human. Bound arms. Blindfold.
Not submission.
Silence.
She reached out.
Touched the statue's face.
It was cool. Real.
And somehow… she didn't feel alone.
Not like she did in war camps, surrounded by shouts and orders.
Not like under the Empire's gaze, where her every movement was measured against history she hadn't written.
Here, there was no gaze.
Only memory.
And whoever had carved this place had chosen stillness instead of orders.
That, at least, she could understand.
⸻
Reneta stepped back.
Her fingers slipped from the statue's stone face.
Her sword-whip uncoiled slightly at her side—just a whisper of movement, like breath through broken leaves. Its chain links caught a thread of starlight and shimmered.
A reminder.
She was still armed.
Still walking.
Still alive.
The Threads didn't whisper here. But something had reached for her when she touched the statue.
Not a voice. Not a command.
Recognition.
A quiet, dangerous part of her almost hoped the High Chancellor had made a mistake. That she wasn't just a useful sword sent to rust in old stone.
That she was something they feared.
Not because of rebellion.
But because of birthright.
Even if they'd attempt to bury her in silence.
Let them try.
She would not break in this place.
And if this forgotten temple was meant to unmake her—
it would have to try harder.
She turned toward the tunnel.
The silence did not stop her.
The darkness did not frighten her.
They didn't define her.
Not anymore.
Not again.