The village bell tolled at dawn.
Three sharp chimes split the morning silence, their echo tumbling down the valley like falling stones. The sound rattled branches and shook snow from pine limbs, stirred crows from their roosts, and set dogs barking somewhere near the goat pens. It was not just a signal. It was an awakening. A summons. A ritual.
Kael stood motionless in the threshold of the temple, the mist of his breath curling in front of him like smoke from a dying fire. The air was sharp and brittle, each inhale was a reminder of his body's fragility—Tarin's fragility.
This form still felt unnatural, like clothes worn too long that never quite fit. His limbs were thin, his joints ached with cold, and the threadbare cloak he had wrapped around his shoulders barely kept the frost from clawing through. But he stood tall. He would not bend. Not here. Not now.
In the square below, the villagers were already gathering.
They moved without urgency, yet with absolute discipline—drawn by the bell, like sleepers obeying habit. They filed into place with bowed heads, whispered greetings, and the solemnity of well-worn obedience.
Kael watched from the shadow of a low stone wall, crouched behind a withered bush crusted with frost. He kept his face turned downward, just enough to blend into the scenery. Tarin had never spoken during these gatherings. No one expected him to speak now—not while they believed him dead.
That was fine. Kael preferred to observe.
He needed to see this. To understand what the gods had made of these people. What centuries of subjugation had done to mortal hearts.
At the front of the square stood an old man draped in layered furs—gray-bearded, sunken-eyed, but holding himself with the kind of quiet authority earned not through power, but persistence. His breath fogged the air as he raised a hand.
Two boys stood beside him, no older than ten. Their small arms trembled under the weight of the carved wooden symbol they carried between them: a sun-wheel of sorts—circular, with eight straight lines radiating from the center like golden rays.
The Sigil of Aureon.
Kael's fists clenched beneath his cloak. The shape still haunted his mind, buried into his nightmares like a scar. He'd once carved that symbol onto armor. He'd seen it hoisted high on banners that fluttered above battlefields.
Once, he had believed in it. Now it was painted on wooden shrines and etched into prayer stones. A holy mark. A god's mark.
Kael swallowed the bitter taste rising in his throat. What they worshipped, he had once wielded. What they feared, he had once become.
The villagers bowed in unison as the old man began to chant.
"Order brings life. Obedience brings peace. The gods see, and we are seen."
The crowd responded as one.
"We are seen."
Even the children said it. Even Lodia, standing near the back with her mother, her long silver hair fixed in a tight braid. Her voice was soft, but there was no fear in it. Only certainty.
Kael felt his stomach knot.
Not one of them hesitated. Not a single flicker of doubt. The words were more than ritual—they were truth to these people. The divine order wasn't questioned, because it had always been. From birth to death, from hunger to harvest, the gods were the answer.
Even when they demanded blood.
The old man raised his staff—smooth oak, covered in bronze, adorned with a strip of white cloth and small silver bells.
His voice carried with practiced strength. "A blessed day. The tribute was accepted. No sign of rot. No lingering shadow. The boy was clean."
Then came a pause. A beat of silence. Soon murmured approval swept through the crowd.
Smiles. They all smiled.
Kael could hardly breathe. The boy was clean.
Tarin. Me.
They spoke of him like cattle. Like a lamb slaughtered and found unspoiled.
The old man continued. "The gods have answered us with quiet skies. We give, and we are spared."
The villagers nodded. Some even clapped softly, reverently. A woman whispered a prayer, tracing the god-sigil in the air with trembling fingers.
Then another woman stepped forward, cradling a small child in her arms. The girl couldn't have been more than five. She looked half-asleep, still clutching a cloth doll.
The priest offered a gentle smile and touched her forehead with a thumb soaked in holy oil. He muttered a blessing Kael recognized from old temple rites. Then, without hesitation, he drew a silver pin from a pouch on his belt and pricked the child's fingertip.
The girl whimpered. A single drop of blood spilled up. It was caught in a tiny glass vial. Sealed with wax. The mother bowed, whispered her thanks, and retreated into the crowd.
Kael's vision pulsed red.
Even infants. Even infants were taxed in blood. Every child marked. Every soul counted.
The High Priests had once told Kael that such offerings were "spirit ties"—minor gestures of devotion, harmless tokens of loyalty. That was the lie. The blood fed something. Strengthened something.
And no one questioned it. Not even him back then.
He had not felt the old fire in years. Not since the siege at Darnfell, where divine light had turned his warlords to ash. Not since the gods had unmade his empire with whispers and judgment.
But he felt it now.
It stirred beneath his skin, rising through his bones, curling behind his eyes like smoke from a blackened forge.
He wanted to scream. To step forward and rip the old man's throat out with his bare hands. To seize that sun-sigil and shatter it against the stones.
But this was not the time. His vengeance would be worthless if it burned too early.
Kael turned his back on the ceremony and slipped away before the fire consumed him.
The cabin greeted him like a tomb.
He shut the door quietly, leaned against it for a moment, and exhaled. The cloak slipped from his shoulders. His hands trembled from the strain of holding back. From sheer control.
He dropped to one knee by the hearth. The embers had gone cold in his absence.
He pried a loose stone from the floor—the one that had caught his eye the night before. The dust around it had been disturbed, faint scratch-marks in the wood suggesting it had been moved, opened, closed again.
Behind the stone was a bundle, wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Tarin's hidden journal.
Kael opened it with reverence.
The pages were fragile, creased and yellowed, stained by age and ink and the occasional tear. But the writing was meticulous—neat, tight script that hinted at long hours practicing in secret. Margins filled with sketches. Dates. Observations.
A careful mind. A frightened one. But not a foolish one.
Kael turned the pages slowly, reading by the gray light that crept through the warped windowpane.
"The Seers come every month now. They say it is to protect us. But we give more each time. Offerings, blood, grain. We're running out of both. The river froze too early this year."
"Mother says to pray harder. That the gods want to hear our gratitude. But I think the gods want more than words."
"The old woman—Sera, the midwife—was taken last spring. They said it was her time, that the gods had chosen her. But I saw her the night before. She begged to stay. She cried. I can still hear it."
Kael closed his eyes.
This boy… this forgotten soul… had seen more truth than most men in power. He had lived beneath the boot of the gods and still found the will to write it down.
The next page struck like a knife.
"I dream of fire. A man in it. Standing tall while everything burns around him. He laughs, but it's not cruel. It's defiant. I don't know his name. I think he's waiting for something."
Kael's hand trembled. He stared at the words for a long time, until they blurred.
You dreamed of me. Somehow… you remembered.
His soul had waited—patient, burning, bound beyond death—for the right vessel. But had the boy known it would be him? Tarin, the quiet child with no legacy but silence?
Kael stared at the rough lines of his borrowed hands. Had fate truly chosen this vessel… or merely scavenged what remained to house his soul?
But then, why this boy? Why Tarin? A simple soul in a frozen village, with no bloodline, no prophecy, no god's blessing.
And yet—something in Tarin had stirred. Enough to call Kael back from the void into his body. Enough to remember and surrendered himself.
Some echo of Kael's soul must have stirred long before his return. The veil between death and life was thin in places—especially near god-marked shrines. Perhaps Tarin's mind, cracked by silence and sorrow, had glimpsed a truth no one else could bear.
Kael gently tore the page free. The rest he burned—slowly, one sheet at a time, feeding the hearth with Tarin's fears, his sorrow, his questions.
Not out of cruelty. But because that life was over.
The boy had died on the stone slab. His spirit gone, his flesh repurposed. What remained would carry forward with purpose. With will.
As Kael watched the flames eat the last of the journal, he felt something in the room shift.
A presence. It wasn't physical, neither was it audible. A weight in the air. As if some invisible thing had turned to look at him.
He did not move. He let it look. Then he whispered: "Come closer, if you dare."
No response. The presence recoiled, and vanished.
Outside, the villagers went about their day. Children shoveled snow. Women washed cloth in half-frozen basins. Men loaded crates onto carts pulled by tired oxen. All under the ever-watching eye of the temple high on the hill, where the Sigil of Aureon hung like a curse.
Kael watched them from behind a frost-dusted window. A village of prayers. Of offerings. Of blind obedience.
They had long forgotten they were prisoners.
But he remembered.
He remembered the chains woven from scripture, the yoke of divine decree. He had knelt once, too—before tearing the altar down with bloodied hands.
They called it worship. He called it surrender.
He would awaken them. Tear the veil from their eyes and burn the fear from their bones.
And he would free them—not with mercy, but with fire.
One god at a time.
Let them offer their blood. Let them bow, chant and beg for divine favor.
Soon, their gods would answer.
And Kael Draven would be waiting prepared.