The Summit's Silence
The climb ended not with triumph but with silence.
The last stair of Uruk'herald broke into open sky. Three nights had thinned into one long dawn that refused to end; only then did the summit lift its face from the clouds. The wind thinned to a whisper that seemed afraid to speak. Frost smoked from the stone, curling into the dawn light. Vulhairi staggered forward, armor dull beneath a crust of ice, breath rattling through split lips. Below him the desert unrolled without end, its sands catching the sunrise like molten brass. Far to the west, sparks trembled against the horizon—gnoll campfires, countless and patient.
A shadow crossed him.
Elizna descended first, her wings outspread in a slow, perfect glide. Golden feathers caught the light, scattering it in ripples across the frost. She landed without sound, the scent of warm dust and myrrh following her. Ajadressor came after, a streak of storm-grey; she hit the ground hard enough to send gravel skittering.
For the first time their voices reached him as words. The height did something to sound; meaning thinned like air and then became simple—at this altitude their voices shaped themselves to his understanding.
"You climbed without wings," said Elizna, wonder softening her tone.
"He climbed because he was told to," Ajadressor answered, voice like a blade drawn through stone. "Now he will learn why."
Vulhairi straightened, pain blooming through every joint. "I thought the mountain had no end."
Elizna's eyes gleamed, ringed in sunlight. "Mountains end only for those who fall. For the chosen, they become doorways."
Beyond them the summit stretched into a circle of ancient monoliths. Between the stones glowed runes that pulsed like slow heartbeats. At their center stood figures—twelve elves in mirrored armor—and among them, taller, unmoving, a presence that bent the light itself.
The Prophet.
He was not the wraith of rumor. Flesh and radiance intertwined in him until neither could be told apart. His hair burned pale as lightning; his eyes were the color of molten gold. When he spoke, the air carried his words before sound could form.
"Welcome, children of the desert," he said. "Welcome, Vulhairi of the Seventh Line. The Light watches, and it remembers who climbs."
The harpies fell silent, feathers drawn close. Vulhairi knelt without thinking, though the stone scorched his knees. The Prophet raised a hand and the fire between the monoliths flared higher, pure and white.
"Rise," he said. "You have reached the summit of the world. Now let us decide what world shall rise beneath it."
And the air itself seemed to bow.
The Prophet's Council
The circle of Light roared to life.
Twelve kneeling disciples pressed branded palms to the stone, their voices a single hum of devotion. Above them, the fire ring pulsed from gold to white and back again, each heartbeat of flame in rhythm with the Prophet's breath.
He stood within that radiance as though born from it. "The gnolls multiply in the west," he said, his gaze cutting toward the desert horizon where embers dotted the dunes. "Their laughter carries through the night like a hymn to darkness. We have waited, believing they would wither. They have not. The Light must expand, or it will die in its own sanctity."
A murmur passed through the gathered priests. The Prophet silenced them with a raised hand.
"The Light does not beg to be followed. It commands to be known. Each of you will go down from this mountain and carry it into every tongue, every tribe, every soul that crawls beneath heaven. Mercy will be our weapon, discipline our law."
He turned slowly, eyes sweeping over the assembly until they rested on Vulhairi. "You have climbed through pain and doubt. Tell me, Captain—what did the mountain teach you?"
Vulhairi hesitated. The harpies watched him, one radiant, one shadowed. "That obedience is easy," he said at last, "but meaning is not."
A thin smile curved the Prophet's lips. "Then you have learned its first truth. Faith without struggle is decoration." He extended his hand; from his palm rose a feather forged of living flame. It drifted toward Vulhairi, hovering before his face. "Take it. The Light chooses you as its herald. You will lead the first campaign east of the sands. The gnolls will kneel, and through them the world will remember the dawn."
The feather touched Vulhairi's hand. Pain seared through skin and bone, carving its mark into his palm, but he did not cry out. It neither burned nor shone; it lived on the narrow line between; it was the narrow line between—white heat that wanted to teach and to consume at once.
The Prophet's voice lowered. "The Light rewards endurance, not comfort. Go now, and prepare. In a fortnight the desert moves."
The council bowed. One by one, they filed away into the pale fog that rimmed the summit. The Prophet remained, eyes fixed on Vulhairi as though weighing his soul against the fire.
And for the first time, Vulhairi wondered whether the Light still illuminated—or only burned.
The Echo of Doubt
When the council dispersed, the mountain grew strangely normal again. The chanting ceased; only the wind remained, sighing through the gaps of the monoliths. The Prophet lingered by the altar, hands clasped behind his back, watching the western fires flicker in the distance.
Vulhairi stood apart, his palm still glowing faintly where the feather had branded him. Elizna and Ajadressor closed in on either side—sun and storm, warmth and warning.
Elizna's voice was soft. "He saw you. Out of all who climbed, he chose you to bear the Light's weight. That is not accident."
Ajadressor's reply cracked like ice. "Chosen, or chained. The Prophet binds more tightly than any oath."
Vulhairi flexed his burned hand. "He speaks of mercy as conquest. Of faith as empire. If the Light commands through fear, what difference is there between it and shadow?"
Elizna turned to him, eyes shimmering. "Difference lies in intent. The Light does not destroy for pleasure—it refines. Fire purifies, even when it screams."
Ajadressor's wings shuddered open, scattering frost. "And what of those who burn? Purified or erased?"
The Prophet's voice broke their argument, calm and near. "You question as all newborn flames do," he said. He had crossed the circle without sound. The air around him trembled faintly with power. "Doubt is not sin, Vulhairi. Doubt is hunger—proof that the Light still works within you."
Vulhairi met his gaze. "And if hunger never ends?"
The Prophet smiled. "Then you become my equal." He rested a hand on Vulhairi's shoulder; warmth surged through armor and skin alike. "But remember—question only what you are willing to replace. The Light requires builders, not skeptics."
He stepped back, the radiance around him dimming to a soft gold. "Rest. At dawn, you will descend and gather your warband. The first sermon will be spoken in blood and flame."
He turned and walked into the shimmer of the altar's light until his form blurred and vanished.
Silence closed again.
Elizna brushed a feather across Vulhairi's cheek. "He grants you destiny."
Ajadressor's eyes were hard as iron. "No. He grants you purpose—and waits to see which kills you first."
Vulhairi looked west, where the gnoll fires pulsed like the heartbeat of some vast beast. His branded palm throbbed in time with them.
Faith had found its voice—and it spoke in pain.
Feather and Flesh
The Prophet's radiance had faded into the mountain's breath. Night rose again from the west, painting the stones in cold silver. Vulhairi lingered beside the altar, palm still raw from the feather's brand, the mark pulsing in rhythm with his heart. The harpies stood at either side of him—Elizna all light and warmth, Ajadressor coiled in shadow, feathers trembling with the memory of restrained flight.
Elizna broke the silence first.
"You have touched the heart of the Light," she said. "Few mortals survive such closeness. Fewer understand it."
Vulhairi looked at his hand, the burn still glowing faintly. "I don't understand," he murmured. "I only endure."
Ajadressor's laugh was a dry rasp of thunder. "Endurance is what keeps beasts alive, not prophets. The Light feeds you now, but it will drain you when it hungers again."
Elizna's wings rose in irritation, gold flashing through the gloom. "You would turn from grace because it frightens you."
"Because I remember what it does to those who kneel," Ajadressor snapped. She turned her fierce eyes on Vulhairi. "The Prophet will send his banners north soon after the Gnolls. When he does, the storms will need their own voice." She turned toward the horizon where stormlines stitched the sky to jagged ice. The wind there carried the smell of iron and snow—her people's warning-call. "I will fly to my kin in the peaks. If you wish to know truth beyond fire, find me there."
The wind caught her words and carried them outward. With a single sweep of her wings she launched into the dark, the sound of her departure rolling like distant thunder until it was swallowed by the clouds.
For a long moment, only Elizna's breathing filled the void. Then she stepped close—so close that the scent of wind-warm feathers and myrrh enveloped him. Her eyes glowed with reflected starlight.
"She seeks storms. Let her." Her voice softened to something near common tongue. "You have already been claimed by flame."
Vulhairi's protest died before it reached his lips. Elizna's hand—talon turned delicate—touched the edge of the burn on his palm. Her touch was neither love nor lust; it was faith looking for a body to live in. A shiver rippled through him. "Feather and flesh," she whispered. "The covenant is complete when the sky remembers the ground."
He could not tell if she blessed him or bound him. When she spread her wings, their gold bled into the night like spilled dawn.
"Come," she said. "The Light no longer waits for those who walk. It flies."
Her arms closed around him. The air rushed upward in a single, terrifying grace. The mountain fell away beneath them, shrinking into shadow. Wind tore through his hair, carrying the Prophet's words, Ajadressor's warning, and the echo of his own heartbeat into the sky.
He did not know whether he was ascending or falling—only that the world below had already begun to burn.
The dance of falling
The sky opened around them like a great, trembling lung.
Elizna's wings unfurled in arcs of molten gold, each beat sending ripples of light across the thinning clouds. The wind caught them, spun them, lifted and let go again. Their descent was not a fall—it was a dance, a slow spiral between heaven and sand, choreographed by gravity and grace.
Vulhairi's heart pounded in rhythm with her wingbeats. His armor hummed as air swept beneath its plates, the metal vibrating like a struck bell. Elizna's laughter—half wind, half song—broke through the roar of descent.
"Do you feel it?" she called. "The sky learning your name?"
He tried to answer, but breath escaped him in bursts of awe. The mountain turned beneath them, its flanks streaked with shadow and fire. The Prophet's altar blazed faintly at the summit—one last star, pulsing in farewell.
Elizna twisted midair, rolling him with her. For a heartbeat, they were horizontal to the world, sky beneath, earth above. Feathers brushed his cheek like sparks. Her hands gripped his shoulders, guiding his body through the rhythm of her wings.
"Do not fight the fall," she whispered. "The Light dances best when it forgets the ground."
Below them, the desert shimmered—an ocean of bronze dust. The wind rose from it in long spirals, carrying heat and the scent of iron. From the west came the faint glimmer of gnoll fires, small and trembling like candles before a storm.
Elizna hummed. The sound wrapped around them, deeper than words, older than flight. Each note pulled the air into new shapes; the sky bent, the stars flickered, and the fall became rhythm. Vulhairi closed his eyes and followed. Their movement turned to ritual: descent as devotion, momentum as prayer.
He no longer knew where she ended and he began. Their spins grew faster, feathers scattering like embers, until the dunes rushed up to meet them. Elizna opened her wings wide, braking in a single elegant flare. They struck the air one final time and landed hard but alive—sand exploding outward like applause.
She leaned close, breath hot against his ear. "Now you've learned the second truth," she said. "The Light does not rise—it falls, and those who fall with it become its shape."
Vulhairi looked back toward the mountain. The Prophet's flame was gone, hidden in cloud. Only the wind danced now, carrying their descent across the endless desert like the memory of a song.
Epilogue -The Watching Flame
High upon the summit, where wind and silence were one, the Prophet watched the two shapes spiral down the sky.
Gold and shadow twined together, falling in widening circles until they vanished into the shimmer of heat that cloaked the desert.
The fire at his back burned low, its light flickering over the stones carved with the names of the first believers.
He did not turn toward it.
"The Light chooses its dancers," he murmured. "But not all remember the steps."
Below, the first horns of the crusade sounded—long, mournful notes that carried across the dunes like the breath of something ancient waking. Far below, Vulghere felt the tremor of those notes pass through the sand and into his bones. He tightened his grip on the banner pole and knew the mountain had given its answer.
The Prophet closed his eyes.
The world was moving as he had foreseen.
And in the rhythm of that fall, he heard the beginning of a hymn.