They left the archive with the tablet wrapped in Lyra's robe and a silence between them that was not empty. Outside, the temple's moonlight felt thin and colder than before, as if the world had shifted to create space for the new knowledge.
Daryn's hands pressed the tablet to his chest as if it were the last piece of warm skin in a chill room. The discovery of his sister did not give Daryn easy answers. It offered ledger lines and a cold trail in a bureaucracy larger than any single man.
But this insight had done something sharper: it gave the young man focus.
He now had a named wound, a recorded wrong to set against the gods' grammar. Where confusion had been, something akin to purpose took root.
Lyra stood beside him. Her grip on his arm when they emerged from the temple was not just a priest's caution but a promise. A personal promise to her goddess's moonborn warrior.
"We will go slow," she said. "We will be precise. And we will not let the temple's politics bury this again," she said through the lumps pilling in her throat.
The words felt heavy as her heart pounded. She wondered if she was doing the right thing. Did she make the right decision? What would her goddess think?
Was Selene against Daryn finding out?
She had hidden it from him, so probably,
As much as she was against the fact that Daryn's sister was stolen from him along with his memories, she was still a priestess, and she knew her goddess. Selene was not a showy goddess. She was neither flamboyant nor aggressive like other gods and goddesses.
In fact, it was for that reason that Lyra had decided to become a priestess of the moon goddess. Where the god Helios was blazing as the mighty sun, Selene was calm, reassuring.
Apart from the goddesses that symbolised an aspect of war or conflict, goddesses were generally known to be vain and sometimes simply petty, but Lyra saw none of those in her goddess.
Throughout the early years of her devotion to the moon goddess, this had always been a sort of reassurance for the young priestess.
But despite all of these qualities, Lyra knew Selene enough to understand that, despite all her values, Selene was first of all a goddess, and every goddess has her pride.
Promising to beseech the moon goddess later when she was alone. She guided Daryn along the path he had just chosen for himself.
Daryn looked back once at Selene's statue, its marble face unreadable in the moonlight. He felt less like a child in its shadow now and more like someone who had just found a map with a jagged X on it.
"Then we begin," he said. The word was small and hard, and it set a direction neither of them could unmake. Though this new knowledge did not heal him, it gave him a target. The gods had their language, and now he had a phrase he could take to them.
The training ring smelled of sweat and wet earth. Torches guttered along the perimeter, casting long, restless shadows that slid over the obsidian tiles. Kaelen stood at the center with his sword flat across one palm, watching Daryn move through a drill like a man learning to breathe under the water—slow, deliberate, then faster until the rhythm settled.
"Again," Kaelen said, voice low but not unkind.
Daryn wiped a smear of blood from his lip and fell into position. He flowed through the form Kaelen had taught him: step, parry, slide, finish. The blade sang at the end of each arc. When he stopped, sweat beaded along his jaw.
"Good," Kaelen said. "Keep your shoulder loose. You're trying to make a hinge where you need a rope."
Daryn laughed, a sudden, sharp sound. "Rope or hinge?"
"Rope." Kaelen thrust the point of his blade into the sand and leaned on the hilt. "If you hinge, you lock. If you rope, you pull back and let them use their own force."
They moved into partner drills. Kaelen's strikes were measured enough to bruise but not to break; Daryn learned how to take the blow and change its angle, how to turn an incoming fury into a path he could step through.
After a while, the rhythm slowed. They sat on the low stones that ringed the arena, breathing, listening to the small noises of others—soft shuffles, a distant oath, the occasional clunk of a practice sword. The torches hissed.
"You ever think about leaving?" Daryn asked. He kept his eyes on the dark line of the ridges beyond the citadel.
Kaelen didn't answer at once. He rubbed the heel of his hand along the flat of his blade as if checking the metal for an old nick. "Every day," he said finally. "Until tonight." He looked at Daryn with a glance that almost held a smile. "Not leaving the citadel. Leaving the idea that the gods get to decide everything."
Daryn turned that over. "I used to think the gods were stories," he said. "Now I don't know. My sister—Seris—was taken. I thought the gods might know where she is. But the more I learn… it smells like bargains and corners."
Kaelen gave a short sound that might have been a laugh. "They make bargains like kings write laws—no concern for what breaks in the margins. I was chosen because I survived a fire. That's not destiny; it's a ledger."
"You don't regret it?" Daryn asked. "Being chosen."
"There are nights I wake up and the mark on my chest feels like a foreign thing." Kaelen traced a fingertip over the cloth that covered his brand. He showed Daryn nothing else; the gesture was its own admission. "But then I think of Elira." His voice went flat, not angry but raw. "I was given a chance to keep somebody from falling once. I failed. I carry that. So if I can teach someone else to keep their head, I do it."
Daryn's jaw tightened. "You've been carrying her name for a long time."
"For a long time and now every time I look at you," Kaelen said, "I see a different kind of promise. You fight for a sister. I fought because I had no choice. We both keep someone alive with the shape of our hands."
They fell silent. In the pause, the torchlight outlined the old scars along Kaelen's forearms and the new bruises on Daryn's ribs. Two men shaped by loss, counted by the same currency.
"Show me the stubborn part," Daryn said at last. "Not the grace. The part that refuses to bow."
Kaelen stood slowly and offered his grip. Daryn met it, palm to palm. Kaelen tightened, then relaxed; not a test of strength but a pact.
"You hold your ground," Kaelen said. "Don't let them make you forget why you fight. The gods tend to trade memory like it's a coin. Don't give them yours."
Daryn nodded. "If I win, I'm finding Seris. If I lose—" He stopped because the idea of loss felt like a blade at his throat.
"If you lose," Kaelen said, "you'll rise again. And I'll be here to make you better. I once promised someone I wouldn't let their fall go to waste. I'll keep that promise to you too."
Daryn let out a breath that could have been a laugh or a sob. He tightened his grip on Kaelen's forearm. "Then teach me to be the rope, not the hinge."
"Start with your footwork," Kaelen replied. "And stop swinging with your heart leading. Use your hands to finish what your head starts."
They trained again until the torches burned low. The drills grew sharper, but their conversation had done something that no lesson ever had: it domesticated the hollowness behind the marks they both carried. By the time the moon slid west and the sentries' rounds came near, the men had not erased their losses, but they had found a shared direction. They rose together, shoulders brushing for a brief moment of kinship, and walked out of the arena not as student and teacher alone, but as two people bound by the same aim—one blade, one promise.