Kael's POV
The Binding Ceremony took place every morning, the first light falling on the crystal spire of the Grand Cathedral tinting the world in golds and promise. I was lined up with forty-seven other kids, all seven years old like me, us all shivering with anticipation. Families intoned prayers to the Seven Gods, the voices blending into a prayerful hymn that filled the sacred hall.
I remember thinking how beautiful everything was that morning. The stained glass windows depicted heroes of legend, warriors who had slain dragons, sages who had shattered plagues, kings who had united nations. They had all walked in their Script just as they should have, and they had all been rewarded with eternal glory. Today, I was to learn what glory was mine.
My father stood behind me, his calloused blacksmith hands on my shoulders. He'd spoken little on the way here, but I'd caught him smiling at me a few times. Pride, I told myself. He was proud of me, proud of whatever destiny the gods had written for his son.
"Kael Ardent," he'd said to me that morning when he dressed me in my ceremonial white robes, "no matter what Script you are given, always remember that I love you. Whether you are destined to be a great hero or a humble farmer, you are my son first."
I'd laughed at that. "What if I'm supposed to be a bad guy, Father?"
He'd laughed also, ruffling my dark hair. "Then you'll be the most honorable bad guy ever."
His laughter would echo inside my head for years.
High Priest Aurelius stood before the altar, the golden robes shining with Scriptlines infused into them, the magical threads that tied him to his destiny as the Voice of Fate. He was very old, yet his voice carried the divine right of power as he called each child forward separately.
"Mira Ashford," he announced.
A small white-haired girl appeared on the raised platform. The priest placed his hand across her brow, and energy charged the air. Light burst from his hand, forming words in the ancient tongue that hung in the air like blazing text.
"The Script of the Silent Blade," Aurelius said. "You will be the greatest assassin of your time, protector of kings, death in the shadows."
The audience whispered its agreement. Mira's parents wept tears of joy. She would be important, respected, remembered.
Individual by individual, my other children discovered their futures. Theron Blackwood was handed the Script of the Unbreakable Shield, destined to guard a future queen. Elena Moonshadow would be a successful merchant, her Script assuring prosperity and power. Even those children who received plain Scripts, farmers and craftsmen and scholars, descended from the dais with grins on their faces because they had certainty, they had purpose, they had a role in the grand design.
Then my turn came.
"Kael Ardent."
I moved forward on someone else's legs. The cathedral felt impossibly huge, every eye upon me, every breath held in anticipation. I mounted the three stairs to the dais and knelt before High Priest Aurelius as is the custom.
His firm, gentle hand rested against my forehead. I shut my eyes and waited for the light, for the words, for the destiny that would dictate every moment of my life left. Nothing. I sensed Aurelius's hand trembling slightly against mine. The humming energy that had accompanied every other child's Binding was absent. The air stagnated, vacant, out of place.
"Try," the priest muttered. He shoved again, putting more of his divine energy into the connection. "Try it again."
Nothing.
Time passed. I kept my eyes shut, refusing to give in to the panic spreading among the crowd, refusing to listen to the cold seeping into my heart. I caught the sound of my father's shocked gasp behind me.
"Not possible," Aurelius gasped, but in the cathedral's ideal acoustics, all heard. "There is nothing. No Script. No thread. No destiny at all."
I opened my eyes at that point and witnessed the fear on his face. It was the expression one gives to a corpse rising, something that doesn't exist.
"I don't understand," I mouthed softly. "What does it mean?"
Aurelius stepped back from me like I was contagious with the plague. His voice, when he did speak, was icy and authoritative. "It means that you are an Error of Fate, child. The first one in a thousand years. You do not belong in the divine plan."
The cathedral erupted. Kids were pulled from my arms by their parents. There were gasps of horror turned screams of fear became shouts of rage. A prayer candle was thrown at me, shattering on the ground and smearing holy wax everywhere.
"Abomination!"
"The gods have forsaken him!"
"Take him out! He'll bring us all evil!"
I remained frozen there, as the world I knew for seven years collapsed around me. My father fought his way through the crowd, colorless face set, and enveloped me in his arms.
"We're leaving," he stated bluntly. "Now."
As he picked me up from the cathedral, I looked back once again. Forty-seven children had seen their futures that morning. I had discovered I had none.