The news came in the late morning of the next day.
A knock at the guest house door, a brief exchange in the hall, and Garran returned to the common room with a folded parchment in hand and a tired kind of relief in his shoulders.
"Well?" Lysa asked, feet up on a bench, idly rolling an arrow between her fingers.
"We're free," Garran said. "For now. 'The crown thanks you for your service, the Arcanum may request your presence again in future, you are released to return to your prior station at your discretion.'"
"In other words," Lysa said, "go away, but don't go too far."
"Close enough," Garran replied.
Naera let out a slow breath. Her staff rested beside her chair, her fingers still faintly ink-stained from the morning's notes. "When do we leave?" she asked.
"Tomorrow, if we want to ride with a supply wagon halfway," Garran said. "Or we can dawdle and walk the whole way alone. I recommend 'wagon.'"
"Then," Trin said, "we have today."
Three sets of eyes turned toward him.
He weighed his words for a heartbeat, then said, "There is something I would like to do before we go. A suggestion."
Lysa tilted her head. "If this involves more councils, I veto it."
"No councils," Trin said. "A temple."
Naera straightened a little.
"Althera's," Trin added. "If this city has one—and from what I've seen of the banners and shrines, it would be odd if it didn't."
Garran's brows knit. "We already have a small temple at home," he said. "You've been there."
"I have," Trin said. "But this is the capital. The center. If Althera's worship has any grand face in this kingdom, it will be here. I would like to see what she grew from a place of more resources and attention."
Naera's grip tightened around her staff. "I'd like that," she said quietly.
Lysa glanced between them. "Is this…part of your 'I knew her' thing?" she asked.
"In a way," Trin said. "You don't have to come."
Garran hesitated, then shook his head. "If you walk into an unfamiliar temple alone in a city we barely know, I'll end up chasing after you anyway," he said. "We might as well start together."
"Also," Lysa added, "if there's impressive architecture involved, I want to see it. The gods of this world have better taste in stonework than its bureaucrats."
"Then we go," Trin said.
They left the guest house into a city more awake than it had been on Naera's early morning walk. Lorenfell's streets thrummed with life—merchants hawking wares, children darting between carts, the occasional mounted officer cutting a line through the crowd.
Finding Althera's temple proved easier than Trin expected.
Her symbol—path spiraling into a circle, lines branching outward—appeared often enough on small shrines and carved into door lintels. Asking directions of a fruit vendor turned into a short chain of gestures and "that way, past the square, you can't miss it."
They didn't.
The cathedral rose at the edge of a broad plaza, its presence dominating the surrounding district.
It was…beautiful.
Not in the overpowering, oppressive way some grand temples could be, but in the sense of intentional craft poured over generations into something that still felt welcoming. Pale stone walls soared upward, their surfaces carved with subtle reliefs—not battle scenes, but roads, rivers, caravans, people walking under stars. Arches framed tall windows of colored glass that caught the sun and sent fractured light across the plaza.
Above the main doors, Althera's symbol appeared again, larger and more intricate, the branching lines interwoven with small figures walking along them. The doors themselves were dark wood banded with metal, worn smooth where countless hands had pushed them open.
Lysa let out a low whistle. "All right," she said. "I take back half the bad things I've said about cities."
Garran squinted up at the facade. "Someone spent a lot of coin teaching stone to look like that," he murmured.
Naera said nothing.
Her eyes were fixed on the symbol above the doors, on the carved suggestion of a robed figure walking at the center of the branching paths.
Trin let himself stand for a moment and simply look.
The temple back in their town had been small, intimate—a place for quiet prayers and familiar faces. This was the opposite scale: grand, echoing, meant to gather hundreds at a time. Yet the motifs were the same. The paths. The invitations. The idea of a goddess who walked with rather than hovering above.
"It's hers," he said softly.
Naera glanced at him. "You can tell?"
He smiled faintly. "You can, can't you?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "It feels…aligned," she said. "Like the little temple does, but louder. More threads woven through it."
Garran eyed them both. "You two and your 'feeling' things," he said. "Let's see what's inside before you start naming the stones."
They stepped through the doors.
The interior swallowed city noise at once.
High vaulted ceilings arched overhead, painted with scenes of stars and stylized roads winding between them. Light filtered through stained glass in dappled colors, pooling on polished stone floors. Rows of benches stretched toward a broad central space where a raised platform held the main altar.
The cathedral was busy but not crowded.
People moved quietly between candles and side alcoves—lighting offerings, murmuring prayers, sitting in reflective silence. A few priests in simple robes threaded through the space, offering assistance where needed.
At the far end, beyond the altar, stood a massive statue of Althera.
It was different from the small temple's carving, more detailed and idealized. She was portrayed mid-stride, cloak sweeping behind her, one hand extended as if inviting those below to follow. The stone had been polished to a soft sheen, and offerings clustered at her feet—flowers, small carved path-symbols, folded notes.
Naera drew in a sharp breath.
Trin's chest tightened.
Even knowing how stylized it was—even knowing the ways mortals smoothed and corrected divine features over time—it still held enough resemblance to stir memory. The tilt of her head. The way the sculptor had captured motion in still stone.
They walked together down the central aisle.
Garran's gaze roamed over the architecture, appreciating the engineering as much as the devotion. Lysa's eyes snagged on small details—the way the path motifs repeated in floor inlays, the expressions on carved figures along the walls. Naera's focus remained mostly ahead, on the statue.
When they reached a space near the front, they stopped.
People prayed in their own ways.
Some knelt at the steps leading up to the altar. Others sat in pews, heads bowed. A few stood off to the side, hands resting on path-symbols carved into support pillars.
Naera moved first, stepping off to the side where a small cluster of kneelers faced the statue at an angle.
She knelt, staff laid carefully beside her, hands clasped around her pendant. Her lips moved silently, eyes fixed on the stone representation of the goddess who had once wrapped real arms around her in the void.
Lysa and Garran exchanged a brief glance, then each found their own way.
Garran chose a bench, sitting with elbows on his knees, head bowed—not the posture of a man expecting clear answers, but of one acknowledging something larger than himself. Lysa stood near a pillar, one hand resting on the carved path-symbol, gaze lifted toward the painted ceiling more than the statue itself.
Trin remained standing for a moment longer.
He had knelt in many temples. Some built to him, many to others. Grand cathedrals with gilded ceilings. Rough stone circles under open sky. Small shrines in corners of homes where a single candle burned.
This one was for Althera.
He stepped to an empty kneeler, lowered himself, and let his thoughts quiet.
He did not expect anything.
Not the void. Not her voice. Not a touch on his shoulder or a sudden brightening of the air. This was not the meeting place between realms; this was a building full of stone and light and mortal longing.
He bowed his head anyway.
His hands rested loosely on his thighs, not clasped, but still.
*You did well,* he thought, not shaping it into prayer so much as shared acknowledgment. *They built this. They kept walking your paths. They taught their children to read the roads you laid down.*
He let his gaze lift to the statue's stone face.
The eyes looked out over the congregation, carved with a softness that had always been real in her, despite the way councils had loved to harden it in their stories. The artist had captured a hint of humor at the corners of her mouth, perhaps unknowingly.
Trin's mouth twitched.
*You'd have hated some of this,* he thought. *The pomp. The central aisle. The way they make you taller than the rest. But you'd have loved the small shrines in the corners. The candles from people who aren't sure you're listening and light them anyway.*
He breathed in the mingled scents of wax, incense, and stone that had cooled over centuries.
No words whispered in his ear. No shift in the air. Just the steady murmur of others' prayers, the rustle of clothing, the faint creak of benches.
It was enough.
After a time, he rose.
Naera stayed kneeling longer.
When she finally stood, there was a tightness around her eyes that had nothing to do with physical strain. She picked up her staff, fingers lingering on the wood, and joined the others near the aisle.
"Well?" Lysa asked softly. "Feel any wiser?"
Naera's mouth twisted. "No," she said. "It's just…a temple."
Lysa glanced at the soaring ceiling, the statue, the gathered people. "Just?" she repeated.
Naera shook her head. "I just…" She searched for words she couldn't use—couldn't explain without spilling a void and a goddess's embrace into a space that wasn't ready for it. "I thought—" She stopped. "Never mind."
Garran studied her for a second. "If you were hoping for lightning or a voice from the rafters," he said gently, "this isn't that kind of place. Not usually."
Naera huffed a humorless breath. "I know," she said. "I just…expected it to feel different."
Lysa shrugged. "It's impressive," she said. "Big. Shiny. Makes you feel small. That's what temples do."
Trin watched Naera's face.
He understood the disappointment.
Once you had stood in the in-between and heard a goddess speak your name, the echo of ordinary devotion—even in a cathedral like this—could feel strangely thin. Not worthless. Just…far away from the intimacy you'd known.
"It's still hers," he said quietly to Naera, when the others' attention drifted to a side altar. "Even if she doesn't answer here the way you've heard before."
Naera's fingers tightened on her staff. "I know," she said. "That might be why it stings."
He nodded.
They lingered a little longer.
Garran took in the architecture with a soldier's practical eye—doors, exits, the way sound carried. Lysa wandered along the side aisles, pausing at smaller carvings that showed travelers sharing food on the road, healers tending to the injured at a crossroads, a group of people standing together at a river ford.
Trin walked once around the central space, tracing with his gaze the repeated path-symbols in floor and wall, the way the light fell through the stained glass onto worn stone. He paused near a small side shrine where someone had left a child's clumsily carved wooden path-sign—crooked lines, uneven circle.
He smiled.
Outside, the city went on with its business, unaware that four people were marking one more quiet intersection in a story much older than the cathedral's stones.
Eventually, Garran cleared his throat.
"We should go," he said. "If we're leaving tomorrow, there are supplies to sort and too many goodbyes to avoid."
Lysa nodded. "And I want to practice with my bow where I won't be yelled at for putting holes in holy walls."
Naera looked back once more at the statue of Althera, at the light pooling around its feet, then turned away.
Trin bowed his head briefly in the goddess's direction—not as supplicant, not as equal, but as someone paying respect to a fallen comrade whose work had clearly outlived her first ending.
"Thank you," he thought, simple and unadorned.
Then he followed the others out into the bright, noisy city, leaving behind the cool hush of the cathedral and carrying with him the quiet knowledge that, somewhere beyond stone and glass, Althera still walked paths alongside them.