Greyfall smelled of smoke for three days.
They burned the dead beyond the Memorial Ridge, where the ash was deepest. The raiders' bodies were laid on a crude pyre of scrub wood and old fence posts. Father Edran oversaw it, Lian and a few others bringing bundles of herbs to throw into the flames.
Al stood back, bandage itching under his shirt, as the fire caught. The smoke rose thick and dark, tinted green by the herbs. It curled over the ridge and thinned into the sky, threads of shadow unraveling.
"Mercy upon their souls," Edran intoned, voice steady. "Justice upon their deeds."
He spoke the words in the Logos tongue. They weren't pleas, not really. They sounded like statements, like entries in a ledger.
"Theirs and ours," he added more quietly, almost to himself.
Arlen swayed slightly beside Al, pale and stiff, one arm bound across his chest. The wolfkin's spear had missed bone, but it had come close enough that Lian's mouth had become a hard, white line and Corin had gone outside to shout at clouds until he was hoarse.
"Smell that?" Arlen grimaced. "That's worse than the tanner's yard."
Daran, standing with arms crossed a few paces behind them, snorted. "That's the smell of 'don't come back as shambling something with too many teeth.' Be grateful."
"Daran," Father Edran called without turning, "if you could keep your commentary to a respectful minimum while the fire takes hold—"
"I am respectful," Daran said. "I'm respecting the need for them to stay very, very gone."
A few nervous chuckles rippled through the small crowd. Tension leaked out with the smoke.
Later, when the pyre had burned low and the village's grief began to settle into sore muscles and quiet chores, Al sat on the steps of the Split Shrine, forehead pressed to his knees. The stone was cool through his trousers. His back ached where the spear had grazed him.
He kept seeing the moment replay: the wolfkin's spear, Arlen's stumble, the way the world had…hitched.
Footsteps approached. Sandals, not boots. Soft, measured.
"Is that the posture of a brave defender of Greyfall?" Father Edran asked mildly, sitting down beside him.
Al lifted his head. "I'm not brave."
"No?" Edran glanced out at the square. "You ran toward a fight you could not win. That's either bravery or stupidity."
"Arlen did that. I followed." Al chewed his lip. "Maybe that's just stupidity twice."
Edran smiled a little. "There are saints built on less."
He rested his staff across his knees. Up close, Al could see faint lines of script carved into the wood, worn nearly smooth. The split shrine behind them cast a long shadow: Aurelion-style arch with the Church of Logos' sun-and-scroll, Xianwu ancestor tablets tucked into one side alcove, old Sula carvings along the foundation stones.
"So," Edran said, "tell me what you felt."
Al hesitated. "When?"
"When the spear almost made your mother a widow," Edran said gently. "Words help put shape to fear."
Al exhaled slowly. "I was scared. My throat felt tight. Everything was…loud. But then, just for a second, it all went quiet. Not like silence. More like…" He searched for the right word. "Like when Selene lines up a table full of ledgers. All the numbers waiting."
Edran's brow creased. "Go on."
"I saw…connections." Al stared at his hands. "Not with my eyes. Just—knew. Where the wolfkin was going to put his foot. Where Arlen was about to move. How steep the ditch was. It all felt…linked. Like strings tied between them."
"And you did?"
"I pulled," Al said, throat dry. "On…something. One of the strings. Or several. I don't know. Everything jerked. He slipped. Arlen moved. A rock rolled. And then it was just me, shoving my idiot brother and screaming."
He waited for Edran to tell him he was imagining things. That it was just luck and panic.
Instead, the priest was quiet for a long moment.
"You know the words we use for power in this world?" Edran asked. "Not just 'strength' and 'skill.' The other ones."
"Pneuma," Al said automatically. "Essence. Logos. You talk about them all the time."
"Do I?" Edran sounded faintly amused. "Master Bren drills you in Pneuma—breath and body. Selene has you copying basic Essence signs you're barely old enough to not blow yourself up with. I try not to bore you with Logos." He tapped his staff. "Let's make sure you understand the difference."
He held up a hand. "Make a fist."
Al did. Edran wrapped his fingers gently around it.
"When Bren shouts about tightening your center, about feeling strength in your limbs, that's Pneuma. The inner flow. The Easterners call it Qi. Beastkin call it Kith. Different words for the same river. It moves here." He tapped Al's chest lightly.
He opened his own hand, palm up. The air above it shimmered faintly, like heat off stone.
"Essence," he said, "is the name we give the world's currents. The lines that run through stone and sky. Aurelion mages shape it into spells. Eastern sects call it Spirit, trace it in talismans. Beastkin sing it as Wildsong. It moves out here."
The shimmer faded. He then rapped his knuckles on the shrine step.
"And Logos is something stranger. It isn't inside or outside. It's…between." He glanced at Al. "Have you ever seen two men swear an oath so hard that even breaking it kills them?"
Al shook his head.
"I have," Edran said softly. "When I call Sanctuary"—he nodded toward the shrine door—"I am not pushing my Pneuma or shaping Essence. I am calling on a Covenant. A law of meaning. 'In this space, for this span, no act of true aggression shall succeed.' If my heart is right and my Vows intact, the world answers. If I lie to myself, Malice answers instead."
Al swallowed. "So what did I do?"
Edran chuckled dryly. "If I knew that precisely, boy, I'd have my own tower in Aurelion, not a drafty shrine in Greyfall."
"I just…" Al clenched his hands. "It felt like I stepped into something between inside and outside. Not a Covenant. More like—I saw how their Pneuma and the ground and…the chance of a rock rolling were all in one pattern, and I touched it."
"And nudged," Edran said. "Not a prophecy. Not a command. A…bias."
Al frowned. "Is that…bad?"
"Is a knife bad?" Edran countered. "Depends on whose hand it's in, and where they point it." He studied Al's face. "You didn't reach for that thread to amuse yourself. You did it to save your brother. The world bent. A little."
He leaned back, looking up at the shrine arch. "There are tales—old ones—of people who see more of those threads than others. Who understand how Pneuma and Essence and even Malice and Miasma weave together. In most stories, they die badly."
Al winced. "That's…comforting."
"In some," Edran added, "they don't."
They sat in silence a moment, listening to distant hammering as Corin and others repaired a section of the palisade.
"Tomorrow," Edran said, "Bren will have you boys back to drills. Selene will rap your knuckles if you smudge your ledgers. Life will pretend to go on as before. But you know it isn't the same."
Al looked at his hands again. "Because I saw it. War, I mean."
"Because," Edran said quietly, "you touched something you weren't supposed to yet."
He turned to look Al full in the face. His gaze was kind, and heavy.
"Listen to me, Al Greyfall. What you felt is not a gift the world gives freely. It exacts a price. Maybe not today. Maybe not this year. But it will. So from now on, you have two choices." He held up two fingers. "One: pretend it never happened. Close your eyes and hope the price never comes due."
Al's chest tightened. "And the other?"
"Two," Edran said, "you learn. You watch. You train. You find out, piece by piece, what the threads are made of. Pneuma, Essence, Logos, Malice, Miasma—all of it. So that when the price comes, you can choose how to pay it, instead of having it ripped from you."
Al thought of Arlen, bleeding in the ditch. Of his mother's hands shaking when she'd cleaned his cut. Of Corin's face when he'd seen them both alive.
"I don't want anyone else to almost die because I'm useless," he said.
"Good." Edran's hand settled briefly on his head. "Then start from that. Not from glory. From that."
He rose, joints popping, and offered Al a hand up.
"I'm not a sect master," Edran said. "I'm just an old Votary who ran from a city he failed. But I can teach you how oaths work. How fear works. How to spot Malice in eyes before it speaks. Bren can teach you how bodies move. Selene can teach you how numbers move. Watch them. Learn. Put the pieces together in that curious head."
Al took his hand and stood. The world swayed briefly, then steadied.
"And when the testers come," Edran added, "and tell you your numbers are low and your affinities are wrong, remember: they are measuring swords. Not the hands that choose where to strike."