The church stood at the center of Valerion, its white stone walls a stark contrast to the grey twilight that pressed against the city. Candles burned in every window, thousands of them, their flames meant to represent the sun that had abandoned the world. Inside, the air was thick with incense and whispered prayers.
Elyss knelt before the altar, her hands clasped, her lips moving silently.
She was twenty-three, young for a priestess of her rank, but the Church promoted quickly when so many of its servants died at the walls. Her robes were white, the color of the Order of the Dawn, and around her neck hung a pendant of polished gold—the Eye, it was called, meant to represent the sun that would one day return.
She did not believe it would return.
She had stopped believing two years ago, when she had been sent to bless the bodies of men who had died holding the line. Three hundred corpses, laid out in rows, their faces grey and their eyes still open. And among them, one that had not been quite dead. One whose eyes had opened as she knelt beside him, whose mouth had stretched into a smile that was too wide, too knowing.
"The light is not coming back," it had whispered. "It was already dead when we arrived."
She had screamed. The guards had come, had killed the thing that had been a man, had led her away shaking and white-faced.
She had not told anyone what it had said.
But she had not forgotten.
"Priestess."
The voice came from behind her. Elyss did not turn. She had learned to recognize the footsteps of the High Inquisitor, the soft tread of someone who had spent decades learning to move without being heard.
"You have news," she said.
The High Inquisitor moved to stand beside her, his own robes black instead of white, his face hidden in the shadow of his hood. He was an old man, older than anyone in Valerion knew, and his eyes were the color of the twilight sky.
"The Unmade retreated today," he said. "At the Hollow Fields."
Elyss closed her eyes. "How many dead?"
"Fewer than expected. That is why I am here." He paused. "The Tall One was seen. And it was seen watching one man in particular."
She knew who he meant before he said the name. Everyone in Valerion knew who the High Inquisitor watched.
"Kaelen."
"The Red Wraith." The High Inquisitor's voice was soft, almost gentle. "Do you know why the Church gave him that name, Priestess? Not for his sword. For the color of the Binding in his veins. He uses it, you see. He uses it and does not fall. And we have been watching to see how long that can last."
Elyss opened her eyes and looked at the altar, at the thousands of candles, at the symbol of a sun that would never rise again.
"How long?" she asked.
"Four years," the High Inquisitor said. "No one has lasted more than one. But he is different. He has always been different." He turned to face her, and even in the candlelight, his eyes seemed to hold no reflection. "The Church has decided. It is time to bring him in. Before he brings something else in with him."
Elyss thought of the corpse that had smiled at her, that had spoken of lights dying before they arrived.
She thought of Kaelen, standing alone against the Unmade, surviving when no one else did.
She thought of the way he looked at the twilight sky sometimes, as if he remembered something about it that no one else did.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
The High Inquisitor smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
"Watch him," he said. "Learn what he knows. And if the Binding begins to take him..." He reached into his robes and produced a small vial, dark glass, sealed with wax. "Use this. It will not kill him. But it will stop him from becoming something worse."
Elyss took the vial. It was cold against her skin, colder than glass should be.
"What is it?"
The High Inquisitor was already walking away, his black robes vanishing into the shadows of the church.
"Something that was brought back from the North," he said. "By the only man who ever returned."
Elyss stared at the vial in her hand. The liquid inside moved on its own, swirling in patterns that made her head ache. She thought she saw faces in the darkness—faces she did not recognize, faces that might have been screaming.
She tucked it into her robes and tried not to think about what she carried.