Aldric stood there in the center of Floralines, staring at a boy,
A corpse that had twitched once and then never again.
And the crowd?
They watched.
They always watched.
Hands over their mouths. Eyes wide. Prayers whispered, but never spoken aloud. No one moved. No one moved.
And he thought:
“We’re past asking questions.”
He tried to run to Tomas.
Veylor caught him by the collar and yanked him backward.
"Not yet."
“LET ME GO!”
“If you go now, the boy dies with no one left to bury him.”
But Aldric had already seen it.
The fire had spread beyond the chapel. Smoke poured from rooftops. White-robed Binders pulled people from their homes like livestock, like firewood, one by on. Sanctum Watchers marched in slow, circular formation—one deliberate orbit around the flames. Their staves rang as they walked.
Another “Ceremony of Flame”.
The purge had begun.
The Chanter stood at the epicenter. Hands raised to the sky, her body a conduit of crackling Luminance. Radiance spun from her palms like a psalm made flesh.
She was singing.
Aldric tore away from Veylor and sprinted straight into it.
His mind was filled with dozens of spells that could’ve saved Tomas.
His Aegis bloomed mid-run. Golden. Tight. No elegance, just survival. He wove Resonance into it, wrapping around like coiled wire. Just enough to keep his skin from boiling.
A Watcher turned. Too slow.
Aldric’s shoulder hit him full-force. The man staggered, but didn’t fall. The staff came up, he ducked. Another struck, his shield caught it. The staff hummed, Each impact peeled his magic off like bark stripped from a tree.
Then his Aegis shattered.
By disruption.
He dropped. Hit the stone. Something cracked in his ribs.
Two villagers dragged him up.
Not enemies.
But not allies.
“We told you,” one hissed. “We told you to stay silent.”
“I TRIED TO HELP!”
“Help will kill all of us.”
Another voice, older. Familiar.
Old Maar. The mapkeeper.
He stepped forward from the shadows of his collapsed home, his eyes were ash.
“You brought this,” he said. “You and your fire. You made them look closer.”
Behind him, Mirla wept by the broken tavern steps. Wenrik clutched his hammer, white-knuckled, like a weapon he wouldn’t raise.
They weren’t praising the Sanctum.
But they weren’t stopping them, either.
Fear was always louder than gratitude.
And twice as sharp.
The Thorn raised his axe again.
Another child knelt in the circle. Barely ten. One Aldric didn’t know. Brown hair, wide eyes, trembling hands.
Just a name on a list and a body kneeling in silence.
Aldric’s legs moved before his thoughts could catch them.
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He shouted. “STOP!”
The Thorn didn’t.
The axe struck.
Aegis.
Aldric’s hands burned. The shield erupted in front of the child. A half-dome of furious gold, layered threefold with compression rings.
But not fast enough.
A staff struck the shield’s outer edge.
Disruption.
The lattice shuddered. Flickered. Then fractured at the base.
Aegis dissolved.
And the axe landed.
The child folded in half.
Just like Tomas.
Blood on stone.
Aldric staggered. Breathless.
He had almost stopped it.
Almost mattered.
Almost.
His knees hit the ground.
His palms burned.
He had studied for years. Fought back his nightmares. Carried every scar Eryndor gave him. For this.
And it wasn’t enough.
He was nothing but an academic with a front-row seat to the slaughter.
Something inside him broke.
Too slow. Too weak. Too late.
Something rise inside him. A scream. A sob. A prayer. He didn’t know which.
Nonetheless, it never reached his lips.
But his spell did.
He moved like instinct.
No theory. No diagrams.
Just rage.
The Watcher deployed Aegis, but Aldric was already there.
Too close.
His palm touched the center of the shield's pattern.
“Null Directive. Pierce. Echo. Collapse.”
He cast it directly into the Aegis matrix. Concept #2. The crude one. The unstable one.
A spell that overloaded the target’s own Luminance, feeding it into itself until it ruptured the neural anchors.
Impact.
The Watcher’s own Luminance spiraled inward and ruptured.
The scream was short.
Then the body dropped.
A body half-melted from the inside out.
Light hemorrhaging from her mouth and eyes.
Smoking.
Dead.
Aldric blinked.
The mask had cracked.
And he saw her face.
Freckles. Pale green eyes. A soft mouth. Maybe a smile once. Maybe someone’s sister. Or daughter. Or favorite person in the world.
Human.
He stared.
Stared until rage dissolved.
His hands began to shake.
It hit all at once.
She had dreams.
Not metaphors. Actual dreams.
Ones no one else would ever know. Fantasies she never spoke aloud. Nightmares she never admitted to. Wishes too private to write down.
She had friends. Inside jokes. A favorite seat at her childhood table. The smell of soup that reminded her of safety. Someone whose name she whispered when she was scared. Someone she secretly loved. Someone she swore she'd never forgive.
She had memories. Thousands. Millions.
Of days so ordinary no one else would remember them.
Perhaps of mornings where sunlight fell across her pillow in a pattern that made her smile for no reason.
Perhaps of the moment her father said he was proud.
Perhaps of a birthday when no one showed up.
She had opinions no one ever asked her to share. A favorite poem. A joke that made her snort. A melody that made her cry.
She had things she never told anyone. Not because she was hiding. Just because no one ever asked.
And now...
Gone.
Erased like chalk from a slate.
He staggered backward.
I burned it all down.
A library of infinite, non-replicable memory.
Years of micro-choices that built a personality no soul would ever match again.
The neural fingerprint of a soul.
A story only she could write.
Gone.
All because of me.
A second of fear.
A heartbeat of rage.
A single decision, and the cosmos that lived behind her eyes collapsed into ash.
He swallowed.
“She would’ve killed another child.” He muttered
“She would’ve kept going.”
“This was necessary.”
He repeated it inside his head again.
And again.
Until it almost didn’t sound like a lie.
The Thorn turned toward him now.
The axe, blackened and blood-wet, dragged along the stone.
Aldric couldn’t cast again. Could barely stand.
But he didn’t have to.
A shadow blurred past him.
Veylor.
Armor to shoulder, full-force, driving into the Thorn like a hammer dropped from heaven.
Stone cracked.
The chapel wall caved.
The Thorn didn’t rise.
Veylor turned. His blade left its sheath.
And the massacre began.
One after another.
Binders.
Wisps.
Even the Chanter, mid-hymn, impaled mid-breath.
Aldric had never seen him move like this. Not a man. A reckoning. Silent. Surgical. Like each cut was an answer to a question Aldric hadn’t dared ask.
It was not rage, but resolve.
Not vengeance.
Correction.
When it was over, the square was nothing but smoke and silence.
And Aldric?
He was on his knees.
Staring at his hands.
His own hands.
Stained not just with blood—
—but with the life of a person.
Something snapped in his chest.
A tight, horrible pop of meaning collapsing under weight.
And it was Lysa’s voice he heard.
“You don’t write like someone who wants to be forgotten.”
He tried to stand.
Fell.
Tried again.
Made it.
Didn’t cry.
Just walked.
Then came the scream.
He turned.
Lysa.
At the chapel door. Pounding.
Locked. From the outside.
The guards had barricaded it.
“Aldric—!”
He skidded across the stone.
The door was red-hot.
“MOVE! LYSA, MOVE!”
She pounded the window, smoke pouring from behind her. Her fingers bled against the glass. He could see her lips moving, but couldn’t hear her anymore.
Her eyes locked on his.
For one last moment.
Then stopped looking at him.
Her eyes went through him. Past him. Into the dark.
She collapsed.
He hit the window with a stone.
His elbow.
His fist.
His own skull.
It didn’t break.
The roof gave way.
And he stood there.
Too long.
Until Veylor grabbed him from behind and shoved him back into the burning night.