The cities bristled like awakened giants.
Walls once left to weather now bore scaffolding and the pounding rhythm of hammer and nail. Watchtowers grew taller. Gates were reinforced with iron-banded wood and fresh barracks bloomed within outer wards. From the desert rise of Maeron to the river-forged cliffs of Vellien, change swept like fire along oil.
Blacksmiths toiled without sleep. Caravans rerouted toward centers of strength. Children were ushered from open pastures to walled keeps, their parents clutching tattered maps and silent prayers. The land prepared—for something no one dared name aloud.
But within the capital, a different sort of battle unfolded.
Where Koda and the Awakened fought against the unseen horror of the Fragments, others raised barriers not of stone—but of pride.
Cardinal Thale of the Divine Shield had installed what he called "safeguards of sanctity." Any addition to the city's defenses required approval from Shield architects—formal audits, endless inspections, blessed sigils etched into every block before foundations could even be laid. And if a single line of ritual law was misquoted or misplaced?
Work halted. For days.
The guards stationed along the city's southern wall stood with weapons in hand, yet their towers lay unfinished, scaffolding swaying in spring winds. Frustration simmered beneath every helm.
Cardinal Enssa of the Holy Mother had created her own web of bureaucracy. Her blessings were required to allocate every salve, every ration, every healer sent into the field. It was not cruelty—but caution, she said. "We cannot pour out the pitcher until we know the drought's true length."
In her sanctum, shelves overflowed with counted supplies. Volunteers waited for permission to act. Men and women bled beyond the walls while parchment and doctrine determined whether bandages would be used today—or tomorrow.
But it was Cardinal Veylan of the Eternal Guide who moved with quiet, unnerving precision.
While the council debated logistics and the churches contested dominion, Veylan began to gather.
At first, it was subtle. A few devoted Awakened were seen more frequently in the Guide's district—cloaked in white and silver, bearing no insignia save for a simple glyph of the rising eye. They spoke of new revelations. Of unity under the true path. Of obedience not to the fractured pantheon, but to the original will—the Eternal Guide's.
And always, they smiled.
They were not called a party. Not yet. But they trained together in the Garden Halls. Received blessings none had heard spoken aloud in years. Their numbers grew quietly, drawn from fringe sects and old-lineage believers who had long whispered that the Guide's church had only ever allowed the others to form.
A kindness now overstayed.
Veylan did not announce their purpose. He did not need to. His presence in senate halls had become a weight. Not a voice in the chamber—but a presence behind its pillars. He rarely spoke, but when he did, he asked simple questions.
"Shouldn't guidance come from the one who first offered it?"
"If a ship is adrift, does the hull or the compass take command?"
And his flock would nod. Even some who had once resisted his tone now looked on his gathering with curiosity. Some with admiration.
He called them Seekers.
Just Seekers.
And every day, more arrived at the marble gate of the Eternal Spire, whispering that they too wished to see the path. That they had grown tired of hesitation. That they no longer trusted the chaos of men and politics.
That they sought a true guide.
———
It was Maia and Thessa who snapped first.
The sun had barely cleared the horizon, its light filtering through the stained-glass windows of the lower cathedral where the injured lay. The air was thick with the copper sting of blood, the sourness of fever, and something deeper—despair. Fresh evacuees from the western lowlands had arrived during the night, many bearing the marks of Fragment exposure. Their bodies trembled not from cold but the slow rot of delayed healing. Children cried for mothers who no longer spoke. Wounds festered beneath makeshift bandages.
And the shelves were bare.
Again.
Rationed.
Doled out only after a committee could ensure "appropriate usage for optimal impact," as the Holy Mother's scrolls dictated. But impact meant nothing when people were already dead. The system was strangling the city with gentle hands.
Maia's fists clenched, bloodied from hours of work. She looked over the faces of those she couldn't help. Then at Thessa, who sat beside a boy no older than ten, her healing light flickering from overuse.
And then they stood.
No more whispers. No more restraint.
They marched—robes stained, hands still covered in the grime of survival—through the temple district, not as silent clergy but as saints in fury.
People followed.
By the time they reached the sanctum of the Cardinal of the Holy Mother, a quiet tide of citizens and healers trailed behind them. Some still wore bandages. Some carried the bodies of loved ones wrapped in linen.
The procession was not organized. It was not sanctioned. But it was righteous.
Cardinal Enssa met them on the upper steps of her cloister, her expression serene as ever—until Maia stepped forward, the Saintess's presence radiating not warmth, but demand.
"We have lost three this morning," Maia said. "Two children. One mother who bled out waiting for bandages you have under lock and seal."
Enssa folded her hands. "Saintess, I understand the urgency—"
"No," Thessa interrupted. Her voice didn't shake. "You don't."
The crowd behind them stirred, murmurs like wind through brittle trees. Maia's voice rose, sharp and clear.
"There is no sanctity in delay. No divine will in withholding mercy. We ration for a future that may never come if we let the present rot. Enough. Give us the keys. Or we open the doors ourselves."
Enssa's composure cracked, just slightly—a twitch of the brow, a tightening at the corner of her mouth.
"This is not how our order operates," she said carefully. "There are procedures—"
"Then your order," Maia said, stepping closer, "will change. Or it will step aside."
The light around her shimmered—not as Sanctuary, but as judgment. Divine. Implacable.
And the people cheered.
Not in triumph, but in relief. Someone had finally said it aloud. Someone they trusted. Someone holy.
Enssa did not answer. But when she turned, the doors behind her opened. Supplies began to move. Scrolls were cast aside. The clerics who had once obeyed without question now moved with new clarity—some bowing as Maia and Thessa passed.
And behind them, the city breathed—if only slightly—easier.
As news of Maia and Thessa's confrontation spread beyond the temple district, it rippled like a tremor beneath the polished stone of the capital. The people spoke not in hushed tones but in open conversations at market stalls, at refugee checkpoints, at the walls. The Saintess had defied a Cardinal—not with rebellion, but with purpose. With truth.
And truth was difficult to silence.
Within days, subtle changes began to take root.
The Church of the Divine Shield, once the loudest opponent to unilateral action, began to adjust. Their edicts softened. Where once every modification to the city's defenses required a dozen signatures and clerical approval, now inspections were faster, oversight lighter. Reinforcements were accepted more freely. Requests from engineers and builders no longer sat buried beneath paperwork.
Not because Cardinal Thale had relented in spirit—he remained a man of firm discipline—but because the growing unrest in the streets could no longer be ignored. The people were watching. And fear was beginning to eclipse faith.
Even the High Paladin's own lieutenants, many of whom had witnessed the bottleneck firsthand along the outer wards, began voicing quiet concern. If the Saintess could act with courage and mercy in public, what excuse did the Shield have for hesitating behind closed doors?
No official declaration came from Thalen. But the orders shifted. The pace quickened. And the complaints quieted.
The balance of power was not breaking—it was bending. Slowly. Inevitably.
And Koda watched it all with cautious silence.
Veylan stood at the steps of the Great Hall of the Eternal Path, silver mantle glinting in the morning sun. A modest crowd had gathered—curious citizens, temple faithful, a few city officials. His voice carried with that practiced, oily smoothness that came from decades in the pulpit. Not fire and brimstone, but something more insidious: reassurance.
"The Eternal Guide," he said with gentle conviction, "has long led us—through fire, through famine, through scar. And though all the churches are blessed, it was He who first breathed the light of awakening into the world."
He paused, letting that revision of history settle. It wasn't overtly heretical. Just… realigned. A subtle reframing.
"Long have we depended upon the grace of the Saintess, and the brave few she travels with. But it is not the will of the Guide that we place all burdens upon one soul alone. And so," he gestured behind him, to a line of freshly anointed figures in radiant white and gold tabards, "we introduce the Sanctified Vanguard. Champions of the Eternal Path. They will stand as the first of a new tide—those guided not just by strength, but by divine structure."
The applause that followed was light, more confused than enthusiastic, but it was enough for his purposes.
He made no mention of Koda—none.
Instead, he called Maia "the Saintess of the Eternal Guide's Grace," and spoke of her healing works as "proof that the Guide walks with us still." The other churches were not dismissed directly, but their presence was reduced to companions on the journey. Side notes.
It wasn't about rewriting the faith in one stroke. It was about pivoting the story, brick by brick.
And among those watching from the shadowed edge of the square, Koda said nothing.
But his silver eyes did not leave Veylan once.
Koda remained still in the fringe of the square, his presence swallowed in the shade of a colonnade—his armor dimmed, his face unreadable. The applause died down, the crowd beginning to thin, but the words lingered. Sanctified Vanguard. The Eternal Guide's Grace. It was dressed in righteousness, but something beneath it felt wrong.
Not heretical. Not yet. But wrong.
He wasn't a priest. Never claimed to be. Whatever faith he had was quiet, personal—a reverence born of seeing the truth behind the veil, of standing in the footsteps of those long gone, not kneeling before marble statues.
And yet as he listened, something twisted beneath his ribs.
This wasn't reverence. This was revision.
His gaze drifted, catching a familiar form across the square—Calthis. The old Watcher stood leaned against a stone baluster, arms crossed, cloak brushing the cobbled floor. Their eyes met for only a moment, but that was enough.
No words.
Just a nod.
A shared understanding.
The Order had always been the unseen knife in the dark, the weight behind the words of balance. They had watched for a long time, even when the world forgot why they had been created. But this? This felt like their domain once more.
"We'll watch him."
Koda turned and walked away, the applause echoing behind him like the whispers of something growing too bold in the sunlight.
Maia closed the door behind her with a quiet snap, her expression already telling the room what her words soon confirmed.
"He announced them publicly," she said, arms crossed. "They're calling it the Sanctified Vanguard. He framed it as a way to 'lighten our burden.'" Her voice dripped with thinly veiled ire. "He never said Koda's name. Not once."
The rest of the team sat in the shared planning chamber of their base, the quiet tension stretching like a drawn wire. Thessa looked uncertain, Wren quietly furious. Deker frowned, and Terron's jaw clenched, muscles flexing beneath his skin. Junen merely muttered, "So it begins."
Koda nodded once, confirming Maia's words. "I heard it with my own ears. It was framed as doctrine. Revised history. Subtle, but effective. The Guide above all. The others… repositioned."
"It's a play," Thessa whispered, glancing toward the window as if wary of eavesdroppers. "He's taking advantage of the fear. He knows the city is scared and craving order. If he provides it, no one will question what version of the truth it's built on."
"We need to move before he gets too rooted," Junen said. "Before his 'truth' becomes canon."
Maia nodded. "Which means not with a public outcry. Not yet. We don't play into his hand."
Koda stepped forward, eyes sharp. "We go through the internal channels. We request a private audience with the other four churches—Isses, Lucien, Thane, Enssa. If Veylan's rewriting doctrine, the other cardinals need to know before their people are swallowed up in it."
Wren let out a breath. "You think they'll side with us?"
"They don't need to side with us," Koda said. "Just realize what he's doing. And what it costs them."
"Cardinal politics," Deker muttered. "Never liked it. Never will."
"Better we use it," Maia said, "than let it use us."
Koda nodded once more. "We leave at first
———
The room was carved in polished stone—no emblems, no banners, no altars. Just a long, darkwood table and the quiet authority of those who had gathered at it.
Isses, the Cardinal of the Divine Forger, sat with her hands steepled before her, thick fingers scarred by years of honest work. Beside her, Lucien of the Divine Librarian adjusted his ink-stained cuffs, eyes flicking between the others with measured curiosity. Thane loomed in his paladin's armor, silent but clearly wary of being summoned without cause. And Enssa, the Matron of the Holy Mother, folded her hands in her lap, the weariness of recent days etched into the corners of her eyes.
Koda stood at the head of the table, his team behind him—Maia to his left, expression controlled but taut, Thessa to his right, shoulders stiff with the weight of truth. The rest of the team flanked the walls, silent, watchful.
It was Lucien who broke the silence. "I find myself at a rare loss, Commander. We were told this was a matter for discretion. But now I see my fellow cardinals—four of us." He paused, then peered over his spectacles. "What about Veylan?"
Koda didn't hesitate. "That's why you're here."
Maia stepped forward, her voice even. "Veylan has shifted doctrine. Subtly. Publicly. Enough that the people think nothing of it—but enough that those with eyes can see the shape of what he's building."
"He has named a Hero's Party," Koda said, tone clipped. "Under the banner of the Eternal Guide alone. The Saintess—Maia—is now referred to as the Grace of the Eternal Guide. He never mentioned her service to the Holy Mother. Never once named the other Churches."
Enssa's hands clenched. "He reassigns one of my daughters by title, and does so without even a courtesy?"
"He's doing more than renaming," Junen said quietly. "He created delays in the senate, blocked action, slowed the war machine—and then preached to the people that only the Eternal Guide's vision can navigate through the gridlock."
Lucien frowned. "Manufacturing the need for himself."
Thane leaned forward. "You're not just accusing ambition. You're accusing something deeper."
"Yes," Koda said. "Not open heresy. Not yet. But isolation. Elevation. If left unchecked, it will spread—and it will divide us, when unity is what we need most."
Isses, ever slow to speak, gave a heavy nod. "You called us to witness, then."
"And to warn," Maia added. "We aren't asking you to denounce him. But watch him. Push back on the rhetoric. Make it known that you see what he's doing, and that you remember the truth of the Five, not just one."
Enssa stood slowly. "That man has rewritten a title I gave. That is not a courtesy I will let pass again."
Lucien exhaled, already reaching for a scroll to make notes.
Thane gave a single nod. "If the shield is being raised under one name alone, it will shatter. I'll see to my paladins."
Isses merely rumbled, "Stone holds best when braced on five pillars."
There was no agreement in writing. No formal oath.
But when they left the room, the four cardinals did not speak of Veylan's doctrine as a curiosity anymore.
They spoke of it as a concern.