Chapter 123

When I first began this journey, Yveth taught me how to sense my Faith and the Faith around me.

I never learned how she saw it, but for me, it was a sea of multicolored stars. Tiny beacons scattered in every direction - like fireflies drifting over a dark, rippling lake. Their distance felt uncertain. Their scale, impossible to judge. Close and far all at once.

My family had always burned brighter than the rest. Ashlara was red with gold, Mirri blue with green, Serah purple with red, and Lilae gold with blue

As my family grew, so did the colors - each person distinct, unmistakable.

And it wasn’t just color. Ashlara wasn’t simply red and gold - she was red with flecks of gold that sparked and flared within her, like embers caught in a forge-fire. Mirri wasn’t just blue and green - her light flowed, threads of green twisting through deep blue in a slow, graceful dance. Each of them had texture. Motion. Presence.

You could tell who they were just by the way their light moved.

Beyond people, there were places. Crossroads. Bridges. Libraries. Places where decisions gathered.

My Faith-scape shifted with the day. At dawn and dusk, harbors and marketplaces flared into being - bright and hopeful - then faded as the hours passed. Fields and workshops burned strongest at noon, then dimmed into nothing with the coming night. Graveyards and alleys came alive after dark, glowing softly until the sun drove them back.

Yveth taught me how to enter my demesne by finding where my Faith was strongest and pulling it toward me. And with her guidance I learned to travel to places where my Faith was strongest by finding those beacons and taking a step toward it. I called it ‘stepping’ because that’s what I needed to do to reach it.

I would step into my demesne, and from there step again to wherever my Faith resonated strongest. And because that’s how I learned it, that’s how I taught it.

Mirri. Ashlara. Serah. Elise. They could all step into the demesne. All of my children could as well. At some point, it stopped being my demesne. It became the demesne. Shared. Lived in. Part of our home.

We grew crops there. Took shelter there. The children had rooms - if they wanted them.

It was a living place. A place that responded to thoughts. A realm shaped by Will. I could mold it - raise mountains, flood valleys, conjure what we needed, change the weather on a whim. But it didn’t belong to me alone. It responded to all of us.

It was vast and shifting. Mountains and swamps. Forests and deserts. Every season, all at once.

Life had taken root there, too - without my doing. Bright, colorful moths. Stray dogs. Bats in the dark. Wildflowers, grasses, trees, even cacti - growing as if they’d always been there.

We’d introduced crops out of necessity - corn, wheat, squash, potatoes - and they’d spread beyond where we planted them, claiming the land as their own.

There was no sun. No moon. And yet, it followed the cycle of the world. Ambient light swelled with dawn, dimmed with dusk, but never fully faded - never left you blind, even in the deepest night.

After a few years, I didn’t need the demesne as a bridge anymore. I could see my Faith-scape and simply go.

The others hadn’t learned that yet. Maybe one day they would.

And so it was that I stepped to Altunvek - the capital of Iilvarion.

My keep bordered the mountains, where winter came early with the elevation. Altunvek lay along the eastern coast at roughly the same latitude, and winter found it just as quickly - arctic winds sweeping in off the sea, dragging storms behind them.

The plains of Iilvarion rolled endlessly until they broke against the coast - stone and surf, scattered with small bays. Islands dotted the water, too small to hold much life, but enough to break the waves.

The city itself was enclosed by a low stone wall. Every twenty-five feet stood a small structure - ten feet square, rising just above the wall, capped with a whitewashed dome and a sharp triangular spire.

The wall held its height even as the land rose and fell around it. To the west, it stood barely five feet. To the east, where the land dropped toward the ocean, it climbed closer to fifteen.

The pattern was deliberate. Uniform. Distinct. Unique to not just Iilvarion, but to the city.

Inside, the buildings followed a similar logic - stone and square, their roofs stepped like small pyramids, each topped with a room with windows that faced the cardinal directions.

Watchpoints. For ships returning. For enemies approaching.

At the center rose the palace - larger, more refined, but built in the same style. Its own wall encircled it, more ornate, but lacking the strange towers of the outer ring.

To the east, beyond the walls, wooden docks stretched into the water - mostly fishing vessels, with the occasional trade ship.

It wasn’t a large city. Five thousand, maybe. But for a land and culture that was semi-nomadic, it was massive.

I appeared just outside the gate - a small building set into the wall that stood less than ten feet tall.

The guards - olive-skinned, dark-haired, clad in leather with red accents - watched me approach. Curved blades at their hips. Simple bows slung over their shoulders.

I nodded. I didn’t know them personally, but my reputation after the war was enough that they let me pass without a word.

I ducked through one of the two doorways - barely six feet tall and narrow enough to brush both shoulders if you weren’t careful - and made my way into the city.

The streets were rough cobblestone over packed earth, uneven and unpredictable. The layout made no sense unless you knew it.

Straight roads ran into twisting alleys that doubled back on themselves. Dead ends appeared without warning. Shops sat beside homes with no distinction between them.

If you didn’t know where you were going you didn’t get there.

I followed the main road for a while, then slipped into a side alley that wound its way to a plain, unremarkable building.

I knocked. Waited. There was a thump. A curse. Something scraping across the floor.

The door opened.

Jackob stood there - tall, lean, older now, but still striking. Clean-shaven. Olive skin that hinted at far-off deserts and sunbaked cities. His hair, more silver than black now, fell in smooth lines to his shoulders.

When he saw me, his face lit up. “Seth!” he exclaimed. “Hero of the Second Silent War - at my door! Will wonders never cease? Come in, come in!” He stepped aside, waving me in with exaggerated enthusiasm.

I climbed the two stone steps and ducked inside.

The house smelled of wood and incense - warm, calming, just a little exotic. Carved furniture lined the walls - chairs, cabinets, tables - all painted in bright reds, greens, and blues. Toys lay scattered across the floor, small and well-used.

A home. A real one.

A small boy peeked out from the kitchen. Our eyes met. Then he grinned and charged.

I scooped him up as he collided with me, his arms wrapping tight around my neck.

“Uncle Seth!” he cried

“How are you, Tark?”

“Good,” he mumbled.

He pulled back, beaming. Three and a half now. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin like his parents. His father’s charm already there. His mother’s smaller frame.

I set him down, and he darted back to Jackob, who lifted him just as easily.

“And how have you been?” I asked Jackob.

Jackob smiled. “Well enough. Better now.”

Nomin emerged from the kitchen, her gait slowed by the weight of her pregnancy.

“Seth,” she said warmly, pulling me into a hug.

“It won’t be long now,” I said, resting a hand on her belly.

The baby kicked almost immediately.

She laughed. “She always does that when you’re around. Why do you think that is?”

“I’m a bad influence,” I said, grinning as I kissed her cheek.

“That you are. If you weren’t, I never would’ve married this good-for-nothing husband of mine.” She leaned into Jackob’s side.

He kissed the top of her head, completely unbothered.

“I’m grateful every day he’s a bad influence,” he said. “You’re the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky. You’re the ocean and the shore - and the ship that keeps me afloat. And the rope - good rope, mind you - the strong kind, not the frayed kind. You’re… you’re the fire in my hearth! The song in my chest, the reason I remember what I was doing when I walk into a room…”

He paused. “…most of the time.”

Nomin rolled her eyes and smacked his chest, smiling despite herself.

“See what I mean? Good for nothing.” She kissed him anyway.

“Lunch will be ready soon. Will you join us, Seth?”

“Thank you, but no,” I said. “I just need a few minutes with your good-for-nothing husband.”

Jackob threw his hands up. “Ah! Betrayed on all sides. Truly, one should never meet their heroes!”

* * *

I went to Jackob when I needed rumors - when I needed to know what people were saying, what they believed, and what they feared.

He was a storyteller at heart, a collector of half-remembered tales and confidently delivered nonsense. Most of his details were wrong - but never all of them. There was always enough truth buried in the embellishment that, with a little work, you could figure out what was really going on.

I’d met him years ago, not long after I arrived in this world, in a small border town called Ashhorn - set between the Iron Nation and Arvellia. He’d been tending a home-turned-museum dedicated to Saint Aldric, a man blessed by Miralis who’d fought in the War of Falling Stars.

According to Jackob, Aldric had been gifted a magical blade by Miralis - a greatsword named Adhaneth. He’d defeated Yveth, risen to heroism, and was ultimately brought low by assassins’ poison.

It made for a good story.

The truth was… different.

Aldric hadn’t defeated Yveth. He’d survived her. He’d sought her out, **** to rid himself of grief - and she refused him. That was her way. Grief, to her, was sacred. Something to be endured, not erased. She believed we were the sum of our choices, and to forget the past was to lose yourself entirely.

And Adhaneth… she wasn’t just a blade.

She was a sleeping entity of unimaginable power - the mother of the Myrddin. She had no memory of Aldric, despite being wielded by him. I only learned the truth when she awakened - when her children nearly tore me apart.

She became a friend after that. A confidant. Someone I would have died for.

In the end, she died for us instead - sacrificing herself to stop her children during the Second Silent War.

I saw Jackob again just before that war’s one and only battle. He rode with the Iilvarion army and loudly insisted I was Arthyr reborn - the soul of the hero of the first Silent War - returned to save the world.

He was wrong, but that didn’t make him any less useful or diminish his contributions.

“So,” he said once Nomin had retreated back to the kitchen, “what can I do for you, my friend?”

“What do you know about the Weeping Gallows?” I asked.

He gasped, hand to his chest in mock offense. “My friend, you were there when the first of them sprouted! It lives in your yard. What could I possibly know that you don’t?”

He paused, eyes narrowing theatrically. “Unless…” His grin spread.

“You’ve come not for my charm, but for my brilliance. My unparalleled insight. My ability to strip away deception and reveal the hidden truth beneath.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, oh great Jackob. I come seeking your infinite wisdom.” I couldn’t quite keep the smirk off my face. “That you might enlighten me - so I don’t have to tell young Tark about the time you ran screaming from a perfectly friendly drago-”

His hand clamped over my mouth. “Now, now,” he said quickly, grin wide and a little strained. “No need to sully my good name with such outrageous lies.”

He stepped back, smoothing his robes, slipping easily into a more “professional” posture.

“As for the Woundroots,” he said, voice dipping into exaggerated seriousness, “I will spare you the common knowledge. Yes, they kill. Yes, only truth may be spoken as they devour you. Yes, the pain is said to purify the soul.”

He leaned in slightly. “But there are… other stories.”

His voice lowered, conspiratorial. “Some say those consumed are not always gone. That they return - changed - from the tree that claimed them. More root than flesh. Eyes glowing like lanterns in the dark.” He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. “And they say these… returned… can call down thunder itself.”

His eyebrows bounced eagerly as he waited for a reaction.

I didn’t give him one, but I filed it away.

If people believed there was a way back - if they thought **** at the hands of those things wasn’t the end - then more people were going to get themselves killed chasing it.

Jackob’s tone shifted, just slightly. Less performance. More concern.

“In Caldris,” he said, “there are whispers of a group calling themselves the Covenant of Mercy. They claim the Woundroots can strip away all pain. All suffering. Their leader, they say, is proof - you can pass through **** and come out better.”

He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

That was… unusual. Jackob didn’t not like things. He embellished them. Romanticized them. Turned them into stories. If he was uneasy, I needed to be paying attention.

“Not related to the Woundroots,” he added, his tone brightening again, slipping back into that familiar conspiratorial cheer, “but something else you might find interesting.”

He leaned back, arms folding loosely. “People speak of a Star Gazer. A bloodchild who doesn’t hunt. Doesn’t attack. Just sits on a hill at night and watches the sky. They say he’s in Esmori, north of Broadacre.”

He tilted his head.

I’d definitely need to look into that one.

Maybe my children weren’t the only ones who’d been raised with parents and a family. Or maybe it was coincidence. A moment of calm mistaken for something more. Or maybe it wasn’t a bloodchild at all. Either way, I’d need to see for myself.

“Thanks, Jackob,” I said. “You’ve been a big help. As always.”

He grinned wider. “I have one more - but I know how busy you are. No time for the great Jackob.” He lifted the back of his hand to his forehead in exaggerated despair, holding the pose just long enough to peek at me through the crook of his arm.

I smiled. “Go on.”

He dropped the act immediately, chuckling. “Word is, an entire city in Ilyr’Vaeneth vanished overnight. Not just the people - the whole thing. Buildings. Streets. Everything. Just…” He snapped his fingers. “…gone.”

He met my eyes then, something more behind the humor. “I know you’ve got a boy there. So - from one father to another - you might want to check on him.”

I nodded slowly. “I saw Elarion last week,” I said. “But I’ll reach out.”

I clasped his hand. “Thanks, Jackob.”

“It’s what I do,” he said lightly.

I turned to Tark, who was still hovering near his father’s legs.

“Good to see you, Tark. Keep an eye on him, yeah? He needs a babysitter.”

Tark lit up. “Yeah!”

I ruffled his hair, then stepped back toward the door.

It was time to see which of Jackob’s stories were worth believing.