I serve none.

Your voice wells up from somewhere nonexistent, pulled into this world unwelcomed. “I serve none.”

Expression unchanged, the old man produces a pouch from beneath the black robe and tosses it casually into the basin beneath you. The flames seem to catch it like a sea of starving mouths snapping at meat, and your first sensation is that of searing pain lancing through everything that composes you. The world around you seems to dim and pull away as the pain consumes you, yet as suddenly as it came it is gone, and you are somehow now surrounded by twice as many hooded figures. The room appears different somehow, yet the same red creature is chained in the back.

The first figure steps forth, the same old man as before. “Hear and understand. You are born by the Sacred Light of Areh, bound by the Divinity of the Kings. You are a servant of the Cleansing Flame.”