Birdsong pulled me from sleep.

  Thin, sharp calls stitched the morning together as light crept through the trees. My body ached where it had cooled in the night, armor stiff against my ribs. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.

  Then Azazel’s shadow crossed the embers.

  He tapped my boot lightly with a stick. “Time to get goin’, yah?”

  I groaned and pushed myself up, rubbing my eyes. The fire had burned down to ash. The air smelled clean, almost kind.

  “Bettah dere,” Azazel said, nodding toward the road, “den stayin’ here.”

  He handed me my satchel first. I took it and slung it over my shoulder out of habit, the familiar weight settling against my back.

  Then he held out a small leather pouch.

  My stomach tightened before I even opened it.

  Inside lay the SIN.

  Wrapped and quiet. Heavy for its size.

  “In case yah gonna need it,” Azazel said.

  I hesitated.

  The memory of names fading pressed close, like a warning whispered just behind my eyes. I looked at him, searching his face for doubt or irony.

  There was none.

  Slowly, I tied the pouch shut and strapped it to my belt. It rested there like a second heartbeat—present, patient.

  Azazel was already turning east, toward where the sun had begun to thin the clouds into pale gold.

  I followed.

  The road stretched ahead, damp with morning dew, leading away from the Empire’s shadow and toward a line I could not yet see.

  East.

  Toward the Border.

  Toward answers.

  Toward the cost of keeping them.

  And with each step, I felt the distance grow—between who I had been, and whatever the road intended to make of me next.

  ***

  Weeks passed on the road.

  Azazel showed me how to read tracks pressed shallow into dust, how to set a snare where the ground dipped just right, how to clean a catch without wasting what mattered. He taught me which roots could be boiled down to something filling, which leaves burned the tongue, which fires would smoke us out and which would hide us beneath the stars.

  We slept wherever night found us.

  Under branches stitched with moonlight.

  Beneath skies so full of stars they made the world feel smaller.

  I learned to wake at the right moment, just before dawn, when the air still held its breath.

  I spoke little.

  Azazel spoke only when it mattered.

  By the time the land began to thin and dry, my body had changed. Leaner. Harder. The road had shaped me quietly, the way water shapes stone.

  The border came without warning.

  The earth turned pale and cracked. Shrubs clung low to the ground, twisted and stubborn. The wind ran unchecked across open stretches of nothing. No banners. No walls. No guards.

  Just emptiness.

  Azazel stopped and exhaled, a long breath he’d been holding for days.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  I looked around, confused. “Here?” I asked. “There’s nothing here.”

  He stepped forward, past a bent shrub barely clinging to life, and spread his arms wide as if presenting a grand hall.

  “We just cross de border.”

  I stared at him.

  Azazel laughed — a short, quiet sound, more relief than humor.

  I shook my head slowly. “Azazel… I rather you have just killed me.”

  He turned back to me, smiling now, eyes bright.

  “Where is yah faith, yah doubting Thomas?”

  The words stung, though his tone was gentle.

  He pointed east, toward a low hill rising from the barren land.

  “Over dere,” he said, “beyond di hill, is a town.”

  “A good people live dere,” he went on. “Dat where di Fatha want yah.”

  I followed his gaze, searching for anything — smoke, stone, movement.

  There was nothing yet.

  But for the first time in weeks, the emptiness didn’t feel like an end.

  It felt like a threshold.

  And as the wind swept across the borderlands, carrying no banners and no prayers, I understood something the Empire never had:

  Freedom did not announce itself.

  You only knew it once you had already crossed.

  The town sat low in the valley beyond the hill.

  Stone and timber, modest and worn, smoke rising in thin lines from chimneys that hadn’t learned fear yet. Fields pressed close to the houses, not fenced, just shared. It looked… ordinary.

  Which somehow made my chest tighten.

  As we walked in, a voice rang out from near the square.

  “Azazel!”

  A tall man in loose robes strode toward us, his pace easy, his smile wide. His hair was bound back, streaked with grey, his eyes sharp despite the warmth in them.

  “Raphael, bruddah,” Azazel said, spreading his arms. “Good to see yah.”

  Raphael laughed and pulled him into a rough embrace, then stepped back and looked me over.

  “Azazel,” he said, squinting. “Who did you bring back this time?”

  Azazel grinned.

  Raphael cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Every time you disappear, you come back with trouble.”

  Azazel chuckled. “Dis one different.”

  He placed a hand briefly on my shoulder.

  “Dis be di boy di Fatha want.”

  Raphael’s smile faded—just a little.

  “The one Gabriel said to find?” he asked.

  Azazel nodded, eyes bright.

  “Dis be de boy.”

  Raphael studied me now with something closer to reverence than curiosity. Not fear. Not awe.

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  Recognition.

  He stepped aside and gestured toward the town.

  “Then welcome,” he said quietly. “Welcome to Deermarch.”

  The name settled over me like a mantle I hadn’t asked for.

  Around us, life went on—people carrying baskets, children running past, voices calling out greetings. No banners. No sigils. No gold.

  Just people.

  Azazel leaned closer and murmured, “Told yah. Good people.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but the way Raphael had looked at me made the hairs on my arms rise.

  Not because I felt special.

  Because I felt expected.

  And for the first time since Old Tumbledown burned, I wondered whether crossing the border hadn’t brought me to safety…

  …but to the beginning of something that had already been waiting for me.

  Azazel stopped at the edge of the square.

  He turned to face me and, without ceremony, knelt.

  The movement startled me. I reached out before I realized what I was doing, then stopped myself. He rested one knee on the dust, head bowed just slightly.

  “I teach yah much, Thomas,” he said. “But dis won’t be di last time I see yah.”

  My throat tightened. I didn’t know why.

  He rose and turned to Raphael.

  “Raphael,” he said, voice steady. “Tek care a him, yah.”

  Raphael inclined his head. “As I was told.”

  Azazel looked back at me one last time. There was no warning in his eyes. No promise either. Just certainty.

  Then he stepped away.

  The wind shifted.

  Dust lifted from the ground in a sudden rush, sweeping through the square like a breath drawn sharp. Sand and grit spun upward, blurring the edges of the world. I shielded my eyes, coughing as the storm rolled over us—brief, violent, and gone as quickly as it had come.

  When it cleared—

  Azazel was gone.

  No footprints.

  No shadow retreating.

  Nothing.

  I stood there, heart hammering, staring at the place he had been as if the ground itself might explain what I had just seen.

  Raphael placed a hand lightly on my shoulder.

  “Come,” he said gently. “You’ll want food in you. Questions sit better after.”

  I looked at him, then back once more at the empty square.

  Nothing stirred.

  I nodded.

  Raphael gestured toward his home, a modest stone house at the edge of town, smoke curling from its chimney. As we walked, the sounds of Deermarch closed in around us—voices, laughter, the clatter of daily life.

  Ordinary sounds.

  But nothing about me felt ordinary anymore.

  I crossed the threshold behind him, carrying my father’s armor, my sin at my belt, and the certainty that whatever Azazel had been…

  He had not left me.

  Not really.

  And as the door closed behind us, I knew the road had only paused—

  —not ended.

  Raphael set a bowl of stew on the table and gestured to the chair across from him.

  “Sit,” he said gently.

  I did, though my body stayed tight, ready to move. The room was simple—stone walls, a low hearth, shelves lined with jars and folded cloth. No icons. No gold. Just warmth.

  “Close your eyes,” Raphael said. “Pray.”

  I hesitated.

  He noticed.

  “You’ve been with Azazel for weeks now,” he said quietly, “and you still doubt?”

  I swallowed.

  Raphael leaned back, studying me the way a man studies weather on the horizon.

  “Did you trust what your father told you,” he asked, “about the Father?”

  My jaw tightened. I nodded once.

  “Then tell me,” he said, calm but firm, “why are you holding your breath now?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came. My chest felt packed with ash and memory.

  “Do you still lack faith, Thomas?” Raphael asked.

  The question finally broke something loose.

  “How can I?” I choked. “How can I have faith—when everyone I loved was taken from me by men of the cloth?”

  My hands curled into fists on the table.

  “They wore His words,” I went on, voice shaking. “They spoke His name. And they burned my home. They killed my family.”

  The room stayed quiet.

  Raphael didn’t interrupt. He didn’t argue. He let the words settle.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was low.

  “Your faith wasn’t broken,” he said. “It was wounded.”

  I looked up at him, anger flashing through the grief. “What’s the difference?”

  “A broken thing doesn’t ache,” Raphael said. “It doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t cry out.”

  He nodded toward my chest.

  “But you’re still asking,” he went on. “Still hurting. Still angry.”

  He slid the bowl of stew closer to me.

  “That means you’re still alive,” Raphael said. “And so is your faith—even if it doesn’t look like prayer yet.”

  The fire cracked softly behind him.

  “You don’t need to close your eyes tonight,” he added. “Just stay.”

  I stared down at the steam rising from the bowl, my reflection wavering in it.

  I pushed my chair back hard enough that it scraped the stone.

  “Why am I here?” I demanded. “Why does it feel like I’m wasting my time?”

  Raphael didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t even flinch.

  “What would you do otherwise?” he asked.

  The answer came too fast.

  “I want to find those bastards who killed my loved ones,” I said. “I want my revenge, Raphael.”

  The word tasted like iron.

  “Where is the Father everyone keeps telling me is always around us?” My voice cracked, anger bleeding into something sharper. “If He’s here—if He’s everywhere—why does He allow this?”

  My hands shook now. I didn’t try to hide it.

  “I wanted to live in peace,” I said, the words tumbling out. “That’s all. I wanted a quiet life. And the clergy took everything from me.”

  My eyes burned. I wiped at them angrily, furious that they wouldn’t stop.

  “I won’t stop,” I said hoarsely. “Not until all of those men are dead.”

  The room went very still.

  Raphael watched me for a long moment, not judging, not afraid. When he finally spoke, his voice was steady.

  “If I pointed you toward them right now,” he said, “you would follow.”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  “And if killing them cost you everything you have left?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth.

  Nothing came out.

  Raphael leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the table.

  “You want revenge because it feels like movement,” he said. “Because standing still hurts too much.”

  I clenched my jaw. “You don’t understand.”

  “I do,” he said quietly. “More than you think.”

  He met my eyes.

  “You’re asking where the Father was,” Raphael continued. “But what you’re really asking is why He didn’t stop it.”

  My throat tightened.

  “I don’t have an answer that will make this clean,” he said. “Or fair. Or small enough to carry easily.”

  He gestured gently toward my chest.

  “But if you hunt them now—if you make revenge your only prayer—you won’t find peace. You’ll just trade one fire for another.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?” I snapped. “Forgive them?”

  “No,” Raphael said immediately. “Not yet.”

  The firmness in his voice surprised me.

  “First,” he said, “you live.”

  The words landed heavier than any command.

  “You stay here,” Raphael went on. “You eat. You rest. You remember who you were before they taught you how to hate.”

  He paused.

  “Then,” he said, “when you finally go looking for them… you’ll know whether you’re doing it for justice.”

  His eyes darkened, just a little.

  “Or because you’re afraid of who you are without your anger.”

  The fire crackled.

  My hands slowly unclenched.

  I didn’t feel calmer.

  I didn’t feel healed.

  But for the first time since Old Tumbledown burned, someone wasn’t feeding the rage just to keep me standing.

  And that frightened me more than the promise of revenge ever had.

  Raphael rose from his chair and came around the table. He stopped beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

  The touch was steady. Not possessive. Not commanding.

  “Then at least for now,” he said quietly, “rest tonight.”

  My eyes burned. I stared at the table, jaw clenched, afraid that if I looked up I’d lose whatever fragile control I still had.

  “I will point you to the way,” Raphael continued. “When the time is right.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “You’re not lost, Thomas,” he said. “Even if it feels like it.”

  I felt my throat tighten.

  “You’re where the Father wants you,” Raphael finished. “Rest assured of that.”

  The fire crackled softly behind us.

  He gave my shoulder a final, reassuring squeeze, then stepped away, leaving me alone with the bowl of stew and the weight of everything I hadn’t said.

  I sat there long after the room went quiet, staring into the thin steam rising from the food.

  For the first time since the night Old Tumbledown burned, I didn’t feel pushed forward by fear alone.

  I didn’t feel peace.

  But I felt… held.

  And for now, that would have to be enough.