? ? ?

  North of the massacre, Sir Tarmour flew low and fast, skimming treetops, hugging ridgelines, anything to keep the ground between him and the sky’s prying eyes. The stump of his left arm throbbed with cold white fire. Every beat of his fractured wings sent black cracks spidering through the air behind him.

  He would find the heretic. He would drag him to the Fountain of Tears. He would hold the bastard’s face under until the colour bled out of him and only a hollow, obedient thing remained.

  The Shimmering City rose ahead: towers of milk-glass and obsidian that caught the Wyrm’s strobing grief and flung it back in blinding pulses. The light rolled over Tarmour’s armor and made him flicker like a broken hologram.

  He dropped into the outer temple grounds hard enough to crack flagstones.

  Something was wrong.

  The courtyard crawled with Priests (far too many), hoods thrown back, blind faces tilted to the sky. Their chained Sycophants jerked and tapped frantic patterns across pale wrists. No mournful choir rose from the First Temple’s throat. The Wyrm had fallen silent.

  Tarmour had never known silence here. Not once in three centuries of service.

  A Priest turned toward the sound of his landing. The Sycophant at his side rattled out a message against the Priest’s palm. The hooded head bowed.

  “Sir Tarmour,” the Priest called, voice dry as tomb dust. “We have been waiting.”

  Tarmour froze. Priests did not know names. Priests did not wait.

  He closed the distance in three strides, sword already half-raised. “Speak.”

  The Priest smiled with too many teeth.

  “The Wyrm weeps no longer,” he said. “It hungers.”

  Overhead, every strobe-light in the city guttered out at once.

  In the sudden dark, a thousand blind faces turned toward Tarmour as though they could see perfectly.

  “It has chosen a new baptism,” the Priest whispered. “And it wants the one who wounded you.”

  The blind Priests closed in, a silent ring of hooded vultures. Their Sycophants dragged chains across stone like funeral bells.

  Tarmour’s remaining hand settled on the pommel of his sword. The living metal purred against his palm, eager.

  “Which one of you am I speaking to?” he asked, voice flat with contempt.

  The nearest Priest lifted his head. The Sycophant’s fingers danced across the back of a corpse-white hand.

  “Brother Keigael,” the Priest rasped. “Arch Minister of Sufferance.”

  Tarmour allowed himself the smallest tilt of helm. Keigael. The only Priest who ever left the city and still came back with blood on his robes. A name worth remembering.

  “Your reputation survives the journey, Knight,” Keigael said, smiling with black, splintering teeth. “But reputations are chaff. The Wyrm has stopped weeping.”

  The courtyard lights flickered once, as though the city itself flinched.

  “It holds its tears,” Keigael continued, stepping closer. “And it calls your name.”

  Every hooded head snapped toward Tarmour in perfect, unnatural unison.

  “You are summoned to the Undervault. The Highest Order awaits. The Divine One wishes to see the Knight who lost an arm to a mortal.”

  The words landed like a blade between ribs.

  Tarmour had spilled oceans of blood for the Wyrm. He had burned villages, salted seas, dragged screaming chieftains to the Fountain. Never once had the god deigned to notice him.

  Now it wanted him by name.

  Keigael leaned in until Tarmour could smell rot and old incense. “Do not keep it waiting, Sir Tarmour the Tarnished. Even you are not indispensable.”

  The ring of Priests tightened. Chains clinked. Somewhere deep beneath the temple, something vast shifted in its sleep and the ground trembled.

  Tarmour released the sword hilt.

  The words struck Tarmour like a physical blow.

  “Tarmour the Tarnished,” Keigael crooned, voice thick with rapture, “will return shamed, broken by a heretic from another world. He will drown in Me, be scoured clean, and rise reborn. Then he will lead My final Crusade until the star-spawned blasphemer kneels at My coils… or the world ends screaming.”

  Every Priest in the courtyard dropped to their knees, foreheads grinding against stone. Their Sycophants trembled so hard the chains sang.

  Tarmour’s legs moved without his consent, one step, then another, toward the black maw of the First Temple. His sword arm hung useless at his side; the living blade had gone dull and cold, as if ashamed of its master.

  He had butchered nations for this god. He had burned his own memories out of his mind so only service remained. And now the god had named him Tarnished.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Lead the way,” he said, without meaning to say it.

  Keigael’s ruined smile widened.

  “Wise,” he whispered. “A great turning has occurred, a shift in the miasma of the Divine One’s dreaming.”

  The Priests moved and started toward the black doors of the First Temple. His Sycophants pulled along like dogs on leashes.

  Tarmour followed, boots ringing on stone that suddenly felt too thin.

  Behind him, the city lights died row by row, darkness swallowing the shimmer until only the faint pulse of his own severed stump lit the way.

  The doors of the temple yawned open on their own. A wind rolled out, thick with salt and rot and something that tasted like burning tears held in for centuries.

  Keigael’s voice followed him into the dark.

  “Do not fear, little Knight. The Wyrm no longer dreams. It is awake. And it is so very, very eager to see you.”

  The doors boomed shut behind them.

  Absolute darkness swallowed the Blanched Knight whole.

  Somewhere far below, something older than sorrow uncoiled and began to rise.

  ? ? ?

  They hiked west, fast and quiet.

  Jenker lagged (four days of Blanched hospitality had carved hollows under his eyes and stolen the spring from his step). Mereque could have carried him like a child and barely noticed the weight. He didn’t offer. The man still walked like a sailor who’d never learned how to quit.

  Good enough.

  The island stank of death and old tears. Jenker had called it the Blanched Land (a place where hope went to drown). Everything that landed here got fed to the Weeping Wyrm or turned into something worse. Knights. Sycophants. And Priests (Jenker spat that word out like poison).

  Mereque filed it away with the rest of the nightmare fuel.

  Then the trees thinned and the ocean hit him like a slap of cold water he hadn’t realized he needed.

  Salt. Real salt.

  He breathed it in until his lungs stopped remembering the dank rot at their backs.

  He stood there a moment longer, eyes closed, letting the salt wind scrape the taste of black-sand blood from his tongue. For the first time in too long, the air didn’t feel poisoned. It felt like forgiveness they desperately needed.

  He opened his eyes and watched the horizon bruise gold. Somewhere out there was vacuum, silence, the cold clean dark he used to call home. Right now the ocean smelled better than any recycled ship air ever had.

  He almost smiled. Almost.

  Jenker dropped to a knee on the sand, yanked out the transmitter, and started cranking like a man ringing the devil’s doorbell.

  In the distance, gulls wheeled and screamed (never coming closer).

  Mereque watched them. “Not a single bird the whole way here,” he said. “Not until your cages.”

  Jenker didn’t look up. “Even the dumbest gull knows when the air tastes like graves.”

  The words hung between them like a shared curse.

  Mereque listened to the surf and realized he hadn’t heard real waves until he came to this planet (only the fake slosh of shipboard water recyclers). The sound was too loud, too honest.

  He glanced at Jenker’s shaking hands on the transmitter.

  “Keep at it, sailor,” he said, voice low. “If your friends don’t show, I’ll carry you into that ocean myself.”

  He slammed the send button.

  Somewhere under the waves, he hoped something had heard them.

  Mereque kept his eyes on the swelling water. “I never saw this island in my descent. Nothing but cloud and blur. If I’d had a choice, I’d have picked anywhere else.”

  “Smartest thing you could’ve done,” Jenker shot back.

  “Wouldn’t have been so good for you.”

  Jenker barked a laugh. “Fair point.”

  He squinted at the horizon. “They say the Shimmering City bends light. Hides the whole damned place until you’re breathing its stink.”

  The transmitter dinged.

  Jenker’s eyes went wide. “Thank the Old Father, they heard us!”

  Mereque stared at empty waves. Minutes crawled. Nothing.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Patience, big man. They don’t exactly surface with trumpets.”

  They found cover behind drift logs, trading watch on sea and tree line.

  Jenker leaned back, studying him. “So. You know my story. Your turn. Where the hell does a giant in bone-white armor come from?”

  Mereque weighed the question like a live grenade.

  “Like I said. Place called Leopold Seven. Different star. It’s a long way away.”

  Jenker didn’t laugh. Just gave him a long, sailor’s look that weighed truth against madness.

  Finally: “Never heard of it. But your gear’s no fisherman’s toy, and you’re not speaking my tongue, I hear it in the pauses. So, either you’re the craziest bastard I’ve ever met…”

  He tapped the Pelter’s muzzle.

  “…or you’re exactly what you say.”

  Mereque met his eyes. “Take your pick.”

  Jenker stared for a long second, then gave a low whistle. “Void and vacuum. You’re actually from the bloody stars.”

  “Born out there.”

  “That explains the armor, the gun, the magic water…” Jenker tapped the side of his own head. “And that voice of yours that keeps turning your words into proper Havenite.”

  “It seems you have me figured out.”

  Jenker grinned, crooked and sudden. “I’ll take the crazy bastard from the stars who cuts Knights’ arms off any day. Works for me.”

  Mereque kept his eyes on the dark tree line. “Answer me one thing. Is this Earth? Third planet, Sol system?”

  Jenker barked a laugh. “What else would it be called, mate? Course it’s Earth.”

  The words landed soft and heavy at once. It was true. He had made it. Home. Mereque let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

  Jenker squinted at him. “You’ve really seen dragons and Fay?”

  “One of each. The dragon tried to eat me. The Fay saved my life.”

  “Old Father’s whiskers…” Jenker muttered, crossing himself sailor-style. “If the chaos drake has an interest in you, it’s a miracle you escaped! Just don’t mention the Fay around the crew. They’ll throw you overboard on principle.”

  Before Mereque could answer, the air split.

  A black line seared itself into existence ten meters down the beach, hissing like hot iron on meat. It carved a perfect rectangle taller than a man, edges crawling with the same white-black fracture Tarmour wore for skin.

  The portal belched steam and the stench of a slaughterhouse left to rot.

  A figure stepped through.

  One-armed no longer. Tarmour was bigger now (as tall as Mereque, broader, crueler). Spiked pauldrons jutted like broken cathedral spires. Fresh-forged plates steamed. Crimson tears bled from the eye slits of his helm, dripping onto sand that hissed and turned to glass.

  A blood-red cape snapped behind him like a battle standard. The sword in his remaining hand screamed when it cleared the scabbard (one long, inhuman shriek that punched Jenker flat on his back and drove Mereque to one knee, ears ringing).

  Mereque’s breath caught.

  Even though he knew it was only in his head, he felt the temperature plummet, colder than vacuum.

  Tarmour wasn’t just healed. He was remade.

  The air around him bent, warped, as though reality itself was trying to crawl away.

  The Knight’s helm tilted. The voice that came out was a thousand dying whales layered over a child’s scream.

  “Heretic,” it said, tasting the word. “The Wyrm has tasted your name.”

  Behind Tarmour the portal snapped shut with a thunderclap.

  He took one step forward. The sand beneath his boot blackened and sank.

  Mereque rose slowly, Pelter up, he had a full magazine, but he wasn’t sure if that would be enough. His weapon suddenly felt very, very small.

  Jenker scrambled upright, yanked a cutlass free from the crate full of salvage, tested the edge, then tossed it point-down into the sand.

  “Junk.”, he spat in frustration. “Guess we’re not waiting for the boat anymore.”

  Mereque racked the Pelter’s slide.

  “Looks like.”

  Jenker clapped him on the shoulder plate, hard enough to ring metal.

  “Try not to die before I get you those drinks I promised.”

  Mereque’s mouth twitched. “Not today.”

  Jenker’s grin went feral.

  “Good. Nothing worse than a dead drinking buddy.”

  Tarmour raised his blade and pointed at the two of them.

  “Come,” he whispered, and the tide itself recoiled from his voice.

  “It is time we finish your baptism.”