The road to Vaeronthe ran like a scar through the hills—old stone paved over older bone, cracked where roots had forced their way back into the world. They walked it in silence. Rowan kept his hood up against the morning glare, stopping every so often to thumb a leaf or coax a sprig from gravel. Each touch left a glint of green behind. Auren walked a step ahead, cloak pulled tight, heat shimmering off him in barely visible waves that made the horizon quiver.
Every now and then, Auren would thumb his pipe, letting the faint burn of Drakesbane settle his nerves and keep Iraxen's heat in check. When the fire inside him pushed too close to the surface, he'd light it—sometimes mid-battle, sometimes on the road, the smoke curling out slow and bitter. When he couldn't smoke—like inside temples or places that still held quiet reverence—he'd chew a leaf instead, jaw tight until the burn eased. But when it came to the Church of the Eight, he didn't bother with courtesy. Their hypocrisy stoked his flames more than soothed them.
Church riders passed twice before noon—white-gold armor, banners of the Eight Flames snapping in the wind. The horses sidestepped without command as they drew near, nostrils flaring at the smell of ash and sap. The riders let their eyes slide past without landing. Everyone learned, sooner or later, not to stare at storms.
"They can feel us," Rowan said quietly.
"Mhm, I've seen that animals are more sensitive to us compared to people," Auren answered, and kept walking.
Vaeronthe rose out of the basin by mid-afternoon, black walls threaded with pale veins that glowed faintly when the sun touched them. From a distance it looked like a spine wrapped in iron. Up close, the gates were a mouth of steel bars and sanctified scripts, and a Church censor hung from a chain like a lantern.
The censor flickered as merchants filed through. It burned yellow when a hedge-witch peddler passed under; it flared to angry orange when a mercenary with a frost-scar on his cheek crossed the threshold. When Auren stepped beneath it, the flame snapped high and hard to a red so bright it hurt to look at.
A guard swore, hand half on his spear. The Church scribe next to him began a prayer under his breath, beads rattling.
Rowan stepped forward before either could decide what to do. He lifted his staff, not quite touching the censor, and let a breath out through his teeth. A cool pulse rolled from his chest to his palms; the chain stopped rattling, and the red bled down to a sickly yellow.
"Sorry," Rowan said mildly, as if diagnosing a fever. "My friend here has trouble controlling his mana at times."
The guard grimaced and waved them on. The scribe finished his prayer, eyes on the ground, as if looking up might make something real.
Inside the walls, Vaeronthe was a living thing that had learned to keep its voice down. Steam carriages hissed along the main arteries, sending up halos where their vents met winter air. Hawkers in the market called out for tinctures, suppressants, rings etched with shallow runes, dragon-glass shavings bottled like perfume. Sermons drifted from tiled courtyards—gentle, insistent words about the Eight Flames and patience. Notices under the sermons read: REGISTERED ECHOS ONLY—NO EXCEPTIONS.
Auren hated it at once—the crush, the smell of street-heat tangled with spice and oil, the knowledge that every eye could become a blade. Rowan watched everything with the interest of a man who had once been caged and recognised the signs of another.
The Guildhall sat where the market's noise thinned, a fortress of black stone and pale bone buttresses carved with old sigils that had been sanded innocent but still hummed when you stood close. Two Church auditors loitered near the doors with slates and too-careful smiles. The guild's bronze crest hung above them: FOR COIN, FOR CRAFT, FOR KINGDOM.
Auren paused as they walked by, looking to Rowan. "Might as well register so we can earn some coin here."
Rowan shrugged. "If you want to."
The room inside was high and loud—mail clatter, shouted bids, the scratch-rasp of quills behind rune glass. Conversation dipped for a breath when Auren crossed the threshold; you could feel the air notice him.
They queued. Rowan rested both hands on his staff, rolling one shoulder as a quiet tremor passed through him and faded. Auren folded his arms and stared at a knot in the floor until it stopped looking like a mouth.
"Names and classes?" the clerk said without looking up.
"Rowan Hale," Rowan replied. "Mage—Life focus, Life Echo."
"Auren Varric," Auren said. "Lancer. Hybrid—Flame focus, Flame Echo."
The clerk's quill hesitated, then kept moving. The ink hissed faintly under Auren's hand when he signed, a tiny thread of smoke ribboning up before disappearing.
'Damn, I need another dose of Drakesbane soon,' he thought to himself.
"Please proceed to the underground chamber for the placement exam," the clerk said, voice careful. He slid two brass chits across—temporary tokens etched with shallow runes. Behind the clerk, the auditors exchanged a glance and a muttered line of scripture.
They followed a proctor down into the belly of the Guildhall, through a corridor that smelled like wet stone and old blood. The arena lay at the end, a circular chamber cut from dragonstone, its walls banded with null-runes. Wards pulsed in the rafters like a dull heartbeat. Behind warded glass on the far side, two Church observers took seats, slates ready, expressions arranged in polite dread.
"Objective is elimination," the proctor said. He didn't waste words. "This is a dangerous beast, and if you are to be one of us, you have to be able to deal with one."
A side gate rolled up. Lyss—the wind mage with too many rings and too much confidence—and Bran—the spear carrier in half-polish with good posture and bad timing—filed in to stand opposite Rowan and Auren. The proctor lifted a hand; the main gate rattled open.
The basilisk that came out was the wrong shape of alive. Its scales were fissured and glowing from beneath like banked coals, eyes damaged beyond use, breath a wet sound that steamed on stone. Where it moved, the floor sweated and then cracked.
Lyss moved first, because people like Lyss always did. Her hands traced quick circles; air pressure buckled with a whine, then snapped forward in a slate-gray pulse that skittered off the creature's plates like rain off a roof. Bran went in behind her, spear aimed true, strike glancing.
Rowan planted his staff and dropped his chin as the beast sent Bran flying. Green spread out from the staff ferrule like ink taking to parchment. It threaded into the cracks between stones and bulged into roots, thick as wrists, that caught the basilisk's forelegs and held. The air cooled by a breath. On the other side of the glass, one of the observers flinched and touched a charm against his chest.
"They're about to die, you know," Rowan said, voice level.
"We both know they won't," Auren answered.
The basilisk tore the first roots and swiveled, tail hammering Bran off his feet and into the wall. Lyss shouted something that sounded like a spell and a curse at once. The creature surged, head dropping to strike.
Rowan lifted his staff again, pain hitting him sharp and hot; his fingers trembled but the roots thickened, buying exactly the amount of time a patient man knew he could buy.
"If you're going to—" he started.
"I know, I know..." Auren said.
He drew one axe, more a movement of breath than muscle. He didn't run. He watched the basilisk's throat, the hitch in its breath where heat pooled, the tiny stutter when it gathered itself to lunge again. The axe warmed as he held it; veins of orange woke within the metal, brightening toward white.
Rowan's barrier cracked like ice.
Auren launched the axe.
The axe went out like a quiet sun. It crossed the distance as a line of heat and intention, slipped between scales, and split the skull clean as a thought. The cut cauterized as it made it. Steam hissed. The body convulsed once and sagged.
For a heartbeat after, the arena forgot how to breathe. The wards in the rafters dimmed and then pulsed back too bright. A hairline crack ran through the nearest band of null-runes with a sound like a frozen branch breaking.
Roots that had held the basilisk's legs blew into bright green bloom and then burned away to ash in the same second. The smell was strange and sweet—sap meeting ember.
The proctor looked down at his slate and then at the broken chalk in his hand, as if the numbers had betrayed him. Behind the glass, one observer whispered, "Blasphemy," like a diagnosis; the other began the first bars of a prayer and lost the words.
Rowan drew his magic back with an effort that showed in his jaw, teeth set against his nerves. Auren walked to the corpse, set his boot on the jaw, and tugged the axe free with a wet sound. He wiped the blade on scaled hide and hung it back on his belt.
He reached into his pouch and pulled a pipe, scarred and familiar. He thumbed the bowl; a spark jumped from skin to leaf. Bitter smoke bloomed, herbal and heavy, and the room's temperature seemed to shift in place.
He took one slow breath, exhaled a line of ember-lit vapor, and held the stem toward Rowan without looking away from the glass.
Rowan accepted it. He drew in, the smoke curling green at the edges as it hit his lungs, and breathed it back out in a thin ribbon that twined through Auren's red. For a moment the colors braided together and then rose, a single pale thread that drifted up into the rafters and vanished among the failing wards.
"That herb is forbidden in sanctified grounds!" one of the observers snapped, voice cracking against the glass.
"So? These are the guild's grounds, not your church's," the proctor said, flat as a stone.
Auren's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Guess we passed."
"Gold stars all around," Rowan murmured, and handed the pipe back.
They left the arena through the same corridor they'd come, boots loud on wet stone. Behind them, men began to argue in low voices. The smell of drakesbane clung to the air like an answer no one wanted.
The Guild did its talking behind closed doors. The Church demanded detainment; the proctor's report said there was nothing to detain. The Guildmaster listened, gaze steady and unreadable, then signed two decisions in the morning with his own hand.
The clerk called Rowan first. The hall was quieter than the day before, or maybe the quiet just noticed them now.
"Rowan Hale," the clerk said, sliding a badge across the counter. Iron, cut clean, runes etched neat and deep. "For discipline, control, and field stability."
Rowan bowed his head in thanks. His fingers shook as he pinned the badge to his cloak. No one commented on the tremor.
"Auren Varric." The clerk's eyes didn't quite meet his when he held out the second badge. Not brass. Gold, dark and warm, the etching deeper, the weight undeniable.
Auren didn't reach for it at first. "Is this a joke?"
"It's protection," said a voice behind the clerk. The Guildmaster had come down from the upper balcony without anyone noticing. He was a broad man with a tired face and hands that looked like they still remembered a sword. "If the world thinks you're ours, it speculates less about who you are. Or who should own you."
"Not a compliment," Auren said.
"No," the Guildmaster agreed. "but it would stave off...unwelcome forces."
Auren took the badge and slid it over his neck, letting it hang. The Guildmaster nodded happily.
"My name is Nomah Elk, and now that you're members, as long as you show your badges you can have room and board at any guild branch. Feel free to eat or go on a mission, and if there is a problem, feel free to report it."
They ate roasted duck and fried rice in the dining hall before briefly going to their new rooms. Rowan brewed tea in a cracked clay pot on a brazier Auren warmed without touching. The steam smelled of mint and something bitter. Church bells rolled out from the upper quarter in even waves, a prayer for the Eight Flames that people mouthed without listening.
"You know the verse," Rowan said when the bells faded. "When ash meets root—"
"—when storm crowns tide," Auren finished, because every child learned the first two lines whether their parents liked it or not.
They watched ivy thread out of a crack in the paving and curl up the leg of their table. It glowed faintly where it touched the warm iron of Auren's axe-hilt, green tinged gold.
"Let's hope nobody else remembers more than that," Auren said.
Rowan blew on his tea. The tremor in his hand was smaller than it had been that morning, thanks to the brief smoke earlier. "They will."
"Then we keep walking," Auren said. He leaned back until the chair creaked. The cat, which had suddenly appeared in their room, hopped into his lap like it had always belonged there and purred itself to sleep from his heat as he nursed at his pipe.
The city breathed around them—steam and scripture and the little ordinary noises people make when they think the worst has already happened. Above the rooftops, the smoke from a dozen chimneys lifted in a common coil and thinned into the pale winter sun. For an instant, as it unraveled, the shape it made looked like wings. Then the wind took it and left only sky.