The Temple of First Light stood against the dawn like a memory carved in stone.
From a distance, it was magnificent—white marble that caught the first rays of sun and held them, as if the stone itself remembered being shaped by hands that knew the old songs, the true names of light.
Spires reached skyward like the fingers of sleeping giants, and every surface bore the mark of ancient craft: the covenant between Kii Hore and the divine rendered in flowing script, the fall of the god-kings depicted in scenes that seemed to move in the changing light, a thousand years of history written by artisans who believed their work would outlast kingdoms.
And it had. But not unchanged.
Up close, I could see what the distance hid—the cracks spreading like veins through marble, the scorch marks someone had tried to scrub away but couldn't quite erase, the dark stains in the grooves between stones that might have been rust but probably weren't. The temple had weathered centuries of sun and storm, but these wounds were fresh. Recent.
Violence had come here, and often.
"This is a mistake," Aret muttered beside me. He'd returned an hour after dawn with two other former Serpents—an older woman missing her left arm and a man so scarred I couldn't tell what he'd looked like before the world had carved its lessons into his flesh.
"The moment you set foot in there, every spy the nobles have planted will know."
"Good." I kept my voice steady despite the fear that crawled up my spine like a living thing. "Let them know. Let them wonder why the bastard is bold enough to walk into the temple wearing the amulet they've been hunting."
The morning air was cool, carrying the smell of incense and old stone and something else—the peculiar scent of a place where prayers had been offered for so long they'd soaked into the very walls. Somewhere in the temple gardens, I could hear birds singing, their voices bright against the weight of what we were about to do.
Small mercies. Small beauties. Worth noticing, even now.
"Confidence or stupidity?" the scarred Serpent—Ovar, he'd said his name was—asked with something that might have been amusement.
"Both, usually," Sebtenius answered for me.
The one-armed woman—Lyris—studied me with sharp eyes that had seen too much and forgotten nothing.
"You look like her. Kessara. Same bone structure. Same foolish determination in the set of your jaw."
"You knew my mother?"
"Protected her for two years before Tet took over my rotation." Her expression was unreadable, carved from years of keeping secrets. "She was brilliant. Compassionate. Completely unprepared for the weight they put on her shoulders. Like hanging the sky from a thread and expecting it to hold."
"And she ran," I said, waiting for the judgment.
"And she chose love over duty." Lyris's voice was flat as winter water. "Some call that cowardice. I call it human. The gods made us to love and to break, and she did both. The question is: which choice will you make when the weight comes down on you?"
I didn't have an answer. Wasn't sure there was one.
Before I could try, the temple doors opened.