The white robe was far too large. Its heavy, stiff fabric dragged against the damp morning dirt, gathering mud with every step. The thick collar, densely embroidered with golden Auric Marks, scratched relentlessly at the sensitive skin of Erika's neck.
He put one foot in front of the other. Left. Right. The damp earth squelched slightly between his bare toes. He did not decide to walk. He did not consciously command his muscles to move. The cold, heavy badge fused to the flesh over his heart pulsed with a slow, parasitic rhythm. That foreign heartbeat dictated the pace of his steps, pulling him forward like a dog on an invisible, electrified leash.
Through the thick, golden haze that had become his mind, the familiar village looked entirely alien. The morning mist still clung to the thatched roofs, but the air tasted of stale incense and metallic ozone.
Faces blurred past him on either side of the dirt path. Dozens of them.
He saw Old Sackman kneeling by the doorway of his hut. The old man's cracked, dirt-stained hands were trembling violently where they rested on his knees. He saw the herb-woman standing near the well, her shoulders hunched, staring fixedly at the ground while her faded shawl was pulled so tight around her face that her knuckles were bone-white.
None of them looked at Erika's face. Their eyes were uniformly locked onto the golden hem of his trailing robe. The village was drowning in a suffocating, unnatural silence. There were no crying infants, no barking dogs, no whispering neighbors.
The only sound in the world was the magically amplified voice of Priest Balthasar, echoing from the front of the procession and vibrating directly against Erika's eardrums.
"...pure as virgin snow! Destined for the Holy Sanctum to bear supreme glory!"
The syllables washed over Erika. They entered his ears, but his brain refused to process their meaning. He was merely a vessel. A display piece being paraded before a silent audience. The procession felt as though it stretched on for an eternity, a slow crawl through a tunnel of terrified eyes.
When the "gilded tour" finally ended at the steps of the church, the two heavily armored Auric Guards flanking him did not wait for a command. Heavy gauntlets clamped onto Erika's thin shoulders, lifting him almost completely off his feet. They shoved him roughly through the heavy oak door of Balthasar's private study.
The iron latch clicked shut. The thick wood instantly severed the murmurs and the oppressive weight of the crowd outside.
Erika stumbled slightly, his bare feet catching on the edge of a woven rug. He righted himself and stood perfectly still in the center of the room. He didn't look around. He didn't blink. His vacant gaze anchored onto a single, dark knot in the polished wood of Balthasar's heavy desk.
The priest was different in here.
The theatrical, benevolent smile that had plastered Balthasar's face outside vanished the second the door closed. He didn't look at Erika. He didn't offer a blessing or a word of doctrine.
Instead, Balthasar began to pace.
Back and forth across the narrow space behind the desk. His leather boots clicked sharply, erratically, against the floorboards. He was biting his thumbnail, gnawing at the cuticle with an anxious, frantic energy. His brow was deeply furrowed, casting dark shadows over his eyes.
Erika's hollow eyes slowly tracked the priest's movements. His nose caught a scent beneath the heavy, sweet smell of church incense—the sharp, acrid tang of nervous, cold sweat. The master of the village, the voice of the Golden Father, was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps. He looked small. Cornered.
Balthasar stopped by a silver pitcher on a side table. He poured a goblet of water, but his hand was shaking so badly that the silver rim clattered loudly against the crystal, spilling water onto the polished wood.
Erika watched the water drip off the edge of the table. Drip. Drip. His brain failed to process why the priest was afraid.
Then, the ground shuddered.
It wasn't a sound at first. It was a vibration that travelled up through the soles of Erika's bare feet, rattling his kneecaps and vibrating in his teeth.
BOOM.
The concussive impact hit a second later. The heavy windowpanes of the study rattled violently in their wooden frames. A fine layer of dust dislodged from the ceiling rafters, drifting down through the sunlight.
BOOM.
The second impact was closer. Heavier. It didn't sound like a powder keg or a falling tree. It sounded like two impossibly massive, impossibly dense objects dropping directly from the sky onto the village square.
Immediately, a wave of chaotic, panicked gasps and the sound of scrambling feet erupted from the other side of the stone walls.
Balthasar froze. The crystal goblet slipped from his fingers, shattering into dozens of pieces on the floorboards. Water pooled around his boots.
The priest stood perfectly rigid for three long seconds. Then, he let out a long, shuddering exhale. The frantic tension seemed to bleed out of his shoulders, replaced by a dark, heavy, and absolute resignation.
He stepped over the broken glass and walked slowly to the window. He didn't open it. He carefully pinched a single corner of the heavy velvet curtain and peeled it back just a fraction of an inch.
Balthasar peered out into the square. He remained like that for a long, breathless moment. He didn't speak. He didn't curse. The only sound in the room was his heavy, labored breathing.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, Balthasar turned away from the window. He walked slowly around the desk, closing the distance between them until he stood directly in front of Erika.
The priest raised a hand. His fingers, cold and trembling slightly, reached out.
Erika didn't flinch. He didn't move away. He just stared blankly ahead as Balthasar's fingertips lightly traced the line of his gaunt, sunken cheek.
"Pitiful," Balthasar whispered.
The word hung in the quiet room. It wasn't spoken with the majestic pity of a priest addressing a sinner. It was small, raw, and entirely hollow. A morbid realization spoken to a broken toy. It carried a weight that Erika's shattered mind couldn't possibly unpack.
Balthasar didn't elaborate. His hand dropped. He grabbed Erika's wrist—his grip suddenly tight, bruising, and desperate—and yanked him toward the heavy oak door.
"Come."
Balthasar threw the door open. The moment they stepped back out into the morning air, a suffocating pressure hit Erika like a physical wall. His lungs instinctively strained, struggling to pull oxygen from air that suddenly felt thick as water.
Beneath his tunic, the Auric Mark flared. It wasn't a pulse. It was a sudden, violent heat, recognizing a raw, towering power far greater than its own.
Balthasar dragged him down the path toward the village gates, walking faster than before, practically pulling Erika off balance. But Erika's head lolled to the side, his vacant eyes snagging on the central square they had just left.
The crowd of villagers had completely scattered from the center. They were pressing themselves violently against the walls of the surrounding huts, squeezing into doorways, trying to flatten themselves into the mud. They formed a massive, terrified, irregular ring around the new altar.
In the very center, where the dust of the impacts was still settling, stood two figures.
Erika's neck twisted involuntarily. He couldn't look away.
One was shaped like a male, the other female. But they weren't human. They were entirely clad in seamless, blinding gold armor that possessed no joints, no leather straps, no visible visors. They stood a full head taller than the largest blacksmith in the village. Their posture was unnaturally perfect, rigid, and utterly still.
They weren't moving. They weren't speaking. They just stood side by side beneath the morning sun. Yet the air around them seemed to literally warp and ripple, like heat rising off a desert floor, bending under the sheer, oppressive weight of their existence.
Looking at them made Erika's eyes water. A sharp, piercing whine echoed deep inside his skull. A faint, primal alarm tried to ring out from the deepest, buried part of his consciousness—a basic animal instinct screaming to run, to hide under the earth.
A sharp, brutal yank on his arm snapped his head forward.
"Eyes front!" Balthasar hissed through gritted teeth, his nails digging into Erika's wrist.
They hurried past the last row of huts, reaching the dirt road at the village entrance. The smell of horse sweat, oiled leather, and woodsmoke hit Erika's nose.
A squad of Auric Guard cavalry was already lined up. In the center sat a heavy transport wagon, its sides reinforced with iron plates. The horses were stamping their hooves nervously, tossing their heads and snorting, their whites showing.
An armored Captain dismounted from his steed. His armor clanked heavily as he approached them, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
"The 'Seed' is prepared," Balthasar said, his voice instantly returning to the smooth, authoritative tone of a priest. He shoved Erika forward. Erika stumbled, his bare feet kicking up dust, before coming to a stop before the Captain. "Ensure his safe delivery to the Sanctum. Do not fail."
The Captain gave Erika a brief, dismissive glance, his eyes sweeping over the oversized, dirty white robe and the hollow, dead eyes.
He turned his attention back to Balthasar. He slammed a heavy gauntleted fist against his breastplate, the metal ringing sharply in the crisp air.
"By the Golden Father's will, the cycle remains unbroken," the Captain recited, the standard doctrinal farewell rolling off his tongue.
Balthasar raised a hand, his fingers forming the sign of the Mark to complete the blessing. "And the Light—"
"—purges the shadowed earth."
The flat, dead voice didn't come from Balthasar.
Both the priest and the Captain froze. The Captain's hand dropped from his chest. They both looked down.
Erika stood there, his lips slightly parted, his vacant eyes staring at a smudge of dirt on the Captain's breastplate. His brain had registered the first half of the litany. The sound had triggered the parasitic badge on his chest, and his vocal cords had moved automatically. Mechanically.
He had answered without a single conscious thought, perfectly filling in the blank like a well-oiled cog snapping into place.
The Captain shifted uncomfortably. Balthasar stared at the boy for a long second. Then, a slow, dark smile crept onto the priest's face. The nervous sweat was still there, but the "product" he had created worked perfectly.
"Indeed," Balthasar said softly, taking a step back. "Load him up."
Two Guards stepped forward. Rough, armored hands grabbed Erika by the shoulders and the back of his robe, hoisting him up like a sack of grain and tossing him into the back of the wagon.
He landed hard on the wooden floorboards, his shoulder slamming into a supply crate. He didn't grunt. He didn't try to right himself. He simply pulled his knees up slightly, sitting exactly where he had been thrown.
Outside, the Captain shouted an order. The heavy iron door of the wagon slammed shut, plunging Erika into semi-darkness, illuminated only by a few slashes of light bleeding through the wooden slats.
A whip cracked sharply. The horses whinnied. The wooden wheels groaned against the dirt, and the wagon lurched forward.
Erika sat in the shadows. He didn't look out the slats back toward the village. He didn't look toward the road ahead. He just listened to the vibration of the wheels, feeling the badge pulse its steady, cold rhythm against his heart, carrying him away into the wasteland.