PROLOGUE
The Burden of the Unseen
No thunder followed the prayer.
Aldric Vaelor noticed that first.
The village of Harthollow lay silent beneath a colorless sky, the kind that carried no promise of rain and no threat of storm. Smoke rose in thin, uncertain columns from burning roofs, drifting without direction, as if even the wind had lost interest in the place.
He stood ankle-deep in mud and blood, his sword hanging low in his right hand, its edge nicked and dull from overuse. His left fingers, two of them stiff and half-dead from an old winter campaign, trembled slightly, not from fear, but from exhaustion that had settled deep into the bone.
Around him were bodies.
Too many to count quickly. Too many to justify slowly.
Women lay where they had fallen, some clutching each other, others clutching nothing at all. Children were smaller, lighter, quieter. Aldric had learned long ago that they bled just as much as grown men, only faster.
A priest stood behind him, breathing hard. His robes were splattered with dark stains that were not his own. The man's lips moved in a whisper, repeating words Aldric had heard since boyhood.
"By the will of Aseren."
The priest had said it before the swords were raised.
He said it again now, as if repetition might summon meaning.
Aldric waited.
He did not know for what.
A sign, perhaps. A voice. Anything that would make the slaughter feel directed, not merely permitted.
Nothing came.
No fire fell from the sky.
No earth opened beneath the condemned.
No warmth filled his chest to ease the weight pressing against his ribs.
Only the sound of crackling wood, distant sobbing from someone not yet discovered, and his own breathing, ragged, uneven, human.
He had killed before. Many times. Soldiers, rebels, men who carried blades and banners. Those deaths had names: duty, order, war. They came with rules, with formations, with the dull comfort of structure.
This had none of that.
This had been called faith.
Aldric looked down at his sword. Blood had dried along the fuller, flaking where it met the steel. He wiped it against his cloak without thinking, the motion automatic, learned through years of repetition. The cloth would never come clean again. He knew that. Still, he wiped.
Behind him, the priest cleared his throat.
"Do not doubt," the man said softly. "Aseren sees."
Aldric turned.
The priest's eyes were bright, not with cruelty, but with certainty. That made it worse.
"Where?" Aldric asked.
The priest hesitated. Only for a moment. Just long enough to reveal that the answer had never been tested.
"Everywhere," he said. "Always."
Aldric followed the man's gaze back to the bodies. To the broken doorways. To the blackened cradle near the well.
If Aseren was everywhere, then Aseren was here.
And if Aseren was here, then Aseren had chosen silence.
That was the moment something inside Aldric fractured, not loudly, not cleanly, but like bone stressed over time. There was no dramatic collapse, no scream, no sudden rejection shouted at the sky.
Only a realization, quiet and irreversible:
If this was done by the will of Aseren, then Aseren did not deserve obedience.
And if Aseren had not willed it, then men had learned to kill without needing Him at all.
Later, much later, people would argue about Harthollow.
Some would call it necessary.
Others would call it tragic.
None would call it uncertain.
Aldric left before the arguments began.
He did not bury the dead. There were too many, and the ground was already soaked. He did not pray. The words felt heavy in his mouth, like a language he no longer spoke fluently.
At the edge of the village, he stopped and looked back once more.
The smoke rose steadily, indifferent to guilt or innocence. Above it all, the sky remained unchanged.
No thunder.
No voice.
Only the weight of something unseen, pressing harder now that Aldric could no longer pretend it was carrying him.
He turned away, unaware that this silence, this unanswered moment, would follow him across kingdoms, into books, into broken conversations and restless nights.
He had not yet decided whether he was searching for God.
Only that, one day, he would demand an answer, from Aseren, or from the world that had spoken in His name.
And if no answer came, he would learn to live with that too.