Garima did not go to Dylan's room that morning.
She wanted to. That was the problem.
She stood outside his door for thirty seconds. Ava's voice came low and steady, saying something she couldn't make out and didn't try to. She turned around before she could knock.
Coward,She thought to herself. The thought followed her all the way to breakfast.
His hand was healing and Riley had said so.
Zihan had said it twice, even Agatha had mentioned it, which meant the whole shrine had apparently agreed Garima needed to hear it from every possible direction.
None of it changed the fact that he'd been hurt by something she had brought into the building and told no one about.
She had written everyone as brave. Now a seventeen year old boy had paid for that bravery with his arm.
She was very good, it turned out, at writing things that happened to other people.
---
Breakfast was uncomfortable. But not in an obvious way.
Ava sat beside Dylan away from Garima.
Dylan tried, twice, to talk to her, and both times she gave him short answers and went back to piling his plate with food.
"Ava, can you pass—"
"I've got it."
She passed the bowl without looking up.
And Ava was totally focused on Dylan's bandages like the linen required her full attention. She didn't look angry though.
Garima almost wished she were, anger had edges, you could apologise to it. This had none.
This quiet distance between them felt far and Garima did not know how to deal with it. She ate her loaf without tasting it and left before anyone could say her name.
---
Renya was outside the guest room, in yesterday's clothes leaning against the wall.
"Priest Filly didn't give you shrine robes?" she asked.
"He did."
"Then why aren't you wearing them?"
"I don't work for the shrine."
"You will live here, though."
"For now."
"You are my bodyguard."
"Exactly.your employee. Not a priest."
They stood there, neither one moving until Garima sighed first. "Fine."
"Good." Renya picked at a thread on her sleeve. "One more thing."
Garima pressed two fingers against her forehead."What?"
"My pay, "
"What about it?" Garima asked.
"You said room, board and salary," Renya said. "I need it to buy clothes. So how much?"
Garima opened her mouth and closed it.
She hadn't thought about the number. She had thought about the job. And has simply assumed the rest would follow.
"You don't know, " Renya said. It wasn't a question.
"I was going to figure it out—"
"Wonderful, let's figure it out before I start risking my neck for you."
They couldn't agree on a number. Garima named one that was probably wrong and Renya couldn't accept it.
"I will have Agatha talk to you"
Renya nodded, the whole exchange had left her more exhausted than dealing with bandits.
Garima watched Renya walk off and thought, for the first time: I don't remember writing you like this.
She still wasn't sure if that was a problem.
---
Duke Ruslan was already in the training hall. Mid-stance, the form that came from decades of experience.
Garima picked up her practice sword and took her place across from him.
"Why not the other one?" he asked.
She knew which one he meant."I do not think that's a good idea."
"I haven't said anything."
"It nearly killed Dylan."
"It nearly killed Dylan because, presumably, he isn't the owner." Ruslan looked at her. "You are."
Garima had moved the sword to the training hall the night before, telling herself no one would touch it here. Now she crossed to it, unwrapped it, and closed her hand around the hilt.
Nothing.
Duke Ruslan's expression changed.
"Again." he said.
Garima tried again.
Nothing.Five minutes. Nothing.Ten minutes.
By the fifteenth minute Ruslan looked genuinely annoyed.
"That sword does not look bonded."
She hadn't heard Renya come in. She was there now. With her arms folded. Looking at them.
Ruslan looked at her. "Who are you?"
"Her bodyguard."
"Since when."
"Since yesterday. That's not important right now—a bonded weapon only allows its owner to hold it. And once it recognizes its owner, it hums, people call it singing. My father's did. Had to bury it with him. It won't leave his side." She looked at the sword, then at Garima. "That one isn't recognizing her. But its not reacting either thats strange"
Nobody said anything for a moment, because she was right.
She set the sword down before her hands dropped it, and walked out.
—
Garima exhaled softly. The corridor was empty. Which she was grateful for–she didn't want to talk to anyone yet.
But Priest Robby found her there anyway. "Your Holiness, could you take this to Priestess Agatha? I haven't finished my chores."
"What is it?"
"Messenger from Domnur."
Garima took the letter. She carefully examined Lawrence's seal pressed into wax. Running her finger across the seal. As if hesitating.
She waited before Robby's footsteps faded before breaking it.
She'd expected a negotiation update. Instead the dispute had turned violent. Sabotaged merchant supply lines. Several Noble houses moving in a pattern that didn't look like a disagreement but more like a conspiracy aimed at the Duke.She read the names twice. House Valen, House Merrow. And a minor guild The Silver Coast Consortium.
She had written Domnur with inheritance disputes. Duke's Politics and stability, the tension Sir Lawrance walked into, that later caused the knights to leave their designations which in turn helped the devils to break in easily.
But she had not written House Valen,or House Merrow. The Silver Coast Consortium did not exist anywhere in eighty-five chapters and forty thousand word outline.
She had reread the draft dozens of times in the ten-minute breaks between Pomodoro sessions.
These names had not come from her. And it was here anyway, in ink, with a wax seal, as real as the letter in her hand.
It's alive, she thought.
There should have been only fear in that. Instead she felt something else tangled with it—Pride. A stupid part of her was flattered that her unfinished world had built the rest itself. Then what exactly are the plotholes?
The question opened under her like a floor giving way.
Garima thought of Dylan. The one without a name like everyone in the shrine. Who didn't survive the war with Mozgaroth. None of them did. But it should change. It couldn't be allowed to happen. The world would have to take her word for that.
She folded the letter and let her feet carry her to the training hall because it suffocated her. Almost everywhere.
---
Duke Ruslan was still there, and Renya sat against the wall with her arms folded. The sword lay on the ground where Garima had left it.
Garima sat down on the floor.Neither of them commented on this.Garima read the letter one time again. As if a second pass might change the content.
The sword began to hum.
Everyone went still. A thin silver light moved along the blade. The sword shook violently, Ruslan took a step back.
Then all at once the glowing stopped
Then the sword said her name. "Garima!"
It came out clear, almost gentle.
Nobody spoke.
The training hall felt suddenly too large.
Garima could hear the banners moving somewhere overhead.
Then. " Anchor."
Agatha was in the doorway—one hand braced on the doorframe,Her face caught somewhere between confusion and fear.
"It spoke?" Agatha asked carefully.
Ruslan was staring at the sword. His jaw was tight. "What does that mean?"
Renya was not moving. Her eyes were looking at the sword at Garima. As if afraid of it.
Nobody answered, because nobody had one.
Garima picked up the sword. It had gone still and quiet again. She thought about the word "Anchor" a thing that kept a ship from being swept away.
She hadn't written it a voice. She hadn't given it language, or anything beyond a vague powerful sentient weapon, with an unfinished sense of mysterious past. It had decided the rest on its own — the same way Domnur had decided to grow houses she'd never imagined.
She felt the same tangle as before, something like pride, something like dread. If she let herself be proud of what the world was becoming, she had to also own what it might become without her permission. She didn't know which way that cut yet.
She set the sword on the rack and held the letter out to Agatha, who took it without a word, eyes still on Garima's face.
"It's a bonding term, maybe," Garima said, after a moment, in a voice steadier than she felt. "The sword's responding. We'll continue tomorrow."
Ruslan studied her for a long beat then nodded once.
Garima made it as far as the courtyard before she had to stop.
She put both hands on the cool stone railings, and breathed. She focused on the chill in the air until her breathing was normal.
The sword hadn't called her Saintess. It hadn't called her the author, the writer, the girl who'd started all of this from a cluttered bedroom on the other side of somewhere. It had called her Anchor.
She turned the word over and couldn't decide what to do with it. There was too much else crowded in alongside it.
Orb found her there. Slipping out from behind the stone table to settle near her feet.
"Aloo," she said, and he closed his eyes and snuggled.
She stayed at the railing until the afternoon bells rang, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and went inside.
She had a great deal left to face.
As though she was here for a reason.
But she no longer knew, with any certainty, why she was here.
She was starting to suspect that was the actual question—and that the answer was going to be much harder to live with than to ask.