A New Order
A New Order
The Sacral Chamber was quiet, the air gone cold with the absence of prayers. Tallow smoke lingered, thick and cloying, clinging to the dark stone walls of Nyskar Hold. It dulled the edges of the candles’ light, their flames twitching in uneasy rhythm, as though the chamber itself held its breath.
Oswald stood by the doorway, a broad silhouette framed by the last light slipping through the narrow arch. His armor, unpolished and scarred, caught little of the candle glow - only shadows, draped heavy over the steel. Across the room, Rene leaned against the altar, his back to the door, fingers resting on the cold stone. It was the kind of silence that rang louder than prayers.
Oswald broke it first. “I thought I’d find you here.”
Rene said nothing. For a long moment, his fingers traced the grooves etched into the altar’s surface - faint lines, worn down to whispers of what they had been. Words of the Fates, old as time and twice as cruel.
Oswald took a step closer, his voice low. “A strange loyalty, turning your back on the very work that made you.”
Rene’s hand stilled. He turned just enough to cast a glance over his shoulder, shadows pooling under his brow. “It was the work that broke me.”
Oswald’s jaw tightened. “It broke us all. The difference is, the rest of us found a use for those pieces.”
The words hung there, sharp-edged and barbed, but Rene didn’t flinch. “And for what?” he said quietly, turning to face Oswald. His eyes, dark and heavy with exhaustion, reflected none of the fire that burned in the other man. “So we might claim righteousness while fields burn, while men scream beneath pyres you call justice? Mercy is no weakness, Oswald. It’s all that’s left for those of us who still wish to feel.”
Oswald took another step forward, his boots scraping against the stone, his presence swelling to fill the distance between them. “And what would you have us feel? Pity? Doubt?” His gauntlet clenched against the pommel of his sword. “You were there when villages fell, Rene. When the rot took root and spread like plague. Do you not remember the bodies? Children pulled from their homes, burned black as coal because of magic’s mercy?”
“I remember!” Rene snapped, the words sharp enough to cut the air between them. His gaze held Oswald’s now, unflinching. “I remember the smoke that choked the skies. I remember the screams. And you still think it was magic that brought all that? Not men like Veral? Not men like us?”
Oswald’s face darkened, but for a fleeting moment, the crack of something else crossed his mind… uncertainty? Regret? He buried it quickly, his voice colder when he spoke again. “Veral knows the Fates’ will.”
“Veral knows nothing.” Rene’s words were flat, as if spoken to no one in particular. He pushed himself away from the altar and paced slowly toward the center of the chamber, his boots echoing dully off the walls. “The Fates do not speak through men. Men speak through their own ambitions and call it divine. And only when the blood finally pools thick enough at their feet, they claim it as proof that they were right all along.”
The candlelight caught Oswald’s gauntlet as his hand lifted from the sword, fingers curling and uncurling at his side. He didn’t answer immediately, the silence stretching taut again. When he did speak, his voice was quieter, weighted. “Faith is not kind, Rene. It doesn’t make itself soft for those afraid of its edges. It demands.”
Rene’s let out a defeated laugh. “Demands what exactly? More fire? More graves?” He turned toward Oswald again, closer now. “Tell me, Oswald, how many men like me have you cast aside? How many like me were called weak before the pyre claimed them?”
Oswald stepped forward, his voice rising. “And what of the price if we falter? What of the sickness that spreads while men like you would have us sit idle, wringing our hands over the world’s sins?”
For the first time, Rene raised his voice, though it was still softer than Oswald’s. “If we’ve cut down everything - burned every root, salted every field - what remains for us to save? You call it a rot, a plague… but it’s us, Oswald. It’s been us since the first torch was lit.”
The words echoed in the chamber. Oswald looked at Rene as though seeing him for the first time, and for a fleeting moment, he looked smaller for it - less a knight of the Imperium, less a man of purpose, and more the boy he had been when they’d first taken their oaths.
When he finally turned to leave, his footsteps were heavy, each one dragging more of the silence with him. He paused at the doorway, glancing back only once. “Faith isn’t about feeling, Rene. It’s about what comes next.”
Rene watched him go, the door groaning closed behind him, its dull thud sealing him in the dark. He let out a breath, slow and hollow, his chest aching from something he couldn’t name. The chamber was empty again, save for the sputtering candles and the faint lines of the altar carved by hands long dead.
And though he stood there alone, Rene could not help but feel the weight of a thousand eyes - watching, waiting, judging - pressed into the stone, as if the chamber itself demanded an answer he could not give, torn as he was between the certainty of duty and the shadow of doubt.