It was not reverent enough to be a benediction, but not casual enough to be a joke. My mind scrambled uselessly for doctrine. There was, of course, nothing in Saint Merin’s codices about how to act when a dy kissed the back of your hand.

  She looked up at me, expectant. “Why do I walk by your side? Which interest do I serve? I think I’ve made it quite clear how I feel about you, Sir Knight.”

  I could only stare at her.

  She peered at me, pouting. “Perhaps I’ve been too forward for a man who prefers his convictions unalloyed. I know you have a certain distaste for such metals. But understand this, you will not find another who walks this road with clearer eyes or steadier devotion. I ask no vows, only that you do not pretend my reasons are hidden when I have id them bare.”

  I spoke, “You will not lie to me.”

  She smiled. Her hands rose, unhurried, and enclosed mine where they hung between us.

  “Oh, Sir Knight,” she said quietly. “Tell me a lie I have made to you.”

  She had literally adopted the guise of a commoner at our first meeting. But I guess, strictly speaking, she wasn’t lying to me. I just caught her when she was trying to conceal herself from something else.

  Her fingers tightened, just enough to be felt, as she caressed along the metal. “I will not speak a lie that is to your detriment. Not now. Not ever.”

  For a moment, I was swayed. Her eyes had gone strangely gss-bright, as if something behind them had come into perfect focus. I held her gaze and felt the faint, unwelcome realization take root: if she wished to persuade me of something untrue, I was no longer certain I would recognize the moment it happened.

  Maybe I should just take her—

  No, Henry, get a hold of yourself! You’re a self-respecting knight and she’s a masochist!

  She studied me for a long moment, head tilted, that same unnervingly precise focus still lodged behind her eyes. “Are you not convinced, Sir Knight?” Then she exhaled. “Very well. There is something I have been… fascinated by for a long time.” She finally stepped back, giving me space as if it were a courtesy deliberately earned. “But understand this, Sir Knight. By telling you, I will be pcing a piece of myself in your keeping before you have ever shared yours with me. Do remember that.”

  I winced. She was right. Maybe she was the same as I was. Maybe we were just two normal people grandstanding as something bigger than we were. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so scared.

  I drew a slow breath. Let it out.

  So I said, ‘you have mistaken me for something older than I am. I’m twenty-five. I haven’t outlived anyone important. I haven’t seen empires fall. Most of the time I’m still guessing whether I’m making the least-wrong choice or just the most convenient one.’

  This was what Ceralis chose to present me, “My mortal existence is brief and unremarkable when measured in years. Yet I carry the will of Saints whose judgments span eons. The cause that moves me is older than memory, and it acts through me now.”

  I saw the problem now.

  Only one thing would take a man’s honest confession and transte it so smoothly into doctrine: a Vanguard. Ceralis must be one of Saint Merin’s instruments, sent ahead of scripture and after doubt, tasked not with obedience but with presentation. With ensuring that the Saint was never seen through a human lens too small to hold him.

  Ceralis wanted a knight who spoke in inherited certainty, a champion whose doubts were merely the prelude to revetion. If I had taken another boon at the start, I would’ve become powerful enough to not have to posture. But I had taken the Ravenlord’s gift, so I would have to mask my weakness.

  But Saint Merin had taught me otherwise. I must take the truth back, and I would.

  Anabeth gnced back over her shoulder. “I did not expect you to be so… forthcoming about yourself, Sir Henry.” A keen smile followed. “But your years are of no consequence to me. I know an outstanding thing when I behold it, and no attempt to render yourself smaller will persuade me otherwise. Or maybe that’s the problem with chosen beings. You wake bearing powers too great to feel extraordinary. So you call yourself normal, but you are anything but.”

  We stood in silence for seconds. Then she said, “But you are quite special to me.”

  While she spoke, I did not listen.

  Her words washed over me—special, to me—and lodged somewhere inconvenient, somewhere I would have to reckon with ter. For now, my mind was elsewhere, rifling through the interior architecture of my condition.

  I searched through everything I could for ways to recim my voice.

  Then I found something.

  Aura Market (Unlocked upon acquiring Skill: Aura Farming)

  Aura Farming? What a pretentious name. Whoever would think such a name was fashionable?

  Description: Allows the proactive acquisition of skills through the redemption of Aura Points.

  Aura Points. Of course. Even faith, it seemed, could be quantified if one stared at it long enough.

  Fine. Then how do I obtain Aura Farming?

  Requirement: Complete a Heroic Task that benefits the people.Then her words returned, “Tell me the st time you saw an Animated Armature, Sir Knight.” I looked again to realize she had turned back toward the canal, crouching down near the bank until her fingers could touch the water.

  Never. I had never seen one. I’d always wondered why magi didn’t simply summon constructs to do the hard bor for them.

  Anabeth dipped her hand into the canal. The water gathered around her fingers instead of slipping away. It somehow thickened into a small, palm-sized figure shaped of compacted pebbles and silt, vaguely humanoid. She lifted it just enough for me to see. Then she loosened her grip. The figure colpsed without resistance.

  She watched the st rivulets fall through the gaps between her fingers as she murmured, “You’d be surprised how small the world becomes when everyone agrees what you’re allowed to want. But I want to believe in arts most people prefer to dismiss as impractical, unfashionable, or... obsolete. Constructs that do not tire, do not doubt, do not rot the way flesh does.”

  So this was about necromancy after all, or at least something adjacent.

  “To pursue it properly, one needs protection. And, occasionally, a traveling companion whose presence discourages inconvenient questions. A knight does that rather well. You, on the other hand, require discretion and someone who understands the local popution. Would you say our interests align?”

  She rose from her crouch and brushed her fingers together, shedding the st traces of canal water as if it had never touched her. Her smile returned. “The Knights of the First Cycle authorized steel. They kept the rites that bind will into ferrum, the geometries that persuade metal to remember obedience. The old disciplines call it Ferrum Animus. In some texts, The Accord of Wrought Silence. Among less charitable schors... Grave Iron Theology.” She took a slow step closer. “Armatures that do not rust because they were never alive. Knights who could fall and rise again, not as revenants, but as continuations.” Her voice softened. “A beautiful distinction, don’t you think? A Knighthood that will rise until perpetuity?”

  Grave Iron Theology?

  The term struck nothing. I had studied knightly histories, campaign manuals, founding charters, and even the apocrypha—the embarrassing texts everyone pretended not to own but secretly did. I had not heard of that once. Where did she hear of this?

  I wanted my order to endure. Any knight worth his oaths did. But not as animated relics stripped of doubt, mercy, or choice.

  “You know where the First Cycle buried its forges,” she said. “Or you know how to find those who do.”

  I said, “You will tell me exactly where you heard the words Grave Iron Theology, where it lies, and why you think you can speak of them in my presence.”

  She smiled. “You must have heard of Mostenstein.”

  A ‘What?’ slipped out before I could stop it. The word felt stripped bare.

  “Mostenstein, a river-city far past the North-Eastern desert, one that lost its charter a century ago. Officially, it colpsed. Unofficially... Why don’t you tell me, Sir Knight?” She stepped close, until her fingers could brush my chestpte. Then lifted the lumenlily again between us. “If you intend to walk the same road, then take the flowers.”

  She and I had the same destination in mind? Was this some sort of fate’s cruel joke? Was this Saint Merin testing my discernment by pcing a woman with a dangerously skewed understanding of sacred craft directly in my path?

  I did not trust her theology. Yet our goals aligned.

  I reached out and closed my fingers around the stem. She grinned at me, radiant.

  [Consumable: Bloomed Lumenlily x1]

  Grade: Rare

  Effect: When consumed, increase all EXP gained through combat by 150% for 30 minutes (rounded up)

  Wait, this is actually an incredible—

  [Pathway Task Received: Echoes Beneath the Charter]

  Objective: Find the next clue to Mostenstein in an adjacent town.

  Reward: 250 EXP

  Path of the Earthen Aegis — Boon Unlock

  [Bonus Objective: Break Encirclement]

  Condition: Exit the current engagement zone without suffering damage or incurring infamy.

  Reward: 100 EXP

  Encirclement?

  The word finished registering just as figures had begun to occupy the far ends of the canal road. Townsfolks emerged from side alleys in ones and twos, then threes. Someone had fetched tools. Someone else had fetched a hammer. Pitchforks were the most common, then woodcutter’s axes, then a fire poker.

  I turned to Anabeth to confirm whether this, too, was part of her calculus, or whether she was as surprised as I was. She met my look with a faint crease of curiosity between her brows.

  That was not reassuring.

  Before I could speak, a man stepped forward from the knot of figures at the canal’s mouth. He held a heavy wooden rolling pin in both hands, knuckles white around its handles like a cudgel he had not yet decided to swing.

  I recognized him immediately: the baker I had collided with earlier in the evening.

  He pointed at me with the rolling pin, arm shaking with vindication.

  “That’s him!” he shouted. “That’s the night-mor! Seize him now!”