For Anneliese, the journey back to Keesh felt like leaving one unending winter only to step into another, bypassing any promise of warmth. The fall of Pragian had shattered her sense of home, leaving it nothing more than a distant, unattainable dream.
Yet their return to Keesh brought an unexpected comfort—an old friend.
Amid the bustling reconstruction of the city, near the newly erected Church of Saints and the Divine Spirit, resided Mother Simonet. Her home, a renovated Rowan barracks, now mirrored the old orphanage’s purpose: a haven for the neglected children of the north, offering them meals, shelter, and a place to belong.
The past year had not dulled Simonet’s compassion, nor softened the stubborn resolve Anneliese had come to rely on. To her, Simonet was the closest thing to a mother she had ever known—a woman who could see past her hardened exterior to the stranger she felt she had become.
“A long campaign turns fertile soil to stone,” Simonet mused as she led Anneliese away from the oppressive Templar presence. They walked along Rekinvale’s riverbanks, where summer’s melt filled the air with the steady hum of water. “Where nothing grows but walls that shut the world out.”
“I’m...” Anneliese hesitated, glancing around for any sign of prying ears.
“Destined for great things,” Simonet finished for her, “but afraid of what those things might be.”
They sat together on an overhanging ridge, gazing down at the simple lives of the peasants below—men and women repeating the same tasks, year after year, for lords who valued their labor more than their lives.
“A serf might see your abilities and consider you unworthy of them,” Simonet said. “But they don’t know what it takes. The politics, the ambiguity, the endless, exhausting expectations. The fear of failure and what it means. Even a skilled sailor, with years at sea, can find themselves unmoored by an unseasonable storm. And yet here you are, having never set foot on the waters, still keeping your head above it all. That is perseverance.”
Simonet exhaled softly. “You know, Father Bellamy spent a year before realizing he wanted to run the orphanage. Not because he liked children, but because it gave him time for what he loved most.”
“Alchemy?” Anneliese murmured under her breath.
Simonet’s lips curled into a faint smile. “And you—a little troublemaker with a sharp mind and a fervent rejection of society’s constraints.” She spoke softly, her gaze drifting downward to the faint red streaks on the back of Anneliese’s hand. The warmth in her eyes dimmed, tempered by quiet concern.
“Bellamy may not have known the exact path, but he understood where he wanted to go. So, Anneliese, what’s your destination?”
“To make them proud,” Anneliese admitted, her voice tight. Her fingernail dragged harshly down the back of her opposite hand.
Simonet’s frown deepened. “I may be out of place for saying this, but for Bellamy to find his calling, he had to rediscover his roots first. Perhaps there’s something from your past that needs rediscovering?”
“My pagan roots, you mean?”
“I was never concerned about your heritage,” Simonet said, resting her amputated arm over Anneliese’s fidgeting hands. “Only about the world, and how it treats those it refuses to understand.”
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That night, sleep eluded Anneliese. Sir Bradfrey’s muffled arguments seeped through the walls, sharp and distant, like far-off sirens. No matter the hour, she felt his presence—a tension that never eased, caught between his good intentions and the Savior of the North, the weapon he kept at his side, unsheathed at the first sign of trouble, whether she willed it or not.
And looming over it all was her pagan past—a buried truth, fragile as glass, that could shatter and doom them both if ever unearthed.
Her only distraction came from a distant commotion a few streets over. At first, it was muffled—an argument. Then came the cries. Pleas for help, unanswered, reverberating through her like a hollow drumbeat.
Before she could think, she was already moving.
Her form shimmered, turning translucent as she passed effortlessly through walls and straw mats. Her bare feet touched the muddy streets, yet left no trace behind. She drifted like a ghost, unseen, unheard, weightless beneath the empty night.
Then she found the source.
Two Templar knights stood over a woman sprawled in the street, her face streaked with mud and tears.
“Please,” the woman begged, reaching for a small totem. “It was my father’s.”
“Heresy,” one knight sneered, kicking her down. “Now leave, before the law compels me to do worse.”
Anneliese’s hands clenched. Anger surged through her, dragging her dangerously close to the edge of her wizard state. The tingle of conjured destruction crackled in her fingertips, raw orbs of magic forming—pulsing—begging to be set loose.
Then she felt it.
Lascivious’s ghostly hands overlapped hers, his icy touch threading through her skin like frost creeping over glass.
She recoiled, breath hitching, her pulse hammering in her ears. Her conscience wrenched her back from the brink, but the question gnawed at her—was the rage surging through her truly hers, or had it always been his?
“Is this not what you wanted?”
The voice drifted through the night—strange, yet hauntingly familiar.
She turned sharply.
The black wolf emerged, a shadow given form, seamlessly entwined with the night. An inconspicuous observer to her outburst, it strode forward, head held high, radiating quiet judgment.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” Anneliese whispered, her heart still set on action, but doubt clouding her mind.
“All societies are built on coercion,” the wolf replied.
“With the right guidance—”
“Like the guidance you gave those pagans?” The wolf cut in, circling in front of her. “When you spared them from Bradfrey’s army? If they truly wanted to convert, they would have done so long ago—you forced their hand to save their lives.”
“But if I set the example—”
“Be honest,” the wolf interrupted, brushing past her. “You would do worse to those Templars than what they did to her. For what? An example. Is that the conduct of a wizard?”
The knights moved on, leaving the woman slumped in the mud, broken and sobbing. A few charitable bystanders hurried to her side, risking reputation and persecution to help her onto firmer ground.
Anneliese’s magic fizzled out, the heat in her veins fading into something cold and hollow. A deep, suffocating guilt settled over her.
She turned to the wolf. “You said the next time we met—”
“The ancient demon Id,” the wolf interrupted again. “What did you think?”
Anneliese’s fingers twitched, the phantom ache of magic still lingering. “Just another demon out to ruin my day. But at least I don’t have Id’s voice crawling through my thoughts.”
“You’re not wrong. But that doesn’t make it right,” the wolf said, already turning away, as if the conversation had been settled. “You coming? I don’t have time for stragglers.”
Anneliese didn’t move. “What makes you think I’m coming with you?”
The wolf paused mid-step. “My master is not dead, and we need your help.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Anneliese exhaled, the words slipping out before she could stop them. The tingling in her fingers knotted her stomach as her gaze drifted over Keesh’s lower quarters—the flickering lanterns, the slumped figures moving through the streets.
Was she truly a force for good, or just another hardship draped in white and the red cross?
Resigned, she prepared to turn translucent and retreat home. But before she vanished, she cast a final glance at the black wolf and murmured, “Please, just leave me alone.”
The wolf didn’t move.
“By ‘we,’ I mean Weddle.”
The name coiled in her gut, tightening like a vice around obligations she could never outrun. Nausea crept up her throat, muffling her words. “What does he have to do with this?”
The wolf’s eyes gleamed with something unreadable, almost amused.
“Ask him yourself,” it teased. “He’s expecting you.”
