Elora had been content, if not exactly happy, with her life at the temple. She arrived on the steps of the Conclave’s primary sanctuary fifteen years ago—a child orphaned by plague, barefoot and pale, with a vision of the Mother on her lips and no other magic to speak of. She was accepted as a novice oracle and given shelter, clothing, and prayers to recite on her knees seven times a day.

  She never questioned it. Not at first.

  She was taught the value of silence, to clear her mind for visions. Taught to read, so she could study doctrine and memorize the attributes of the gods—major and minor, holy and obscure. Taught to write, so she could record the revelations of others while she waited, faithfully, for her own.

  She was obedient. Devout. And deeply, quietly lonely. Elora had always been a little set apart. Not disliked, but not quite belonging either. The other novices whispered in shared corners, laughed during chores, paired off during studies. Elora listened more than she spoke. Watched more than she joined.

  And every morning, like clockwork, she saved a bit of her breakfast and slipped it beneath the old iron lattice behind the garden wall. The the raven would come.

  The same one had been visiting the temple grounds the same year that Elora arrived. A little larger than usual, it was sleek-feathered, clever-eyed, always watching. The other girls made signs to ward off evil whenever they saw it perched on a rooftop or pecking at a fig. Ravens were omens, they said. Valtren’s ghost.

  Elora only smiled.

  “It’s just a bird,” she would say, offering a crust of bread through the bars. “He’s hungry. That’s all.”

  She told herself she liked caring for it because it was in her nature to be kind to all living things. But the truth, unspoken, pressed closer every day: She liked it because it came back.

  The sanctuary served the entire Pantheon. While most of the faithful focused their worship on the four primary gods, Aurelien, Calistra, Tharnis, and Nireya, there were dozens of lesser deities as well: gods of wind and wine, music and mourning, even rust and ruin.

  Because of this, the temple had become a rare place of spiritual refuge across castes. A space where anyone, highborn or destitute, might find solace beneath the same vaulted ceiling. And so the infirmary hall, tucked along the temple’s quiet southern wing, often became the last refuge for the lowest in society. A place to be tended to. To die with a little dignity when all else had failed.

  As a younger, untested sister with no family name or known divine patron, Elora had been given the least desirable duties: changing linens, scrubbing the infirmary floors, holding the hands of those too far gone to save. The castoffs. The plague-worn. The forgotten.

  She didn’t mind. She found she rather liked it.

  Well liking it wasn’t quite the word. But she felt useful there, and that counted for something. More than most things, in fact.

  The other sisters did their duty well, serving simple meals, administering herbal draughts, reciting the prescribed prayers. Few ever made eye contact with the patients. Especially the ones from the lower castes. They moved quickly, quietly, avoiding any gesture that might be mistaken for familiarity. For softness. For connection.

  But Elora never shied away.

  Not when a dying mother gripped her hand with blood beneath her nails. Not when a boy from the outer slums coughed bile onto her robe. Not when an old man, forgotten by his kin, wept like a child as she washed his feet.

  She looked at them. Spoke to them. Saw them. And when she realized that the simple act of just being seen could ease a person’s fear or shame or pain more than any salve or chant ever could… she couldn’t stop.

  No matter how often the senior sisters reminded her to keep her head down, to guard her soul, to maintain spiritual distance, Elora returned to the infirmary every morning with sleeves rolled and eyes wide open.

  Because even if the gods weren’t watching, she was.

  She tried her best to be good. And when it came time for her own power to manifest, no one doubted she would be blessed. Her piety had been spotless. Her diligence unquestioned. Surely, the gods would reward her.

  And they did.

  Sort of.

  The gift came not with fire, or light, or a dream. It came as a hush. A stilling. A boy dying in her arms. A breath smoothed into silence.

  They called it gentle. She thought it strange, but she accepted it as she accepted everything. Until she didn’t.

  She was ten the first time she broke the rules.

  The boy was barely older than she was, maybe eleven. A bricklayer’s son from the outer slums, brought to the temple infirmary after a fall from scaffolding. His lungs were filling with blood. His mother had dragged him in herself, barefoot and trembling, begging the sisters to help. She wasn’t allowed past the outer gate.

  Elora wasn’t allowed inside either, not without gloves. Not without the protective amulet to ward off soul taint. It was Conclave law: direct contact with the lower castes before they were cleansed with certain incantations could spiritually corrupt a novice. That’s what the prayers and barriers were for. That’s what the rules were for.

  But the boy was dying. Alone. Crying so softly she barely heard him from her place in the doorway. No one had touched him since he arrived. Elora couldn’t stand it.

  She slipped into the room, stripped off her gloves, and knelt at his side. She took his hand. It was warm and shaking.

  She whispered to him, words she didn’t plan and barely understood herself. She told him he wasn’t alone. That the fear could pass. That the pain would end. That she’d stay.

  He stilled. His chest rose once, then again, more easily. His mother fell to her knees at the gate, weeping with gratitude. The priestesses stood frozen behind her, saying nothing. No one interrupted.

  Afterward, they scolded her. Told her she’d broken sacred law. That she’d risked spiritual defilement. That touching a child of that station might mark her forever. She had to pay penitence for weeks in order ensure there was no lasting mark on her soul and beg the gods not to punish her for her indiscretion.

  But the boy died smiling.

  And Elora had felt something in that moment. A hum in her chest, a pull in her hands. Something not of this world, but not foreign either. Gentle. Intentional. It didn’t save him. It didn’t need to. It had done what it was meant to. Elora knew it was a miracle.

  And once the sacred rule had been broken and she realized she had survived it without divine punishment, something in her shifted. She felt different. Bolder. Wrong, maybe. Or simply less afraid. She still said her prayers. Still recited doctrine. Still served with lowered eyes and folded hands. But something inside her had cracked open.

  And though she tried her absolute best to be good, to be obedient… she couldn’t seem to stop breaking the rules.

  She was thirteen the first time she tried to hit someone.

  It wasn’t a violent impulse, not truly. Just desperation. One of the older acolytes, a smug girl with a sharp tongue, had cornered Elora after a prayer vigil. She’d mocked her again, as she often did, for being “the Conclave’s little ghost,” for sitting with corpses and never crying, for whispering to ravens, cursed Valtren’s own minions, like they were friends.

  Elora had ignored her, as always. But this time the girl had grabbed her by the wrist and twisted. Just enough to hurt. Just enough to mock the pain Elora spent her days easing in others.

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  The shove came instinctively.

  But her hands… didn’t connect.

  They passed through the girl’s arm like mist.

  Elora stared, confused. She reached out again, this time on purpose with all the anger she could summon and slapped her.

  Or tried to.

  Again, her hand curved like smoke around flesh. No contact. No sting. Just that strange, tingling void.

  The girl didn’t even flinch. She just laughed and said something cruel Elora wouldn’t remember. But that emptiness where her hand should’ve landed, that feeling had stayed.

  Later that night, Elora tested it on a pillow. On a wooden beam. A stone. A slug.

  She could move things. Touch things. But strike? Scratch? No.

  When she confessed it to the Mother Superior days later, the woman had simply frowned and said, “There are worse things than being harmless, child.”

  Elora had nodded, dutiful as always. But inside, the guilt twisted. She didn’t always feel grateful for her gift.

  Sister Jasin could sanctify sacred, binding vows. Anyone who broke a promise under her oversight suffered spiritual consequences. Sister Amiea could sense illness in a body, sometimes even burn it out. Their gifts were practical. Revered. Called upon by lords and monarchy alike. They left the temple walls. Served the kingdom. Changed lives.

  Soft, sweet Elora, whose only power soothed the dying, was treated like something delicate. A mercy reserved for the weak and forgotten.

  And every day she spent in the infirmary, staring into the eyes of the discarded and the damned, the quiet anger in her grew sharper. People assumed she was soft, but it took a certain amount of steel to look into the eyes of the dying every day.

  There was the boy, the young son of a dead prostitute, who, unable to find honest work to feed himself, had stolen a piece of fruit from the market. For his first offense, the city guards had followed the letter of the law: a public flogging and a week of banishment. Now he was here, returned to his miserable corner of the world with festering welts down his back, a fever rising, and no one to tend him but the temple’s lowest-ranked sisters.

  Then there was the blacksmith’s daughter, pregnant and alone. Her family had cast her out when her lover was revealed to be the son of a merchant. Too far above her station for marriage. Too proud to claim her now. Her shame was hers to carry, as if love had been the sin.

  Elora saw them all. She listened to their stories. Held their hands when no one else would. And each time she lit a candle or whispered a prayer for the dying, she felt the quiet rage grow stronger.

  Why should kindness be considered lowly, while cruelty wore a crown? The rules made little sense, least of all in a holy place like this. And Elora refused to believe they were sacred.

  Sometimes, she felt so angry that she was certain the gods had made her this way on purpose, unable to harm a living thing, because if she could, the world might already lie in ruin.

  But even anger dulled with time. And in its place came something else. Not peace, exactly, but a kind of resigned stillness. The quiet patience of someone who had been dismissed too often, overlooked too long. She no longer argued with the rules out loud. She simply worked around them. She kept her hands busy and her voice soft. Made the dying feel seen and the forgotten feel held, and if that made her improper, then so be it.

  Lately, though, she had begun to feel something strange.

  She began to feel the presence while she worked with the sickest patients. Distantly she wondered if her oracle powers were finally manifesting, so she quietly noted the chill in the room, the sudden stillness of the air, the little hairs prickling up on the back of her neck as her body signaled that she was being watched. She worked, she waited, she watched, and she listened. She told herself it was just the heaviness of death. Or some lingering temple magic at work. Nothing to fear. Nothing to name. And so she carried on. Peacefully, dutifully. Not questioning, not quite believing.

  Then, one day, everything changed.

  It was the old woman, whom everyone simply called Grandmother, her true name lost to time. She had passed peacefully that morning, her frail hand wrapped in Elora’s. She’d died with the crease between her brows eased by Elora’s soothing power. The woman’s grandchildren had brought her in, begging for restored lucidity so she could keep raising them in their mother’s absence.

  Now, Elora stood alone in the dim stone basement used for washing the dead. She moved with reverence, bathing the body as if it were her own kin, her hands gentle, slow. She wasn’t afraid of touching the dead. That fear had faded long ago.

  And then the temperature dropped. So fast, so sharp, her next breath came out in a puff of steam.

  She froze. Waited. The presence had returned, but heavier this time. Thicker.

  From the corner of the room, smoke began to gather. There were swirling thin wisps at first, curling upward like incense. Then thickening, condensing, until a dark form stood where the shadows had once been. A cloaked figure. Broad-shouldered. Motionless.

  Elora lifted her head slowly, heart hammering.

  He wore a deep hood, but she saw his face clearly. Worn and weathered, pale as ash, with eyes the color of winter steel. He looked impossibly tired. Ancient. And when he looked at her, it felt like gravity itself had turned to stare.

  She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She did what she’d been trained to do. She waited.

  His voice, when it came, was low and rough as gravel. “The line must end.”

  Elora startled. A prophecy, spoken aloud, not dreamt. Not scribed in sleep. Spoken. Her throat went dry.

  “What god are you?” she whispered.

  He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. “The line must end,” he repeated. “You are not to share this message with anyone but Alric Kendral.”

  The name struck her like a blow to the chest.

  Alric Kendral.

  The Butcher of Balverin.

  * * *

  It was the first time a god had spoken to a human for 300 years, and the first thing Elora did when the stranger swirled out existance was disobey him. She hadn’t meant to. Honestly, he probably meant don’t tell anyone except The Butcher and the Mother Superior of the Oracle Conclave.

  As the leader of the highest religous order in the land, the Mother was the ultimate representation of the will of the gods other than the Queen. She was a stout woman of at least 60 years, with a stern brow and a permanent frown, but had always been patient with Elora’s more rebellious streaks and offered her the kindness of a listening ear or a stern redirection when she needed it. The Mother had always kept her on the right path when her feet wanted to stray, and Elora could think of no other person in the world who could guide her next steps.

  With Grandmother washed and prepped, Elora recited the proper prayers the cleanse her soul and then headed straight for the Mother’s personal library, where she knew she was most likely to find her at the hour.

  The older woman listened to her short tale, her face grave.

  “You say he appeared in smoke?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Elora gasped, breathless from telling her tale without taking a breath. “Gray smoke. Do you know of it? Which god could it be?”

  Mother furrowed her brows and a deep line appeared across her forehead. “It could not be a god,” she responded, and Elora’s fought to keep her heart from sinking. She had felt so sure.

  “But he had a prophecy,” Elora argued, trying to keep a whine from her voice. Prophecies were reserved for gods who controlled fate and destiny, a power that did not manifest in ghosts or spirits. “He said that the line-”

  “It is no god!” The woman snapped so viciously that Elora snapped her own mouth shut in surprise.

  “I do not know what you thought you saw,” the Mother said in a more gentle tone. “You must be very tired, Daughter. You have been working many late hours in the infirmery. You were working too much and your mind played a trick on you.”

  Elora knit her brows. Why was Mother telling her what she felt? She wasn’t tired. Of course she knew what she saw.

  “You do not believe me.” Elora didn’t phrase it as a question. She knew.

  “I do not,” the Mother confirmed. “And if I did, it would be all the worse for you.”

  “What do you m-” Elora’s voice cut off as whisps of ash-gray smoke began to swirl in the chair to her left. Within a moment, the god was present, looking sorrowfully at the Mother who was busying herself with the scrolls before her. When she looked up, it was to Elora’s shocked expression, not at the man before her.

  “A god speaking is one thing,” the Mother explained, and it was apparent that she could not see the god before her. “A great miracle for the ages. But no god would deliver such a message for such a man.”

  Elora shifted uneasily. She was finally given a message and a mission and hadn’t really stopped to think about interpretation. “End the line. It could mean…”

  Her voice trailed off as her mind snapped to the most likely possibility. A bloodline. The bloodline. She was to tell the royal fucking executioner that the royal bloodline must end. The god beside her looked her direction and slowly shook his head in what seemed like a warning. She didn’t need it. Even she knew that voicing such things allowed was dangerous. The Mother also saw her make the mental connection.

  “There are things now that must happen,” the Mother said, her voice suddenly full of sorrow. “You believe you have had a vision, and as Mother I must make note.”

  Elora sucked in a breath and her pulse began to beat loudly against her ears. “I… I’m not sure what the message truly means,” she tried. “I need more time to understand.”

  The Mother opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a small leather pouch. Elora heard the unmistakable clink of a few heavy coins.

  “I will tell the Conclave that you did not seem of your right mind,” she said quietly. “Take this. When you leave this room, I want you to head straight to the kitchens. Tell Sister Delora that some sisters have an unexpected request and need quick provisions for a few days. Then I want you to go to your room and gather anything you can carry, and then head for the woods.”

  Elora listened silently, dumbstruck, as she took the pouch and clutched it in her lap. What was happening?

  “You will have to be quick,” the Mother continued. “If the Conclave reacts the way the law intends, they will first move to cleanse everything you’ve touched. Then they will come for you.” Her tortured eyes met Elora’s. “The heratic.”

  Elora bowed her head. There was no room for iinterpretation of the laws against heretics. No one would believe a god had visited her, and if they did, the message itself was damning. The only reasonable conclusion was that Elora was lying or crazy or both, and liars and the insane met with swift justice, especially if they were a part of the highest religious order in the land. It didn’t matter that Elora said her prayers and never raised her voice and didn’t – couldn’t – hurt a living soul. It mattered that this experience was a threat to the very fabric of their world.

  The god, invisible beside her, finally spoke. “You will learn,” he rasped as Elora fought back rebellious tears, “to listen to my warnings. You will not survive ignoring me a second time.”

  Elora did not respond. She couldn’t form words if she tried, she was so shocked and numb at the sudden bleakness of her reality.

  “I am Valtren,” the specter continued. “I am the god of death, and I have spoken.”