Valtren.

  Valtren?

  The murdered god of death was apparently alive. And delivering prophecies. To her.

  Elora huffed a breathless laugh, half-choked and wholly disbelieving, as she waited in the kitchens. Her heart thudded with unspent panic, her arms hugged tightly around the small cloth bundle Sister Delora had quietly packed with movements swift and suspiciously without question.

  Smoke, faint and acrid, brushed the edge of Elora’s senses. She stiffened, eyes flicking around for signs of the god. But the kitchen hearth was dark. Valtren hadn’t returned since the moment he vanished in the library, swirling away in ash and breath and the impossible weight of prophecy.

  She felt stunned, and swayed slightly on her feet, not trusting herself to move. A god had spoken to her. Not just any god. The first to fall. The one whose death had supposedly silenced them all.

  Her mind was too preoccupied with the impossibility of all to feel any real fear, only a numb kind of acceptance. The doctrine she’d copied for years in neat, reverent script echoed in her mind:

  Valtren, the god of death, fell to ruin by his own heresy.

  His soul was bound to mortal dust, and his silence sealed the fate of all gods.

  By the curse of the witch Serelai, the divine veil was cast. No god shall walk the earth or speak again.

  Elora had transcribed those lines a hundred times. Had sung their echoes in funerary rites. Had whispered them to the dying, believing them holy.

  But if Valtren had returned and if his voice still reached mortal ears, then none of it was true. Or worse, it was true, and he had broken through anyway.

  Was he resurrected? Had he never truly died? Would the others follow? Would Aurelien speak again, in fire and light? Would Calistra whisper from the ocean depths? Elora felt an small kernel of hope within her chest. Would they set right what had gone so wrong in the world? The cruelty, the caste lines, the quiet, sanctioned violence? Or would they come to silence her too?

  She pushed the air of her lungs in an effort to cleanse her reeling thoughts and tried to steady her breathing. Panic pressed against her ribs and she began to head to the dormitory wing to gather her things and continue to follow The Mother’s instructions.

  Heat rose to her cheeks as she replayed the series of events that led to this. She had been so stupid. Why hadn’t she thought this through? Valtren had warned her not to repeat her words. The Mother hadn’t overreacted. She had done what was required and expected in the face of such a situation. And The Conclave had every right to be afraid. Valtren was the cursed god. The one who had dared to love a mortal. The one who had forged a blade that could kill the divine. The one whose lover’s dying breath silenced the heavens. The Conclave had every right to protect its order from danger. But Elora didn’t feel dangerous. She couldn’t even hurt a fly. Literally.

  Elora clutched the food parcel tighter, her thoughts spinning so loudly she almost missed the shift in the air. Her steps, light and quick, turned down the corridor toward her dormitory. She barely registered the sound of footsteps echoing ahead of her, until she saw them.

  Two temple guards. Standing outside her door. Smoke curled upward from the floor between them.

  Elora’s feet stopped cold. Her pulse spiked. Her mouth went dry. It wasn’t just her bedding. Or her cloak. Or the few threadbare robes she owned. It was her journals. A dozen of them. More. Stacked and blackening. Pages curling inwards like petals shriveling in flame. Ash drifted down like gray snow.

  She moved without thinking, stumbling forward a step before she pressed herself into a nearby alcove. The guards didn’t react and she let loose a sigh of relief that they failed to notice her. The smell of burning paper hit her nostrils and her knees nearly gave out.

  No. No, no, no.

  Those journals were her life’s work. They were more than ink and parchment. They were names. Dates. Final words spoken in rasping, trembling voices. Desperate apologies. Warnings. Wishes. Forgotten songs. The last fragments of people who had no monuments. She had written them down so they wouldn’t vanish. She had kept them because no one else would.

  Every entry had been a defiance. A quiet act of rebellion in a system that consigned the poor, the tainted, the criminal, and the unblessed to nameless graves. She had sat by their bedsides and held their hands and made a promise she never spoke aloud: You will be remembered.

  And now they were burning. As if their lives hadn’t mattered. As if her act of remembrance was a crime. As if she was the stain they needed to erase. It wasn’t just paper. It was people. Hundreds of them. Names she could recite by heart, reduced to ash.

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  Her breath hitched. Tears blurred her vision, but she didn’t cry. She stood very still, feeling every crack of her heart as it broke. Her mind and body begged her to react, to fight, to claw and scream and rage. But she knew even if she could, her rage would be silenced and her firsts would hit nothing but air.

  She had always been soft, always weak, but never had she felt so helpless.

  Cold wrapped around her like a shroud as a hoarse whisper brushed the base of her neck. "Life is sorrow, Elora. I have chosen you."

  Valtren. Invisible this time, but his voice was no less real.

  Her nails dug into her palm. “Why?” She whispered back. “Why choose me if I can do nothing?”

  Another whisper, rough and close, “This world would burn your memory of mercy. But I will not."

  Elora felt it then, the purpose and the sacredness of Valtren’s prophecy. There was so much she didn’t understand, so many questions left to answer. But she was Elora of Valisca and she was chosen by a god for a holy mission. And with her god at her side, she would deliver her prophecy to the Butcher of Balvarin. Even if it meant certain death.

  A resigned sob nearly escaped her, but a hand landed on her shoulder, and she flinched. She whirled, expecting to meet Valtren’s weathered face, but found the Mother standing behind her, eyes brimming with urgency and sorrow.

  “It’s too late,” the older woman said quietly. “You have to go. Now. Before they send for more than just guards.”

  Elora nodded, dazed. “But… what do I do?”

  She meant, How do I reach the capital? How do I find The Butcher? What am I supposed to say when I do?

  “Stay deep in the forests,” the Mother said. “If you’re lucky, one day you can pretend to be a hedge-healer. But you must never speak of this again. It’s the only life left to you.”

  A life alone. Without identity. Elora nodded as if she agreed. But in her heart, she already knew she would never be a recluse.

  She had been called.

  Valtren had chosen her.

  She would not waste that.

  She gave the Mother’s hands one final squeeze, turned, and walked away.

  * * *

  She didn’t know when she started running. Her feet moved, but her mind still swam with impossibilities she could barely hold. Her lungs ached. The wind bit her skin. She passed through the rusted grate behind the garden, the same one she used to feed scraps to the raven.

  And then the forest opened up before her.

  Valtren waited. He was no longer a man. He had taken the form of a raven, her raven. Sleek, black as night, gleaming in the sun as he perched on a half-fallen branch with his head cocked at her. And when he soared into the shadows of the trees, she squared her shoulders, fastened the coin pouch to her belt, and followed, the forest swallowing her whole.

  There was something powerful in being part of something greater. Elora had always found meaning in service, in helping the dying find dignity, in whispering comfort through their final breaths. Now, that same heart had been chosen for something even bigger. It hadn’t served her well. Not yet. But faith didn’t always feel like safety. Sometimes, it just felt like the truth. She trusted Valtren. For now.

  But oh, gods… the cost would be higher than she ever dared believe.

  The trees closed overhead as the shadows deepened. The path underfoot was barely a game trail. The wind carried no birdsong, only the loud intermittent caw of the raven as it guided her. She walked until her legs trembled, until she no longer tracked Valtren raven form along the treetops, only listening for its cues echoing through the woods.

  And then she saw it. A pool. Shallow, silvered with starlight. She knelt to drink. And on its surface, her reflection flickered.

  Not her face.

  Someone older. Fiercer. Black hair braided with bone. A mouth twisted in fury. Eyes glowing with a violet fire. Elora recoiled and the vision shattered like glass.

  She gasped, breath catching painfully. For a moment she could feel the other woman’s grief. Her rage. Her final scream as her soul tore from her body.

  Valtren’s voice came low, steady, almost kind. “Serelai.”

  The name clanged in Elora’s chest like a bell.

  "Bound in soul,” Valtren continued, his human form whirled into existence beside her. “ Scattered in silence. Her curse is your breath."

  Elora wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t understand.”

  "You will.”

  She stared into the pool as Valtren transformed back into the black bird, giving a rattling caw before flapping up to the trees. Her own face stared back at her. Pale. Tired. Mortal.

  But she was changing. And the gods, it seemed, were watching again. What else could she do but follow? She stood slowly, and turned her feet to the west. Toward Caldrith. Toward the Butcher. Toward fate.

  She thought the worst was behind her. Valtren had spoken. The Conclave had cast her out. Her name, her past, even her journals were gone. She was defenseless in every sense of the word. But she was still breathing. Still walking. Still following the path set before her.

  Resigned, she followed Valtren deeper into the trees. Not knowing she’d soon be caught. Not knowing she would die.

  And wake again.