29. Wingbeat in Silence
Wingbeat in Silence
Six months.
Then a year.
Then another.
Time passed in thresholds, not seasons, though the Cycles shifted and turned despite all of Auryn’s prayers that they would linger. That nature might stay its hand, just once, to let those beneath its fist take even a single breath of respite.
But the Cycles were relentless.
First came Ice, when the air in the Commons burned the lungs, and the sick began to die in stillness. Then came Growth, and with it, the stench. Mold on wet straw. Fever sweat pooled on stone. Weeds threading through lattice cracks like veins carving new paths through the body.
Fire burned through the city after, sapping strength and bending the healers’ magic, spreading other illnesses and leaving those sick with the Madness unaided.
And when the Shields failed during Dark, the Council nearly toppled the Sokar's rising light, claiming they’d been right, calling her a heretic for campaigning against the need for Estar, and turning their glares towards the Resh’Agar.
Questioning his loyalty. Questioning whether housing the Sokar in his wing was putting him beneath her vile influence.
And still.
Still—Auryn brought them to task.
Endless banquets, processions, trading of Gleams and favors and promises. Exhaustion that ran bone-deep—fed by endless Flares and arguments with the man she loved. All of it, culminating in an act that would ripple through history for centuries to come.
Archivists notated the moment into the Umbral Archives as the Sokar herself—breathless, fevered, burning from within — signed the Writ of the Ninth Lattice into existence.
Nearly five long years ago.
Nearly five years since she stood before the Circle of Rule in her healing robe, bare-faced and trembling, and carved the decree into light with nothing but will and invocation.
Funds would be redirected. Salves and Lustral runes would be sent to the Commons.
Temples would be repaired, their sanctums restored.
A thousand lives would be saved before the Cycle turned again.
The words had blazed that day—through ego, through Doctrine, through the walls Krystopolis had built between divinity and rot. Sacred. Binding. Final.
They had bowed. Even the ones who had voted against her. Even Shu’Khan, unmoved and unreadable, had nodded once beneath his veil of calm. Even he had seen sense in her proposals, had acted in secret to give her knowledge, clearance, a voice where she’d had none.
On that day of victory, she’d turned to Kailorien—to her Resh’Agar—to her staunchest ally and her Bonded, and smiled in triumph.
Things should have improved. Lives should have changed. She had given the Writ everything. Every drop of her breath. She’d even halted construction on the Sokar’s wing. And it still wasn’t enough.
The Council had done nothing.
Just like always.
The shipments had trickled in. Too little.
Too late. Half of what was promised. Spoiled poultices, dried herbs, cracked phiros stones.
And then… silence. The Council had found a dozen new emergencies to fund—each more prestigious, more visible than the Commons.
The Prismatum received a new wing. The Companions received imported silks.
The Temples of the Commons received a whisper of mercy, then were forgotten again.
Now, Auryn stood at the threshold of the easternmost temple in the Commons, known by the acolytes as the River’s End. Her hands folded within the sleeves of her outer white robes as she stared at a cracked column where vines had started to grow inside.
There had once been crystal veins threaded through the altar, she was told. Lustral stones meant to ease the pain of the sick. Now, the altar was bare and dark, surrounded by huddled shapes swaddled in old shawls and thin silks.
You come once again to see death, emberling.
Vargrún.
Another force of nature that refused to let go. Ever since she’d started Weaving Kailorien’s runes at night, his voice had been ever-present. Intrusive. Maddening.
Yet, not a threat.
Not yet.
So, she kept it from Kailorien. Would continue to keep it while she could hold this secret close. In all things, they were honest and open with each other. But in this—in her need to keep him whole and safe and rested—she would not bend.
You come to these death-ridden temples too often.
What has changed, do you suppose, from several days past? What are you, to fight like this? To burn yourself for others?
She ignored him. She always did. Pushing him to the back of her mind, she proceeded through the temple’s archway. The stench hit first—sour breath and sweat, the copper tang of old blood, the stink of opened bowels and unwashed skin. It clung to everything.
Her Reskala shifted behind her, uneasy but silent.
'Your Radiance,' signed a young acolyte in stained linens, bowing. 'You have returned. We are in your debt.'
Auryn nodded once, then stepped inside.
Every Veilday and every Moonfell, Auryn dedicated several hours to a temple. Cleaning linens. Mopping floors. Sitting with the sick. Praying over them. Offering whatever hope she could.
She walked through the halls with her chin held high, wrapping suffering around her like armor. Using the screams to boost her resolve. Gagging from the stench and reminding herself that she fought every day for these people. With every floor she mopped, she helped in some way.
Maybe then, she could make up for her failure.
The divine Sokar, swimming in filth. How quaint.
Some voices were low and hollow, rocking with fever.
Others were erratic, sharp, shrill. The madwoman by the entry clawed at her face, sobbing into the stone.
Another man shouted names into the air, names that belonged to no one.
A child, no older than five, sat cradling a stuffed animal, her mouth open in a voiceless scream.
'She hasn’t signed since the fever took her,' explained a healer, kneeling beside the girl. 'But she tries. Void help her, she tries.'
Auryn swallowed, then knelt and took the child’s hand as the healer walked to another cot. The girl trembled, barely conscious. Auryn brushed back sweat-damp hair and offered a steady, soft breath.
“You are not alone,” she whispered. “I am with you. The Rivers are with you. We are not done searching.”
Careful not to be seen, Auryn reached for the Weave.
The child's hand glowed silver as Auryn channeled her magic into her small body.
For a moment, the little girl's breath steadied.
Then pain. All consuming agony in the center of her chest—that soul-deep crack that had been there since she'd sealed the rift on the Moores decades ago throbbed and burned.
Nausea flared, and Auryn nearly lost the contents of her stomach.
She gritted her teeth so she wouldn't make a sound, not wanting to frighten the child.
I knew it would fail, but I cannot help but try again and again. I don't understand. Why was I given this power if I cannot make use of it to help these people?
Is making a gown and breaking a ward all I am good for?
If I cannot save a child, what use am I as Sokar?
The healer returned, and Auryn tried to keep her face set in a mask of neutrality. The floor dipped beneath her feet as she stood, and it took focus to keep her breathing steady, so the healer wouldn't notice anything amiss.
They moved from one sickbed to the next.
A man restrained to his cot begged them to kill him with clumsy hand signs.
A young woman had gouged her own thigh open with a temple spoon and stared at the wound.
Another had jumped from the high tier the day before, and the Attendants were still scraping the remnants from the temple gutters.
'Prayers are sometimes not enough,' a greying Priest signed to her, wringing her hands. 'So the Priests now listen. That is all. No salve touches this. No chant eases it.'
“Have you seen any improvement?” Auryn asked, her voice raw.
The woman’s mouth curved downward as she signed, 'The ones who die quickly.'
Ah, but they don’t tell you, do they? How they let them jump. How they untie them at night and hope they slit their own throats just so they’ll stop screaming.
Auryn’s fingers curled into her sleeve, her teeth gnashing together.
"Do you have sufficient Reskala guards here to keep the Solutus away?" Auryn asked.
The healer's expression soured.
'They came in the night three days past, just after Moonfell. Took nearly twenty of the adults. Several children.'
"Why wasn't His Quintessence informed? Three days past? He would have bolstered the Reskala assignments here."
The healer hesitated, wringing her hands together. 'We thought…no one would come, Your Radiance. We could not fight them…the Priests locked themselves in the sanctum, and the other healers—'
Auryn placed a hand on the woman's shoulder. The healer looked down at her, pain in her eyes.
"You are not expected to fight. The laws of this city," Auryn glanced at the woman's neck—at the Batcher number showing just beneath her collar. "The laws of Doctrine state that you are to receive protection. Sanctuary. We will speak to His Quintessence of this oversight."
The woman fell to her knees, and before Auryn could stop her, she took the hem of her skirts and kissed it. Auryn froze. The nausea returned in full force.
"Please don't—" she choked out.
'Your Radiance,' the healer signed. 'If it wasn't for you, for the Writ of the Ninth Lattice, for the way Your Radiance comes to comfort the sick and help us…the Sokar is the only one who sees…the only one who would protect us.'
"This isn't true. The Resh'Agar fights for you. For all of you."
'We see. We serve,' the healer signed, but there was no truth in it. Only fear. And there was no way to change that, not now—perhaps not even in a decade.
No one knew Kailorien as she did. No one saw the exhaustion that shadowed his every step. So, she said nothing more on the topic. But she did help the woman to her feet, feeling better when she towered over her once more.