Where Truth Rests
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Eridessa
I sit at my workbench for a little while to gather my thoughts for our conversation. I’m hunched over a yellowed notebook, candlelight pooling across scarred wood and scattered papers.
The house is quiet around me. Too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your ears and makes your own breathing feel intrusive.
I close my eyes.
Some truths, once learned, never truly leave you.
When I open my eyes again, I begin to write down the two passages from my dream.
Two different versions of similar scripture. The Good Book and the secret text in the book Grand Minister Judiah kept locked away.
Though the scars no longer mark my flesh, I still feel them as if they do. They linger in more than memory, etched into marrow instead of muscle.
I craft each word carefully, my pen pressing heavily into the page as if the act itself might summon clarity. Line by line, I copy them out, letting the differences surface the way fractures appear in glass—subtle at first, then impossible to ignore.
The riders arrive the same.
The stars fall the same.
Judgment comes either way. But everything after that diverges.
In one version, God turns away.
In the other, He grants those worthy mercy.
I lean back in my chair and study them side by side, my gaze moving between columns of nearly identical language that somehow lead to entirely different futures.
One promises abandonment.
The other offers mercy and a chance for redemption.
The candle gutters softly, its flame wavering as if even it cannot decide which truth it prefers.
My jaw tightens. Which truth to believe?
Has someone lied? Altered the text to fit their own narrative? Grand Minister Judiah? The Order? Someone long before they were born? Has the Good Book itself been shaped by careful hands and selective faith—its verses echoing the Bible, familiar in structure, yet diverging sharply from Revelation?
Maybe one is more false than the other, or only time will tell which holds true.
I can trust in nothing and have to find my own way through this parable. If the Horseman has the answers and is willing to share, he might just earn my trust and his freedom.
This is the first test.
Orán
When the heavy lock on the outside clicks open and the creak of the door groans, I slowly sit up from lying on the cot and make my way to the bars.
This Eridessa is a different version of the woman I met many days ago on the hillside, the white woman cloaked, intent on blending in with the world around her as if to go unnoticed.
Her hair is only half pulled back, the rounded tips of her ears exposed, loose strands escaping to frame her face as though she’s just come in from the wind and hasn’t bothered to tame it.
Pale wisps halo her features, catching the lantern light and throwing it back in soft contrast against her freckled nose and flushed cheeks.
Her eyes glow faintly in the dim corridor—an obvious tell that she’s so much more of a threat than she first seemed.
She wears simple clothes: fitted brown leather pants, worn riding boots, and a sleeveless white blouse that hints at the shape beneath it. No ornamentation. No armor. Just practicality and quiet confidence wrapped around a body that seems entirely unaware of the effect it has on me.
She wears no makeup beyond the faint shadow beneath her eyes. Her beauty is unaltered. Dark or light. Wraith or human. It makes no difference. Both versions of her hold me captive far more effectively than these bars do.
In one hand, she carries papers. In the other, a lantern. She stops outside my cell as I rest my bound wrists against the bars.
“I’d like to discuss something with you.” Her voice is steady, but there’s tension in the way she holds herself, in the way her shoulders remain subtly braced.
She presents the papers to me.
I hesitate for only a moment before I take the papers from her. I can read in the dark, but the light helps. I hear the jangle of keys, and then she’s opening the door.
She pauses just past the threshold, taking a breath, measuring the space between us as if gauging how much danger I still represent. I gesture toward the bed but remain standing myself, my attention already pulled back to the first passage.
Not just language, but detail—the faint blue of the ink, the graceful curves of her handwriting, and the places where her strokes deepen and she lingered over certain lines.
She sets the lantern on the small table beside the cot and lets her gaze sweep the cell, cataloging corners and shadows. Finally, she takes the offered seat on the edge of the bed, fingers gripping the mattress as though she might need to move quickly.
“Those were copied from the texts of the Order I grew up in,” she says. “One comes from the book every woman in the Order was given. We were expected to know it backward and forward. The other—the second—came from a volume kept hidden. Only a few were ever allowed access.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“I need to know which one is correct.”
The intensity in her gaze unsettles me. There’s resolve there. And fear. And something dangerously close to hope.
I flip to the second page.
Read it once.
Then again.
The differences are subtle. Intent buried in phrasing. Meaning is redirected through omission. I study the ending more carefully this time, tracing the alterations made by hands long dead—prophet or charlatan, believer or architect.
Lowering the papers in one hand, I give her the truth as I know it.
“Both and neither.”
She stills. The air in the cell sharpens. The only hint of her displeasure is a slight tightening around her eyes and small mouth.
“Explain,” she says. Demand and frustration thread through the word. “Explain to me how they are both correct and not.”
I hold her gaze unflinchingly. “The future is unwritten.” I pause, choosing my words with care.
“Neither the person who wrote this, your Order, your leaders, nor I know how the fate of this world will unfold. Not entirely. I know the most probable course. I know my foretold path. You determine yours. Each soul on Earth will do the same. These are two possible paths that vary greatly. Are they the only path that exists? No. Is one more likely than the other? Yes. Could something happen that sways how this will all unfold?”
I nod once.
“Quite possibly.”
I lower the papers to my side and chance a step closer.
“God can and does reevaluate His decisions. He always has. Creation is not static—it is responsive. A great many things could yet happen between now and the final weighing that would shift the balance or alter the outcome of the final days. These are possibilities, and as far as I am concerned, nothing more. These passages differ in what comes after because belief shapes outcome. Humanity possesses free will. Free will can be influenced. Faith in humanity—humanity’s faith—may yet alter everything. ”
Silence stretches between us, heavy with implication. Her fingers flex against the edge of the bed.
She exhales slowly through her nose, gaze dropping to the papers in my hand before lifting back to me. “Belief shapes outcome,” she repeats quietly. “Free will. Faith.”
There’s something bitter in the way she says it.
She shifts on the mattress, lantern light sliding across the planes of her face. Up close, the exhaustion she carries is impossible to miss—the faint shadows beneath her eyes, the tension carved into her jaw. This is a woman who learned early how to endure.
“You speak like someone who doesn’t care about the innumerable lives at stake,” she says. “Like each one lost doesn’t weigh on your soul.”
I don’t answer right away.
“I speak like someone who has watched civilizations rise and fall beneath the weight of their own decisions,” I finally say. “I speak as one who knows that every soul chooses its path—and bears the consequence of that choice.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver.
“And that makes it easier for you?”
“No.” My answer is resolute, though something tightens behind my ribs. It has never been easy.
Once, I listened to forests breathe. I learned the language of roots and rain, of rivers carving patience into stone.
I followed the migration of stars through forest canopies and believed my purpose was to tend to life, not harvest it.
Those instincts do not vanish simply because Heaven rewrites what you are.
That part of me never truly died.
Every fragment of life that passes through me leaves its imprint. Every soul I draw into myself leaves an echo, even when I return it all to Him. The exchange is never clean. Never unfeeling. There is always a reckoning in the space between breath and absence.
I carry all of it.
But I also carry knowledge she does not.
I have seen what waits beyond this horizon. I have stood in the quiet places where futures gather. I understand what collapses if this covenant fails. It was not forged in cruelty—it was born of necessity. I was shown what unravels if mercy comes too soon. Creation is not preserved by sentiment.
It is preserved by balance.
By sacrifice.
So I do not tell her how the ache sometimes coils in my chest like an old wound that never learned to close. I do not confess how memory rises when I touch soil, or how instinct still reaches for green things even as my hands are tasked with ending them.
Those truths change nothing.
What must be done will be done. I understand the cost of hesitation. The consequences if I don’t do what I was remade for and tasked with.
So I meet her eyes and hold them.
Duty does not erase grief. It simply demands that I walk beside it.
“In my Order,” she says after a moment, “scripture was law. There was no choice. Certainty was reserved for the faithful. Survival was promised only to those who followed the path laid before us.” She gestures to the first page.
Her gaze bores into the paper as if in accusation.
“We knew only what we were taught. And we were taught to believe in this.”
Her eyes flick up and meet mine. “Only later was I made aware of the path offered to a select few. Of how the God I held in such reverence could turn on His creations without warning. That I wasn’t meant to follow Him blindly, but to work against His decree. To believe in humanity above Him.”
I remain silent, letting her choose how much to offer.
She draws in a measured breath. “We were raised to obey, above all things. The Good Book was law. We devoted every minute of every day of our lives to prayer, scripture study, understanding doctrine, and worship.” Her jaw tightens. “And then like this”—she snaps her fingers softly—“it all changed.”
Her gaze drifts briefly to the stone wall, as though she’s seeing something beyond it. “I need to know if what I originally believed was the lie, or if this is.” She points at the second page. “Have I strayed from the path by design, or was I never set upon the right one to begin with?”
Her shoulders square subtly, as though bracing against old memories. “We were trained young. Discipline. Ritual. Silence. Every woman in the Order learned to endure discomfort without complaint. You don’t survive in a monastery by being soft.”
I study her more carefully now.
The way she holds herself. The economy of her movements. The readiness beneath her stillness. It all makes sense.
“And the hidden texts?” I ask. “How many were permitted to see them?”
“Very few,” she answers. “Those deemed… spiritually resilient. Only the ones who excelled in their studies.”
Her lips press together.
“Or useful.”
That sends a flicker of unease through my chest. There’s more there. As if to prove my point, her aura darkens at the edges, emotion bleeding through despite her effort to contain it. I’m afraid to press her for details.
“Many of those spiritually resilient souls, or the useful women inside my Order, died so that I could be here today. So that I could find a way to ensure humanity endures. Whether that’s wrong or right according to some long-dead man, I no longer care, because it feels right to me.
I know it’s what I must do. And not just humanity, but this place, the life inside of it, the small miracles he created ages ago and forgot about.
The beauty found in everything that breathes life. ”
She rises from the bed and takes a slow step toward me, stopping just outside arm’s reach. The space between us tightens, charged with something neither of us names.
“You talk about probability,” she says quietly. “About outcomes and trajectories.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“But you don’t talk about cost. About the value of a human life. Or any life, be it the life inside a single flower, a rose bush, a small fish inside the vast ocean, or one tree within a mountain region filled with them.”
I don’t answer immediately. Instead, I study her beauty. The value of this life, this woman standing before me, and how, more than anything else, I feel the cost at this moment of what it would mean to lose even a moment with her.
“Those are vastly different things.”
“But each is a life,” she counters. “Each is a connected thread in the world He created. They exist because of Him. And whether that power is needed or not, He can’t simply siphon it away through you to do as He pleases.”
“He can.”
“No.” She shakes her head adamantly, countering my statement.
“I won’t let Him. I refuse to watch the beauty of this world be erased.
” Her voice steadies as she continues. “God’s love for His creations should be unending.
It should not be conditional. Just as a mother’s love is not conditional—His shouldn’t be either. ”
Then, more quietly, as if the words are for herself as much as for me, she says, “Mercy is possible. We can go on with or without Him. He has enough power to create other worlds. He does not get to take what’s here.”
“Eridessa,” I begin. “That’s not—”
Her voice drops.
“I’ll find a way.”
Something shifts inside me.
Not hope.
Recognition.
Resolve tempered by compassion.
Danger sharpened by belief.
There is trepidation—and, against my will, admiration.
Because deep down, I share pieces of her conviction. I once believed in life the way she does. In roots and rivers. In preservation over extraction. Heaven taught me otherwise. Expanding my understanding. It showed me what cannot be undone, no matter how fiercely one wishes it so.
“And if that path conflicts with mine?” I ask.
Her eyes harden.
She rises in a single fluid motion and pulls the papers from my hands.
“Then I’ll go through you if I have to,” she says. “Or you can spend whatever time this world has left in this cell and be bound to the same fate.” She turns away and walks out of the cell, leaving me with the echo of her footsteps and the unmistakable certainty that she means every word.