Equito
The sanctum was colder than she had expected. The walls were white stone, slick from the rain that had soaked through the palace roof, and the torchlight flickered unevenly across the polished floors. Priests moved silently about, carrying vessels of oil, herbs, and incense. Their robes swished softly against the stone, the only sound besides the faint drip of water from the high windows.
Equito stood at the center of the chamber, her halberd leaned against the wall behind her. She did not sit. She could not. Her armor scraped softly when she shifted her weight. Every sound felt amplified in the cold, cavernous space.
The guards had laid Kael on a raised platform, draped in fine white linens. His face was serene, unnervingly so, though his eyes had been closed when they placed him there. The wound in his chest had been hidden beneath the cloth, carefully bound with strips of cloth to maintain what the priests called "dignity."
Equito knelt beside the platform, her gloves brushing the wet silk of the linens. Her breath fogged in the cold air. She reached out and touched the edge of the binding, hesitating. The body was cold, stiff, but not rigid. There was a faint warmth in the skin of his hands, something subtle that made the hair on her arms rise.
One of the priests stepped forward. "We must begin the rites," he said softly. "We must ensure the body is prepared properly before the king is informed."
Equito nodded once. "I understand."
The priests began to remove the cloth covering his torso. Her hands hovered near his body as they lifted the layers. Kael's skin was pale, almost gray in the torchlight, but smooth. The wound where her halberd had pierced him was clean and deep. She could see the path of the blade, the ragged tissue at the edges, the faintly congealed blood still dark and glossy.
Her stomach turned, but she did not look away. She could not. The prince she had fought, carried, and seen fall, lay here in front of her, and there was something profoundly wrong about it.
She crouched closer, careful not to disturb the priests' work. The chest was the most jarring. The entry wound was a perfect line, the blade's path still obvious. She pressed lightly at the edges with her gloved fingers. The skin gave with no resistance. There was no pulse, no heat, but the subtle tension beneath the surface of his abdomen, the faint twitch of a finger, made her chest tighten.
A priest muttered a prayer, sprinkling water along the wound and murmuring words she did not understand. The scent of burning herbs filled the air. Equito watched the smoke curl and swirl above the body.
She straightened slightly. "Check the limbs," one priest instructed another. "We must be thorough."
Kael's arms were extended carefully to the sides. Equito leaned closer, her gloved hands hovering over his pale skin. The joints were stiff but moved when the priests adjusted them, though there was a faint resistance, almost imperceptible. She blinked. The fingers twitched again, barely enough to see, and her heart skipped.
Her voice was a whisper. "This is impossible."
One of the younger priests flinched. "The body is prepared properly," he said, though his own uncertainty made his words hollow.
Equito swallowed. She crouched lower, examining his legs. The muscle was cold and unresponsive. Nothing should move. Nothing should be alive.
Yet she thought she felt it. A subtle shift beneath her gaze, a minute curl of toes, a faint flex of the calf. She bent closer to ensure she wasn't imagining it.
She was not.
Her eyes lifted to his face. His eyes were closed again, but the faintest line of light had traced across the pale irises, a shimmer almost like wet glass catching the torchlight.
She could not turn away. Her hands itched to touch him, to feel the truth beneath the surface. The priests' chanting filled the sanctum, steady and monotonous, yet every note felt hollow against the tension in the air.
Equito's knuckles whitened against her armor. She remained crouched over the body, analyzing, observing. Every detail was wrong. Every motion, no matter how small, screamed that this was not a corpse in the ordinary sense.
The linen was stripped further to expose his torso fully. His chest was flat, the wound clean, the blood gone. Yet something in the faint rise and fall of the skin suggested life. Not human life, but something else.
She straightened for the first time and looked at the priests. They were oblivious to the subtle signs. They worked as if nothing was strange, relying on tradition and ritual to give them control over the inevitable.
Equito's hands pressed lightly against the platform. She did not speak. Words would not suffice. The boy she had carried, whom she had seen fall, might not be dead.
She adjusted her gloves and folded her hands in front of her, keeping them steady. Her mind raced, but she did not allow it to falter. Kael's body was still here. Still dangerous. Still uncertain.
The priests finished arranging him for the rites. The room smelled of wet stone and incense. Smoke curled lazily through the air, but Equito could feel the tension in the very walls. Something ancient and unknowable seemed to stir around him.
She did not move. She could not. She was sworn to watch. And she would watch until the final moment of the ritual.
The boy's chest did not rise. Yet beneath the stillness, she knew something was alive. Something not fully human. Something that had waited for this moment, and had not died.