Night deepened. The storm's remains whispered over the river, carrying a smell of wet stone and charred wood. The little circle of fire where Cael, Zahir, and Miran sat flickered weakly, the flames bending as if the air itself pressed down. Silence stretched, heavy and uncomfortable, until Zahir broke it.
"Men invent laws the way they invent weights for their nets," he said, poking at the coals. "Not because they are divine, but because they need them to catch their lives together. That is all — necessity, not heaven."
The fire cracked sharply, as if in protest. Cael felt the words echo in his chest — sharp, cold, wrong, but spoken with a soldier's confidence.
Miran leaned forward. "If it were only necessity, then laws would change with every tide. Yet we see them enduring, carved into the nature of man. Justice, truth, trust — these are not inventions. They are marks, like a signature pressed into wax. Who pressed them there? Men? No. Men only stumble upon them, the way a wanderer stumbles upon a well dug long before his thirst."
Zahir's jaw worked. "And yet men betray, steal, lie, and kill. If the signature were truly carved, why do so many smear it away?"
Miran answered softly. "Because clay can crack, wax can melt. A mark does not cease to exist when a hand tries to erase it. Wrongdoing is rebellion, not proof of absence."
The fire hissed. Cael watched the embers and thought of the brig that had come like a knife, demanding names and loyalty. He remembered Barak's sneer, his claim that "lawful is what pays and protects." The lie still tasted bitter.
"Then what is written in those books you chase, Miran?" Cael asked suddenly. "If they are filled with riddles and men's tricks, I want no part of them. I will cast aside what is false and hold only what proves true in the test of living."
Miran's eyes caught the flame. "That is the right heart to carry. A book is no master — it is a mirror. If the reflection shows only shadows, set it down. If it shows you the mark you carry but could not name, then it serves its purpose."
Zahir shifted. His face was lined by firelight, skeptical yet unsettled. "Still, I warn you both — belief that shuts its ears to every question becomes superstition. I have seen men who cling to empty charms and call it faith."
Cael looked at him steadily. "And I say belief that fears questions is already hollow. True conviction stands firm under argument, because it rests not on charm or chance, but on what is unshakable. If it falls apart at a whisper, it was never truth."
Zahir said nothing. The firelight painted his silence with unease.
Cael leaned back and stared at the sky. A faint clearing showed a handful of stars, trembling as though freshly uncovered from a burial of storm. He whispered, not as chant, not as commandment, but as a private keeping of memory:
"First: The world is not empty.
Second: The mark is real.
Third: Betrayal is loss, though it promise safety.
Fourth: Death is not silence, but a gate.
Fifth: A book may lie, but truth does not.
Sixth: Questions sharpen truth, they do not wound it.
Seventh: I will seek until I find."
The words were his own, nothing sacred, nothing binding but to his heart. Yet as he spoke them, he felt a thread tighten inside him, not fragile but firm, like the first knot in a net that would one day hold the weight of the sea.
The fire burned lower. Behind them the dark river moved with its ceaseless murmur, as though it knew secrets that men could only approach in fragments.
Miran finally spoke, his voice almost a whisper: "This is only the beginning. Truth does not hide, but it requires patience to see. You have stepped onto its path."
And though the night was thick and the future unknown, Cael felt the heaviness inside him begin to shift — not vanish, but change shape. He no longer carried only doubt. He carried the burden of a seeker.