The chamber was cold, the air thick with ozone and the damp smell of stone.
The Lore-Keeper stood amid the ruin of his ritual circle, a gaunt figure whose eyes held not zeal but the exhaustion of a man who had read too many endings.
"You're too late, tool of the Forge," he rasped.
The words were a trigger. Bedlam moved. A conclusion arrived. He flowed across the floor, but the world skipped. The Lore-Keeper was suddenly elsewhere, a shimmer in the air marking where he'd been.
Displacement.
Bedlam pivoted for another strike, but the stone beneath his boot vanished, replaced by air. His balance broke for a breath, an eternity. The man's Essence twisted the battlefield itself. Bedlam pushed off the shifting ground, his attack a blur, but the Lore-Keeper's hand rose. The air warped. Bedlam's knife pierced only stone.
It was a perilous dance. Bedlam shut his eyes and reached for the rhythm beneath sight, his Essence, Unraveling Echoes.
He didn't hunt the man, but the echo of intent, the ghost-outline of where he would be.
When the Lore-Keeper displaced again, intending to appear behind him, Bedlam was already turning. His blade swept through the distortion, steel meeting flesh as the man materialized. Surprise flickered in the Lore-Keeper's eyes as he parried, too slow, too weak. The fight was over.
"Wait!" The man stumbled backward and hurled a coiled rope. It struck Bedlam's chest and constricted, alive, whispering against itself.
Restraint. Restraint. Restraint.
An Intonement. Intonements were forged words, whispering objects convinced to believe a purpose until it became truth. Rare, purpose-bound, priceless. Bedlam had seen only a handful, always in the hands of senior Glaives.
"I have no wish to kill you," the man said, panting. "If I did, another would come, a Glaive, perhaps. My life is yours. I only ask that you listen."
Bedlam calculated. His reserves were low; forcing free would leave him defenseless for hours.
"They'll inspect my Mark," he said. "They'll know if killed you or not."
A tired smile touched the man's lips. "I know. I just wish for one person to know why."
He leaned against a pillar. "Do you even know what the Forge is? Or do they simply point you at a name and say 'end it'? By the time you reach Terminus, you'll be perfect, obedient. A hound. I've seen generations of you. But never a Mark like yours, a hidden channel, a true anomaly but still it won't save you." He said the last part with a heavy sigh.
His voice softened. "We non-combatants see the most. I could never be a Glaive, not for lack of talent, but because I saw the senselessness. They demand obedience, and I… I hunger for why."
He exhaled, the sound trembling. "That is my Penance, to suffer for every unanswered question. Curiosity itself burns me. How could I serve a place that forbids asking?"
The Lore-Keeper stared at his young face "What is your name?"
"You know we do not yet take names. I am known as Quiescent Bedlam". The response came perfunctorily.
"Yet another cruelty", The Lore-Keeper said, shaking his head.
He looked up. "I dislike Quiescent Bedlam. It's a label. I chose my own name-Simon. And I'll call you Lam. Shorter. Now then, Lam, any questions before we end this farce?"
Bedlam stood bound, listening. A part of him calculated escape routes. Another, smaller, stranger listened. He had no questions worth asking, after all, why would a weapon have undue questions since his task was clear? So he thought about the only other sliver of thought he often strayed to.
"What was the nicest meal you have ever had?"
Simon blinked, startled, then chuckled softly. "Apple pie. My grandmother's. Before the Tithe. The crust was buttery, the apples sweet and spiced. Not like the Forge's broth."
The image lingered, alien and vivid. Bedlam swallowed, the ghost of hunger tightening his throat.
"You're a deserter," he said quietly. "Your Penance drove you. Did you find what you sought?"
The humor drained from Simon's face. "Only a fragment, and it's terrible. Others are discovering it too. The Anvil isn't safe, Lam. The Forge's purpose… isn't what any of us think."
He straightened, exhaustion hollowing his voice. "That's all."
He whispered to a smaller Intonement, and the rope slackened, falling away. "Please," he said, almost kindly, "make it painless."
Bedlam rose. The mission was absolute. The request was human.
One precise strike. Silence.
Simon's final breath was a whisper: "Goodbye, Lam."
Bedlam collected the stolen texts. His mission was complete. Yet as he rode back through the marshes, something inside him twisted, a new, inexplicable hunger his training had no name for and a small part of himself that didn't think being called Lam was so bad.
–––––––––––
The debriefing chamber was a pocket of silence, cold and airless.
Terminus Varien stood before a heavy oak table, back turned, studying a map of the marshlands. Bedlam and Dolorous Woe waited, still, masked, equal.
Varien turned, eyes sweeping over them. "Your reports are adequate. The texts are being analyzed. Dismissed."
They bowed and turned away. In the corridor, silence stretched between them.
"I…" Dolorous began, her voice brittle. "Just—"
The tremor struck before the sentence could finish.
A low, grinding rumble deep in the mountain's bones. The floor convulsed. Stone screamed. Dust and light exploded as the Anvil itself began to die.
Bedlam was thrown down the corridors by the unstable ground. Getting up, he could not see where Dolorous Woe was partly because of the rising dust and falling debris.
A masked Glaive tumbled beside Bedlam. All of a sudden the Glaive rose and sprang, knife flashing for his spine.
Instinct moved faster than thought. Bedlam twisted; the blade tore his side instead of severing it. Pain flared. He ignored it. Pulling out his own daggers, steel met steel. Three exchanges. Then he feigned a high cut aiming towards the neck to which the Glaive committed, opening him up to the true intended strike which was a vicious stab into the kidney. The Glaive collapsed, out of breath, never to rise again and Bedlam felt energy rush into his mark but ignored it. There was a lot going on and this was no time to get distracted.
All around him was chaos. Glaives killing Glaives. Explosions blooming in the dark.
Dolorous Woe fought ahead, fluid, merciless.
And beyond her, in the main hall, Varien battled a stranger in white robes, hair of gold, a Mark burning like a sun within a black ring. Varien's scythe lengthened and shrank with every swing. The stranger met each strike before it came.
Blurs crossed Bedlam's path, three senior Glaives, Halos nearly complete.
Then the men's eyes rolled back, showing white, and they moved.
The engagement that followed was brutal.
The first Senior Glaive significantly taller than the other two began to emit cracking sounds as bones squirmed under his flesh and hardened while another immediately charged Bedlam, letting out a roar that disoriented him with a glow from a mark on his chin. Acting as if his balance was more compromised than it was Bedlam leaned forward into the charging man's guard and headbutted him in the nose temporarily shutting him up long enough for the last Glaive to appear in a cloud of dust to slit his throat with one dagger while throwing another at Bedlam who parried it handily as if expecting it.
Bedlam then rolled just in time sensing the floor shaking more than it already was due to the earth quakes and missed a stomp that defaced the floor leaving a firm foot print.
Physical enhancement and stealth of some sort. So soft vitals and feints. He thought as his essence began circulating letting him read the room like he had built it and placed the actors.
Bedlam dodged a fist from the tall Glaive and the kick that followed seemingly out of nowhere only to find the stealthy glaive was nowhere to be seen. however he could feel at the edge of his vision subtle tugs of where he could be. A flying dagger came from his left, ripping a bit of fabric without nicking skin before proceeding to the tall Glaive and stopping short only to fall on the ground with a clang.
The tall Glaive lunged, each step cracking the stone beneath him. Bedlam slipped under a swing that would have broken ribs, his knife tracing a shallow line across the man's thigh. The scent of blood hit the air.
The stealthy Glaive reappeared behind him, blade angling for the gap at his neck. Bedlam turned just enough; steel glanced off his mask, sparks flickering across the dark. He drove an elbow back into empty air, nothing. Then, a whisper of breath at his flank. He pivoted and slashed. Resistance, then yield. The invisible man's outline shimmered and collapsed, revealing a body with a clean cut through the throat.
The tall one roared and swung both arms like hammers. Bedlam stepped in close, too close, driving his knife into the side of the man's mask, straight into the inner ear. The impact jarred his arm, but he twisted hard until he heard a slush. The Glaive staggered, bellowed again, then fell to one knee.
Bedlam kicked him over and wrenched his blade free. The last of the light in the man's eyes dimmed.
He waited a moment, breathing steady, listening for movement. Only the low rumble of distant tremors answered and the climbing energy on his mark and rising symphony of echoes. Suppressing it all, he got up, staying alert and accepted the fact that he had just slain three Senior Glaives with mute resignation.
Turning to his side, he parried an incoming blade. The assailant wore a white robe and had a slender rapier. Too fast. Too precise. Bedlam's defense barely held; each parry cost blood. He reached for Unraveling Echoes, too much static, too much speed.
Desperation bled into instinct.
He leaned into the voices. The echoes of those he'd killed.
Agony lanced through his skull, his nose bleeding freely. The world fractured but patterns emerged.
Every twitch, every weight-shift, he could see them now. His parries sharpened. He was surviving, this foe who was seemingly as dangerous as Senior Glaives.
Then the mountain screamed again.
The floor split apart. He fell, head striking stone.
The last sound before darkness was the chorus in his skull, voices, screaming, then nothing.