Part I: The Stripping
The chains felt heavier than Sidharth had anticipated. It wasn't the iron; he had trained with weights twice as heavy during his apprenticeship. No, these chains bore a different kind of weight. It was the weight of eyes. Three thousand citizens crowded the Grand Plaza of Varnastra, their silence somehow louder than any condemnation. Above them, the blood moon hung like a wound in the sky, casting everything in shades of rust and shadow.
Sidharth knelt on the execution platform, hands bound behind his back, head pushed down by the Captain of the Royal Guard. The wood beneath his knees was still stained from yesterday's beheading. He could smell the iron in it.
"Sidharth of House Amar," the King's Herald announced, his voice amplified by resonance stones in the platform. "Apprentice Knight of the Third Order, sworn protector of the Crown, defender of the sacred laws—"
Was, Sidharth thought bitterly. Was all those things.
"—you stand accused of the foulest treason. On the seventh night of the Autumn Purge, when His Majesty King Devrath declared a righteous cleansing of the marked ones, you willfully obstructed royal decree. You sheltered a forbidden being. You raised your blade—not in service of the Crown, but against it."
The crowd stirred. Whispers rippled through them like wind through dead grass.
Sidharth kept his eyes on the bloodstain. If he looked up, he would see faces. Friends from the training grounds. Fellow apprentices who had shared bread and bruises with him. Master Vikram, who had taught him the Seven Forms of the Azure Blade. And somewhere in that sea of faces—he prayed she wasn't here—his younger sister, Ananya.
"How do you answer these charges?" the Herald demanded.
The Captain yanked Sidharth's hair, forcing his head up. Pain shot through his scalp, but he bit down on it. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
"Guilty," Sidharth said, his voice steady. "I did all of it."
The whispers in the crowd grew louder. Someone shouted something he couldn't make out. A woman wept.
"And do you recant?Do you renounce your actions and beg His Majesty's mercy?"
Now Sidharth looked up. He gazed past the crowd and the floating lanterns that bobbed in the autumn wind, to the Royal Balcony where King Devrath sat on his portable throne. The king seemed younger than Sidharth had expected for a man who had ruled thirty years—the divine blood of the Solari Dynasty kept him preserved, ageless, and strikingly beautiful. His eyes caught the moonlight and reflected it like mirrors.
"No," Sidharth said clearly. "I don't."
The Herald's face twisted in fury—or was it fear? It was hard to tell in the red light. He turned to the king, awaiting a signal.
King Devrath leaned forward. When he spoke, his voice carried without amplification, as if the very air listened to him. "Tell me, boy. What did you see in her? This marked slave, this condemned wretch, this thing we were purging from our sacred land. What was worth your honor? Your future? Your very name?"
Sidharth's throat tightened. He remembered the rain-slicked cobblestones, the screaming, soldiers with blood on their swords hunting marked ones through the alleys. And her—small, no older than thirteen, with strange silver marks tracing her collarbone like frozen lightning. She had been cornered in an alley, three soldiers closing in.
He had acted without thinking. He drew his practice sword and stepped between them.
"I saw someone afraid," Sidharth answered. "Someone who didn't want to die."
"So sentimental," the king said softly, dangerously. "You saw a monster wearing human skin. A descendant of the Fallen Ones who brought calamity to this world. A threat to every soul in this kingdom." He stood, his robes cascading like liquid night. "But you are young. Foolish. Perhaps you truly did not understand."
For a moment—just a heartbeat—Sidharth felt hope flicker in his chest. Perhaps exile instead of execution. Perhaps—
"Therefore," King Devrath continued, "we shall be merciful in our punishment. We will not take your head, Sidharth who-was-Amar. We will not spill your blood on this sacred stone. Instead, we strip you of everything you were—your name, your honor, your place in this kingdom."
The king nodded to the Captain.
What happened next would haunt Sidharth's nightmares for years.
The Captain produced a brand—not for flesh, but for spirit. The iron glowed with symbols that hurt to look at, ancient script from before the Sundering. Resonance energy crackled around it, purple-black and wrong.
"This is the Mark of the Forsaken," the Herald announced. "Let all who see it know: this man is no longer a citizen of Varnastra. No shelter may house him. No hearth may warm him. No hand may aid him without sharing his curse."
They pressed the brand against Sidharth's left shoulder blade.
He'd been stabbed in training. Broken ribs. Dislocated his jaw once. This was worse. The brand didn't burn flesh—it burned deeper, searing something inside him that had no name. His scream tore from him before he could stop it, raw and animal.
The mark took. He felt it settle into him like a second skeleton, cold and permanent.
When the Captain released him, Sidharth collapsed forward, gasping. His vision swam with red and black. Somewhere distant, someone was crying. He hoped it wasn't Ananya.
"Strip him of his insignia," the king ordered.
Rough hands grabbed him and yanked him upright. The Captain tore away Sidharth's apprentice cloak—the blue-and-silver he'd worn with such pride. He ripped off the iron pauldron marking him as Third Order. Then he broke the training sword across his knee and threw the pieces at Sidharth's feet.
"One mercy we grant," King Devrath said, something hungry in his voice. "You may keep your blade's hilt. Let it remind you of what you were. What you can never be again."
They unchained him. Sidharth's legs barely held him as they shoved him toward the plaza's edge. The crowd parted like water from disease, faces turning away. No one would meet his eyes.
"Go," the Herald commanded. "Beyond the Frostmark Gate. Into the wastes where the forsaken belong. If you return, if you are seen within kingdom walls after the new moon rises, you will be executed on sight. No trial. No mercy. Do you understand?"
Sidharth nodded. He didn't trust his voice.
"Then go."