There is no silence deeper than the one left behind when the gods abandon men.
Kael walked beneath a rain of dust.
Behind him lay Ythra—the City of Smoke—and its silver ghost.
The child followed at his side in silence, eyes glowing with a light not born of this world.
They had been traveling for two days without rest.
Each step carried them farther from the fire and closer to the abyss.
The air grew heavier; the landscape, more uncertain.
On the horizon, a fissure opened in the earth like a wound.
From it rose a constant murmur, a whisper woven from a thousand overlapping voices.
The child stopped.
"Down there," he said calmly, "speak those who no longer exist."
Kael looked at him.
"How do you know that?"
"Because they're calling me."
The Well of Voices was a circle of black stone, ancient as time itself.
It had no visible bottom.
From its depths came a warm current of air—almost human—laden with broken words and lamentations.
Kael approached the edge.
He heard names, prayers, curses.
And among them, a voice he knew.
His wife's voice.
"Kael… you let us burn."
The inquisitor fell to his knees.
His hands trembled; his eyes wide, as if he had just awakened from a dream that had lasted for years.
"No," he whispered. "I… I tried to save you…"
"You purified us with your own hands."
The child watched him without emotion.
"They do not lie," he said.
"They're not real," Kael muttered.
"Then why are you crying?"
Kael didn't answer.
Suddenly, the surface of the well began to glow with a pale white light.
Within it appeared shadows—the faces of all those he had executed in the name of the Pure Fire.
Men. Women. Children.
All with the same question on their lips: Why?
The inquisitor leaned over the edge.
For a moment, he felt the pull—the temptation to let himself fall.
Perhaps down there he would find rest.
Perhaps redemption.
But a small hand caught his arm.
The child.
His gaze was steady.
"Not yet," he said. "You cannot die until you remember."
Kael stared at him, confused.
"Remember what?"
"What you were before the fire."
That night, they camped beside the well.
The wind carried murmurs, but Kael no longer listened. He had sealed his mind with prayers that meant nothing now.
The child slept, though his breathing followed the rhythm of the voices, as if he were dreaming with them.
Kael thought of the woman with the silver veil.
"Fire purifies, but love condemns."
He couldn't drive that phrase from his mind.
What did she know of love?
What did he know—he who had turned love into ashes?
Lifting his gaze to the sky, he saw something impossible:
among the clouds, a constellation that had never existed before.
It formed the symbol of the sacred flame.
And beneath it—a feminine figure, arms outstretched.
Kael understood then that the woman wasn't an apparition.
She was a message.
And that the fate following him was not made of guilt… but something far worse: hope.
At dawn, the child woke him.
"Someone's coming."
Kael rose to his feet.
From the horizon emerged a caravan—rusted wagons, torn banners, men cloaked in dark robes.
The one in front raised his hand.
"We are the Brothers of the Last Creed," he said. "We seek the inquisitor who deserted."
Kael said nothing.
"They say he travels with a child born of thunder."
"They say many things," Kael replied.
"And all of them are true."
Suddenly, all the men knelt.
Their voices joined in a single chant:
"The child is the return.
The fire shall become flesh.
And the man who guards him shall become either god or ash."
Kael felt the weight of destiny upon his shoulders.
The child, however, smiled—
for the first time.
And in that smile, Kael understood what he still could not accept:
the child was not his burden,
but his judge.