Chapter 4: The Fractured Choir
The midday meal for the Templum's non-clerical staff was taken in a vast, noisy refectory built into the bedrock beneath the main complex. It was a world away from the serene, sun-drenched dining halls above. Long trestle tables were crowded with smiths, stonemasons, scribes, laundresses, and stable hands, all talking over each other, the air thick with the smell of stew, sweat, and woodsmoke.
Kaelan took a bowl of a thick, brown gruel from a serving line and found an empty spot at the end of a bench, as far from the center of the noise as possible. He ate mechanically, his mind still in the rhythmic space of the forge. The memory of the iron yielding to his will was a cold, hard pebble of certainty in a sea of confusion.
He was halfway through the bland meal when the conversations around him began to shift. The loud gossip about whose apprentice had botched a casting faded. Heads turned toward the high archway that connected the refectory to the upper levels.
A group of priests and minor nobles, their robes and tunics fine but not ceremonial, entered. They moved with a hushed, urgent energy, their faces tight with concern. They clustered at the head of the hall, ignoring the food, speaking in low, tense voices that carried in the vaulted space.
"—completely unstable," a priest with a pinched face was saying, clutching a sheaf of parchment. "The Hero's mana flared violently during the strength assessment. Shattered the reinforced testing post and sent two Wardens flying. No control whatsoever."
A noblewoman in a green velvet surcoat shook her head. "The Archmage is worse. Intellectually, she's a prodigy. She understood the basic principles of arcane funneling instantly. But her practical application… she nearly inverted a minor ward. Said it 'felt illogical.' The magical backlash gave three observers nosebleeds."
"And the Saintess?" asked a younger scribe, leaning in.
The pinched-face priest sighed, a sound of profound exasperation. "Passive manifestations are strong. Purity is off the charts. But directed application? We asked for a simple blessing on a cup of water—to purify a mild toxin. She focused, and the water didn't just purify. It evaporated. The crystal cup shattered from the internal pressure of her focused 'benevolence.' She was in tears."
Murmurs rippled through the nearby tables. Kaelan kept his head down, his white hair a pale flag, but he listened with every fiber of his being.
"Raw, untamed power," the noblewoman summarized, her voice laced with a fear she couldn't fully mask. "Like giving a continent-shattering sword to a toddler. The prophecy spoke of 'flawless champions.' These are… volatile instruments. The Goddess's grace is upon them, yes, but they lack the vessel's discipline to hold it."
"A week," the priest said grimly. "The Council expects them to be battlefield-ready in a week. To lead the rally at the Silver Gorge against the Shadow's advance. With this level of control? They'll be as much a danger to our own lines as to the enemy."
The group moved off, their worried conversation fading as they headed toward the administrative chambers.
A heavy silence fell over that section of the refectory, broken only by the clatter of spoons. Then the conversations started up again, lower, more anxious.
"Heard the Hero broke a man's arm during a sparring 'demonstration,'" a grizzled old armorer muttered to his companion. "Accident, they say. Didn't know her own strength."
"The little mage one," a laundress whispered, "they say she makes the air taste of copper and lightning when she's frustrated. Gave a chancellor a migraine from across the room."
Kaelan sat very still, the cold gruel turning to paste in his mouth. His family. His brilliant, vibrant, hopelessly out-of-their-depth family. They weren't just heroes. They were divine catastrophes waiting to happen. Elara's tears over a shattered cup. Lysandra's accidental violence. Selene's logical, dangerous magic.
The cold pebble of certainty in his gut grew heavier. They had the power of gods and the control of children. And this world, this desperate, beautiful, foreign world, was counting on them to be its flawless saviors.
A different kind of pressure settled on him, one that had nothing to do with his hidden bloodline. It was the old pressure, the ghost's pressure—the need to observe, to be unseen, to understand the cracks in the system. But the stakes were no longer a failing grade or a disappointed look. The stakes were their lives.
The noon break ended with another, sharper bell. The refectory emptied. Kaelan made his way back to the forge annex, his thoughts a tangled knot.
Forge-Master Holt was waiting, his arms crossed. Two fresh iron rods lay on the anvil by Kaelan's hearth. "Two nails," Holt said without preamble. "Matching. Tolerances are tighter. Show me the control wasn't a fluke."
The work was a refuge. The simple, brutal logic of heat and force was a welcome alternative to the terrifying implications upstairs. He lit the forge, fell into the rhythm. The connection to the metal came quicker this time, that faint, blood-deep resonance guiding his hands. The first nail took shape under his hammer, precise and steady.
He was heating the second rod when a commotion erupted at the annex's main entrance.
A cluster of people entered, their fine clothes and clean faces starkly out of place in the sooty underworld. At the center was Elara. She was no longer in her silver-gray dress, but in a simpler, white practice robe, her face pale, her eyes red-rimmed. She was flanked by two severe-looking women in the robes of the Order of Disciples—trainers, or perhaps handlers. Behind them followed a curious, whispering gaggle of junior priests and a few nobles' offspring, here for a spectacle.
"—understand the principle of grounded energy, Saintess," one of the Disciples was saying in a patient, strained voice. "The earth absorbs and stabilizes. Your power is a river. You must learn to let it flow into the soil, not burst the banks."
"I tried," Elara said, her voice thick with frustration and shame. "It just… goes where it wants. It feels like trying to hold sunlight in my fists."
The group had stopped near the central forging area, a clear space used for demonstrations. The Disciple gestured to the stone floor. "Then we practice here. Away from fragile things. A simple grounding exercise. Channel a wisp of your power, the smallest amount you can conceive, and let it seep into the stone. Not to do anything. Just to be there."
Elara nodded, closing her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration. She held out her hands, palms down.
A faint, beautiful light began to glow around her fingers.
Then it flickered. Intensified. The light wasn't seeping into the stone. It was pooling beneath her palms, growing brighter, hotter. The stone itself began to whine, a high-pitched stress sound. Tiny cracks, glowing with white light, spiderwebbed out from where her power touched the floor.
The Disciple's eyes widened. "Saintess, too much! Pull it back!"
"I'm not doing anything!" Elara cried, her voice rising in panic. The light flared violently. A wave of pure, concussive warmth—not heat, but a force of sheer, benign vitality—washed out from her. It didn't burn, but it was physically palpable. Apprentices stumbled back. Tools on nearby benches rattled. The banked coals in the nearest forge flared up with sudden, roaring life.
Elara gasped, wrenching her hands back. The light snapped off. The cracked, glowing stone faded to dull, damaged rock. She stood there, trembling, looking at the minor destruction her "smallest amount" had wrought. The Disciples exchanged grim looks. The onlookers murmured, their awe now tinged with unease.
Kaelan had stopped his work, the half-heated rod forgotten in the tongs. He watched from his isolated forge, the cold place inside him utterly still. He saw her devastation, her utter lack of control. The Saintess, who was supposed to bring gentle healing and hope, was a walking conduit for unfocused divine dynamite.
His [Progenitor's Gaze] itched at the edge of his consciousness, hungry to analyze the chaotic flow of power he'd just witnessed. He crushed the impulse.
As the Disciples tried to soothe Elara, leading her away from the staring eyes, her gaze swept across the forge in a blur of misery. It passed over the sooty apprentices, the hulking forges… and landed on him.
Their eyes met.
For a fraction of a second, he saw not the Saintess, but Elara. His Elara. Scared, overwhelmed, and utterly alone in a role she couldn't understand. She saw him, the silent boy in the apron, holding a piece of glowing iron. A piece of this world he seemed to be handling just fine.
In her eyes, he saw a flash of something that wasn't pity, but a desperate, lonely recognition. Then the Disciple gently took her arm, turning her away, and the moment was broken.
Kaelan turned back to his anvil. The iron rod had cooled to a dull black. He had to reheat it.
He worked in silence, the clink of his hammer the only sound in his immediate world. But the image was burned into his mind: the spiderweb of light in the stone, her terrified face.
The heroes were broken. The saviors were dangerously unstable.
And he, the useless Blacksmith, the hidden Progenitor, was perhaps the only one among them who was learning any real control in this terrifying new world.
He finished the second nail. It was a perfect match for the first. He set them side by side on the anvil's horn, two identical, well-made pieces of mundane craftsmanship.
He looked at them, then up at the vaulted ceiling, as if he could see through the stone to the fractured, shining chaos above.
The game had just become infinitely more complicated.