Two days later, a small, rolled scroll sat tucked into Elias’s personal cubby in the Scribes’ Annex. His fingers, usually so precise, fumbled slightly when they brushed against it. Not a summons from the High Scribe, nor a communal bulletin. A note for him, alone.
He unrolled the parchment. The script was hasty, almost desperate. “Brother Elias, might you spare a moment in the Lesser Archive before the Communal Vigil today?”
Kael. His breath hitched. A tremor ran through him. The memory of Kael’s declaration, the searing touch on his injured foot, still disquieted him. He tried to dismiss the request. Surely, Kael only sought solace, not further entanglement. The idea of a private meeting with a brother so… ardent, unsettled his meticulously ordered spirit. It was improper. It invited speculation.
He meant to ignore it. The note slipped from his mind as he bent over the day’s assigned scripture, the intricate loops and descenders demanding his full focus. He lost himself in the rhythm of ink and vellum, until the tolling of the Vespers bell shattered his concentration. The Communal Vigil. He had forgotten.
A sense of obligation, cold and heavy, settled in his chest. His conscience, ever striving for perfection, pricked him. Kael had asked. To ignore a brother, however troublesome, felt uncharitable. Slowly, Elias gathered his quills, his hands trembling with a strange mix of apprehension and duty. He would go. Briefly. To refuse Kael would be a greater sin than to merely listen.
Dust motes danced in the sparse light filtering into the Lesser Archive. The air hung thick with the scent of aged parchment and something faintly metallic. Brother Kael stood near a tall, crumbling shelf of forgotten texts, his head bowed, fingers worrying at the hem of his novice’s tunic. His usually pale face was flushed.
“Kael?” Elias’s voice was barely a whisper. The chamber felt too small, too quiet.
Kael started, his small head snapping up. A nervous smile flickered across his lips, fleeting and fragile. He waved a hesitant hand, a gesture both familiar and deeply unnerving. Elias’s brow furrowed. That desperate eagerness, that unspoken plea.
“Brother Elias, I… I wished to speak.” Kael’s voice was thin, reedy.
Elias remained by the door. “What is it, Brother? The Vigil approaches.” His words were clipped, precise. He wanted to leave. Already, a cold dread coiled in his gut. To be seen alone with Kael, in such a secluded place, invited the whispers Elias so desperately sought to avoid. He only ever offered Kael enough kindness to appear dutiful, never more, never less. Elias yearned for the quiet sanctity of his work, not this messy emotional dependency.
Oblivious to Elias’s palpable discomfort, Kael gnawed at his thumb, his gaze darting around the dim chamber. His expression was a warring mix of indecision and fervent resolve. Each time his lips parted, they snapped shut again. He seemed caught, a moth struggling against a pane of glass.
Elias’s irritation flared, hot and sudden. He disliked this. He disliked Kael’s clinging need, his lack of monastic reserve. Every halting movement, every nervous twitch, chafed against Elias’s desire for order and calm. Perhaps his own nerves were frayed. His head throbbed, a tangled knot of frustration and a lingering unease from Kael’s previous blasphemy.
“Brother, forgive me, but I must attend the Rite. Could you state your purpose?” Elias’s voice, usually a gentle murmur, held a sharp edge. He felt a desperate urge to lash out, to cut through the suffocating tension. His stomach churned with a familiar unease, another symptom of his hidden anxieties.
As Elias wrestled with his thoughts, Kael finally seemed to gather his courage. His small voice, trembling, began to form words. “Brother Elias, I… I am… I desired…”
“Yes, Brother?” Elias responded, his hand absently rubbing the back of his neck. The interval before the Vigil was almost spent. He wished Kael would simply *speak*. He felt an absurd, un-monastic urge to pry open Kael’s mouth and extract the truth himself.
Then, the heavy oak door to the Lesser Archive creaked open, shattering the strained quiet. Both Kael and Elias turned, their eyes locking onto Brother Valerius, who stood framed in the archway, gasping for breath. No, not at Elias. His burning gaze was fixed solely upon Kael.
“Hmph, hmph…” Valerius’s ragged breathing filled the small space, betraying his frantic search. A suffocating ache constricted Elias’s own chest, imagining Valerius scouring the cloister for Kael. Valerius let out a long, shuddering exhale, then strode confidently into the archive. Elias, without conscious thought, dropped the hand from his neck.
Valerius’s gaze flickered between Kael and Elias, his expression fierce, almost feral. “Why are you here with him?” His voice, usually modulated with acolyte decorum, was rough, thick with an unspoken fury. His fists, at his sides, clenched and unclenched.
Beneath Elias’s outward calm, his insides felt bruised, battered. After a long, agonizing pause, Valerius finally looked at him. Elias could not bear the accusation in those eyes. It was unbearable. “Brother Valerius, what is this?” he managed.
*Please, please, do not look at me so.* Blame Kael for this summons. Why gaze at me, your fellow devotee, your companion in studies, with such raw resentment? He was dragged into this, an unwitting participant. Even as this thought solidified, Valerius’s burning eyes remained locked on him. Elias knew those were not the eyes of devotional fervor. They were eyes consumed by rage, by a possessive, unholy madness. The face of a man deranged by a dark obsession, a visage Elias found pitiable and despicable in equal measure.
“Why are you here with him!”
*You appear pathetic, Brother Valerius. So utterly pathetic.* Elias glared back, a defiant flicker in his usually submissive gaze. Yet, somehow, he felt the pitiful one was not Valerius—it was him.
Before Elias could react, Valerius’s long strides carried him directly before Elias. The moment Elias looked closely into his face, the world spun. A sharp, searing pain exploded across his cheek. His vision blurred.
“...!”
He could not even process the assault. His frail body toppled to the cold stone floor. Only then did his mind, slow and disbelieving, replay the event. *No, it cannot be.* He touched his stinging cheek with trembling hands. *He struck me.* Brother Valerius, the respected acolyte, had struck him. *How could you… How could you do this to me?*
“B-Brother Elias!” Kael, horrified, rushed toward him, but Valerius screamed like a demon-possessed madman. “You wretched novitiate! I commanded you to cease your entreaties! Do not address him—do not address him at all!” Seeing Valerius’s furious face, Kael’s expression grew increasingly pale, tears welling in his eyes.
“I-I am sorry, I am sorry.”
“You vowed! You swore an oath! May the Unseen judge you!”
Kael took a faltering step back, his face contorted in distress. But no, Kael was not the one who should weep. Elias was.
Unbidden tears welled in Elias’s own eyes, threatening to spill. Mercifully, before he could break down completely, Valerius cursed violently, a profane sound in the sacred space, and stormed off, dragging Kael by the arm. The suddenness of it all left Elias reeling.
Left sitting alone on the cold, dusty flagstones, Elias stared at the half-open door. A narrow shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom, illuminating the swirling dust. Something inside him finally gave way. The dam holding back his emotions burst, and hot tears streamed down his face.
He despised everything. Kael, who had summoned him here, drawing him into this mire. Valerius, who had defiled him with a blow. He wished they would both simply vanish from Veritas. He felt miserable, reduced to a mere bystander, a prop in their twisted, unholy drama. He rose, skipped the Communal Vigil, and sought an early dismissal from Brother Superior. His swollen, crimson face made his excuse—a sudden bout of illness—more than believable. Brother Superior, blessedly, seemed to understand without prying.
---
Back in his sparsely furnished cell, Elias collapsed onto his prayer mat, the ache in his cheek echoing a deeper ache within. He lay there, unmoving, until the evening chants began their slow, mournful ascent. When he finally stirred, his face felt puffy and bruised. Out of habit, he reached for his personal wax tablet. A message from Brother Gareth awaited him. They did not often exchange private messages, but Elias likely had some record of contact due to shared duties with Valerius. *May the Unseen curse this entanglement.*
Were it any other novitiate, Elias would have ignored the message. But Brother Gareth was not just anyone. He held a respected position among the acolytes, a steady presence, often mediating disputes among the younger brothers. Elias could not afford to slight him.
“Brother Elias, when did you depart the Vigil?”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth, a small, frustrated sound. Gareth’s message, though formal, held an implied rebuke. Elias replied belatedly to the cycle-old query.
“A sudden malaise, Brother.”
He kept his response deliberately vague, carefully detached. He did not want anyone to know of his current predicament. The thought of the brothers discovering that Valerius had struck him was unbearably humiliating. And all because of Kael.
“Are you well, Brother?”
Gareth, showing genuine concern? Elias felt a strange disquiet. He set the tablet aside, pushing it away. Hours later, a wave of profound sadness washed over him. Even Gareth’s message felt suffocating. Other brothers, with whom he shared scriptorium duties, had also inquired after his absence, but none of it was what Elias truly craved.
No message of inquiry bore the name of Brother Valerius. Elias must be losing his mind. Still, he consoled himself, this was the fate of one entangled in maddening devotion. Even knowing the truth, Elias lay there like an idiot, doing what he did best—closing his eyes and turning a blind eye to the stark reality.
“...I am not the only one.”
Perhaps Kael and he were trapped in similar snares. That strange, twisted, grotesque thought lingered. A selfish, wicked, childish hope intertwined with it. While lying on his mat, staring at the rough-hewn ceiling, another message arrived. It was from an unknown hand, scratched onto a small, folded scrap of vellum left beneath his cell door.
“Brother Elias, are you sorely afflicted?”
Elias frowned. Who among his peers would use such direct, almost intimate language? Gareth? But this was not his script. Before Elias could ponder further, a follow-up message arrived, relentless and infuriating.
“I am sorrowful. Truly sorrowful. It is all my doing.”
“I am sorry.”
“Please, forgive me.”
Be it three words or four, the desperate apologies made Elias want to scream. He crumpled the vellum scraps, tossing them across his cell in frustration. How did this novitiate obtain such knowledge of his personal space? And how was someone supposedly without means of formal communication sending him messages?
Then it hit him. *Oh*. He had offered Kael a private audience, not so long ago. That night by the sacred spring. He cursed his idiotic brain and let out an angry sigh, a sound raw and untamed. To vent his frustration, he pounded his fists against the prayer mat, a silent, furious rhythm, until he was too exhausted to continue and eventually drifted into a restless sleep. Just before his thoughts completely faded, one last message, unwritten, lingered in his mind.
*Please, do not abhor me.*
*Funny.* Elias thought. *I have harbored distaste for you for cycles.*
The next morning, when Elias woke, his face was swollen like a steamed pastry.
---
He skipped his morning duties in the scriptorium. No matter how devoted a scribe he strove to be, he was not so fanatical as to appear with a face like this, a public display of his humiliation.
Sister Agnes, a kind-faced lay sister, prepared a simple midday meal for him. As he ate, she could not resist offering a gentle caution, urging him to be more careful with his health. The meal itself was nothing special—soft porridge and bland, seasoned greens. Elias swallowed it all in one gulp, hardly chewing.
As he set his wooden spoon down and reached for a cup of cool spring water, Sister Agnes returned to clear the dishes. Plate in one hand, she spoke softly. “Brother Elias, a visitor awaits.”
“A visitor?” His heart fluttered, a wild bird trapped in a cage. Before he could even identify the emotion, his mind had already begun to construct an image of who might be standing at his cell door.
*Could it be… Brother Valerius?*
It seemed a wild fantasy, a foolish hope, yet it was not entirely impossible. Few among the order ever visited a brother’s cell unbidden. Among his companions in study, only a handful even knew the location of his secluded quarters. If it were Valerius, then he must have come to offer penance, finally feeling the weight of his actions. Valerius had never, not once, raised a hand against him before. Yes, he must be troubled, deeply worried. The fantasy solidified into a fragile certainty. Even though he chastised himself for such naive hope, Elias could not help but feel a small, illicit sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, he was still important to Valerius in some profound way. That thought filled him with an inexplicable, dangerous warmth. He quickly turned toward the entrance, his pace quickening with an unfamiliar, almost sinful excitement.
But the person awaiting him was not who he had so desperately imagined.
“A good day, Brother.” Brother Gareth’s sharp-featured face greeted him, a faint, almost teasing smirk playing on his lips. He held a small, woven pouch. As soon as his eyes fell upon Elias’s face, however, his smirk vanished. He stopped short, asking in an uncharacteristically serious tone, “By the Saint’s grace, what happened to your countenance?”
Elias’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, crushing disappointment. *How does Brother Gareth even know where my cell is?*
“I… I stumbled,” Elias replied flatly, his voice devoid of inflection.
Gareth’s brow furrowed, his lips twisting in that way he always did before uttering a dry, pointed observation. “You are truly clumsy, then.”
Elias did not bother to argue. He merely rubbed his swollen cheek, feeling a dull throb near his jaw. Shame surged, a hot wave, as he recalled his earlier, pathetic anticipation. He was such an idiot. Brother Valerius did not think of him as someone important, not in the way Elias craved. And here he was, wagging his tail like a hopeful little dog—like a complete moron.
“Here. For your affliction.” Gareth held out a small, stoppered phial. Elias accepted it, immediately opening the lid to examine the contents. The sharp scent of crushed herbs, mixed with a faint, sweet oil, rose to his nostrils.
“...Is this of the common willow?”
“Indeed. Does it matter?”
“It suggests a pragmatic, rather than devotional, remedy.”
“Damn, you are fastidious.” Gareth chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. “Why are you even here, Brother?”
“Why do you think? I came to check on you. May I enter?”
“Brother, wait!”
Without hesitation, Gareth’s long legs carried him across the threshold and into Elias’s small, private cell. He glanced around, taking in the sparse furnishings, the neatly stacked scrolls, the single wooden stool.
“Where is your mat for contemplation?”
“Brother, where are you going?”
“Where else? There is nowhere else to go in your humble cell, is there?”
“...”
Elias had no retort. Gareth was correct. All cells were much the same, weren’t they? Feeling intensely awkward, Elias followed Gareth, who seemed oddly intent on inspecting the interior of his sacred, yet now deeply compromised, space.