"Inquisitor, you claim to have faced a lone apostate, yet you allowed her to escape with an agent of the Voysan Hegemony and, more critically, the *vessel*?" Valerija stood at the rim of the raised dais in the Crucible Hall, framed by the pale, tallow-fueled flames of the purification pyres. Below, the disgraced officer knelt on the flagstones, head bowed, his white vestments streaked with soot. Around them, two dozen members of the Order of the Sanctified Blade stood rigid, their polished black plate armor reflecting the crimson glow. Each bore the stylized twin-bladed emblem of the Order, ready to carve heresy from the world. "The surge of black pitch, Justicar," he rasped, his voice scraped raw. "It broke every precedent. The Raskova girl wielded it with a scholar's precision, bringing down the archway. The chaos—" “Chaos is but opportunity for the disciplined,” Valerija interjected, her gaze sweeping over her silent Order. Her eyes, the color of winter frost, fixed back on Vesper. “Your failure allowed a tainted bloodline to persist, and a holy vessel to be fouled by proximity to darkness. The Creed demands absolute vigilance. You are not fit to lead. You are not fit to serve.” She gestured, and two armored figures stepped forward. Steel gauntlets clamped onto his collarbones. When a breathless protest caught in his throat, Valerija lifted a single finger. "Let this be a lesson. Incompetence before blasphemy is itself treason." She turned toward her ranks, her voice clipping across the hall. “He will undergo the Penitence of the Fractured Mind. His memories of this failure, and all others, will be scoured until only devotion remains. A vessel for lesser tasks.” As the guards dragged him past the iron doors, his muffled protests scraping against stone, Valerija turned toward a low trestle. Upon it rested a tarnished silver bowl, filled with water as still and dark as pitch. Beside it, a single artifact pulsed with a faint, corrupted light: a shard of obsidian, jagged and rough, taken from the ruins of a forgotten shrine. “Bring me the Eye of Oskyr,” she commanded. A robed acolyte approached, bearing a small, leather-bound box. From within, he carefully extracted a polished orb of murky amber, veined with threads of shadow. It was an artifact wrested from an ancient abyssal sepulcher, cut to catch the movements of the impure. Valerija took the Eye, its surface cool and slick against her skin. She held it over the dark water, her lips moving in a silent recitation of ancient cantrips. The obsidian sliver on the timber began to hum, a low vibration shivering across the basin. The water stirred into a dark spiral, glowing with thin, pale luminescence. Within the swirl, stone spires reached like cracked ribs toward an empty sky, framing the frozen pass of St. Demyan. Her eyes narrowed. The Regalia. Outcasts always ran toward cold graves. *** The freight cart stank of damp fleece, stale hay, and sour sweat. Ivana wedged herself into the back beneath the hemp awning, rough floorboards biting into her hip. Marek slept against her ribs, his fingers locked into her wool tunic. Across from them, Gavril tracked the road through slits in the oiled cloth, his shoulders braced against the timber. A rut in the road tossed chaff across their boots. “Are you certain this is wise?” Ivana whispered, her voice barely audible over the creak of the wheels. “We’re too exposed. A single patrol…” “Necessity dictates,” Gavril replied, his gaze still fixed on the passing landscape. "No one looks for fugitives in a northbound wool haul. It is too mundane for the sanctified blades. We keep to the drover's pace, stay behind the crates. It is our straightest route toward the border pass." A sudden jolt threw them forward. The wagon slowed, then stopped. Coarse shouts echoed from outside. Gavril’s hand went to the hidden dagger at his belt. Marek stirred, whimpering softly. “Creed patrol,” Gavril murmured, his voice flat. “Stay still. Do not make a sound.” Heavy footsteps crunched in the snow outside. A gruff voice demanded, “Who travels here? State your purpose and cargo!” The merchant, a portly man named Kaelis, stammered, “Honorable… honorable justicar! Kaelis’s Wools, bound for Thallon. Nothing but fleece and felt, I assure you!” “Open the tarp!” The voice was sharp, zealous. "Every bundle gets inspected for black rot." The rear tarp tore open on screeching rings. Cold air, sharp with the scent of pine and ice, rushed in. A young sentry in stiff white tabards peered into the wagon bed, his gaze sweeping over the stacked sacks before catching on Ivana and Gavril. He paused, his gaze lingering on Ivana’s dirt-streaked face, then on Marek, still half-hidden by her cloak. “And who are these… pilgrims?” he demanded, his hand resting on the pommel of his ceremonial blade. Ivana met his stare without flinching. Her mind raced, sifting through years of forbidden texts and intercepted Creed edicts. “We are penitents, Justicar,” she said, her voice clear and steady, devoid of fear. “Pilgrims seeking absolution at the Shrine of the Cleansed Spring, as decreed by the Sixth Edict of Sanctification. My brother suffers from the wasting cough, and the sacred spring is our final hope." She gestured to Marek, who, sensing the tension, had begun to cough weakly, a dry, rattling sound. The Justicar’s brow furrowed. “The Sixth Edict… that applies only to those of documented piety, not to common vagrants. And your papers?” “Our papers were lost in the recent blizzard near the Veridian Spire,” Ivana lied smoothly, her eyes locked onto his. “A mercy, perhaps, for such humble supplicants. The Sixth Edict, as I recall, also states that the truly devout, unburdened by worldly possessions, are granted expedited passage to any consecrated shrine during the Month of Frost-Kissed Lamentations, so long as their plea is pure. Are you implying, Justicar, that our faith is insufficient? That the Creed denies succor to the sick and penitent?” The Justicar bristled, his face reddening. To question the purity of a Creed member’s faith, especially one of his rank, was a minor heresy in itself. He had anticipated cornering a desperate vagrant, not an archivist who could dismantle canon law before his commander. His superior, a grizzled Centurion, shifted impatiently on his mount nearby. “N-no! Of course not!” the young Justicar stammered, caught between his ambition and Creed doctrine. "Your faith is... noted. Move on, drover. Keep to the road." He slapped the flap shut, the hemp settling back over the frame. The wagon lurched forward once more. Ivana exhaled quietly through her nose. Across the straw, Gavril offered only a slow nod, his fingers relaxing off his hilt. She gathered Marek against her shoulder, smoothing down his sleep-tangled hair. *** Back in the Citadel of the Cleansed Hearth, Valerija stood before a massive, leather-bound tome. Its pages, brittle with age, bore ancient script and faded illuminations. The scried image of the broken spires had sent her straight down into the Creed's sealed vaults. The Eye of Oskyr, now cool and inert, lay discarded on the table beside her. Her fingers traced a passage, her lips moving in a low murmur. "*When the Twin Shards of Creation are sundered, and the child of dusk claims the blood of the light, the Apostate's Hand shall reach for the Regalia of the Old Gods. A harbinger of the Great Unmaking, a blight born of sacred fire, whose touch shall unravel the weave of the Aethel…*" Valerija slammed the heavy parchment shut, iron clasps biting into wood. Ivana Raskova was no incidental runaway. She was the subject of an expunged foretelling, a presence striking directly at the empire's luminous hierarchy. That dark well inside the girl was no mutation; it was an arrival. This was no longer a border dragnet; it was a purification campaign for the continent. She returned to the precipice of the platform, looking down at the gathered ranks of the Sanctified Blade. "The target carries far greater danger than reported," Valerija called down, her voice cutting through the hall. "She is the harbinger named in the sealed verses. Intercept her before she reaches the mountain pass. The fate of the Krovian Empire rests upon your steel." She leveled her gaze at the front rank. "Take the boy unblemished. Slay the girl. I will consign her remains to the pyre myself."

The Sanctified Blade