Morning crept into the camp, slipping through Caelus' bones with the weight of shame and soreness. A slow, nauseating heartbeat pulsed in his temples.

  Regret. That’s what pressed on his chest the most. Like a stone altar set atop his ribs. Weight he’d placed there himself.

  The memory of last night was a haze—part nightmare, part wine, and something else he didn’t want to name.

  He had let his guard down. Nolan had felt safe—and so he'd let his guard down.

  He drank. He shared. He chatted. And now he had slept in.

  Again.

  What, in the Light’s name, was happening to him?

  This place must be cursed.

  Maybe the people here didn’t even know it—and that’s why everyone was so unhinged. Yes, that had to be it. It was the magic. He was being poisoned by it.

  That was the only logical explanation for why he, the Church’s perfect exemplar of restraint, was losing his mind.

  Caelus sat up. Too fast. His head punished him for it instantly.

  His tent was a mess. Bottles. Food trays. Piece of Nolan’s armor. Items from people he couldn’t name.

  Just how many had been in here?

  His damp tunic from yesterday’s stream incident stared back at him.

  Right. Solferen. This was all his fault. Every last bit of it.

  Even when he wasn't in the tent, he was in Cael’s thoughts—laughing, humming, weaving silk into chaos.

  The air tasted of ash and stale ale. Every noise outside—the clang of pans, the bark of a dog—stabbed through his skull like accusation. He could feel the pulse in his eyes, steady and cruel, reminding him of every rule he’d broken last night.

  The Light should have struck him down. Instead, it let him wake. Cruel mercy.

  He rubbed at his face as if he could scrub the shame out through sheer friction.

  Collect yourself, Caelus.

  Food was out of the question. Even the idea made his stomach turn.

  Water, then. The soft sound of the stream called from just behind his tent.

  He gathered his clothes with slow, cautious motions. Placed his boots near one of the campfires to coax out the last of the moisture.

  Then, just a few steps around the tent, he knelt by the stream and splashed water onto his face in both hands. Cold, biting. Good. It fought back the heaviness pressing behind his eyes.

  Better. Just a little.

  His hands still trembled. Not from chill, but from the realization that cold no longer cleansed like it used to.

  He sighed.

  Clothes next. Tunic, trousers, cloak—dipped gently into the water, one by one. Squeezed out. Dipped again. He was careful not to ruin the soft blue fabric of his tunic, not to damage the finely embroidered symbol of the Church still intact along the hem.

  Folded. Neat. Exact.

  Back to the tent. Lay them out to dry along the rope running beneath the roof. As pristine as possible.

  Unknown items? Piled outside like a street vendor’s stall.

  Plates and mugs? Stacked. Balanced.

  A few mercs passed by chatting. “Gonna grab lunch,” one said.

  Lunch?

  He stared after them.

  Had he slept until noon? And no one had bothered to wake him?

  What about the mission? Did they go without him?

  Panic hit like a lance to the gut. Cael scrambled into his armor—clasps, belts, buckles, why are there so many—and stumbled out of the tent, balancing the tray of dishes awkwardly on the way out.

  He dropped the dishes off at the kitchen, muttered something barely resembling acknowledgement, then rushed out of the cave—

  Only to be temporarily blinded by the midday sun.

  And greeted with a scene of…

  Nothing.

  Everything was in its place. The camp was busy, yes—but unbothered.

  Smoke drifted over the clearing in lazy coils, carrying the smell of steel oil, wet leather, and cooked roots. The sound of sparring metal clashed with laughter. It shouldn’t have fit together, but somehow it did. The camp breathed like one great, chaotic creature.

  Mercenaries lounged by the fire, some playfighting in the clearing, others tending to chores. Killeon and Gorrath were stacking logs far too large for a normal human. Varg and Nolan argued passionately in the distance. The witch and Sol were tending a garden.

  Sol. Tending a garden.

  Sure.

  So they hadn’t gone without him. Cael exhaled.

  So they didn’t go. Cael hissed. They ignored the urgency of the Pope’s command.

  He marched straight to Solferen, ignoring the fact that he’d have to get dangerously close to Ysilla.

  They noticed him before he even opened his mouth.

  “Ah! You survived the night, I see!” Sol graced him with a peaceful smile, rubbing his hands together to shake off the dirt—only managing to smear it worse.

  “We have a mission to complete, and you didn’t even bother to wake me up?” Cael bit out accusingly, arms thrown in a wide, disappointed gesture.

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  “What for?” Solferen grinned. He gestured to the soil as if it was sacred. “Relax a bit. The farmland ain’t going anywhere.” He waved a hand lazily in dismissal.

  The witch snickered.

  Her shadow stretched long across the rows of herbs, brushing his boots before she even spoke. It felt like an omen.

  Ysilla slowly rose from her crouch beside the Mercenary King. The look she gave Cael could have withered the garden on its own.

  “Isn’t this precious,” she hissed, voice low and sharp. “The little pyromancer’s errand boy, waking up just in time to bark orders again.”

  Caelus bristled.

  “I am not—”

  “You think I forgot?” She stepped closer, dirt-stained fingers twitching near her belt. “You think because I lived, it didn’t happen? Because you didn’t light the fire yourself, your hands are clean?”

  The scent of charred cloth drifted past him, spectral. The way the flames danced off sacred stone. The echoes had been distant… until now.

  Cael’s jaw clenched and unclenched in an endless cycle—as if he was physically biting back things he would regret saying later.

  “I was following orders—” He gritted through his teeth.

  “So was the man who tightened the ropes around my wrists.”

  Her voice cut like glass.

  “So was the one who blessed the crowd while I burned.”

  His throat tightened around a sound he didn’t let out. His stomach dropped—not at her anger, but at how much of it was deserved. He promptly swallowed it down.

  Sol didn’t intervene. He let the silence stretch, let Caelus stew in it.

  Not because he wanted the man to suffer, but because interference would rob the moment of meaning. Some truths couldn’t be preached—they had to be collided with.

  He watched from the garden’s edge, hands clasped loosely behind his back, reading every flicker of pride and guilt across Cael’s face like verses he’d already memorized. The anger, the deflection, the faint tremor beneath—he knew them all. Once, they’d been his own.

  Ysilla’s words were sharp, yes, but not cruel. Her fire had purpose, and he let it burn. Only through heat did metal lose its stiffness.

  The knight turned back to him instead, desperate for any other target.

  The mission. That’s the only thing that mattered.

  “The Pope ordered—”

  “You.” Sol cut in, wiping his hands on his expensive shirt. “You think Lucen holds any influence over me?”

  The head of the Crown of Aurenos. Addressed by name like some back-alley merchant.

  What a disgrace.

  Caelus reeled. “You took the money! We have to do the job!”

  He was losing hope in reasoning with this one.

  Sol had already turned back to fussing with some flowering plant. “And look at you, already sobered up enough to remember the contract.”

  Caelus opened his mouth to retort, but Ysilla beat him to it.

  “In your condition?” The Witch side-eyed him, voice dripping with contempt.

  “You probably haven’t looked in a mirror, but if you had…” She paused. Reconsidered. Waved a hand like one might do at a fly. “…you’d still be too proud to believe what you saw.”

  Caelus felt his cheeks warm. His hand flew up to comb through his chestnut hair, sheepish. Shame returned tenfold at her words, but he had no rebuttal. She was right.

  “So what am I supposed to do, then? Sit around and wait for you to play gardener?”

  “We have plenty of things waiting to be done!” Solferen chirped without looking up.

  “Community service,” Ysilla echoed, this time with a smile so sharp it could bleed.

  Before he could protest, heavy footsteps landed behind him.

  “Oh good, you’re free,” came Varg’s voice—far too pleased with itself.

  Caelus didn’t even have time to turn before Nolan appeared behind him, hauling something massive slung over his shoulder, half-wrapped in canvas.

  With a grunt and absolutely no ceremony, he dumped it at Cael’s feet like it owed him money.

  “That’s a boar,” Caelus said flatly.

  “Was,” Varg corrected. “Now it’s dinner. But only if someone gets to cleaning it. Kitchen’s busy. Volunteers?”

  Cael didn’t respond.

  Ysilla raised her hands like a saint backing out of a miracle. “Don’t look at me, I already have blood under my nails.”

  “You could’ve led with that!” Nolan grinned, already behind Cael, cheerfully judging two knives like he was at a fair. “C’mon, Cael. Time to bond with your new besties over a fine afternoon of butchery.”

  Caelus took one deliberate step back. “Absolutely not.”

  Varg tossed him a pair of gloves. Cael caught them purely by reflex—and immediately regretted it. His lips folded in on themselves, jaw twitching with swallowed anger.

  “You’ve already washed dishes… once,” Nolan added helpfully. “Think of this as a promotion.”

  “Promotion into what? Barbarism?” The templar protested.

  “Brotherhood,” Varg grinned. “With guts!”

  Caelus made a guttural noise that came from a primal part of the soul, that hadn’t passed his lips since he dislocated his shoulder in training. “I’m reporting this.”

  “T’whom? The pig?” Varg held up a limp ear on the boar’s head. “He’s dead.”

  “I am a Knight Commander.” Cael growled through his teeth.

  “And you are still commanding,” Nolan declared condescendingly. He wrapped an arm around Cael’s shoulders. “Commanding the guts out of this pig!”

  Someone wheezed.

  The shifter slapped Cael lightly on the shoulder and spun him toward the kitchen like a child being redirected from a tantrum.

  “You’re all insane,” the knight muttered, being frog-marched toward the gutting block.

  Behind them, still crouched by the garden bed, Sol lifted his head just enough to call out over his shoulder.

  “Good boy! He’s adapting!”

  Caelus didn’t even dignify it with a response, just a snarl—but the gloves were on, and the pig was waiting.

  The smell hit first. Warm metal. Memory. For half a second, he wasn’t cleaning a boar—he was back on the battlefield, knelt beside a body.

  Flies already claimed their dominion, humming like tiny priests of decay. Cael’s stomach twisted. Valor had never smelled like this.

  But nobody cared.

  And so Caelus Moraine—Templar Commander of the Church, born of noble blood, defender of the Light—found himself elbow-deep in boar intestines, while a ranger and a werebeast argued over whether honey glaze or dry rub was thematically more appropriate.

  Cael’s hands worked with precision he didn’t remember learning. It unnerved him—how instinctively he adjusted the blade, how steady his cuts were.

  He never stooped so low as to gut prey.

  So why…?

  And why, by the Rot’s teeth, was he doing it for them?!

  But alas.

  The boar was cleaned, butchered, and hauled off before the sun even began to down. Between Nolan’s horrifying cheerfulness, Varg’s gutting expertise, and Caelus' quiet, reluctant precision, the deed was done before the blood could dry on his sleeves.

  The kitchen crew cheered when they arrived, dragging in trays of meat like returning hunters. Not a word of thanks was directed at Caelus specifically—but he chose to interpret a few vague nods as such.

  Just a little. Just enough.

  Someone slapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his armor. He almost drew his sword on reflex. Instead, he stood there blinking through the haze of grease and laughter, not sure whether to fight or laugh with them.

  They didn’t mock him when he walked past. No one called him ‘Your Holiness.’ No vegetable was thrown. No ghost child whispered omens into his soul. And Caelus—still sore, still damp, still deeply uncomfortable, feeling the unbearable sensation of not being hated for once—allowed himself, for the briefest moment, to believe he was adapting.

  Big mistake.

  He passed a group of mercenaries lounging near the firepit, blades out, jokes flying.

  One of them was absolutely massacring a whetstone, grinding at a dagger with the grace of a brick.

  Caelus slowed. His sense of order twitched.

  “You’re going to ruin the edge like that,” he said flatly.

  The man blinked.

  The group went still.

  Then, from the shadows behind him, a gray-haired brute with one eye and a grin carved from scar tissue leaned forward with mock reverence.

  “Would you look at that,” he said loudly, elbowing his friend.

  “One drink and a bath, and he thinks he owns the damn place.”

  Another merc whistled low.

  “Someone get him a throne! Captain Clean’s got opinions now.”

  Laughter broke around the circle like a thunderclap.

  “Careful,” a third chimed in, grinning.

  “Correct his grip and he might smite you with holy light next.”

  Cael’s spine snapped straight.

  He cleared his throat. Sharply.

  Walked faster.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter.

  He just needed to focus.

  The mission still loomed over his head like divine judgment.

  And yet—no one seemed to care.

  No horses were being prepped.

  No weapons sharpened with intent.

  Just… more soup. More laughter. More nothing.

  So, he sought Sol.