The Archon’s hymns died mid-roar, its golden aura flickering like a guttering candle. For a heartbeat, the battlefield held its breath. Then the titan of blackened steel drove its dual swords into the earth, the impact cracking the bedrock beneath. Dust plumed as it knelt, gauntleted hands trembling at its helmet’s edge. With a hiss of pressurized steam, the faceplate disengaged—and the rebels froze.

  A woman stared back, her face streaked with soot and sweat. Blonde hair, matted and greasy, framed eyes so blue they seemed to swallow the Greylands’ gloom. “Please,” she rasped, voice raw as a fresh wound. “The Monarch’s grip… it slips in me for moments. But it always returns.” Her gaze locked on Devon. “You’re the one who wrote the Black Liberation. The shadow that eats light.”

  Natalie’s glaive hovered at the woman’s throat. “Archons don’t plead. They purge.”

  “Wait.” Claire’s hand tightened on her buckler, her mind racing. The Archon’s armor bore fresh scars—jagged, unprofessional repairs, as if hacked by desperate hands. “You’re the one who’s been sabotaging patrols. Burning supply caravans.”

  The woman nodded, chains clinking beneath her armor. “When I’m… myself.”

  Devon materialized beside her, static distorting the air. “Tier 5 Archon. Master strategist. Killer of cities.” His void-eye narrowed. “Yet here you kneel.”

  “I’m begging,” she hissed. “The Monarch’s sigils—they’re alive in me. Gnawing. Even now—” Her body jerked, golden light seeping from her pores. “Do it. Before he drags me back.”

  Devon’s ethereal hands clamped her temples. “This will hurt.”

  “Everything does.”

  The scream that tore from her throat was not human. Golden sigils erupted across her armor, thrashing like serpents as Devon’s Void-tendrils speared them. The Apostates circled, chanting in a language of fractured static, their rodent-skull filters misting with black ichor.

  “Focus on her spine!” Veyra barked, dragging a jagged Talin-shard across her palm. Blood sizzled as she smeared it over the Archon’s chest plate. “The Monarch’s leash is knotted there!”

  Lapen shielded Lissa’s eyes as the woman’s back arched, armor plates rupturing. “Should we… help?”

  “Help?” Natalie snorted, glaive still drawn. “She led the Siege of Karst. Leveled three blocks to flush out a single pamphleteer.”

  “And now she’s meat,” Georg muttered, his voice hollow. His fingers brushed the red ribbon in his pocket—Lara’s ribbon. “Just like the rest of us.”

  The baptism lasted thirteen minutes.

  When it ended, the Archon’s armor lay in pieces, still smoking. The woman—Elara, she gasped her name between sobs—collapsed into the dirt, her skin mapped with jagged violet veins where golden sigils had burned away.

  “Well?” Natalie jabbed her glaive near Elara’s throat. “Still feeling chatty?”

  Elara met her glare. “I slaughtered children under His command. Executed rebels who were targeted for their potential.”

  Elara’s vision blurred as the Void’s cold seeped into her bones. For a heartbeat, she was back in the Cathedral of Five Days, her gauntleted fist trembling above a rebel child’s chest. The Monarch’s hymn thundered in her skull—“Purge the tainted.” But the girl’s eyes, wide and unbroken, mirrored her sister’s before the smog took her. Elara’s sword had veered—a fractional slip, carving stone instead of flesh. The lapse cost her a week in the soul engine’s maw, but in moments like this, she knew that her instincts were not overridden, she was stil human.

  She sat up slowly, clutching a shard of her shattered breastplate. “Now I’m here. Do with that what you will.”

  Claire stepped forward. “Why?”

  “Because this—” Elara tapped her Void-scarred chest. “—is the first real breath I’ve taken in twenty years.”

  The others got baptized at noon.

  One by one, they came—Melissa with her wrench raised like a scepter, Gonov silent as ever, Lapen clutching Lissa’s hand. Even Dwang, Georg with his Rug Rat squire, still limping from last week’s skirmish. Baruch and Trent also went through with it.

  Baruch, ever the pragmatist, spat into the dirt before stepping forward. “Make it quick, specter. I’ve got a carburetor to rebuild.” His Machinist sigil—a gear branded over his heart—dissolved into ash, replaced by violet threads that coiled around his wrench. He flexed his fingers, scowling. “Feels like a damn hangover.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Trent, quieter, flinched as Devon’s hands touched his brow. His Scrap Assembler sigil flared gold before crumbling. “Will it… fix the tremors?” he whispered, staring at his scarred palms. The Void-thread pulsed, steadying his grip. For the first time in years, his hands didn’t shake.

  Devon’s voice echoed through the ruins as he pressed his palms to each forehead:

  “Name?”

  “Melissa Vorn. But you already knew that, you spectral bastard.”

  Age:26

  Art:Unbound(initate)

  Her Gear Junky sigil ignited—then crumbled to ash. Violet light threaded her scars, her breath catching as decades of suppressed pain flared and faded. “Huh. Feels like shedding a skin.”

  Gonov didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. His Gutter Sniper sigil—a crosshair branded between his shoulders—dissolved under Devon’s touch. When the Void-thread curled around his rifle barrel, he simply nodded.

  Name:Gonov Loyd

  Age : 35

  Art : Unbound(initaite)

  Devon knelt, his form solidifying just enough to mimic human warmth. “Brave one. Name?”

  “Lissa.”

  A muscle twitched in Georg’s jaw.

  Age : 12

  Art: Unbound (initiate)

  She grinned, Void-light dancing in her eyes. “Unbound… and annoying.”

  Even Natalie laughed.

  Lissa’s grin faltered as the Void-thread coiled around her wrist. The world sharpened—the Greylands’ rot, the metallic tang of Devon’s static, Lapen’s breath hitching behind her. For years, her lungs had been bellows for the Monarch’s poison. Now, the air tasted clean. She pressed a hand to her chest, half-expecting silver veins to unravel like yarn. What if I’m not enough? The fear lasted a breath. Then she caught Georg’s gaze—his jaw clenched, Lara’s ribbon peeking from his pocket—and straightened. Enough for him.

  Name : Georg Tamphton

  Age : 32

  Art : Unbound(initate)

  Devon’s form flickered, static bleeding into the campfire. Each baptism had cost him—strands of his being unraveling to knit theirs. He flexed a translucent hand, memories surfacing: Georg’s laughter in their childhood cellar, Lissa’s first cough, the Inquisitor’s scalpel while carving him out. Chaos of our making

  Elara watched from the shadows, her Void-scars pulsing in time with Devon’s voice.

  “The Monarch’s classes are cages,” he intoned, circling the fire. “Fighter. Mage. Bard—labels to make you forget you’re people.” Static swirled into visions: A Stone Pelter reciting poetry. A Seraphim weeping over a rebel’s lullaby. “The Void isn’t power. It’s memory. The parts of you they tried to burn.”

  Georg stood abruptly. “And when we win? What replaces the classes? More chaos?”

  “Yes.” Devon’s void-eye flared. “Chaos of our making. No tiers. No tiers. Just… choices.”

  Claire raised an eyebrow. “You’re terrible at sermons.”

  “Noted.”

  Elara stepped into the firelight, her borrowed rebel rags hanging loose. “The Monarch’s soul engine—it’s fed by the classes and the oppression. Every sigil, every promotion, it fuels him. But your Void…” She pressed a hand to her chest. “It starves him.”

  Silence. Then:

  “So we hit the engine,” Georg said quietly.

  “We hit it hard,” Natalie corrected.

  Elara’s laugh crackled like kindling. “With what? Hymns and hope?”

  Natalie’s grip tightened on her glaive. Elara’s voice—calm, measured—clawed at old wounds. She’d lost comrades to Archon raids, watched Gonov’s sniper nests collapse under golden fire. Mercy is a luxury, she’d told herself. But now, as Elara stood unarmed, Void-scars glowing like fresh welts, Natalie’s resolve faltered. Is she a weapon or a liability? The glaive’s edge hovered, unanswered.

  Elara lifted her shattered breastplate shard. “We still do not know how the Monarch uses the classes and the pain and oppression he causes. But Hope is what we need right now.”

  Georg’s shadow loomed over Elara. “You stood on the gallows,” he said, voice low as a knife-drag. “When they hung my wife. My girl. Did you twitch then?”

  Elara didn’t flinch. “No. I conducted the hymns.” Her thumb traced the breastplate shard’s edge. “But I remember your daughter’s ribbon. Red, like the pamphleteer’s ink in Karst.” She met his glare. “I brought it back for you, it was something that I could do that wasn’t eye-catching. I will do my penance, I will repent. I will try.”

  The Apostates sang as they marched.

  No longer the guttural dirge of before, but something sharper—a melody stitched from stolen rebel ballads and the clang of Void-forged steel. Lissa hummed along, her silver-veined fingers conducting an invisible choir. Even the Greylands seemed to listen, the ash-stiffened grass trembling in time.

  Veyra’s voice cut through the hymn. “She reeks of Holy smoke.” Her talon-like nails gestured at Elara. “The Void scrubbed her sigils, not her stink.”

  Natalie snorted. “Says the woman who bathes in rat glands.”

  “We all stink,” Claire said, eyeing Elara’s rigid posture. “But she’s right about the engine. Doubt her after it’s ash.”

  The Apostates’ song resumed, but the melody bristled with discord. Lissa hummed louder, her silver veins pulsing like a metronome.

  “It won’t last,” Claire muttered, watching a speck of color—a lone wildflower?—peek through the grey.

  Devon materialized beside her, his form barely a shadow. “Nothing does. But it’s enough for now.”

  Ahead, Elara walked flanked by Natalie and Georg—a former Archon between a grieving father and a woman who’d once sworn to skewer her.

  How poetic, Claire thought. How fragile.

  The seminary loomed in the distance, its broken spire clawing at the smog. Somewhere inside, maps awaited. Plans. A war brewing in the bones of a dead god’s house.

  Claire adjusted her scarf. “You trust her?”

  Devon’s static hummed. “She has betrayed the Monarch, we are in the same boat.”

  “And the Void?”

  His form flickered. “Ask me tomorrow.”

  The hymn swelled. Somewhere, a bird sang—or the wind lied.