Corruption. That's what she called the golden light beneath my skin, the changes that made my senses sharper, my reflexes faster. The way I could now hear heartbeats through stone walls, the rhythmic percussion of life pulsing through corridors I'd once thought silent. The way I could smell emotions on the air like perfume. Fear was acrid and metallic, joy was sweet likehoney, grief was as heavy as wet earth. Each new ability felt less like corruption and more like awakening, like parts of myself I'd never known existed were finally opening their eyes.
The path down from the Citadel wound through ancient forest, autumn painting the leaves in shades of fire and blood. Each tree stood like a sentinel bearing witness to the season's slow death, their branches creating a canopy that filtered the weak afternoon light into scattered golden beams. I'd walked this path countless times for supply runs, my feet knowing every root, every stone, every place where the trail dipped or rose. But never like this. Never with guards trailing fifty paces behind, close enough to watch my every movement, far enough to seem like they weren't monitoring my every breath. Never with the princes' voices still echoing in my bones, their words reverberating through me like the aftershocks of some great bell that had been struck in the depths of my soul.
Come as yourself. Come as ours.
The forest gave way gradually to cultivated fields, the wild yielding to the ordered. Neat rows of winter wheat struggled through early frost, their pale green shoots defiant against the creeping cold. Split-rail fences marked property boundaries, their weathered wood grey and patient. Then came the first houses, timber and thatch clustered like children seeking warmth around a hearth. Smoke rose from chimneys in lazy spirals, carrying the scent of baking bread and rendered fat, normal things, human things, so achingly different from the Citadel's perpetual smell of cold stone and ritual incense.
Oakhaven felt like stepping into another world. A gentler world. A world that had somehow escaped the harsh equations of duty and sacrifice that governed my existence.
A world where children played.
Three of them chased each other through the market square, their laughter bright as temple bells, clear as spring water. Thesmallest, a girl with cheerfully mismatched ribbons in her hair shrieked with delight as her brother caught her, spinning her in circles until they both collapsed in a giggling heap on the cobblestones. Their mother watched from a shop doorway, her smile soft with the kind of love I'd only seen in dreams, in the forbidden stories Master Theron sometimes whispered when he thought no one else was listening. She didn't shout warnings about dignity or proper behavior. She simply stood there, hands resting on her apron, drinking in the sight of her children's joy as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
A world where lovers held hands.
A young couple walked past, fingers intertwined, heads bent together in intimate conversation. She wore wildflowers in her hair, probably picked from the meadow beyond the village, their petals already beginning to wilt but still beautiful. He kept touching her face, gentle brushes of affection that made her glow, that painted her cheeks with color and her eyes with light. They moved like they were alone in the universe, like nothing existed beyond their joined hands and whispered promises. I caught fragments of their conversation, something about a cottage, about curtains for the window, about planting roses in the spring. Plans for a future they assumed they'd have.
Outside the bakery, an elderly woman sat with a girl who couldn't have been more than seven. Between them lay a length of dough on a wooden board dusted with flour, and the grandmother's weathered hands guided smaller ones through the motions of braiding bread. Her fingers were gnarled with age, marked with the brown spots of accumulated years, but they moved with practiced grace.
"Over, under, through," she said, voice warm as summer honey, patient as stones. "Just like braiding hair, little dove. See? You're doing beautifully."
The girl beamed with pride as her clumsy fingers slowly formed something resembling a braid, the strands of dough crossing each other in an approximation of the pattern her grandmother demonstrated. When she looked up for approval, her face open and eager, the old woman kissed her forehead with such tenderness that my chest ached. The kiss lingered, deliberate and loving, and I saw the girl's eyes flutter closed as if trying to preserve the moment forever.
Oakhaven was everything the Citadel wasn't.
No cold corridors where footsteps echoed like accusations against stone that had witnessed centuries of suffering. No silent meals where emotion was sin and questions were heresy, where we sat in rows at long tables and ate without tasting, fueling our bodies like one might oil a mechanism. No bleeding dawns where duty consumed everything you might have been, where the person you could have become was sacrificed to the person you were required to be.
Just life. Simple, warm, mortal life. The kind of life I'd been taught to protect but never to want for myself.
"Keeper Pandoros!"
The voice pulled me from my reverie like a hand breaking water's surface. Marcus, the baker, stood in his doorway, flour dusting his beard like premature snow, coating his apron in white streaks. His face split into a genuine smile, the kind that reached his eyes and crinkled the corners, the kind that transformed his whole expression. The kind no one in the Citadel ever wore, because smiles there were controlled things, measured and appropriate, never spontaneous or unreserved.
"The usual order's ready," he said, wiping his hands on his apron in a gesture so ordinary it nearly broke my heart. But then he stepped closer, voice dropping to something more confidential, more intimate. "But first, might I beg a moment? There's someone who'd like to thank you."
Before I could respond, before I could manufacture some excuse about schedules and duties, he ushered me inside with the gentle insistence of someone who wouldn't take no for an answer. The bakery wrapped around me like an embrace, warm and yeasty, filled with the comfortable chaos of a working kitchen. Loaves cooled on racks along one wall, their crusts golden and cracked. Steam rose from somewhere in the back where fresh batches were being pulled from the ovens. The air itself seemed to shimmer with heat and the smell of honest labor.
And there, seated at a small table near the window, was a young couple.
She was heavily pregnant, her belly round and full beneath her simple dress, hands resting on its swell with the protective instinct of impending motherhood. Her fingers moved in slow circles, soothing or connecting with the life growing inside her. He sat close, one arm around her shoulders, the other holding her hand, his thumb tracing gentle patterns across her knuckles. They both stood when they saw me, faces lighting with something that looked horribly like reverence, like I was something holy rather than something they should fear.
"Keeper Pandoros," the woman breathed, her voice trembling slightly with emotion. "We've hoped to see you. To thank you."
"Thank me?" The words felt thick on my tongue.
"For your service." The man's voice carried the weight of genuine gratitude, deep and sincere. "For protecting us. The plagues that struck Westhill last year, the famine that destroyed Northgarden's crops two seasons past—they never touched Oakhaven. Because of you. Because of the Keepers watching over us from your mountain."
My mouth went dry. My tongue felt like leather against my teeth. They thought we protected them from plague. Fromfamine. From the mundane disasters that plagued mortal life, the natural calamities that swept through the world like the turning of seasons.
They knew nothing of the Gate.
Nothing of the imprisoned princes whose rage could level mountains, whose power could reshape reality itself. Nothing of the blood price paid every dawn, the cost extracted from my veins to maintain the bindings. Nothing of the true darkness we held at bay—or claimed to. Nothing of the possibility that everything they'd been told was a carefully constructed lie, a necessary deception to keep them compliant and grateful.
"Our child will grow up safe," the woman continued, her hand moving in slow circles over her belly, her touch reverent. "Because of your sacrifice. Because you stand between us and... and whatever evils lurk beyond our understanding." Her eyes glistened with unshed tears of gratitude that cut into me like glass.
The weight of their ignorance sat on my chest like stone, like the mountain itself pressing down. They looked at me with such hope, such faith, such absolute certainty in the rightness of the world. They believed we were heroes. Protectors. Sacred guardians standing against nameless threats, noble and selfless in our isolation.
Not jailers. Not torturers feeding divine prisoners with blood and binding words, maintaining a prison that might be the greatest injustice ever perpetrated.
