FOUR
ARAX
The work is soothing in its simplicity. See threat. End threat. No complications, no moral calculations, no weight of consequence. This is what I was made for. This is what the Ashen Flight trained me to be. A weapon with direction. A solution to problems that other solutions can’t touch.
I’m very good at ending things.
The question of why I’m ending these particular things—why I’m clearing a zone of safety around a witch I met hours ago—doesn’t have an answer I’m prepared to examine.
By the time I return to the shelter, full dark has fallen over the Reach. The darkness here isn’t natural. It presses with physical weight, thick with suspended ash that catches what little light exists and smothers it. Most creatures can’t navigate it without magical assistance.
I’m not most creatures.
The witch has built a small fire in the shelter’s interior, feeding it with debris that must have been scattered across the floor. The flames provide light but little heat—fire in the Reach burns differently, as if the corruption saps energy from the combustion itself. She sits near the flames with her back to asolid wall, her injured ankle extended, her hands occupied with work I can’t immediately identify.
I enter without announcing myself. She doesn’t startle.
“Thirty-two minutes.” She doesn’t look up from her work. “I was starting to think you’d decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“I eliminated ancillary threats. It required additional time.”
“Eliminated.” Her mouth quirks—not quite humor, but close. “That’s one word for it.”
I move to the opposite wall and lower myself to a seated position, maintaining clear sightlines to both the entrance and the witch herself. The fire creates dancing shadows across her features as she works.
She’s repairing her boot. The ankle damage must have stressed the leather, and she’s produced a needle and thread from somewhere in her pack. Her stitches are small and even, the work of someone who has mended their own gear countless times across years of travel.
“You watched me at the ritual site.” She speaks without looking up, her attention apparently fixed on her work. “Before you intervened. You watched.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question hangs suspended. I consider my response carefully, weighing what to reveal against what to conceal.
“Undetermined.”
Her hands still on the boot. She looks up, firelight caught in her gaze and held there. “Undetermined. After watching me collapse a ritual node and fight off a dozen attackers?”
“Your capabilities are clear. Your allegiances are not.”
“I’m not aligned with the Choir, if that’s your concern.”
“My concern encompasses more than the Choir.”
She sets the boot aside, her full attention now focused on me. The weight of her gaze is heavier than it should be—she’shuman, mortal, fragile in ways I haven’t been for millennia. She shouldn’t be able to hold my eyes like this. She shouldn’t be able to meet Oblivion and refuse to flinch.
“What else bothers you?”
I could lie. I could deflect. I could retreat into the silence that has served me well across lifetimes of dangerous conversations.
“The Ash Choir wants you.” I state the fact without inflection. “Their Cardinal has placed priority on your capture.”
“I’m aware.”
“Do you know why?”
“I have theories.” She doesn’t elaborate.
