Four hours had passed since the Parade, since the shouting, the crying, the genuflecting, the vows shouted into ash-thick air and scribes bleeding at their fingertips. Aaron had seen it all, blinked at it once, and walked away from the throne they tried to burnish for him. And now the throne, left empty, had already birthed a doctrine.
A heresy of humility, they were calling it.
A miracle in dust.
No one dared question his refusal. Not openly. By the time his boots stepped past the Cathedral threshold, the clergy were already debating whether the Saint's true throne was the dirt of the trenches. Or perhaps he'd already been enthroned when he lay broken in the mud and vomited fire. That alone had sparked a new theological division: The Order of the Puked Benediction.
Aaron didn't care.
He was cold. He was tired. And more than anything, he wanted a bath.
The inner sanctums of Virex-Cathedralis were vast and hollow, ribbed like the bones of a long-dead titan. Every echo was a prayer. Every hall stank of sanctified soot and relic-vapor. Gilded murals flickered with ghostlight from incense crucibles. Choir-drones whispered liturgies overhead—hymns designed to be felt in the lungs more than heard with the ears.
As they passed through the grand cloisters, nuns whispered in his wake.
"His Eminence requires rest."
"But must we not present him to the Grand Reliquary?"
"Silence! He walks as he wills!"
Aaron didn't speak. He just let them shepherd him. Past the stained pulpits. Past bio-stitched murals of saints dying in starlight. Past half-open reliquary doors from which glowed the searing red of relics too sacred to name.
They brought him to a chamber.
A monk's cell, the biggest room on the middle floor.
Clean and quiet. With warm stone walls and a single, shuttered window. A pitcher of water sat on a table beside a small bowl of ash-flowers, their petals grey and curling like burnt parchment. Someone—Trenaxa, probably—had folded a trench-coat on the bedside.
On it, a note. In Aleric's sprawling script,
Your Eminence, I have bullied a Confessor into finding you the biggest room. Rest. We'll lie to the clergy about a fast or divine silence. — A.
Aaron exhaled.
Tugged off his boots. Pressed his raw soles to the floor, stone-cold but honest. He glanced to the small wooden altar beside the bed, usually reserved for holy teeth or martyr-bullets, and reached into his coat.
He pulled out the toy.
A tiny carved soldier. Rough-hewn, but careful. A child's work. Tattered armor, holding a torch. On the back, a crude flame had been etched, with patience, maybe reverence. He stared at it for a long moment, then placed it gently on the altar.
He laid down. Let his head hit the straw-filled pillow like a stone dropped into a shallow grave. Closed his eyes.
He didn't sleep.
Because—
Knock-knock.
Aaron groaned like a dying engine. One eye peeled open, bloodshot and accusing.
His entire body felt like someone had wrung it out, folded it into thirds, and mailed it back in a box labeled "fragile." Muscles he didn't know he had hurt. His spine was staging a quiet protest.
"Enter," he croaked. It came out like someone trying to gargle gravel.
The door creaked open. The light from the corridor blasted in like judgment.
Captain-Forgelord Rhest stepped in, framed in cathedral light. Smoke puffed gently from the shoulder vents of his armor like a sacred chimney. He smelled like gun-oil, incense, and very recent combustion—less man, more battlefield with boots.
Rhest dropped to one knee, moving with the reverence of a man proposing to a landmine.
"My lord," he intoned, like this was the most important moment in the liturgical calendar. "I have returned from the Forge-Shrine of Sanctorum Pyra. Father Dren's remains have been secured. Interred beneath the Iron Flame, with rites spoken in three tongues."
Aaron sat up slowly on the monk's cot, wincing as his spine cracked. He nodded, words caught somewhere between grief and gratitude.
"I've also brought my two most trusted," Rhest continued. "They will guard you at every hour. They do not sleep. They do not err."
He stepped aside, revealing two figures in the doorway—silent as the grave and just as comforting.
Both were Crucible-born, unmistakably so. Clad in lean-cut ash-gray armor with no insignia, no ornament. Faces as blank as sanded stone, expressions etched in permanent discipline. One male. One female. Both moved like ghosts who'd learned how to bleed silence into every footstep.
Aaron squinted. "Great. Living statues."
He gave a weak half-laugh, half-wheeze. "Thanks… I think."
Rhest offered a final bow, nothing theatrical, just a forged man giving respect, then exited without another word.
Silence settled again.
Aaron rubbed his face. "Alright. One of you. Tell the maids I want a bath. Something with steam. Maybe even soap, if we haven't declared hygiene heretical yet."
The male Crucible-Walker saluted with practiced grace, turned, and left in perfect silence.
Aaron turned his gaze to the remaining figure. The female guard stood like a statue, hands clasped behind her back.
"Okay," he muttered. "Now it's weird."
He gestured toward the nearest chair. "Sit. Or at least… look less like you're waiting to stab a daemon and then yourself for fun."
She blinked once. "I am Khaline, sir. An honor to serve."
Aaron squinted. "Khaline."
She gave a small nod.
"And the other one?"
"Varro. Also Crucible-born."
Aaron tilted his head, a strange curiosity poking through the haze of exhaustion. "This is probably a weird question but… do Crucible Walkers have families?"
The question hung in the air like gun smoke. Khaline didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was a little quieter.
"None, my lord. All Crucible Walkers are orphans. Taken from the ruinfronts. Father Dren took us in. He gave us names, purpose, and discipline. May he guide us in death as he did in life."
Aaron let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd held. "You're still guided," he said softly. Then changed the subject.
"Got any paint?"
Khaline blinked. "Paint, sir?"
He held up the wooden toy. It still felt warm, somehow. Like it had soaked up the heat of the crowd's belief.
"I want to finish it. Something proper. Something holy, if you people still count that word."
Khaline studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Yes my lord, I know just the thing."
She left and returned minutes later with a small metal case, reverently carried like a relic.
The Field-Blessing Kit.
When she opened it, Aaron almost laughed. "You people paint in blood and saint-dust."
She didn't deny it. "It is the pigment we use when naming trench-born relics. Or sanctifying war-banners. This kit was last used on a chaplain's bolt-pistol."
Aaron raised a brow. "So it's sacred?"
She nodded.
"Perfect," he said, and set the toy gently on the table.
The phials were labeled in looping ecclesiastic script:
[Martyr's Ember — red as scorched coals, ground from saint-ash and flame-lichen.]
[Woundsteel Gray — glinting like oiled iron, mixed from shrapnel and rust-oil.]
[Blood of the Faithful — dark, viscous crimson, preserved from executed heretics and blessed in penitential rites.]
[Sanctum Bone-White — shimmered like crushed moonlight, made from powdered saint-bone.]
[Ash-Garden Violet — soft and subdued, a mourning hue from incense and crushed ash-flowers.]
[Halo-Gold Ochre — dull and tarnished, pulled from melted cathedral icon-wax.]
[Holy Salve Varnish — final sealant, sweet-smelling of roses, ash, and relic oil.]
[Tear of the Penitent — a single droplet of sanctified water, used to seal the prayer into form.]
He began with Martyr's Ember, brushing the flame on the toy's torch, tiny and careful strokes.
Then Woundsteel Gray for the armor, rough-edged, like every soldier he'd ever known.
He used Blood of the Faithful for the eyes. Tiny dots of crimson.
Over the chest, a symbol in Sanctum Bone-White, a mark of purity. Not the ones etched in scrolls. This one was made from his own memory. His first warband sigil back on earth. Half-lost and half-sacred.
Ash-Garden Violet dusted across the soldier's back, for the mourning cloak.
And Halo-Gold Ochre traced along the rim of the torch, and the soles of the figure's carved boots. Dust-covered, yet divine.
Each stroke was slower than the last. Aaron found himself breathing with the brush. Painting not like a Saint, but like a man trying to remember what it felt like to paint figurines again.
"Hope," he muttered. "Flame, armor, blood. It's all there. Poor bastard's ready for war."
He set the toy down. Sat back.
But it wobbled and tipped over.
Aaron frowned.
The base wasn't even.
He picked it back up and reached across the table, grabbing the trench knife that had been laid beside the blessing kit, perhaps as a relic itself. Its edge was clean.
He held the toy in one hand. The knife in the other.
Carefully, he scraped the bottom.
A few curls of wood fell.
Then the knife slipped.
A hiss.
"Damn it."
Blood welled up from a shallow cut on his finger. A bright, vivid droplet formed—then fell.
It landed squarely on the figurine's painted flame.
The red seeped into the Martyr's Ember paint, running down the soldier's carved back, merging with the etched symbol of the flame.
Aaron didn't move.
A heat pulsed up from the table.
Then, the toy shimmered.