ASTROLABE OF FATE

CHAPTER 5: ASH AND VOWS

Blue swallowed them. Then fire.

Not hellfire. Earthfire. The stink of burning wood and flesh and something worse. Something sweet.

They hit ground hard. Not stone. Mud. Cold. Full of ash.

Liora choked. Her glasses were gone. Blurry world. Smoke in her lungs. “Caelen?” Her voice cracked.

Hands found her before eyes did. His. Scarred, ink-stained, iron-strong. He pulled her up against his chest. Shielded her back with his body as debris fell. “I have you,” he said in her ear. Same words. Different time. “Breathe through cloth.”

He ripped a strip from his robe. Pressed it to her mouth. Wool, incense, him. She breathed.

The sky was wrong. Orange, not blue. The sun was a red smear behind smoke. Bells tolled. Not for prayer. For death.

“Where are we?” Liora whispered.

Caelen’s face went white under the tonsure. The bells. The smoke. The pyres. He knew the signs. Not the name. “God forgive me,” he whispered. Voice hollow. “The air is foul. The breath of the world is sick. Father Abbot spoke of days like this… ‘when God’s wrath walks as pestilence and half the world is taken.’” He looked at the red sun. “But he said that of the Saracen wars. Not… this.”

Liora stared at the plague carts. Her glasses gone. Everything blur. But she knew the year. “1348,” she breathed. “Year of the Great Dying. Black Death. It’s happening now

A scream cut the air. Close. Human.

Caelen was moving before Liora could protest. He dragged her behind the skeleton of a timber house. Blackened beams. Door hanging off one hinge. Through the gap: a village square. Pyres. Bodies stacked like cordwood. Men in masks. Beaks stuffed with flowers. The plague doctors.

“Stay down,” Caelen ordered. But his hands shook. Not from fear. From memory. “The world ends in ash,” he whispered now. “I thought it was just parable, but the prophecy was true.”

The astrolabe lay between them in the mud. Still pulsing. But weak. Cracked deeper. Blue light sputtering like a dying candle.

Liora grabbed it. Her fingers burned. “It’s damaged,” she hissed. “The jump fractured the gear. We’re stuck. Anchor’s bleeding energy.”

Footsteps. Not monks. Not soldiers. Heavy. Purposeful.

A man in a plague mask stepped through the smoke. Tall. Robe stained brown. Leather gloves. In his hand: a staff. At the end: a cross burned into wood.

He stopped. Looked at Caelen’s tonsure. Then at Liora’s jeans and t-shirt. Then at the glowing astrolabe in her hands.

“Heretics,” the man said. Voice muffled by the mask. “Time-thieves. The Abbot warned of you.”

Caelen stood. 6'4" between Liora and the stranger. Hands empty. But his stance said _over my corpse_. “I am Brother Caelen of St. Aelric’s. This woman is under my protection by God’s will.”

The plague doctor laughed. Wet. Wrong. “God’s will? God sent the Dying. And He sent us to cleanse. You carry a devil’s toy.” He pointed the staff at the astrolabe. “Give it to me, monk. Or we burn you both with the rest.”

Three more figures emerged from the smoke. Not doctors. Penitents. Rope around their necks. Torches in hand. Eyes hollow.

Caelen’s vow screamed _do not kill_. His duty screamed _protect her_. He stepped forward, unarmed, into the circle of firelight. “I will not surrender God’s instrument to men who wear death for faces. Lower your torches.”

The lead doctor tilted his head. “God’s instrument? That’s a lie from the Pit. We burn liars first.”

The doctor reached up and pulled off his mask.

Under it wasn’t plague sores. It was a younger version of Caelen’s face. Scar across the cheek. Eyes the same dark brown. 15 years younger. Brother Tomas. Caelen’s novice from the abbey. The boy he’d taught to read Latin.

Tomas smiled. Teeth too white. “Hello, Brother. Miss me?”

Caelen went still. Like stone. “Tomas died. In 1126. Fever took him before his vows.”

“Did he?” Tomas tapped the staff on the ground. The cross pulsed once. Same blue as the astrolabe. “Time folds, Brother. Not just for you. The astrolabe called me here too. Three years ago. I learned the truth. There is no God. Only gears. And I will have the master gear.”

Liora understood then. Cold sank into her bones. “He’s been jumping,” she whispered. “That’s why the astrolabe is cracked. He’s been forcing it. Stealing time.”

Tomas lunged. Not for Caelen. For Liora. For the astrolabe.

Caelen moved faster. He caught Tomas’s wrist. Bone cracked. Tomas screamed. But the penitents closed in. Torches high.

Smoke thickened. The pyres flared. Liora’s lungs seized. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t calculate. Science failed in ash.

Caelen roared. Not prayer. Not Latin. A sound from deep in his chest. He slammed Tomas into the mud. Took the staff. Broke it over his knee. The blue light inside died.

“Run,” he told Liora. Shoved the astrolabe into her hands. “Now. Before they surround us.”

But there was nowhere to run. Fire behind. Penitents ahead. Tomas bleeding at his feet, laughing through broken teeth: “You can’t save her, Brother. God doesn’t save anyone."

Liora grabbed Caelen’s robe. “The abbey,” she gasped. “You said your abbey locked gates. Is it near?”

“Three miles,” Caelen said. Then, softer, only for her: “I was ordered to fast three days and never touch it again. Father Abbot said time belongs to God alone. If I return now, with you and this curse… I break every vow I ever swore.”

Liora looked at him. Ash on his face. Fire in his eyes. Vow breaking and remaking with every breath. “Then we break that order too,” she said. And pulled him into the smoke.

Behind them, Tomas’s scream: “YOU CANNOT OUTRUN TIME!”

Ahead: three miles of plague, fire, and an abbey that might not open.

Caelen took her hand. His grip was iron. His voice was steady. “If God abandoned this place, then I will not abandon you.”

The astrolabe pulsed once in her palm. Weak. But alive.

1348 didn’t want them. And someone from Caelen’s past wanted them dead.

The bells tolled again. For Matins. Or for their burial.