Kael chose his words the way one chooses blades in a dark room, carefully, and deliberately.
Never the sharpest one first.
Eron sat across from him in the small stone chamber beneath the estate—one of the few places where divine resonance thinned enough to breathe. A single lantern burned between them, its light steady, unjudging. Kael had brought Eron here after the chapel released him, silent and pale, eyes carrying a weight that did not belong to someone his age.
“You didn’t answer them,” Kael said softly.
Eron nodded once. “I couldn’t.”
That alone told Kael everything.
The gods had not withdrawn because Eron passed.
They had withdrawn because he hesitated.
And hesitation was poison to divine certainty.
“That was dangerous,” Kael continued. “They won’t forget it.”
Eron let out
