To the Veil, With Reverence
Chapter 13 Law & Order (By Law and Flame)
Previously: After a successful ambush on Payine’s mercenaries, Ben shares a quiet dawn with Leorcan, reassuring him that the village’s freedom—and responsibility—are now theirs. Meanwhile, back in Eola, Sheriff Balgair is summoned by a patrolman to investigate a gruesome murder. A woman has been ritually slain in an abandoned warehouse, her body displayed in a way that suggests a dark magical purpose. Disturbed but composed, Balgair calls on mages Arien and Eygas, who examine the mysterious symbols and determine the spell circle may have opened a rift—or caged something that crossed through. Unfamiliar runes and unnatural decay point to forces older than the known pantheon. Balgair refuses to abandon the victim, insisting on a proper funeral and preservation of the remains. He expresses a desire to contact her soul remnant and muses on seeking help from a disciple of Despoina—hinting at Rowena. The chapter ends with plans to secure the body for council evidence.
Balgair waited until the body was placed in the wagon before mounting up and guiding Black Star to the front. The stallion’s breath fogged the chill air, ears swiveling at every muted sound.
“When you’re ready,” Balgair said softly.
The driver nodded, still adjusting the bindings. “We’ll let you know once she’s secure.”
Moving the body took time, not out of necessity alone, but reverence. Every bone and piece had to be accounted for, wrapped in muslin soaked with pine oil and tied with red cord. The patrolmen cleared space in the wagon, shifting tools and evidence to a chest along the wall, whispering between themselves as they worked, as if afraid to disturb her further. When the final knot was tied and the linen shroud settled like snowfall over her, the driver stepped up onto the box and glanced back at Balgair.
“She’s ready, sir.”
Balgair didn’t speak. Instead, he raised his right hand, fingers splayed toward the sky, then lowered it with slow finality, pointing down the street toward the sheriff’s office.
The driver nodded once and gave the reins a soft flick. The team moved, hooves crunching in thick snow. Wagon wheels resisted at first, squelching through mud until they found firmer ground.
Jameson mounted beside him. “Anything I can do, sir?”
Balgair looked ahead. “Ride ahead with another scout. Clear the street. This needs to be clean. No delays.”
Jameson gave a crisp nod, turning to fetch another rider. Together, they moved ahead, warning pedestrians and waving merchants to the sides.
As the wagon turned out of the warehouse cul-de-sac, the procession passed through a street already changed. Wagons had pulled over, teamsters stood beside them, hats off, heads bowed. One woman stepped forward and dropped a single sprig of winter mint into the wagon’s wake, a simple ward of peace for the dead.
The snow fell gently, veiling the world in silence. The flakes caught in the breath of horses and hung like lace in the air. The entire town seemed to hold itself in stillness.
By the time they reached the first residential row, townsfolk had begun lining the path. Some clasped hands in prayer, others crossed their hearts or pressed tokens of bone and twine to their lips. Children were hushed, clutched gently to hips or shoulders, eyes wide with a sadness too deep to name.
Balgair felt the shift as much as saw it. This wasn’t just grief. It was ritual. Ancient, instinctive. Something sacred reawakened.
He glanced left. The driver was staring wide-eyed at the people, as if seeing his home for the first time.
Something new, then.
The procession turned, weaving slowly through the streets. The air was still, reverent. When they finally passed through the back gate of the sheriff’s compound, Balgair released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
He dismounted in silence, looping the reins over the hitching post and fitting a feed bag on Black Star. The stallion, quiet and watchful, dipped his head and began to eat. Even the oats seemed sacred now.
On the back dock, Balgair stood straight-backed, hands behind him, as the patrolmen gently lifted the shrouded body from the wagon. They entered the rear door with slow, even steps. As they walked the hall, every staff member they passed paused, bowed, and whispered silent blessings. Some pressed hands to lintels; others stepped aside to touch the linen shroud with two fingers, then their brow.
At the threshold of the Arcane Vault, Arien waited. She bowed her head and gestured them inside.
Step by step, they entered, the air inside already colder, thick with something just beyond understanding.
The marble slab had been cleared and washed with sacred oil. Eygas and Arien were ready. They began immediately, no wasted movement. Eygas lit a dish of copal resin, its sweet smoke curling into the stillness. Arien dipped a stylus of carved obsidian into ash and blessed oil, tracing the first glyph onto the floor.
They worked barefoot, sleeves rolled, hands marked with runes of consecration. They drew the circle in charcoal and salt, then embedded the sigils of nan Diathan at the crown, the sides of the heart, and down the flanks of the body. They closed the circle at her feet, placing a carved river stone beneath her heels, an old symbol of peace in death.
With care, they scattered frankincense and myrrh across the shroud. The scent filled the chamber, ancient and holy. Arien murmured a hymn as Eygas raised both hands, fingers inscribing runes into the air above the body.
Then came the chant.
In the spidery arcanic tongue, their voices wove together, neither loud nor soft, but inevitable. The runes pulsed. The air thickened. A pale blue shimmer enveloped the body. Cold swept over the chamber, not winter’s bite, but the grave’s hush.
Eygas and Arien turned as one and approached Balgair.
“It’s done,” Eygas said, voice low and steady.
Arien rubbed her arms, her skin pale with gooseflesh. “We’ve bought you two days, maybe less.”
Balgair bowed his head. “Thank you. Take the day, both of you. I doubt anyone’s using the crystal after this.”
They nodded and departed in silence.
Balgair stepped forward. The air still crackled faintly with power. He knelt at the slab, rested his hand gently against the edge.
“I’m sorry for what was done to you,” he whispered. “But I swear to you, on the wheel, on my badge, and on every god that hears this prayer, I will find them. And I will send them to the veil.”
A windless chill passed through him. Not malevolent, but present.
Something had heard.
He bowed once more, stood, and walked out, his footfalls echoing like drumbeats in the stillness behind him.
Alone in his office, with the shades drawn and the fire guttering low in the hearth, Balgair sat in stillness and shadow. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock, each beat echoing louder in the quiet like a drum marking time for the dead.
He had seen death more times than he could count, on battlefields, in alleyways, even by his own hand. He had sent men and monsters alike to the Wheel. But nothing had prepared him for what he saw today. That girl, what was left of her, was not just killed. She had been sacrificed. Laid out like an offering to something vile and forgotten.
A chill settled into his bones despite the wool coat hanging on the hook nearby. He didn’t stir.
His thoughts turned dark. Despite having Amelie and Nell, despite the warmth of their home and the quiet laughter that sometimes filled it, he felt more alone than ever. This was the frontier. And it wasn’t the howling cold or lawless men that unsettled him most. It was the absence.
There were no temples here. No incense curling through stained glass beneath the watchful eye of nan Diathan. No golden serpents twining their way around jade altars. No quiet shrines where the Dreamer whispered in riddles and visions. No wandering chain-makers with their songs of binding and release. No black-stone embassies where veiled priestesses of Despoina burned their sacred smoke and read the ashes.
Nothing.
Only snow. Silence. And the dead.
If he were in Ausden, he could call upon the acolytes of the Lady Wreathed in Smoke to speak with the soul remnant. If he were in Mòintich de Bhluathan, he could light candles beneath the boughs of the First Dreamer’s tree. Even Hewestown had one of the old oath-fires still burning, watched over by the masked votaries of the Guardian.
But here, in Eola, he had himself.
His staff. His family.
He clenched his jaw. And it’s not enough.
This town needed more. It needed sanctity, structure. It needed places where the gods could dwell, not just in stories and memories, but in stone and flame, in bells and song. They needed signs, visible, tangible signs, that the gods had not turned their backs.
That they were still watching.
That they still cared.
Outside, the wind whispered past the eaves, tugging at the shutters with a lonely rattle. In the half-light, Balgair bowed his head, not in prayer, but in resolve.
The gods might be far, but he would bring them closer.
In her smoke-veiled demesne, beneath a sky that knew neither dawn nor dusk, the Goddess of Prophecy stood alone, watching the tapestry of time. It stretched across the void like a living scroll, woven with strands of gold, silver, and shadow, each thread a soul, each knot a moment.
The tapestry shimmered as it shifted, revealing glimpses of eternity: how Eru had sung the world of Crann na Beatha into being, his voice echoing in the darkness, igniting the Flame Imperishable and breathing order into chaos. She saw Astinmah’s sorrow as she wandered the emptiness, mourning the death of her garden, until she welcomed nan Diathan into her creation, divine companions to tend the new world alongside her.
She traced one thread, ancient, gleaming with sorrow and fire, showing the Redeemer, who had given himself freely to bind the coming darkness. His sacrifice, like so many, had been sung into the fabric of the world.
But even among the beauty and burden of that grand design, a disturbance came.
The spirits cried out, not with song, but with the broken keening of loss.
She turned from the tapestry, the light of stars still reflecting in her ink-dark eyes, and whispered the Words of Gathering. Smoke curled tighter around her fingers as she wove them through the air in the shape of a spiral. The chamber darkened. The veils parted.
From the void beyond the veil, something formed.
Slowly, painfully, it came: a spirit, fragmented and raw. A woman with copper-hued hair, her essence fractured but luminous, her eyes like rain over ocean glass. She trembled as she took shape, her voice no more than wind through reeds.
“Please,” the spirit wept, though only the goddess could hear, “watch over my child… he is alone… cold... I was not ready…”
The goddess extended a hand, not to touch, for the dead were fragile, but to offer presence, weight, witness.
Then, from beyond the realm of spirits, another sound rose, a living voice, calling not in fear, but in hope. A prayer. The kind rarely uttered without cost.
She turned her head slightly, as if listening to a distant bell.
It came from a Ridere, a warrior of oaths and ashes. She knew him. He had stood once in halls where her name was whispered by few. His plea rose like mist across the tapestry. Not for glory. Not even for justice. But for peace, for the soul of a girl who had died in ritual, and for the town who now bore that weight.
She tasted the prayer on the air, felt its sincerity settle like falling snow.
The goddess of veils and visions, who saw the wheel turn from the first breath to the last, let the tapestry fall still.
Then, she reached.
And touched the one who could serve her purpose.
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