14. First Pilgrimage

The Greylands did not welcome. They endured.

Brittle grass crunched like shattered glass underfoot, each step echoing the desolation of a land leeched of life. The horizon blurred into a smudge of ash and bone-white sky, the air so still it felt like the world had been stuffed into a funeral urn. Claire's new uniform—a black, threadbare thing stitched from the banners of dead rebels—drank the weak sunlight, leaving her a silhouette against the wasteland. Good, she thought, adjusting the scarf over her mouth. Let the Monarch's drones mistake her for a shadow. Let them choke on the absence they'd created.

Devon flickered at the edge of vision, his form fraying like smoke caught in a draft. Without the city's smog to tether him, the Void gnawed at his edges. He'd been solid for six hours yesterday, eighteen the day before. Now he dissolved into static by midday, his voice reduced to a radio-dial hum in their molars. Behind Claire, Lissa coughed—a wet, rattling sound that marked time more reliably than the pocket watch buried in Claire's pack. The girl's purifier mask hung loose, its filter clogged with grey dust.

"We should rest," Natalie muttered, her glaive slung across her back like a steel scar. "Before the kid collapses."

Claire didn't turn. "The seminary's ruins are close. Shelter there."

"Shelter?" Lapen snapped, his sister's weight sagging against him. "You call that shelter?" He jabbed a finger at the skeletal outline of a farmhouse ahead, its roof caved in, walls pockmarked by old artillery fire. A rusted plow lay half-buried in the dirt, its blade crusted with something darker than rust.

"Better than open sky," Claire said, but her throat tightened. The farmhouse's door hung askew, its hinges screeching in the wind. It sounded like laughter.

Day 1: Communion

The Apostates found them at twilight, bleeding from the haze like ink from a wound.

Sister Veyra led them, her silhouette sharp as a shiv. Her hair, once shorn to the scalp in pious uniformity, now writhed in a wild mane threaded with crow feathers and shards of Talin-stone. Behind her shuffled Brother Orris, his hands spasming around the ghost of a censer, its chain still fused to his palm from a lifetime of service. Three others followed—faceless in tattered robes, their breaths hissing through filters made of rodent skulls.

"You're late," Veyra said, tossing Claire a waterskin that sloshed with something thicker than water.

Natalie's hand flew to her glaive. "Who the hell are these crows?"

"We are the Apostates," Orris rasped. His voice was a relic of another life—soft, melodic, the kind that could talk widows into unlocking their doors for purge squads. Now it crackled like parchment. "The Void's first choir."

Devon coalesced beside them, static distorting the air into prismatic fractures. "They're why we're here. Anchor points."

Claire uncorked the waterskin. The stench hit her first—fermented moss and burnt hair. "What's this? Blessings?"

"Bilewine," Veyra said. "Distilled from the glands of smog-rats. It'll keep your lungs from seizing."

Lapen forced a sip between Lissa's cracked lips. The girl gagged, veins flaring gold beneath her skin. "It's poison—"

"It's survival," Veyra interrupted. She crouched, her crow-feather cloak pooling around her like spilled oil. "The Monarch's light doesn't reach here. His smog neither. But his rot does." She pressed a thumb to Lissa's throat, where the gold tendrils pulsed. "Holy sickness. From the purifiers."

Natalie bristled. "We know what it is."

"Do you?" Veyra's smile was a sickle. "It's not just a disease. It's a brand. Every cough, every fever—it's him watching. Or so they say, but rumors are hard to check if it's not through magic."

The Apostates offered no bread, no blessings—only salted rat meat and a paste of crushed moth wings that glowed like dying embers. They ate in silence, the wind carrying the creak of the farmhouse's hinges.

Lissa trembled, her breath fogging the air in short, panicked bursts. "Lapen… the birds—"

"Eat," Lapen whispered, pressing a morsel to her lips. His hands shook. "For the birds. Remember?"

She swallowed, tears cutting tracks through the ash on her cheeks. "Birds don't live here."

Day 3: Baptism in Static

The well was a tomb.

Its stones, once pale granite, had blackened with age, the bucket long rotted to skeletal ribs. Lissa convulsed at its edge, her fever dreams spilling into the air as golden vapor that stank of censer smoke.

"Hold her," Devon ordered, his form solidifying with a sound like tearing canvas.

Lapen pinned his sister's thrashing limbs. "Don't you dare die. Not here. Not now."

Void-tendrils erupted from Devon's palms—black, liquid filaments that slithered into Lissa's wrists. The girl screamed, a sound that bent the grass into spirals, as the Monarch's poison fought its expulsion. Golden ichor bubbled from her pores, hissing where it struck stone.

"Almost—" Devon snarled, his void-eye flickering like a dying star.

Claire watched, her hand on Natalie's arm. "If this goes wrong…"

"It won't," Natalie lied.

With a wet snap, the corruption tore free—a serpent of light thrashing in Devon's grip. Lissa collapsed, gasping, her skin ashen. Around her finger coiled a thread of living Void, delicate as a spider's silk, its edges humming with half-heard whispers.

Devon dissolved into a shower of embers. "Don't… write ballads about this," he crackled, his voice scattering into the wind.

That night, Veyra sang.

The Apostates circled the farmhouse's crumbling hearth, their voices a discordant drone that vibrated in the teeth. No words—just sounds. The scrape of shovels. The hiss of smog. The wet gurgle of a Seraphim's last breath.

Lapen slept fitfully, Lissa's Void-thread coiled around his wrist like a leash. Natalie sharpened her glaive, eyes locked on Veyra. "Why follow him?" she asked finally. "The Void's just another cage."

Veyra's teeth gleamed in the dark. "Cages have doors. The Monarch's 'freedom' is a leash." She tossed a bone into the fire—a human femur, its surface etched with census markings. "Devon's no savior. But he's a key."

Claire stirred. "To what?"

"To the question you're too scared to ask." Veyra leaned close, her breath reeking of bilewine. "What comes after the revolution?"

The fire spat embers. Somewhere in the wastes, a drone's searchlight carved through the smog.

The drone's carcass lay gutted in the dirt, its wings snapped like a child's toy. Georg knelt beside it, his calloused fingers brushing the scrap of cloth tangled in its gears—a frayed red ribbon, the same shade his daughter had worn in her hair the day the Inquisition dragged her away.

"They made me watch," Georg said, his voice splintering. "Hung your corpse first. Then my wife. Then Lara. Five days on the gallows. They didn't even touch me. Just… left me there. To see."

Devon materialized beside him, static distorting the air. His form flickered—half-shadow, half-memory—as if the Greylands rejected the weight of his borrowed flesh. "They wanted you broken. Not with pain. With guilt."

Georg's laugh was a raw thing. "Guilt? For what? Choosing to not storm the Inquisition the moment I got free ? Refusing to lie there biding my time ?"

"For surviving." Devon's void-eye flared, its light reflecting the ribbon in Georg's hand. "They hung our corpses to mock you. To make you wish you'd died first. And to taunt you, to force your hand."

The admission hung like a noose. Natalie and Claire lingered at the edge of the clearing, their silence deliberate.

Georg stood abruptly, ash swirling around him like a shroud. "You think I didn't? Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. Lara. Her braids. The way she clutched that damned ribbon when they—" He choked, hurling the scrap into the dirt. "You were supposed to protect them."

Devon's form solidified just enough to grip Georg's wrist, his touch glacial. "I tried. Buried their names in ISB records. Redirected patrols. But the Inquisition… they already had the order.I did not know you were caught, much more them." His voice frayed, static bleeding into the words.

Georg yanked free. "I don't hate you. I hate them. The ones who laughed. The ones who called it justice."

"Then let's burn them." Devon pointed to the horizon, where the smog churned like a living thing. "Starting with them."

Flashback — The Execution

The corpses of Georg's family and Devon was unceremonial, to mock their existence, to show that they did not deserve the formality. Their corpses were towed and dragged across the streets, hung where they could be seen clearly. To show what happens to those that rebel against the Monarch.

This was routine, so people hardly pay much attention, they got used to it. Every day, every week, more rebels, more families as collateral.

The next morning was sombre, it was slow and enduring, the Greylands were quiet, too quiet that a rustle in the bush was clearer, whispers were louder. The city's contrast, it was bustling even though it had an overwhelming oppression to it.

A few flaps of wings was heard, and everyone ready for battle.The Archon descended—a titan of blackened steel, its six wings bristling with serrated hymns. The censer on its helmet, spewing golden smoke that reeked of embalming spices.