Trials of Envy

The chamber behind them emptied slowly.

Scribes resumed their notes with trembling hands. The cardinals exchanged low, frayed words. Veylan had not moved. And the Head of the Order turned without another glance.

Koda followed.

The weight of the dark coin still rested in his palm, its cold edge pressing into his skin. He didn't speak, didn't ask. The invitation had been clear. This was not command. This was something else.

The others started after them, but at the arched threshold, the Head lifted one hand.

"The rest of you," he said without turning, "will be taken to your quarters. You've earned rest—and safety."

A pause. Then, as if an afterthought:

"Maia."

She straightened at the sound of her name.

"I think it's better if you came as well."

Her smile was immediate—relieved, certain. "Of course."

Koda waited as she fell into step beside him. And together, the two of them followed the Head deeper into the heart of the cathedral.

Not back through the high halls or judgment domes. Not toward the Order's barracks or formal offices.

But down.

Past the marble corridors, past the lantern-lit vaults. Into stairwells where the stone grew colder and older, where glyphs on the walls were written in tongues no longer spoken aloud. The echoes changed pitch. The weight of the air thickened.

This was not just beneath the Church.

It was below it.

Far below the noise of doctrine. Below the thrones and councils and cloistered pride. Where no cardinal's voice could reach.

Maia drew closer to Koda as they descended, her hand brushing his for the briefest moment. Neither spoke.

The Head of the Order led them without hesitation.

To a door that bore no seal. No lock. Just stone, worn smooth by hands long gone.

He placed his palm against it.

It opened.

The chamber welcomed no light, only the breathless hush of stone long kept secret. The heavy door slid inward without sound, revealing a space carved directly into the bedrock beneathReprieve.

The walls bore no banners. No candles flickered. There was nothing ornamental here—only purpose.

And in the center of the floor, chiseled deep into the stone as if to outlast kingdoms, was a circle of script.

An oath.

Maia slowed, eyes scanning the markings—but Koda stopped outright. The breath caught in his chest, his pulse beat in his ears. He knew these words. Not from books. Not from teaching.

He had seen them.

Not in memory, but within the system itself. Flickering through vision at the moment the Guides gifted him his memory showcasing what was. These were not teachings. They were truth.

Koda knelt, fingertips brushing the edge of the engraving as he read:

"We are not kings.

We are not gods.

We do not rule.

We watch.

And when corruption rises,

when truth is bled dry for power's sake,

we are the hand that guides.

We dismantle.

We return it to balance.

So swears the Order.

So swears the Hand.

So swears the Guide."

Maia's breath left her in a quiet gasp.

The Head of the Order stepped forward, placing one hand over the etching—not to venerate, but to reaffirm. The motion was subtle, practiced, familiar.

"The first vow," he said. "Older than this stone passage. Before the Cardinals. Before the churches."

Koda rose slowly. "You still follow it?"

The man looked at him then. Really looked.

"It's not just followed," he said quietly. "It binds us. Every one of us takes it in the presence of the window. If we covet power, if we step beyond our place—we lose the system. Completely."

Koda felt the truth of it like a pull beneath the skin. This was not ceremony. This was a constraint forged by the Guide Himself.

Observers. Watchers. The blade hidden until the rot spread too far.

Only then did they act.

Maia looked to Koda, eyes wide with a dawning understanding. "You weren't just brought here for protection."

"No," Koda said. His voice was steady.

"They brought me to see if I'd forgotten this."

The Head of the Order stepped past the carved oath, his pace slow, almost reverent. But there was a sharpness behind his words now—like a blade long sheathed but never dulled.

"By our own oath," he said, "we are watchers. Nothing more. We are the ones who chose to guide, not rule. And so we swore never to wear crowns. Never to sit on thrones."

He turned to face them fully now. The filtered light from above barely reached him, but even in shadow, his presence anchored the room.

"And so," he continued, "we watched. As the people built altars. As the Cardinals carved seats from power, and called it piety. We watched the Patrons honored with shrines. We watched them lifted—worshiped—as gods."

Maia shifted, uncomfortable. "You let them?"

The Head gave a faint, humorless smile.

"The churches are of use," he said. "They carry the doctrine. They ease suffering. They give language to the sacred. They help." He paused. "But help is not holiness. And usefulness is not truth."

He walked slowly to the center of the etched circle and looked down at the words that bound them all.

"If they truly spoke for the divine," he said, softer now, "they would tear down their marble halls. Burn their tapestries. Scatter the gold. They would return to the road, with the poor, the sick, and the forgotten."

He looked up—first to Maia, then to Koda.

"They would dismantle the entire thing."

Koda felt the weight of it settle in his chest—not as judgment, but as recognition. A grief long buried. A calling long ignored.

"The Five," the Head said, voice low now, reverent, "never wanted to be gods."

Koda's voice came quiet, almost lost in the stone around them.

"Though that," he said, eyes still on the oath, "is precisely why they are worthy of it."

The Head paused mid-step, looking back.

Koda didn't flinch. "The Guide showed me. Not in symbolism, not in dreams—but through his own memories. Things I didn't understand then. The choices I made. The quiet ones. The hard ones." He met the older man's gaze. "That's how He speaks. In what we already are."

The Head studied him for a long moment. Then gave a single, approving nod.

Without another word, he turned and led them deeper.

They reached a stone platform ringed in faded runes. A mechanism, older than the spires above, hummed faintly beneath their feet. With a grinding lurch, it began to lower—stone shifting against stone as they descended into shadow.

The light of the upper chamber faded.

Down they went.

Past catacomb and carved hall. Past foundations and forgotten crypts. Past even the old records chambers sealed from public knowledge. It was cold here. Still. Not untouched—but untouched by time.

At last, the lift slowed.

They stepped out into a wide corridor sealed behind a door of blackened iron, reinforced with wards Koda could barely perceive, let alone understand. There were no guards here. There didn't need to be.

Several tons of stone rested above them. No ladder. No stair. No escape without the Order's will.

The Head moved a hand across the door. It opened silently.

Inside was a room unlike any either of them had seen.

Not massive—but dense. Shelves carved into the walls themselves, each filled with scrolls bound in cloth so old they seemed part of the rock. The air smelled of dust, earth, and something older. Something true.

"This," the Head said, "is the Archive."

His voice was calm, but there was reverence in it. Awe, even after decades.

"Most think the Archive is above. The records, the towers, the scriptoriums—those are just copies. Reflections." He stepped inside, gesturing for them to follow. "This is the original."

He trailed a hand along the edge of a shelf.

"The true library of the Hand," he said. "When they were still mortal."

He looked back over his shoulder, a faint smile playing at his lips.

"It was once kept in Red Pine. But long ago, before the War of Oaths, it was moved here. Beneath Reprieve. Beneath the city that never lies."

He looked to Maia, then to Koda. His voice softened.

"This… is the First Library of the Librarian."

The Head walked deeper into the chamber, fingers brushing a groove in the stone where ancient words had long since faded with time. Then, quietly, he turned.

"I should offer you more than titles," he said. "More than riddles and restraint."

He stepped forward, his eyes clear now—less the shadowed gaze of authority, and more the steady clarity of a man laying down his guard.

"My name is Calthis."

He extended a hand. Weathered. Calloused. The hand of a man who had worked, written, fought, and endured.

"And I meant what I said," Calthis added. "I see you as my equal."

Koda didn't hesitate.

He reached out and took the man's hand.

The clasp was firm, but not overbearing. Honest. A meeting of weight, not posturing.

"You've walked a road I didn't believe was possible anymore," Calthis said, voice low. "And you've done it without guidance. Without a seat. Without needing to steal power from those before you."

He looked toward the shelves—toward the carved stone and sealed records and truth buried deeper than most could imagine.

"I've known saints who never heard the Guide's voice. Known kings who ruled without ever once considering they might be wrong. But you… You listen. You change. That is what makes you dangerous to the wrong people."

He looked back to Koda, and there was no caution left in his expression. No guarded words.

Only pride.

"And that's why I've brought you here."

Calthis held Koda's grip a moment longer before releasing it. Then, he turned and walked further into the chamber—past a shelf reinforced with iron bands, past stone alcoves with sealed drawers, past records so old they seemed fossilized.

He stopped at a vault door—no keyhole, no handle, only a depression at chest height, etched with the sigil of the Guide: the open eye within the compass rose.

"Few know the Order's founding," he said without turning. "Even fewer know what we were first meant to protect people from."

He pressed his palm into the depression.

The sigil flared dimly, not with light, but with absence—like the memory of something that had never been lit at all. A sound followed, dull and heavy, as locks deep within the wall disengaged.

Beyond the door was a long, arched corridor of polished black stone. The walls were lined with alcoves—but unlike those above, none bore names. No tags. No classification marks. Only warning runes, glowing faintly like blood beneath skin.

Maia hesitated.

Koda stepped forward without pause.

Calthis nodded once and led them in.

"The world sees virtue and vice as concepts," Calthis said. "Ideas to strive toward or guard against. The Church teaches as much because it's clean. Safe. Digestible."

He paused beside a sealed archway. There was no door—only a thick pane of what looked like obsidian, humming faintly.

"But what happens," Calthis asked, "when a sin gains shape? When it chooses not to linger as a whisper, but to become form?"

He stepped aside and gestured toward the vault.

"Envy was the first."

Maia's brows drew down faintly. "A demon?"

Calthis shook his head. "Not in the sense you're used to. Not a beast. Not a shade. Not even a person. A mirror."

He paused, looking to both of them now.

"It came from a ruined estate north of the Greymire coast. Found by scavengers picking over a collapsed noble keep. The mirror was buried beneath the drawing hall—unbroken despite the ceiling having collapsed directly onto it. One of the men tried to pry it free to sell it."

Calthis' face darkened.

"He gouged out his own eyes within two hours of looking into it."

Maia flinched. Koda's expression didn't change.

Calthis went on.

"They brought it to the Order under the assumption that it was cursed. We prepared the usual quarantine—but it refused to be categorized. Magic refused to hold around it. Scribes who attempted to record its dimensions couldn't write straight. Reflections were always slightly off. At first, we assumed it was warped glass, poor craftsmanship."

He turned to the vault again.

"But it wasn't the mirror that was warped. It was us."

He let the silence settle before continuing.

"We had a woman then. High Archivist Helen. Brilliant. Cold. Controlled. She volunteered to test proximity exposure under ritual supervision."

He exhaled, almost to himself.

"She looked into the mirror. Five seconds. That was all."

Koda tilted his head. "And?"

"And after those five seconds, she spent the next week weeping. Not screaming. Not talking. Just… weeping."

Calthis' voice dropped.

"When she finally spoke, she described what she'd seen. Not a reflection. Not a trick of her appearance. But the version of herself she believed she could have been. The version who had chosen differently at every important moment. The braver version. The stronger version. The one who'd been loved."

Maia's breath caught.

Calthis nodded grimly.

"The mirror didn't reflect what was. It reflected what was wanted most. Not as a dream. As a possibility. As a cruel, unreachable ideal. And it showed you—only you. No matter how many stood beside you, the mirror's vision was tailored. Made to fracture you, piece by piece."

He turned away from the vault now, his hands clasped lightly behind his back.

"It was Envy. Not metaphorically. It was the sin, wearing glass as its form. We tried to contain it. We locked it here, in the Archive's deepest hall. It hasn't moved, hasn't spread. But neither has it changed."

Calthis looked at Koda now. Really looked.

"I tell you this not to frighten you. But to prepare you."

"For what?" Koda asked.

Calthis held his gaze.

"For the reality that some things in this world don't want to be saved. They want to twist. To watch. To wait. Envy isn't alone. We've encountered others. Gluttony—what you fought—was raw, destructive, chaotic. But Envy? It's patient."

He paused.

"Because it knows people better than they know themselves. And it doesn't need to raise a sword. It just has to show you what you could have been."

Silence followed. Even Maia didn't speak.

Calthis turned and began walking again, deeper into the hall.

"We learned that when we brought a convicted murderer before the mirror. He looked into it and saw not redemption. Not horror. But himself—beloved. Revered. A better man. And when he turned away, he laughed."

Calthis' voice dropped.

"He laughed because he realized it was never about who he was. It was about who others let him be."

Koda stepped up beside the vault and stared at the black glass.

He didn't speak.

Maia looked between them. "Why not destroy it?"

Calthis gave a small, regretful smile.

"Because even destruction requires understanding. And this… whatever this is—it's older than us. Older than the Patrons. We believe it's a relic from before the system itself. Or perhaps a seed of what later became the sins."

He faced them both squarely again.

"We call them the True Embodied. They are not people possessed by vice. They are the vice. Given form. Given intention."

He let that settle. Then finally turned away from the vault.

"But this," he said, voice quieting, "is not your burden. Not yet. Only if you choose it."

He looked at Koda with something like pride.

"But you needed to know. Because your path… it's not just miracles and resistance. It's legacy. And legacy is heavy."

Koda stood still, his gaze not on the mirror itself but on the space around it—the air seemed thin, tense, as if reality itself leaned away from what was locked inside.

Then he spoke.

"Not envy," he said, voice quiet but firm.

Calthis turned toward him. Maia blinked, startled by the certainty in Koda's tone.

"That's just the shape it takes," Koda continued. "What we're calling sins—they're not ancient vices made manifest. They're shards. Fragments of a god that died before even the Five. You're not guarding temptations. You're guarding thoughts. Instincts that once had form."

Calthis frowned. "Fragments of what?"

Koda turned to him fully. "The original God. Not good or evil—primal. It didn't rule or judge. It simply was. Containing all desires and fears, restraint and chaos, until it was shattered."

He drew a breath. "The Five… they didn't replace it. They inherited pieces of what it left behind. They took on its restraint, its vision, its care. And they chose to serve rather than rule. That was their greatness. That's why they became worthy of worship."

Maia's voice was soft. "But they didn't take all of it, did they?"

Koda shook his head. "No. The rest—its hunger, its longing to be seen, to be desired—were scattered. Not sealed. Not studied. Not even known."

Calthis frowned. "Not known? Not even to the Five?"

Koda nodded. "Not then. They didn't know what they were rising from. Only that something had shattered before them, and that its absence had made space for their path. They walked with wisdom, not full understanding. The fragments—those leftover instincts—they were buried. Lost in places where memory couldn't reach. Forgotten even by the world itself."

Maia stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Then how did we find them now?"

Koda's voice lowered.

"They found us."

A beat passed.

"Desire doesn't stay dormant forever. Not when it's unbound by will or form. These fragments have no shape of their own—but they've begun to attach themselves. To ideas. To longings. To power left unchecked. And when that started happening—when want itself began to wake—Heaven went silent."

Maia went still.

"The Silence…"

Koda nodded. "Not an absence. A warning. The Five couldn't speak—not because they left—but because their voices are being drowned out. Their clarity is lost in the rising storm of a god that shouldn't be reforming."

He looked to Calthis now.

Calthis exhaled slowly. "And if it reforms?"

"Then even the Five would fall silent. Permanently."

A pause.

Then Koda straightened.

"But we're not powerless. Not yet."

Calthis looked to him. "You have a plan."

"We listen."

The old man blinked. "To what?"

"To them. The fragments. Each one that emerges is a twisted echo—but an echo with voice. It speaks to someone. Shapes them. Corrupts them—but not without giving away its shape, its lack."

Koda's expression hardened.

"Every desire we claim first… is one it can't claim later. Every truth we witness before it does is a chain. The only way to prevent its rebirth is to meet its pieces before they merge."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Calthis asked.

Koda stepped forward. "We hunt them. We face them. One by one."

Maia's voice was steady. "Trials."

Koda nodded. "Not for power. For containment. We bind them by understanding them. By carrying what they would otherwise consume."

He turned back to Calthis.

"I'll take on the Trial of Envy. Now."

The room went still.

Calthis searched Koda's face for any trace of bravado—but found only calm resolve.

"…You understand what that means."

"I do," Koda said. "And that's why it must be me."

Maia stepped beside him. "And I'll stand watch. We'll face them one at a time. Not as heroes. As witnesses. The only ones who remember what this power once was—and what it must never become again."