Chapter four: 1528 The vein beneath the stone

Kiara

The incense was lit before dawn, but already the smoke curled low and bitter through the square, struggling to mask the scent beneath. Rot, rain, unwashed bodies. The faint copper ghost of old blood. The festival had begun, and yet it was as if the city had forgotten how to celebrate.

Kiara stood at the edge of the procession, her veil drawn low, robes marked with the sigil of balance. She did not announce herself. She did not need to. The crowd parted for her without looking, as though the cloth she wore carried a weight their eyes could not meet.

Above, the temple bells rang. Seven chimes for the Sevenfold Oaths: Faith. Fealty. Blood. Birth. Silence. Service. Flame.

None of them sounded clean.

The Festival of Binding had always been theatrical—gilded banners, costumed saints, the Royal Choir chanting the king's victories in voices too young to have seen them. But this year, the celebration moved like a marionette with snapped strings. Too much silk. Too few smiles.

A priest from the palace temple climbed the plinth, voice ringing loud and false.

"On his deathbed, our beloved king spoke peace! He gave us a future. A queen yet unbroken. The war has not come—it waits, because we are righteous!"

A thin cheer followed. Not joy. Obedience.

Someone near Kiara muttered, "War waits because they have no one left to send."

She turned. An older woman with calloused hands and a toddler clinging to her hip. No fear in her tone. Just fatigue.

"Rations were halved again," the woman added. "But they still light candles for the dead king like he fed the gods."

Kiara said nothing. She watched a soldier march past—half-armor, spear dull, eyes sunken. The soldier looked away when their gazes met.

Farther down the square, children played in a ring. One held a stick to the other's neck, crowing, "Traitor! Off with his head!" Laughter followed.

The mother spat at the ground. "They learn young."

She moved on, deeper into the city. The Market Road had thinned. Once a parade of spice and silk, now only bone broth and brittle bread. One stall sold stew made of roots and old goat cartilage. Another hawked "air cakes"—dough beaten flat and fried so thin it was mostly crisp and hope.

A preacher stood atop a crate, hoarse from shouting.

"The king stalled the war! In mercy! In wisdom!"

And yet just beside him, another man laughed bitterly:

"Wisdom? He died hiding. He stalled because he feared the forest would answer back."

Kiara paused at a mural faded on the chapel wall—an image of Ashera with open palms, once painted in gold leaf. Now someone had scrawled over the fingers in crimson dye, turning the divine gesture into a hand reaching for help.

At the sanctuary, the incense was stronger. It clawed her throat.

Inside, the air shimmered with quiet tension. Novices scrubbed the stone floors in silence. Several high clergy whispered in a cloistered circle. One of the older deacons glanced up at her approach and did not bow.

She entered the Inner Hall, where the sacred texts were kept.

New scrolls lined the center table, marked with wax seals from the palace. Kiara unrolled one.

The text was fresh.

"By divine revelation, the queen's rule is sanctioned. The delay of war is a sign of holy intervention. The Jhaljie, corrupt and godless, will be judged in time."

A rewrite. A lie. The original prophecy spoke only of balance.

Footsteps. A young acolyte stood at the archway, uncertain.

"Is it true?" she asked. "That the gods want war now?"

Kiara looked back at the scroll.

"No," she said. "The gods want silence. What we choose to do inside it is ours to answer for."

At dusk, she slipped away.

The sanctuary's rear gate led into the chapel gardens—overgrown, thorn-choked, but quiet. Smoke from the city hovered low over the hedges. The bells had stopped. The square was darkening.

A child stood in the grass. Not a temple child—clothes too ragged, face too thin. An orphan, perhaps. Or something stranger.

He looked up at her.

"Will they burn the city?" he asked plainly.

"Who?" Kiara asked.

"All of them."

She gave no answer.

The child continued, "Mama said the king cursed us when he died. That he whispered something, before his tongue fell out."

Kiara stepped closer. "What curse?"

The boy shrugged. "Said: Let the next ones carry the ash."

He turned and ran into the fog.

Later, as the stars broke open above the temple dome, Kiara stood before the reliquary flame. She waited for a voice—Ashera's, or something near to it.

None came.

Only the candle guttering. The smoke forming shapes against the wall.

One of them looked like the crown.

Another, like a blade.

And the third—thin and spidery—like a noose made of roots.

She knelt.

"The people have not revolted," she whispered into the stone. "But they are learning how to starve together."

And from the silence, something watched.

—---

The first bell at dawn rang alongside the cold air.

Yule season crept in faster than ever.

The sky above Mahilyaa held no color—only the bruised gray of pre-winter, brittle as old paper. Across the stone streets and crooked lanes, the Church of the Divine One opened its tall gates to the public for the first time since the king's passing. The final rites for his burial were about to begin.

They came cloaked and slow, the people—lined up outside the temple walls, shivering. Not from grief. From something else: a bone-deep uncertainty, the kind that makes a nation chew its tongue and wait for permission to speak.

The king was being buried only six days after his death—too fast for custom, too fast for mourning. The sacred thirteen days of vigil had been ignored. The court offered no reason.

The royal crypts were hollow and dark beneath the palace, lit only by torchlight struggling to stay alive in the damp. The torches hissed and spit, casting shadows like claw marks across the stone.

A wreath of preserved myrtle was placed on the dead king's body—a traditional seal, meant to keep unspoken truths trapped in death. His body was wrapped in blue linen, not royal crimson. His sword was placed at his feet, not across his chest.

The Divine One did not attend. Only lower clergy gave the rites—rushed, stammered, stiff with formality. Their chants echoed like forgotten oaths. Even the nobles who knelt did so out of habit, not sorrow.

A council elder leaned toward another and whispered, "He goes to rest faster than his people starve."

No one reprimanded him.

No royal drums played. No procession led the king's soul across the sky. The crypt doors were shut with a final thud, and with that, a reign ended.

The throne room remained untouched. The throne itself—a high spire of carved obsidian—sat beneath a banner still marked with the late king's crest. His daughter had not stepped into the chamber since his death.

Winnifred, Crown Princess of Mahilyaa, remained absent.

Some said she mourned in solitude. Others whispered she was ill. But the sharper tongues—those behind curtains and council walls—insisted she refused to be crowned until justice for her brother was delivered.

The people waited for her. The court stalled.

"The crown still cast its shadow, but no one wore its weight."

Two great houses began to circle. One summoned genealogists. Another quoted succession laws not spoken aloud in over a century. The scent of ambition seeped into the walls.

Without a sovereign, the people turned—hesitantly, hungrily—to the only power still visible.

The Church moved slowly, like a tide swallowing the shoreline.

On the eighth day, the Divine One appeared atop the temple steps. Veiled in white robes stitched with golden vines, their face was hidden—only the outline of their mouth visible beneath the fabric. In one hand they carried a staff crowned with an open eye enclosed in roots—the ancient symbol of Ashera, Mother of Balance.

Their voice was soft, yet it carried like iron through water.

"Ashera does not bless disorder," they said to the gathered crowd.

"She does not crown a child born of disobedience. She waits. So must we."

The people knelt. Most, not all.

A merchant near the outer steps scoffed, "That god listens to Sera, not to our streets."

Another, older woman replied, "She's the only one who still listens at all."

The crowd was not unified. Mahilyaa was a country of broken beliefs—forest gods, house spirits, ancestor rites still whispered in barns and beneath floorboards. Ashera was not mother to all. In Sera, yes—she was worshiped as the divine origin, the celestial womb. But in Mahilyaa, hers was a foreign god still learning the shape of local hunger.

Yet in absence of crown and war and council, the Church offered the only certainty.

The Divine One continued:

"The stars have not yet aligned. The balance has not been chosen. No ruler shall be crowned until Ashera moves."

In private, one noble spoke with them behind a curtain of gold thread:

"The people want a queen."

"Then let them kneel to something real first," came the answer.

That evening, storm clouds rolled across the hills. Thunder cracked over the palace, but no bells rang. No musicians played.

Kiara returned to her quarters before dusk, robes damp from temple mist. On her desk lay a letter with no seal.

Inside, in a hand she didn't recognize:

If the gods will not crown her, the people must. Before someone else does.

She burned the letter, but the smoke didn't rise—it settled low over the floor, curling like vines around her boots.

Somewhere in the capital, a child threw ash into the wind. A broken circlet, carved from bark and painted gold, lay abandoned in the square.

The crown was missing. But the weight still hung in the air.

Inside the Church of the Divine One, in the stone heart of Acacia, the morning air had turned bitter.

Smoke coiled from the incense braziers, rising in thin columns toward the vaulted dome—unseen, unsensed. The benches remained empty. Dust coated the hymn books. One of the wall candles had gone out, and no one relit it.

Kiara stood alone beneath the high mural of Ashera, whose many hands held both cradle and scythe.

They do not come. Not even now. Not even for a king.

She had prepared the rite herself. Mix the resins. Anointed the marble basin. But the city remained unmoved. Her footsteps echoed louder than the chants.

These people had always mistrusted the Church. They clung to their forest idols, their ancestor fires, their whispered superstitions. Yet when famine struck, when the crown fell, when the roads turned red—they did not blame their gods. They blamed hers.

They say Ashera turned away. They say the king's prayers were ignored. They say faith failed him.

But the truth was simpler: he did not pray. Not truly. His belief was convenience, not covenant.

She set down the censer. The ash inside had blackened to tar. The silver chain was warm in her palm, pulsing faintly like a vein.

Why should She listen to those who mock Her altar, but still demand Her miracles?

Kiara walked toward the choir stalls, now empty of novices. Only two others remained in the Acacian branch: an elder kaliki with a clouded eye, and a young initiate too afraid to speak above a whisper.

The rest had returned to Sera—or abandoned the robes altogether.

She sat on the edge of the stone bench, unwinding the stiff collar at her throat. Her fingers were raw. The skin beneath her nails was stained with the dark blue of ritual ink.

A voice echoed down the nave.

"No mourners came."

Kiara did not turn. The voice belonged to Sister Navine, the last senior kalihi stationed here before her.

"Only nobles. And only because they feared the gossip if they did not attend," Navine added, stepping into view. Her robes were looser now, threadbare. Her eyes rimmed in sleepless red. "They say you overstepped, calling for rites so soon."

"He died six days ago," Kiara replied evenly. "The law permits seven."

"And yet not one house sent their sigil. Not even the crown princess."

Kiara's jaw tensed.

"She mourns elsewhere."

Navine studied her for a moment, then walked to the altar and extinguished a candle.

"Do you truly believe she listened to him?" she asked. "The king?"

"No," Kiara said. "But that is not her fault. He prayed like a politician. And she answers only what is true."

Outside, the bells rang once more—a second bell. Noon approached.

From the upper gallery, a raven tapped once on the stained-glass window, then flew.

A message followed.

A novice entered, pale and shaking. He held a sealed scroll—dark wax, unmarked.

"From the palace," he said, breathing short. "For you."

Kiara broke the seal. Read. Frowned.

The letter was short, almost careless.

"The coronation is delayed again. The princess remains in mourning. The council requests your presence at the next high assembly. Discussion: recognition of divine timing in matters of state."

Recognition of divine timing. As if they could trap faith in a clocktower.

She folded the letter without ceremony.

"They want my compliance," she murmured. "Not my counsel."

Navine crossed her arms. "And will you give it?"

"No. I will give them something greater."

"Which is?"

"Proof."

Kiara's eyes turned back to the mural—Ashera's many arms reaching in all directions.

"If they will not come to Her, then She will come to them."

The temple doors shut behind her with a sound like judgment.

Outside, Acacia had begun to rot. Not visibly—not yet. But it was in the way the fish market had only dry bones by the third bell. The way children played in silence. The way bakeries rationed salt. The way the palace gardens, once groomed like scripture, now let weeds climb between the rose beds.

People needed someone to blame. The dead king was too distant. The princess was too invisible. The Church was next.

They forget it was Ashera who first taught the laws of mercy. It was Her breath that split the heavens and made rain. Yet they blame Her for their drought.

Kiara entered the old wing of the church, unused since the last famine. It had once been a sanctuary for the sick—those who refused to die quietly. The stone walls still bore soot from prayers burned too hard, too fast.

Sister Navine followed.

"You're going to do it," she said, not quite asking.

Kiara didn't answer. She moved toward the reliquary.

Dusk felt like a verdict.

They gathered not out of reverence, but in need—drawn by rumor, hunger, or the bitter cold that clawed through Acacia's bones.

By sixth bell, the square before the Church of the Divine One brimmed with quiet bodies.

They came without songs. Without banners. Just veils and coats and grief pressed into silence.

They expected answers.

Or perhaps, they expected another silence.

Candles burned along the steps, though no hand claimed them. The frost swallowed their light.

Kiara emerged from the church alone.

Her robes were unmarred white—a symbol of the kalihi, the hand that holds balance—but she wore no crown, no pendant of rank. Only a thin band of iron at her throat, and the painted sigil of Ashera drawn in midnight ink across her brow.

The wind did not rise. The sky did not shift.

She did not climb the dais. She stood at the same level as them—so they could see her, not above, but among.

Then she spoke.

"You waited. Not for truth. Not for god. But for a voice louder than your own."

"Your king died. And you bowed your heads to coin and custom, not to mourning. Not to memory."

"The princess hides behind the veil, the council bickers behind oaths, and still your bread grows thinner, your streets darker, your questions unanswered."

She looked over them—eyes like cut glass, unblinking.

"Where are your gods now? The ones your fathers named in secret? The ones you carved in wood and hung above your door? What prayers have they answered?"

No one spoke.

"Ashera is not a god of comfort. She does not reward obedience like a coin. She is balance. She is a witness."

She took one step forward.

"When the scales tilt, She does not rush to rescue. She watches—until someone dares to restore the weight."

Another step.

"This city has no weight. No spine. No crown."

Another.

"So I will carry what you cast aside."

She reached into her robe and withdrew a narrow strip of black cloth—the mourning veil.

"You mourn a man who feared prayer more than death. You place your hopes in a crown that will not wear itself."

"But I do not need a crown to speak."

Her voice did not rise—but it struck, each word honed like a blade of bone.

"You came for signs. You came to see if the gods would tremble."

"But you are the ones trembling. And she sees it."

Kiara raised the veil—then tore it in half.

The sound of the cloth ripping rang louder than any bell.

"Mourning ends when silence is no longer sacred."

She cast the veil to the ground.

No flame. No miracle. Only her.

A stillness followed—full and crushing.

And one by one, without knowing why, the people knelt.

Not out of fear.

Not out of worship.

But out of recognition—that something had shifted.

That someone, at last, had spoken the thing they all feared was true.

Inside the church, Sister Navine stood just beyond the archway, hands clenched at her sides.

"You did not preach," she whispered as Kiara approached.

"No," Kiara said, brushing frost from her hem. "I commanded."

"You shouldn't have torn the veil. It's sacred."

"So is truth. And I've grown tired of whispering it."

That night, a raven clawed against the palace tower.

Winnifred, shrouded still in ceremonial silence, read the letter in the dark.

No seal. No name.

Just a single line, inked in black:

"If the crown fears its own weight, others will carry it."