Saint’s Bones

They brought Alric's body wrapped in wool and silence.

The cloth wasn't proper funerary weave—it was a cut field tarp. But the shrinekeeper didn't protest.

Most soldiers didn't get even that.

The shrine was built into a crumbled root crypt, halfway up a hillock knotted with elder trees. The stairs had eroded, the roof sagged, and moss clung to every stone.

But the bones were still there.

Twelve of them.

Each laid in its own hollow, named in soot-ink, and sealed behind fire-smoothed glass.

Saint Halden. The soldier who didn't kill when he could have, and died for it.

His shrine was rare. Not because it was rich—but because it was for men like Alric.

The keeper spoke an old chant. Not Latin. Not noble-tongue.

Just the old words.

"No oath survives alone. No banner waves without hands. No saint holds weight without the buried dead."

Darin stood beside the fire-pit. He didn't speak.

Raive did.

"Alric served. Alric bled. We remember the weight he carried."

That was all.

One by one, the men dropped something into the flame: a coin, a tooth, a piece of cloth.

Darin dropped his belt loop.

He could sew another.

But this one had been torn when he lunged too late.

That night, back at camp, no one asked where he'd gone.

But someone had left two rations by his bedroll. And a fresh whetstone.

Not a word.

Just silence and warmth.