In a place that was not a room — an empty fold of space with no walls and no light worth the name — a white-haired man hung in chains.
The chains held his arms wide. His head was bowed. His eyes, when the dark let them be seen at all, were sorrowful and very still, the eyes of someone who had stopped expecting the situation to change and had made an uneasy peace with that.
He was speaking.
The words did not hold together. They came in fragments, half-formed, slipping out of sense the moment they were spoken — the speech of a mind that had been somewhere too long.
"...you shall count every coin in your boundless well..."
A pause, or maybe an unhearded incoherent speech.
"...yet die in the arms of the Sovereign, empty of the single drop that holds the depth."
The fragments stopped.
A pause followed them. Not an empty pause. A worried one — the silence of someone who had heard himself say a thing and did not like the shape of it.
"...stop, please," the white-haired man said quietly, to no one. "just listen to me once.."
The dark did not answer him.
Nothing care enough to be there to answer him.
---
Sancturia. Several days earlier.
In a cell that was more shrine than prison, a being made of golden light sat bound.
It was difficult to look at directly, and difficult to look at and call it a body — the arrogance light moved like something alive and something exhausted at once. Chains crossed it. They were not ordinary chains; they drank the glow where they touched. Every part of the radiant thing seemed to be in pain, and every part of it seemed too tired to show the pain properly. A strip of cloth had been bound across the place where its eyes should be.
A god who saw all things, blinded.
A figure came into the cell — wrapped in thick black smoke and a long veil, the smoke moving wrong, the way smoke moves when something is wearing it rather than making it.
"Oh, you who once saw all things," the figure said softly. "And now alas — made sightless. Made to grope in the dark like the rest of us."
The bound god lifted its head.
"Who are you.." The voice still had teeth in it. He pulled against the chains — a hard, desperate wrench — and the chains answered the way they were built to answer, biting deeper, drinking more of the light, until the wrench became a thing too pitiful to watch.
"I am only a woman," the veiled figure said, "who wishes to see you set free."
"Then why am I in chains at all!" The radiance flared, ragged. "Why would you—"
"My master wishes you to remain here. My cruel master." The voice dropped, sorrowful, intimate. "He keeps my own freedom locked away no differently than yours. You and I are the same, in that."
"Who is your master! Tell me his name and I will tear him apart—"
The light around the bounded god was not steady. It guttered at the edges. Something was eating it, slowly, from the inside — a madness, fine and patient, gnawing the brightness down thread by thread. He did not seem entirely aware of it. That was the worst part.
"I cannot tell you," the veiled figure said. "Not unless you promise me something first." A pause, weighted with care. "A promise made upon the name of Veranthos. Could you give me that?"
"...and what would I receive."
"Something that may help you. Something that may carry you out of this."
"Then ask. Anything."
Beneath the veil, the mouth curved.
"I ask only this," the figure said gently. "That you allow yourself to move with the current of your own will — that you follow, fully, whatever your heart has already decided it wants." The voice softened further, almost mournful. "And that you free me. From my cruel master."
"And in return?"
"I will bring you what my master holds. And a sacred sustenance — something that will let you be strong again."
The bound god was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had thinned. The fight had not left it. But it had grown tired enough to bargain.
"...agreed."
---
The creature moved above the road of deadlands.
The Seer sat behind Mivelle and watched the dead lands pass.
"Something troubles you, Seer?"
"I was only thinking of Lord Terminus." He chose his words slowly. "He never once said what he wanted. He simply — bound us to him. A contract, and nothing else."
"And your contract, Seer? What were its words?"
"That I would go to Sancturia and bring back everything it holds." A pause. "In exchange for the chance to stand before Lord Agares again."
"I see." Mivelle's voice was light, almost amused, the tone of someone making pleasant conversation on a long road. "Lord Terminus. So fearsome, so vast that not even fate can be read upon him — and yet, you know, not a greedy man. Not greedy at all."
The wind moved over the empty country.
"Mine," she said, "was only a small thing."
"I will grant you what cannot be fathomed in this world, and I will deliver you to your refuge. In exchange, you will give me one thing. A single thing — which you yourself will place into my hand. When I ask it."