Morning arrives quietly.

Sunlight slips through tall palace windows, pale and clean, catching on stone floors and the edges of maps left out overnight. The city beyond the walls is already awake—bells, voices, distant carts—life continuing as if the world isn’t on a clock.

The palace smells like fresh bread and ink.

Servants move through the halls with practiced ease. Somewhere deeper in the keep, water runs—baths being drained, fountains refilled. Guards change shifts.

In the war room, the long table is already occupied.

Alaric stands near the windows, sleeves rolled, posture loose but alert. Edrin is mid-argument with a stack of books, red-eyed but energized. Iseph lingers near the doorway, arms folded, watching light creep across the floor like he’s measuring time.

Cassian and Rook entered just ahead of me, already talking in low voices.

I enter the room with an easy walk and a wide yawn. My hair is still slightly damp from running wet hands through it this morning, and my shirt—tucked in, mostly—is unlaced at the top.

“Is coffee a thing here?” I drawl. “And I think I smelled bread?”

Alaric looks up at the sound of my voice.

His gaze catches—then lingers—taking in damp hair, the open collar, the easy confidence of a man who slept well in a palace bed and knows exactly what he’s doing to the room.

“Yes,” he says. “Coffee exists. Strong. Bitter. Edrin drinks too much of it.”

“I need it to live,” Edrin mutters without looking up.

“And bread,” Alaric adds, gesturing toward a side table where a covered tray waits. “Still warm. You’re just in time.”

Cassian smirks. “You look refreshed.”

Rook grins. “Dangerously so.”

Servants move in as if on cue, setting cups, breaking loaves, pouring dark liquid that smells close enough to home to hurt a little.

Alaric steps aside from the window, closer now—close enough to be convenient. Or inconvenient.

“Eat,” he says. “Then we plan.”

The morning settles in.

“It’s always a lot easier to sleep when you’re not worried about where your next meal is going to come from.” I say, perusing the offerings.

I choose my sustenance and take a seat, coffee in one hand and a slice of fresh bread and cheese in the other, then reflect on my statement.

“Hmm… That kinda makes me sound like a loser.”

Alaric pours his own coffee, then pauses beside my chair just long enough to speak quietly. “It makes you sound like someone who’s been hungry before.” No judgment. Just fact.

Cassian takes a seat across from me, already eating. “Anyone who hasn’t is lying or sheltered.”

Edrin looks up at last, frowning slightly. “Food security is… not a moral failing,” he says, then blinks, embarrassed by his own earnestness. “I mean—obviously.”

Rook steals a piece of bread off the tray and leans against the table. “Also, losers don’t usually save kingdoms.”

“Mm. That’s good to hear,” I say around a mouthful of bread. “’Cus I gotta say, hero work is not nearly as rewarding as you’d expect when the place you go home to doesn’t know what you’ve done.”

Iseph watches the exchange from the doorway, saying nothing, but his expression eases a fraction.

Morning light strengthens. Coffee steams.

Alaric clears his throat. “When you’re done eating,” he says, “we’ll start with routes east and where to focus advancement efforts.”

I drag a map toward me from across the table. “Not east. We’ll go north. Straight into the corruption.”

The room stills—then leans in.

Edrin blinks. “North?” He steps closer, already scanning the map I’ve pulled. “That’s… aggressive.”

Cassian’s mouth curves, just slightly. “Direct,” he says. “Risky. I like it.”

Rook tilts his head, eyes bright. “Into the mess instead of skirting it. Faster answers. Shorter lifespan.”

Iseph exhales through his nose. “Corruption is thicker there. Less subtle.” A pause. “Purification will be… painful.”

Alaric studies the map over my shoulder, close enough that I can feel him there. “If we go north,” he says evenly, “we draw attention. Demonkind won’t ignore that.”

Then he straightens. “So, we adjust the plan. Supplies for cold terrain. Evacuate civilians.”

The map is already changing under their hands—routes marked, risks circled.

“Edrin,” I say, drawing his attention while the others debate routes. “Talk to me about saintess summoning.”

Edrin looks up sharply, then glances at Alaric. The prince doesn’t stop him.

“Saintess summoning isn’t… one thing,” Edrin says, pulling a thinner folio from the pile. “It’s a category. Old rites. Inconsistent outcomes.”

He opens it, turning pages carefully.

“Historically, saintesses aren’t chosen for power. They’re chosen for capacity. Emotional endurance. Empathy. The ability to act as a conduit without fracturing emotionally.” He hesitates. “Most don’t survive long-term.”

Cassian mutters, “It’s an ugly truth.”

Edrin nods. “Very. The church reframed it as martyrdom. In practice, it’s controlled burnout.”

He points to a diagram. “The summoning binds them to a locus—altar, seal, or person. Their power scales fast, then eats them alive.”

He looks at me directly. “Why?”

I gesture toward him, palm up and open. “You got a sigil? Show me.”

Edrin hesitates—then nods.

He flips the folio around and slides it toward me. The page is yellowed, edges fragile. Ink lines form a complex sigil: concentric circles broken by asymmetry, runes stitched together instead of cleanly aligned. It looks patched, like it’s been repaired mid-design.

“This is the core binding,” he says. “The Accord standardized it. Older versions were… worse.”

He taps the outer ring. “Containment.”

A spoke cutting inward. “Channel.”

The center mark—uneven, almost organic. “Anchor point. That’s where the saintess… sits.”

Up close, I can see faint annotations in the margins. Corrections. Warnings.

Cassian leans in just enough to look. “That thing’s hungry.”

“Yes,” Edrin says. “It is.”

Iseph’s voice cuts in from behind. “That’s not a summoning circle,” he adds flatly. “That’s a cage.”

I’m already nodding, my hand out again, palm up. “I need paper and a pen—er—quill or something. Whatever you write with. Charcoal.”

Edrin doesn’t argue.

He snaps his fingers once, sharp. A servant appears almost immediately—palace efficiency—and returns with parchment, charcoal sticks, and a quill with ink.

Edrin clears space on the table for me, sweeping aside maps and notes. “Careful,” he says reflexively. “That sigil—”

Cassian cuts in, dry. “He’s already past careful.”

Iseph steps closer, eyes on my hands now. Watching. Measuring.

The parchment is rough under my palm. Charcoal smudges easily. The sigil from the folio sits open beside me—circles, breaks, cages pretending to be conduits.

The room quiets around the table.

Alaric doesn’t speak. He just watches, intent.

I sketch out a complex rune on the page in front of me with the charcoal. The lines are so detailed it takes me nearly ten minutes to draw it. When it’s done, I start on a second, even more complex sigil. In total, I’m sketching for nearly forty minutes.

When I finish, my hands are stained with charcoal, black streaks smeared up my forearms.

I tap the first sigil I drew. “Summon this.”

Then I tap the second one. “And bind it to this.”

“I don’t know how this mess works,” I say, gesturing to the original sigil. “This is like a patchwork nightmare. I can’t fix this. But if you look here—” I point to a rune slightly off-center toward the heart of the summoning circle. “This is your source. And this—” I point to another spot. “Is your cage. So put these two in those spots and that’ll solve your saintess problem.”

The room stays silent for several long seconds.

Edrin is the first to move. He leans in slowly, like the parchment might bite him, eyes tracking every line I’ve drawn. His breath catches once. Then again.

“…That’s not a saintess,” he says quietly.

Iseph steps up beside him, squints, then stills completely. His jaw tightens. “No,” he agrees. “That’s not a person at all.”

Cassian folds his arms, gaze flicking between my hands and the sigils. “You want to summon something else.”

Edrin swallows. “You’ve separated the conduit from the vessel,” he murmurs, more to himself now.

Alaric finally speaks. “Say it plainly.”

Edrin does. “He’s proposing we summon a purification energy. Not a martyr.”

He looks up at me then, eyes bright, shaken, reverent. “If this works,” he says, “you don’t just solve the saintess problem. You end it.”

Cassian huffs a short laugh. “And here I thought you were just here to flirt with royalty.”

Alaric hasn’t taken his eyes off the sigils. “Can it be done?” he asks.

Edrin nods. Once. Hard. “Yes. It will be difficult. Theologically heretical.” He looks at me again. “But yes.”

“Wait, wait, wait—” I say, hands up. “I understand why you read it that way, but that’s not what this is. This is a location. I’m not proposing we use the location as a bottomless pit of purification energy. I’m just changing your source destination.”

I gesture between the sigils. “Think about it like a fish pond. The pond you’ve been fishing in is running low on fish. So, your fish are small and weak. I’m proposing you fish from a bigger pond.”

I grin.

“And this world just so happens to owe me a favor. This—” I point to the second, more complex sigil I drew. “Is me. I’m proposing you bind her to me. I can support her mana problem.”

The room freezes again—this time sharper.

Edrin’s breath leaves him in a rush. “Bind… to you?”

Iseph’s eyes snap up, hard. “Absolutely not.”

Cassian’s head turns slowly toward me. “Cael.”

Alaric steps closer to the table, voice low but controlled. “Explain. Carefully.”

Edrin forces himself to look back at the sigils, then at me. His hands tremble—excitement, fear, both. “You’re saying the saintess wouldn’t burn because you would be the conduit. The load wouldn’t sit on her nervous system. It would—” He stops. Swallows. “—pass through you.”

Iseph shakes his head once. “That would kill an ordinary man.”

Cassian doesn’t look away from me. “He’s not ordinary,” he says.

Alaric’s jaw tightens. “And if something goes wrong?”

Edrin answers quietly, because he understands now. “Then the failure state isn’t martyrdom.” He looks at me. “It’s you.”

I shrug. “What are heroes for?”