"Hold still."
"I am holding still."
The woman behind Cael pulled the collar tighter.
Cael's jaw clenched as the stiff white fabric pressed against his throat, forcing his chin slightly higher than was comfortable. He resisted the urge to reach up and loosen it. Three attendants had already fixed it twice, and judging by the increasingly irritated expression of the woman currently working behind him, another attempt would probably be taken as a personal insult.
He looked back toward the mirror.
A stranger looked back.
White ceremonial cloth covered him from his neck to his ankles, broken only by thin lines of gold embroidered perfectly along the seams. The patterns were symmetrical. Of course they were. Everything Elyndra's priests gave him seemed obsessed with symmetry.
Even the buttons had been measured.
Cael had checked.
He wasn't sure why.
A golden mantle rested over his shoulders, heavier than it looked, with the scales of Elyndra stitched across the center of his chest. Beneath them sat seven smaller markings arranged into a perfect circle.
Seven Dominions.
Seven gods.
Seven Blessed.
And today, for the first time, all seven would stand in the same room.
The attendant finally released his collar.
"There."
Cael immediately reached toward it.
"Don't."
His hand stopped halfway.
The woman stared at him through the mirror.
Cael slowly lowered it.
"...I wasn't going to touch it."
"You were."
"I was checking it."
"You've checked it four times."
"Three."
She stared.
Cael looked away.
"Four."
The attendant sighed and stepped back to inspect him, leaving Cael alone with the person staring back at him from the mirror.
He almost wished she hadn't.
The boy reflected in the glass looked nothing like the one who had stood outside that bakery weeks ago with powdered sugar on his sleeves and a bag of donuts tucked beneath his arm.
His orange hair had been washed, trimmed, and carefully combed into something the attendants had assured him was presentable. The unruly strands that normally fell wherever they pleased had been pushed neatly away from his forehead, exposing a face that still seemed too young for everything they'd dressed him in. His cheeks were rounder than he would've liked, his jaw lacked the hard edges of the knights and priests constantly surrounding him, and there was little about his body that could be called imposing.
He wasn't particularly tall.
He wasn't particularly muscular.
He looked sixteen.
The only part that truly seemed different were his eyes.
The brown was gone.
Pale gold stared back at him now, faintly luminous beneath the light of the room, an unmistakable reminder that regardless of what Cael thought about the matter, something divine had touched him.
Everything else had been manufactured.
Every fold had been straightened. Every measurement had been checked. His hair had been cut, his skin scrubbed, his posture corrected, and clothes worth more than anything he'd owned in his entire life now covered his body.
Standing there, Cael looked like the young heir of some great noble house.
Clean.
Educated.
Proper.
Perhaps even important.
He almost believed it.
Almost.
Then his eyes shifted toward the reflection behind him.
His guardian, Korin, stood beside the doorway.
Now that was what a Blessed was supposed to look like.
Korin was only a few years older than Cael, somewhere around twenty, yet the difference between them seemed almost insulting. He stood considerably taller, with broad shoulders and a strong build that made the white-and-gold armor covering his body look ceremonial until Cael noticed the wear along its edges.
Pale white hair framed a face Cael imagined painters would fight each other for the privilege of putting on temple walls, while clear blue eyes watched the room with the easy calm Cael had spent the last several weeks desperately trying to imitate.
A sword rested across his back.
Not at his hip.
Across his back, because apparently looking like some legendary hero wasn't enough.
Cael looked at him.
Then himself.
Then back at him.
"This seems backwards."
Korin raised an eyebrow.
"What does?"
Cael gestured vaguely between their reflections.
"Look at you."
Korin's eyebrow rose slightly higher.
"Now look at me."
"I can see you."
"Then surely you understand the problem."
The faintest hint of amusement touched Korin's face.
Cael turned back toward the mirror.
"If you walked into the courthouse surrounded by divine light, nobody would've questioned it. They would've started writing hymns before you hit the floor."
"And you?"
"I nearly died choking on a pastry."
"You survived."
"Barely."
Korin's mouth twitched.
Cael looked back at himself.
The amusement slowly left his face.
The attendants had done an impressive job.
That was the problem.
The boy staring back at him looked clean enough to belong in a palace and dressed well enough that nobody would question him walking beside princes, priests, or the children of the Dominion's most powerful families.
But Cael knew what was underneath it.
He could still see the boy who had been there before the light.
The broke kid arguing with bakers over free food because sometimes being clever was easier than admitting he was hungry. The kid who walked around with his chest puffed out and an answer ready for everything because confidence made people less likely to notice when you had absolutely no idea what you were doing.
That Cael hadn't disappeared.
They'd washed him.
Dressed him.
Taught him which fork to use.
Then put gold around his shoulders and called him the Arbiter.
Fraud was an ugly word.
It was also becoming increasingly difficult not to think about.
What if Elyndra had made a mistake?
The thought had followed Cael since the moment the light struck him.
Sometimes he wondered if it hadn't been a mistake at all.
Maybe Elyndra had heard him.
Maybe the god of law and order had looked down, heard some idiot kid openly criticizing him while eating a stolen donut, and decided to make the next several decades of his life miserable out of spite.
Cael wasn't entirely convinced gods were above that sort of thing.
Korin's reflection shifted behind him.
"You're doing it again."
Cael blinked.
"Doing what?"
"Staring at yourself like you're waiting for the mirror to confess something."
Cael looked away from his reflection.
"Maybe I am."
"And?"
"It remains uncooperative."
"Tragic."
"Finally, someone understands."
The attendant stepped between them before Cael could continue and adjusted one side of his mantle.
"You're frowning."
Cael's expression immediately flattened.
She gave him a tired look.
"That's worse."
"What am I supposed to look like?"
"Calm."
"I am calm."
"You've counted the buttons on your coat four times."
"Five."
The woman paused.
Cael regretted answering.
A quiet sound came from near the doorway.
Not quite a laugh.
Cael turned toward Korin.
"You find this amusing?"
"A little."
"Helpful."
"You're nervous."
"I'm meeting six people."
"Six Blessed."
"Still people."
Korin didn't answer immediately.
Cael's eyes lowered toward the seven symbols embroidered across his chest.
That was what everyone kept forgetting.
Or perhaps what they deliberately ignored.
He had heard about the others for weeks.
The Verdant Heart.
The Crimson Fang.
The Chronicle.
The Whispered Smile.
The Emberforged.
The Pale Requiem.
Titles.
Prophecies.
Stories carried between the Dominions faster than the people themselves could travel.
Cael knew about Rokhan Graal, the young orc chosen by Draveth during Gravann's Day of Blades. The stories claimed a beam of molten red light had struck the arena hard enough to melt weapons and turn the sand beneath his feet into glass. When everyone else fled, Rokhan had supposedly remained standing alone inside the crater with a blade glowing in his hands.
Some versions claimed he hadn't even flinched.
Cael doubted that part.
He knew about Serenya Thaloriel, the elven healer's apprentice chosen beneath Thalenwood's Worldtree. People claimed the roots themselves had moved beneath her when Aenvara's light descended, flowers blooming wherever she stepped while petals fell from branches that hadn't been in season.
Apparently flowers still bloomed around her now.
Cael hoped they cleaned themselves up afterward.
Then there was Elyra Vosin, the Eidoryn girl chosen within the Luminar Spire. According to the stories coming from Isoryn Reach, time itself had stopped when Vaerith's light touched her metallic body. People had supposedly watched memories from hundreds of years ago appear across the surfaces surrounding her, although every account Cael read seemed to disagree on exactly what those memories had been.
He suspected at least half of them were lying.
Kaelric Varr was worse.
The panther Beastkin had been performing during Vel'kaar's Festival of Masks when Narethos chose him, and Cael had encountered at least eleven different explanations for what happened afterward. Some claimed every lantern in the city extinguished at once. Others insisted Kaelric disappeared completely and only his laughter remained.
One particularly enthusiastic account claimed his mask had screamed before melting into his face.
Cael had stopped reading after that one.
Tova Brimestone, a dwarven girl from Atherion Spire, had apparently managed to make her own choosing sound like an accident even before a god became involved. Her forge had collapsed during an eruption, burying her beneath rubble and smoke, only for her to crawl back out laughing.
Then Thalenor's light struck the molten ground beside her and wrapped her in flame.
According to one witness, she kept laughing.
That part Cael actually believed.
And finally there was Silas Drevin.
The Dragonkin.
The Pale Requiem.
Cael knew almost nothing about what had happened when Kharoth chose him.
That bothered him.
There were stories, of course. There were always stories. Some said a pale ray had descended over one of Eldranveil's mirrored lakes at dawn. Others claimed the entire lake had gone perfectly still. One account insisted every bird for miles had suddenly stopped singing.
The problem was that nobody had actually been there.
Silas had apparently been alone.
By the time anyone found him, the light was already gone and the young Dragonkin was standing near the water with silver beginning to show across his scales.
Everything else was speculation.
Six Blessed.
Six impossible stories.
Then there was Cael Varin.
Cael looked down at himself.
A broke human kid who mocked his own god, twisted a baker's words for free pastries, criticized the Dominion that now paraded him through its streets
and nearly died choking on a donut while being chosen.
He sighed.
Truly, Elyndra had saved the best for last.
"Cael."
Korin's voice pulled him from the thought.
Cael looked toward him.
"It's time."
The room suddenly seemed quieter.
Cael looked toward the door.
Beyond it waited diplomats from all seven Dominions, priests representing seven gods, officials whose names he'd spent the last week memorizing, seven guardians powerful enough to be trusted with the lives of divine vessels-
and six teenagers who supposedly represented the future of the world.
His stomach tightened.
He hated that it did.
Cael reached toward his collar one final time before catching himself.
The attendant noticed.
She said nothing.
Somehow that was worse.
He lowered his hand, straightened his shoulders, and looked once more at the boy in the mirror.
The clothes were perfect.
Not a fold sat out of place. Every golden line matched the one opposite it, the mantle rested exactly where it had been designed to rest, and Elyndra's scales sat perfectly centered over his chest.
Everything about him looked exactly as it should.
Cael wished that made him feel better.
It didn't.
He turned away from the mirror.
"Let's go."
---
The Hall of Seven belonged to no Dominion.
That was the first thing Cael had been taught about it.
The second was that every Dominion claimed some responsibility for building it.
Valmyr records insisted Elyndra's first magistrates had established the grounds. Thalenwood's oldest histories claimed the land had been gifted under an ancient pact with Aenvara. Gravann maintained that none of it would have survived long enough to become neutral ground without the Strongholds defending it during the early wars.
Whatever the truth was, the result stood before him now.
Seven enormous structures surrounded a circular plaza, each constructed in the architectural tradition of a different Dominion. White Valmyrian stone stood beside living Thalenwood roots. Dark Gravann masonry faced polished Isoryn metal, while the remaining structures completed the enormous ring around the central building.
None stood higher than another.
Cael noticed that immediately.
Of course he did.
At the center stood the Concord Hall.
No banners hung from its walls.
No statue of any god stood above its entrance.
Even the seven divine symbols carved around its enormous doors had been made exactly the same size.
Neutrality made physical.
Cael wasn't sure whether he found it impressive or exhausting.
Their carriage slowed.
He noticed the sound before they even came to a complete stop.
At first, it had been little more than a distant rumble beneath the turning wheels, something Cael could feel vibrating faintly through the floor beneath his feet. But as the carriage moved deeper into the plaza, that rumble grew until individual voices became impossible to separate from one another.
Thousands upon thousands of people were shouting at once.
By the time the carriage finally stopped, Cael could barely hear himself think.
He glanced toward the window.
People.
That was all he could see.
They filled the enormous plaza from one end to the other, packed shoulder to shoulder behind the barriers and overflowing into the streets beyond. They crowded balconies, rooftops, bridges, windows, terraces, and seemingly every other surface capable of holding a person. The gathering stretched so far into the surrounding city that Cael couldn't find where it ended.
Tens of thousands were immediately visible.
There had to be hundreds of thousands beyond them.
Maybe more.
He'd been told people had traveled from across all seven Dominions for this.
He hadn't understood what that meant until now.
Somewhere outside, one voice managed to rise above the others.
"THE ARBITER!"
The response was immediate.
His title exploded across the plaza.
"ARBITER!"
"THE BLESSED OF ELYNDRA!"
"ARBITER!"
The carriage trembled beneath the force of it.
Cael's stomach dropped.
Then, somewhere among the endless mass of voices, he heard something different.
"CAEL VARIN!"
Cael blinked.
That one almost surprised him more than everything else.
Someone actually knew his name.
Not the Arbiter.
Not Elyndra's Blessed.
Cael.
For some reason, that made him more nervous.
The carriage door opened.
The sound that forced its way inside was deafening.
Cael actually flinched.
What had seemed impossibly loud through the walls of the carriage became something physical once there was nothing separating him from it. Hundreds of thousands of voices blended into one enormous roar that pressed against his ears and vibrated through his chest.
Korin stepped out first.
Cael remained seated.
Only for a second.
Maybe less.
Long enough to stare through the open doorway at the sea of people waiting beyond it.
He couldn't see the end of them.
All those people had come to see the Blessed.
And now they were waiting for him.
Cael swallowed and stepped out.
The world erupted.
The roar struck him all at once, no longer muffled by the carriage walls. It came from every direction, thousands upon thousands of voices crashing together until Cael couldn't separate his name from his title or either from the cheers surrounding them.
For one horrible moment, Cael forgot every single thing he'd practiced.
His eyes moved across the crowd without knowing where to settle.
There were too many of them.
The guarded path cutting through the plaza was one of the only pieces of open ground left. Beyond it, people stood packed so tightly together that Cael could barely make out the stone beneath their feet. Valmyrian white filled entire sections of the crowd, but it was broken everywhere by colors and clothing belonging to Dominions Cael had only ever seen painted across maps or illustrated in books.
Priests stood shoulder to shoulder with commoners. Merchants pressed against nobles who normally wouldn't have allowed them within ten feet. Children sat on shoulders and waved small banners above their heads while adults stretched upward behind them, desperate for even a momentary glimpse of one of the seven people they'd crossed entire Dominions to see.
And it didn't end with the plaza.
Every balcony overlooking the street was filled. People leaned from windows several floors above him, crowded rooftops, climbed monuments, and packed the roads disappearing between the surrounding buildings. Farther away, beyond where Cael could distinguish individual faces, the crowd became little more than an endless mass of movement stretching toward the horizon.
He couldn't possibly count them.
From where Cael stood, there was no point where the gathering seemed to end. The plaza simply became streets, the streets disappeared between buildings, and everywhere he looked there were more people waiting beyond them.
All of them had come for the same reason.
Them.
The Seven Blessed.
Another wave of cheers rolled through the plaza as someone shouted his title, and Cael felt it travel through the crowd like a spark through dry grass. One section erupted, then another, until his name and title were being thrown back and forth by so many voices that they stopped sounding like words.
Cael Varin had never had this many people know he existed.
A few weeks ago, he could walk through Valmyr's streets without anyone looking twice at him. If someone did know his name, it was probably because he owed them money, had annoyed them, or had somehow managed to turn a simple agreement over donuts into a legal dispute.
Now there were more eyes fixed on him than he could comprehend.
Not hundreds.
Not thousands.
An entire sea of people seemed to turn with him when he moved.
For a moment, the practiced Arbiter disappeared, leaving only Cael standing beneath the weight of it all.
Then his body reacted before his mind could.
His back straightened, his shoulders settled, and his chin rose just enough to appear confident without looking arrogant. He adjusted the length of his stride as he started forward, making sure each step remained measured and even.
Not too quickly.
Not too slowly.
He'd practiced this.
Gods, had he practiced it.
For weeks, people had been correcting things Cael hadn't even known could be done incorrectly. The way he stood. The way he sat. Where his hands rested while speaking. How deeply he was supposed to incline his head toward a magistrate compared with a priest. Which hand held a cup. How quickly he ate. How loudly he laughed. When he was allowed to interrupt someone and, more importantly, which people he was never supposed to interrupt regardless of how wrong they were.
That last lesson had proven particularly difficult.
Every mistake had been corrected, practiced, and corrected again until Cael had begun catching himself even when nobody was around to reprimand him.
He'd learned how long his steps should be, where his eyes should rest, and how to acknowledge someone calling his name without turning too eagerly toward them. He'd even practiced how to smile without looking either overly pleased with himself or terrified.
Apparently there was an acceptable amount of happiness for the divine representative of justice.
Cael still wasn't sure he'd found it.
"The Arbiter!"
Someone screamed his title from beyond the barrier.
Cael turned his head only slightly and offered the crowd the small, controlled smile he'd practiced in front of a mirror until his cheeks hurt.
The response was immediate.
Cheers erupted.
Cael kept walking.
Don't look down.
Don't touch the collar.
Don't walk faster.
Shoulders relaxed.
Chin up.
He repeated each instruction silently as the enormous doors drew closer.
To everyone watching, he hoped it looked natural.
That was the entire point.
They weren't supposed to see the weeks of correction behind every movement. They weren't supposed to know he'd once walked with his hands buried in his pockets, talked while chewing, slouched whenever he sat, or had absolutely no idea what half the silverware placed around his dinner plate was meant for.
They were supposed to see the Arbiter.
So Cael gave them the Arbiter.
At least until he made it through the doors.
The great doors of the Concord Hall waited ahead.
Two guards pulled them open.
The noise from outside dulled the moment Cael crossed the threshold, the cheering becoming a distant rumble behind walls thick enough to make the enormous gathering outside seem suddenly far away.
Cael exhaled.
His shoulders dropped perhaps half an inch before he caught himself.
Finally.
He'd made it through the crowd without tripping, waving at the wrong person, walking too quickly, touching his collar, or otherwise disgracing Elyndra before half the known world.
He would consider that a success.
His footsteps echoed through the chamber as he continued forward.
Then stopped.
Cael stared.
He had expected officials.
Priests.
Diplomats.
Perhaps some long ceremonial introduction before the others arrived.
Instead, twelve figures were already waiting.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Cael's eyes moved slowly across them.
An elf.
An orc.
An Eidoryn.
A panther Beastkin.
A dwarf.
A Dragonkin.
Names he'd read in reports and heard shouted through streets suddenly had faces attached to them.
And behind each of them stood another figure.
Their guardians.
Some wore armor, others robes, and several carried weapons that made Cael briefly question what exactly the Concord considered *neutral*. They were older than the Blessed, stronger, and carried themselves with the kind of quiet awareness that made the difference between the two groups immediately obvious.
The Blessed were looking at him.
Their guardians looked past him.
Cael noticed it almost immediately.
Their eyes settled on him when he entered, some curious, others difficult to read, but the attention lasted only a moment. One after another, their gazes shifted over his shoulder toward the person walking several steps behind him.
Korin.
The change was subtle.
No one reached for a weapon. No one moved from where they stood. There was no sudden hostility that Cael could point toward and accuse them of.
They simply watched him.
One guardian's eyes moved toward the sword across Korin's back before returning to his hands. Another studied the white-and-gold armor covering him, lingering over the marks and wear along its edges. Someone else shifted their stance slightly as Korin entered, while another seemed content to simply stare.
Sizing him up.
Cael glanced over his shoulder.
Korin appeared completely unconcerned.
Of course he did.
He walked into a room containing six of the people specifically entrusted with protecting divine vessels and somehow looked as comfortable as if he'd entered an empty tavern.
Cael looked forward again.
For the briefest moment, an irritating thought returned.
See?
He suppressed it before it could go any further.
He'd already spent enough of the morning comparing himself to Korin.
Still, it was difficult not to notice that the six Blessed had looked at Cael because he was the Arbiter.
Their guardians were looking at Korin because they actually wanted to know what he could do.
Cael wasn't sure which bothered him more.
Seven Blessed.
Seven guardians.
For weeks he'd heard the stories.
He'd seen drawings.
Read reports.
Listened to priests explain what each blessing supposedly meant.
He'd imagined what meeting them might be like so many times that he'd accidentally created entire people in his head.
Now all six were standing in front of him.
Cael swallowed.
He recognized every one of them.
And somehow none of them looked anything like he'd imagined.