"You hear that?" Talia whispered.
The Diviner tilted her head.
"Yes… the same sound as before. From the beams."
Before she could answer, something moved in the darkness ahead—fast, silent, gliding along the wall like a shadow with shape. Talia raised her sword, light flaring instinctively. The creature hissed and recoiled, wings unfurling in a blur of motion that filled the corridor.
"Stay back!" she shouted, stepping forward.
The light glared against sleek, dark membranes that stretched nearly wall to wall. For an instant she saw it clearly—tall, lean, its skin a soft grey-black like ashstone, eyes glinting silver in the dim. The wings folded tightly again, their edges sharp as blades. Its face was unmistakably intelligent—and not human.
"Ba'Ham's demon," Talia hissed, raising her blade.
"No!" The Diviner's voice cracked. "Don't!"
The figure's head tilted toward the sound, its nostrils flaring. It spoke, its voice low and raw from disuse, the syllables rough but clear.
"You… burn wrong."
Talia blinked. The voice wasn't angry—just wary.
"You're not one of his," the Diviner said softly, stepping forward.
The creature's silver eyes shifted toward her.
"No. I am Nyxir. I watched you wake the bones."
Talia's grip on her sword loosened. "You were the one above the beams."
The Nyxir nodded once. "I thought you servants of flame. But you ran. You live."
Its gaze flicked toward the corridor behind them, where a faint red glow still pulsed.
"They will follow soon."
The Diviner swayed on her feet, catching herself on the wall.
"Then help us," she said, voice breaking.
The Nyxir's wings unfurled again, the sound of stretched leather whispering through the silence.
"I can show you the way out," it said, "but the temple hungers for memory. To pass this corridor, you'll have to leave something behind."
Talia frowned, chest still heaving. "What does that mean?"
"It means," the Nyxir said, "that to leave this place, you must let it forget you."
The Nyxir folded its wings close, the movement silent, like silk folding into shadow. In the dimness, Talia could see the faint pattern of scars across its chest—burn marks, circular and precise, like brands.
"Leave something behind?" Talia repeated, still catching her breath. "What are you talking about?"
The Nyxir tilted its head, those silver eyes reflecting her dim light.
"This place is not dead, Paladin. It remembers all who walk its bones. The Keeper, the fire, the voices—it is all the same memory. To pass beyond it, you must separate yourself from its dream."
"You mean forget."
"Not quite," it said. "To forget is to lose. To be forgotten is to live free."
The Diviner leaned against the wall, listening intently.
"I've heard of this. The temples of Ba'Ham were built as mirrors—they recorded all who entered. He feared nothing more than being alone in eternity, so he bound memory into stone."
The Nyxir nodded slowly. "And when the gods struck him down, they cursed the mirrors to keep reflecting forever. They do not know he is gone. They still collect."
Talia frowned, lowering her sword slightly. "Collect what?"
"Names," the Nyxir said simply. "Voices. Faces. Every thought that burns bright enough to be seen. Every life that refuses to fade. That is why the dead still burn below."
The Diviner's hand trembled as she pressed it to her temple.
"It explains why the Keeper called to us—why it felt us in the stone. We've already been marked."
"Marked?" Talia turned sharply. "You mean—this place knows us?"
"Knows you," the Nyxir corrected, glancing toward Talia's still-faintly glowing gauntlet. "Holy light is memory in its purest form. The temple drinks it. It will not let you go easily."
Talia took an involuntary step back, as if she could somehow separate herself from her own light.
"So what are you saying? I just… let it take part of me?"
The Nyxir's expression softened, though his voice carried an ache centuries deep.
"You must choose what you want the temple to forget. A face, a promise, a name. Leave it behind, and it will not follow you out."
"That's barbaric," she hissed. "You expect me to carve out part of myself just to walk free?"
"It is not cruelty," he said. "It is balance. The temple keeps its stories, and you keep your life."
The Diviner had gone quiet, her sightless eyes lowered.
"You've done this before," she murmured. "That's why you're still here. You gave something up."
The Nyxir's wings twitched once, a soft shiver through the air.
"I gave my name. It was the first thing this place took, and the only thing I could offer willingly. I have been nameless ever since."
Talia stared at him, torn between pity and disbelief. "Then how are you still sane?"
"Names are only chains to the past," the Nyxir said. "Without mine, I am lighter. I survive." His gaze shifted toward her. "But your kind—your faith—it is built on memory. On vows. On the weight of promises made to gods and mortals alike. What will you give, Paladin?"
She opened her mouth, but no words came. For a moment, she saw flashes—her Order's crest, her mentor's hand on her shoulder, the laughter of her sister before the war. Things she'd sworn never to lose. The Diviner's hand found hers, weak but steady.
"If you don't choose, Wildfire," she whispered, "the temple will choose for you."
"And what about you?" Talia asked, her throat tight. "What would you give up?"
The Diviner smiled faintly, sadness softening her face.
"I've already given too much. My blood, my rest, my peace. Maybe this place will take my fear next."
The Nyxir inclined his head respectfully. "Then you will walk lightest of all."
The silence between them stretched. Beyond it, the faint red glow in the hall began to brighten—the sound of cracking bone and whispering flame growing closer. The Children of Ba'Ham were waking fully now.
"Time," the Nyxir said, his wings twitching. "Decide quickly. The temple does not wait."
Talia's heart pounded. She could feel the heat rising again from behind them, the air vibrating with the march of burning footsteps.
"If I give up something," she said, "will I remember that I did?"
"No," the Nyxir said softly. "You'll only feel lighter—and emptier. You will know a wound you cannot name."
Talia's hand trembled at her side.
"Choose," the Nyxir said again, voice low and almost kind. "Or the fire will choose for you."
The air changed again. A low hum thrummed through the stone beneath their feet—steady, rhythmic, like the slow pulse of a creature's heart buried deep below. Dust fell in thin streams from the ceiling as something massive shifted in the dark hall behind them. The Nyxir turned its head sharply, nostrils flaring.
"They are coming."
The Diviner straightened, clutching Talia's arm for balance.
"The Children."
From the corridor they had left behind came a flicker of light—not Talia's gold, but a crawling, molten red that rolled along the walls like blood in water. The air itself shimmered with heat, and the faint shapes of figures began to emerge in it: blackened bone, flickering sinew, and the glow of living embers pulsing in their hollow chests. Each step they took left scorched footprints behind. The temple groaned. Beams above them cracked, the sound sharp as thunder in a tomb.
"There is no more time," the Nyxir said, stepping closer. "Choose what the temple will take, or you will burn with its memory."
Talia backed up, sword raised. "You can't ask me to just—just rip part of myself away!"
The Diviner's voice trembled but held its calm.
"Talia. If we don't, there won't be a self left to save."
The Nyxir spread his wings, dark against the molten light. "The fire knows your light now. It will come for you first."
Heat pressed in on all sides—smoke without flame, the scent of charred metal, the faint scream of something ancient remembering how to hate. The first of the Children appeared fully, crawling over the corpses of their still-dead kin, their molten eyes reflecting the gold of Talia's trembling torch-light. Talia's gauntlet flared instinctively in response, holy light and cursed flame meeting mid-air—sparking, fighting, devouring each other. The collision sent a shockwave through the corridor, tearing cracks across the walls and throwing both women back a step.
"Wildfire—!" The Diviner's cry was swallowed by the roar of collapsing stone.
Talia staggered, her hand gripping the Diviner's shoulder, both of them staring into the advancing tide of half-formed demons, the Nyxir's calm silhouette between them and the fire.
"You must decide!" the Nyxir shouted over the din. "Give the temple your memory—or it will take your flesh!"
The hall shuddered again, a rain of dust and debris falling around them. The light from Talia's gauntlet flickered violently, caught between two forces that refused to yield. She turned toward the Diviner—toward the only person whose hand she still held—and her mouth opened as if to speak, to name the thing she could lose. But the sound never came. The stone gave way beneath their feet, and the world fell with them.
The fall ended in silence. Not the silence of death, but of something vast and patient. When Talia opened her eyes, she was standing in a courtyard washed in the pale light of dawn. The scent of wet stone and smoke was achingly familiar. She knew this place—the training grounds of the Order, years ago. But she shouldn't be here. Across the yard, two younger paladins whispered together, glancing her way. Their words were faint, but she remembered every one of them: unnatural,wrong, gross,not one of us.
At the center of it all stood a younger version of herself, she couldn't have been older than fourteen at the time. Her armor too large, hands clenched at her sides, jaw tight to keep from trembling. The moment she had buried so deep she'd almost convinced herself it had never happened.
"This is what the temple took," said a voice beside her.
The Diviner was there, half-transparent in the soft light, her blind eyes wide as if they could see for the first time.
"It's showing me what you've given up."
Talia's throat closed. "Then you can see it?"
"I can feel it."
The Diviner's hand brushed the air, tracing the outline of the younger Talia—angry, ashamed, desperate not to cry.
"This is where you learned to hide the parts of yourself that didn't fit the mold they gave you. The light you've carried ever since was born here, out of defiance."
The younger Talia turned, eyes fierce with a pain the present one had long since learned to mask.
"You don't understand," she whispered.
The Diviner did not answer. Instead, she stepped forward, and the image of the courtyard shuddered. The whispers fell silent. The younger Talia's anger dissolved into a quiet, trembling kind of courage.
"You were never wrong for loving as you do," the Diviner said softly. "But you believed it cost you your place, your faith. That's the wound you've carried."
Talia bowed her head. "Then this is what I've given up. The memory that made me build walls even you couldn't see through."
The Diviner reached toward her, the edges of her form flickering.
"Only I will remember. That's the bargain."
The world began to fracture around them—light bleeding through cracks in the air like dawn through broken glass. The courtyard folded in on itself, the younger paladins vanishing, the stones dissolving into sand.
"Talia," the Diviner said, voice distant now, "when you wake, you'll feel lighter. But I'll carry this for you. I'll remember who you were, and why you fought so hard to be yourself."
Talia tried to speak, but her lips formed no sound. The world turned white—
—and then grey.
She gasped awake on cold stone, lungs burning. Above her loomed the cavern's roof, a lattice of blackened beams and faintly glowing runes. The Diviner lay beside her, breathing shallowly but alive. Between them stood the Nyxir, wings half-spread, the silver of his eyes dim.
"You fell farther than most survive," he said quietly. "The temple wanted to keep you, but I bargained for your lives."
Talia pushed herself up, dizzy. "What did you give it?"
"A memory of my own," he replied. "Now we both walk lighter."
He turned toward the dark corridor ahead, where a faint wind whispered upward.
"The way out lies beyond. But remember this—what the temple takes, it never returns. And what it leaves behind, it binds."
Talia glanced at the Diviner, whose expression was unreadable.
"You don't remember what you lost, do you?" the blind woman asked softly.
Talia frowned. "No. Should I?"
"No," the Diviner said, forcing a small smile. "It's better that way."
They rose together, the Nyxir leading them deeper into the temple's hollow heart, the echoes of forgotten fire following close behind.
The Nyxir had been wandering the temple for a long time. As such he had discovered certain safe spots, places where the temple was in an eternal slumber. At one such point, he decided to give the pair, and especially the Diviner, some much needed rest. Talia had decided to get as comfortable as she could. The stress on both body and mind had been building up for several days now, and within minutes she was fast asleep. The Diviner wasn't so lucky. She'd been pushing herself over her own limits several times over, going beyond her exhaustion. She couldn't sleep now, even if she wanted to. She remembered her training and breathed in through her nose, and out the mouth. Her breathing steadied, but her pulse still hammered too loudly in her ears. The stone under her palm throbbed faintly, as if it held its own slow heart. When she reached out with her other senses, she felt the echo—a thousand overlapping whispers, a place thinking of itself. The Nyxir sat a few paces away, wings folded close, eyes half-closed as if listening to something very far off.
"You said the temple remembers," the Diviner murmured. "Show me what it remembered last."
He inclined his head once. "You will not like what you see."
The air shifted; the world bent. And suddenly she was standing in the square of a living village. Lanterns swayed in the wind. Children ran barefoot through the dust. For a moment it was ordinary, warm, alive. Then the smell of ash began to creep in. From the well, a woman's voice rose in song—old, trembling, wrong. It wasn't a song anyone there should have known. It was an invocation to Ba'Ham, the Fire Father, the god of magic. The people nearest her stopped to listen. A man dropped his tools. A child began to hum along, eyes unfocused. The Diviner saw how it spread: one by one, faces going still, lips mouthing words their throats had never learned. The whole village breathing as one, chanting as one. The earth beneath the well split open, light seeping through the cracks.
"It began with dreams," the Nyxir's voice said beside her, though his form was faint. "They dreamed of the old wars—of Ba'Ham's victory, of May'Jahan's betrayal. They woke with tears that were not their own. They stopped trusting their neighbors. They stopped trusting themselves."
The vision shifted. The villagers were armed now—pitchforks, kitchen knives, rusted swords. Their eyes burned with reflected flame as the first houses caught.
"Some thought they were his priests reborn," the Nyxir continued. "Others thought they were her avengers. In the end, they all burned for someone else's cause."
Through the smoke, the Diviner saw him—whole, unscarred, his name still his own—trying to pull them back, to break the chant. They turned on him, calling him demon, echo, thief of memory. When he spread his wings to shield a child from the fire, they saw only the shadow and screamed. The child's small hand slipped from his grasp and vanished in the flame.
The Diviner staggered as the vision broke. The Nyxir's voice was quiet when it returned.
"When it was over, the temple had fed well. Every soul it touched was folded into its walls. The village was gone by dawn. Only the echo remained."
She opened her eyes. The sanctum was still. Talia slept nearby, face slack, unaware.
"You stayed here," the Diviner said softly. "All this time."
The Nyxir nodded. "Someone had to keep the temple dreaming slowly. If it wakes too fast, it will remember everything again."
"And now that we've come?"
His silver eyes met hers, weary and sad. "Now it knows there are new memories to collect."
He rose, wings rustling softly. "Rest while you can. When the temple starts to dream again, it will come looking for her light first."