I said nothing for a long moment, my hand still pressed to the base of the stone. The wind curled through my hair. The bond hummed, gentle and steady, like a second heartbeat in my chest.
“I wonder,” I whispered, “if they knew what they were beginning.”
Auren looked at me then. Really looked.
And his expression—lit with sunlight, softened with awe—was the kind of thing I’d only ever read in the old poems. The kind that felt like worship.
Auren’s hand found mine again, warm and firm.
“There is pleasure in the bond,” he said softly. “There is joy and love and longing. But those are only the first gifts. The bond is also a bridge—one laid stone by stone between men and the halls of the gods.”
I turned toward him.
He gestured toward the obelisk, then the horizon beyond it. “The stones have crumbled over the centuries. The knowledge, the faith, the discipline—it all faded. But each bond we form now lays a new brick. And the stronger the bond, the larger the brick. It matters. It builds.”
His voice grew distant, almost reverent. “One day, when enough bridges rise across the great divide, the gods may return. Not as myth, not in dreams. But as presence. They’ll walk beside us again. They’ll open the halls. They’ll let us in.”
I stared at him.
“That’s what you believe?” I asked, barely above a whisper. “That it’s possible?”
“That’s what we devote ourselves to,” he said. “What the Order was founded for. To build the way back.”
“How long would it take?” I asked. “A hundred bonds? A thousand?”
He smiled—but it was the kind of smile that ached a little.
And then he said, “Would you like to hear a story?”
I nodded.
“There is a ravine,” Auren said, “deep in the western cliffs of Iphireon, where the sun kisses stone but once each winter. No hearth burns there. No tree takes root. Only silence dwells.
“And in that silence—halfway down the gorge, behind a curtain of petrified vine—lies a basin carved from the mountain’s breast. Perfect and round. So old, they say, even the stone has forgotten the hands that shaped it.
“Once every hundred years, when the frost retreats and the air stills to breathless hush, a single drop falls from the ceiling above. Just one. Cold as truth. Clear as prayer. It strikes the bowl with no echo—no sound at all.
“One drop, each century.
“Not enough to fill. Not enough to see. But the stone remembers. And slowly, slowly, the basin deepens.The edges smooth. The shape refines. Not by chisel. Not by will. But by waiting.
“And when the day comes that the bowl can hold its drop… when not a trace of water sinks into stone…” He turned to me then, voice low with awe. “…that is when the first second of our work will have passed.”
I stood very still.
“That’s how long it takes?” I asked.
Auren’s smile softened. “That’s how long it’s worth taking.”
The wind whispered through the field again, brushing the grass like waves around us.
He stepped closer, brushed his thumb again over my knuckles.
“That’s why I study the old stories. Why I honor the bonds. I don’t need to see the gods in my lifetime. I only need to lay a brick strong enough to last.”
I looked at the obelisk behind him.
Then I looked at him.
