“It iseveryone’splace to question,” I said calmly. “Even mine. Especially mine.”
They didn’t argue. They didn’t dare. But their silence had the weight of disapproval, and I saw the look they gave the novices: thinly veiled scorn.
After they left, the boys murmured quick blessings and scattered.
I stood alone for a moment in the high corridor, staring at the mosaic of firebirds on the walls. The golden light filtering through the glass cast shifting patterns on the floor. And yet, I felt the cold.
A kind of rot had taken root.
Nothing yet I could see. Nothing I could name. But the edges were fraying—in the Temple, in the city, in the very fabric of our sanctity.
I’d seen cracks like this before. In the years before the warwith Telluria. In the year the plague came down from the peaks. In the year the portal magic first tore open, and half the Temple had tried to brand it heresy.
Solaris had survived each time.
But I had learned long ago—survival did not come from silence.
I walked onward, deeper into the heart of the Temple, past the scriptorium where the scribes were hunched over their scrolls, past the vaults where golden relics gleamed behind enchanted glass, and into the small side chamber where I often sat to think — alone, unseen.
There, I allowed the mask to slip, just for a moment.
My hand trembled as I placed the staff beside the stone bench. Not with fear. Not with age. I had not aged a day in sixty years. But with the weight of knowing.
Something was coming.
And I would face it. I always did.
But not without cost.
~
At the end of the hall, I turned left. Still flanked by Heira and my scribe, Nekir, I walked toward the magnificent audience chamber of the High Priestess, my steps measured and silent in my light leather sandals.
As always, the air was suffused with the scent of incense and the aura of solemnity.
Sunlight streamed in through the expansive glass windows, casting a warm, ethereal glow upon the ornate furnishings—the plush velvet cushions adorning the wooden benches where the priests, the Sun Guardians, sat in rapt attention.
As I swept into the chamber, I scanned the faces of the assembled guardians, each one a familiar sight that I had come to know over the five decades of my service.
Aeldrin, the senior-most of the Guardians, rose to greet me, his once youthful features now marked by time.
Though his brow was furrowed with worry, his gaze held a steadfast determination that I had come to admire over the years. His brown skin was now lined and spotted with age, but I still remembered the bright-eyed, enthusiastic junior priest he’d been when I’d first met him twenty-five years before.
“High Priestess,” Aeldrin began now, his voice rich and resonant, “we have grave news to report.”
It always saddened me when Aeldrin called me by my title. When he was younger, just a novice priest, he’d treated me as a friend, as an equal, calling me by my name.
If I closed my eyes, I could still recall his youthful voice chirping at me:Elena, have you eaten? Elena, let’s study together in the library. Elena…Elena…
Now, that boy was fifty-five, and he called me ‘High Priestess’, as befitted the senior most Guardian.
I nodded solemnly, gesturing for him to continue. What was it this time? A plague? A drought?
We had thrived under the protection of the Sun God for nearly a century, its people living in peace and prosperity. That didn’t mean that we had never faced problems, though.
I suppressed a shudder as I recalled the last plague to affect Solaris. It struck twenty-three years ago — a cruel winter plague, unnamed by healers, untouched by potions. It crawled through the mountain air and stole breath before sun-up. Entire households lost in a single week. I could not heal them all. I tried.
I nearly burned myself hollow doing so.
