Chapter 3: Under No Orders

The nun’s hand is stronger than it looks. She pulls with the heft of someone accustomed to hauling buckets of water, not religious relics. The moment I step out of the cage, another pair of hands is already on my chains, tearing off the shackles with a pincer that screeches as loudly as the metal itself.

"Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to fight with us?" The voice belongs to a thin man with a patchy beard and a crooked smile that doesn't match the chaos around him.

He holds out a sword to me. It is no ordinary blade. I recognize the weight, the balance, and the carving at the base of the hilt. It is a holy sword of the kind carried only by high-ranking paladins. My fingers find the grip easily, my thumb naturally falling into the worn indentation, a mark that exists only because I wore it down myself through years of repeatedly sheathing and unsheathing the weapon until the metal yielded slightly to the shape of my hand. I recognize this weapon just as I would recognize my own handwriting.

Somehow, that group of rebels had retrieved my sword from the Guards and was placing it back in my hands.

Before I can ask anything, the man has already turned toward the orders of someone further ahead.

"Sister Catarina, get behind me!" shouts the other rebel, a younger man, dragging a cracked shield.

Catarina. So that's the nun's name.

I don’t have time to process anything else. A soldier from the retinue advances on my left with his sword raised, and my body moves before I do. I parry the blow, shift my weight to the other foot, and disarm him, executing one of the moves I practiced most at the camp. It took years of learning that motion for it to become second nature.

But I stop there. I decide not to finish him off and let the soldier limp away. I don’t want to feel that emptiness opening up in my chest again today. I will use only what I can control: my sword.

Around me, the battle is being decided. The rebels are few but coordinated, and the Guards of the Most Holy’s retinue clearly did not expect to be ambushed so close to the main road. Within minutes, the surviving guards fall back, and the silence that remains has a strange taste of victory.

Catarina catches up to me, still breathless, checking my wrists where the chains had been.

"You shouldn't have come back."

My voice sounds harsher than I intended.

"And do I need your permission?" she says, looking not the least bit sorry. "You should have said thank you first and complained later. Especially with that look on your face."

I don't know what expression I made. I don't even know if I have any expression to make other than the one I use for everything.

As the rebels regroup the horses and gather what remains of the entourage's supplies, I watch that unknown group.

Eleven people, not counting Catarina. Three bows, two of them with strings too worn to be trusted for long-range shots. A man limping on his left knee loudly complains that the "damn pothole in the road" is going to cost him his dinner; someone laughs and tosses a water skin his way without even turning to look. An older woman carrying glass vials with exaggerated care. Perhaps a healer or an apothecary. She passes close to Catarina and gives her arm a gentle squeeze, a silent expression of gratitude. These are the people who just risked their lives to get me out of a cage.

We set out along a narrow trail between cliffs, climbing toward the mountains. After a while, a middle-aged woman with an upright posture guides her horse up beside mine.

"Bethenah," she introduces herself without extending her hand. "I’m the one who decides where this band goes. Since Sister Catarina forgot to say her own name before pulling you out of a cage, I’d rather not make the same mistake."

She speaks while looking straight ahead, at the path. Never at me. It is a habit I recognize from commanders who have spent too much time leading people into danger.

"Elias... Aster."

Aster. The surname reserved for orphans taken in by the Church of Apex. It wasn’t a family name but a reminder that we never had one.

Bethenah nods slightly, signing she already knew it.

She doesn't ask about my past. She just watches me in a way that suggests she has already decided what she thinks about it and has chosen not to say it out loud.

"And if surnames worry you..." She turns her eyes back to the road. "Hardly anyone here has one."

I remain silent.

I still don't know how to stop being an Aster.

But mapping the terrain was always simpler than mapping myself.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"There are stories about an isolated valley, a place far enough out of the Church's reach that no one would think to look there. Among ourselves, we call it the Promised Land. Not very original, I admit." She laughs, shrugging. "I don't know if it really exists. But I'd rather die walking toward something than sitting around waiting for death."

"That is not a plan."

"It's enough when you have no other choice."

I can't answer.

"I’m not asking you to fight for our cause," she continues, not looking at me this time. "I’m just saying that as long as you carry what you have now inside you, the Church of Apex’s private army won’t stop hunting you. You are the Eighth Sin they’ve spent their entire lives waiting for, Elias. That makes you the most valuable asset they’ve ever had within reach."

The weight of Bethenah's words sinks in slowly.

"I didn't ask for this."

"No one would."

I don’t tell her I have no intention of staying. I don’t tell her that, as soon as I find an opportunity, I’ll strike out on my own, the way I’ve always done best. But when I try to picture the path in that direction, I find nothing. No place, no name, no city where my face doesn’t spell a death sentence. Just, perhaps, a road that ends in ruin.

We arrived at the caves just as the sun was rising behind the peaks, the high-altitude chill biting through the borrowed uniform someone had handed me along the way. The camp is larger than I expected. Wind-shielded campfires, patched tents, and the smell of simple food cooking in iron pots. No one looks at me with the same fright shown by the guards in the escort party. They look with curiosity, perhaps suspicion, but not fear.

It is strange not to be feared in the way every Sin I have exorcised so far was.

Around the campfires, no one forms lines or waits for orders to eat or sleep. A nearby group laughs loudly at a joke I can’t quite hear. Someone sings a song off-key while stirring a pot. Everyone there chose where to sit, what to do, and whom to talk to, without needing to ask for permission.

Catarina approaches and shows me where I can rest. A secluded spot near the cave entrance, far enough from the main group to seem respectful, yet close enough to appear like a kind sentry.

"Tomorrow you decide whether to stay," she says, before leaving. "Today just rest."

I sit against the cold stone and gaze at the sword resting across my lap. For years, I slept with it within arm's reach. A paladin's sacred rule: never part with one's blessed blade. Not in sleep, nor on friendly ground.

No one ordered me to do this today.

For the first time in years, no one is going to knock on my door in the middle of the night with an order. No one is going to tell me where to be tomorrow, what to exorcise, whom to save, or whom to sacrifice. My decisions, whatever they may be, are entirely my own from now on.

I lean the sword against the cave wall, far enough away that I would need two steps to reach it.

It’s a small thing. It doesn’t change anything, except for the fact that, for the first time in years, I was the one who decided.

I should be relieved. But what I feel is despair.

I spent my entire life knowing exactly what to do because someone above me had already decided for me, whether a person or a celestial being. Now, sitting in a cold cave among strangers who risked their lives to free me, I realize I have no idea what to actually do with the one thing the Church couldn't take away from me.

My free will.