Chapter 5: Uncharted

I wake to the sound of water dripping somewhere deep within the cave, in a steady, unfamiliar rhythm. My sword is still leaning against the wall, exactly where I left it. Untouched.

The camp is already stirring when I step out from my spot. A central fire keeps a pot of porridge bubbling, and the scent reaches me before the sound of voices. Catarina waves from a distance, beckoning me closer. She is sitting on a log beside a thin man with a sparse beard, the same man who handed me my sword during the escape.

"Doran," he introduces himself as soon as I approach, before I can even sit down. "And you should stop looking at us like you're cataloging the enemy troop."

I neither confirm nor deny it. Doran himself already knows he got it right, and his crooked smile says he doesn't mind it one bit.

"That’s Sela," he says, jerking his chin toward the older woman carrying the glass jars. "And the grumpy guy with the bandaged leg is Bram. He’s been complaining about joint pain since before I joined the crew, so don’t take his health issues too seriously."

"I heard that," Bram shouts, without looking up from his food.

"You didn't eat properly," Catarina says, handing me a bowl of porridge. "And there's no point in refusing. They always make more food around here than they need."

I accept without argument. I notice that she carefully rolls up the sleeves of her habit as she hands me the bowl, ensuring the fabric doesn't contaminate the food, a practice of someone who has distributed meals dozens of times.

I eat in silence, still trying to understand the dynamics of that group of strangers.

Bethenah appears shortly after, already dressed for the journey, studying an old map, one so creased and folded I lose count of the lines. Over her shoulder, I can see routes marked and crisscrossed in at least three different inks, each likely from a previous attempt to reach a place they haven't yet found. It is a strategy completely different from what I am used to, coming from someone who always sought the shortest path to the Paladin's campaigns.

"Eat quickly," Bethenah announces, addressing no one in particular yet everyone at once. "We’ve stayed put here too long. The Guard is likely already reorganizing the search, and this valley will cease to be safe the moment someone decides to start looking properly."

"Where do we go now?" asks a young voice, the man who shouted for Catarina during the ambush.

"West first, Yuri. I don't want to make our route too obvious for the Holy State." Bethenah replies without taking her eyes off the map, as if the question were unnecessary after months of repeating the same answers.

She turns to me before I ask anything.

"Have you decided what you want, Elias? Are you coming with us or staying here to figure out on your own what to do with that sword?"

I do not answer immediately. I spent the night trying to imagine a path other than this one, yet I still find none. No city where my face is not a death sentence. No temple that would welcome me without chaining me up again. The only direction left is the one already being offered.

"I'll go with you, until I find another way."

Bethenah acknowledges this with a minimal nod, the sort that neither celebrates a victory nor expects instant loyalty. She simply notes the fact and moves on, as she would with any other piece of tactical data, while refolding her map and tucking it inside her coat to shield it from the elements.

We spend the morning breaking camp. I learn everyone’s roles as I help carry supplies: Yuri on the bow, Sela handling the medicine, and Bram complaining about everything with the same energy he uses to haul more weight than he should, given the state of his knee. I notice that no one here expects perfection from anyone else. It still feels strange to live among people who don’t seem to be sizing each other up all the time.

As I fold a tarp, I find myself muttering the usual prayer under my breath.

"God does not impose upon you a trial greater than..."

I realize what I'm doing and stop in the middle of the sentence.

I don't know if I stopped because I no longer believe in it or because I no longer know to whom it should be directed. Both possibilities trouble me in different ways.

Doran, working on the chores alongside me, notices the strange silence and asks nothing. He simply hands me another tarp to fold, as if work were the only courtesy a man like me still knows how to accept without suspicion.

The march begins slowly, with the group spreading out along the narrow trail at varying paces. The supplies feel heavier than they did inside the cave, so some horses are harnessed to pull the supply wagons, meaning not everyone has a mount of their own.

"Here." Bram approaches me and offers me what appeared to be his personal chestnut horse.

I watch that stubborn man and let out a silent laugh.

"Walking seems like good exercise to me," I say, declining.

I join the walkers, including Catarina and Sela, who constantly move among the others to offer water or check if anyone has been injured along the way. A cold wind blows from the mountains, carrying the scent of wet stone and pine burning in some distant campfire that isn't ours. Each rest stop lasts less time than any weary body would like.

During one of these breaks, the group spreads out around a narrow stream that cuts across the trail.

Doran fills the canteens one by one, grumbling at every bottle that wasn't empty enough to justify the trip to the water. Catarina kneels at the bank and splashes her face with both hands, sighing loudly enough for everyone to hear that it was worth it. Bram sits on a flat rock and props up his bandaged leg as if it deserved applause just for making it this far. Yuri, still wet, picks up a small stone and takes aim at a piece of wild fruit hanging from a nearby tree. He misses three times, hits it on the fourth, and celebrates as if he had won a real archery tournament. No one applauds, but someone laughs at the display.

I observe all of this from a distance close enough to hear, but far enough away that I don't need to participate. I still don't understand what place to occupy in a scene like that.

Back on the path, at one point, Bethenah, who had been riding ahead of us when we set out, slowed her horse to draw closer to me, keeping her eyes fixed on the trail.

"You still think about them. The Sins." she says, without me having mentioned anything to warrant the comment. "I see it in the way you look at your own sword. As if it still had a sacred purpose to fulfill."

"It does."

"It did." Bethenah tears her gaze away from the trail for a moment and looks directly at me, meeting my eyes for the first time since I met her. "Do you really believe they deserved to become monsters, Elias?"

I cannot answer immediately.

What Bethenah says starts to, piece by piece, realign the puzzle of the memories of my past missions.

A thin man begging for something I didn't understand at the time, a woman who wouldn't stop repeating a name, the faces of people who looked more hungry than dangerous. I never paid enough attention to remember details. Paying attention wasn't the job.

Carrying it out was.

"How many of them did you see up close before exorcising them?" she continues, turning her gaze back to the road. "How many had time to say anything before your sword decided for them?"

I realize, too late, that I don't know. Because it was never my job to.

"I imagine many of those places were already on reduced rations when you arrived, under collective punishment. They had likely already lost a harvest, a child, or a home. Perhaps what they needed was aid, not an exorcist."

Her words come down slowly.

"Are you sure?" I reply, stunned. My words sound weak, crushed by the weight of realization.

"I believe you must find the answers you seek yourself, Elias," she says, then walks away, returning to her position at the head of the entourage.

Unwittingly, I clench my hand around the hilt of my sword, squeezing it harder than I should.

What if the evil I fought my entire life was merely the mess the Church itself created and then labeled the will of God? If Bethenah is right, then every exorcism I performed with pride, every mission from which I returned alive and successful, every time my superiors hailed me as exemplary, it was all a lie. It was nothing more than me killing desperate people and calling it justice.

How many certainties of a lifetime have just crumbled in a single sentence?

My hand now moves down to the sword’s hilt, where the state seal is still etched into the metal. The same seal I swore to serve all my life, without ever having truly chosen it. Instinctively, I begin to scrape the surface with my fingertips, slowly.

It won’t come off.

But I keep trying.