Smoke clung still to the city’s edges, pressed into every seam, every pore of brick and timber, every unsuspecting lung that dared to breathe. It seeped as if Hasholm itself were a vessel cracked and spilling its black breath upon us.

  The Festningsanstalt had gone first. A bloody business, but brief. Most of the poor Touched had been kept there—caged, branded too impure for the rest of the city. They had grown into their pens like vines around rusted bars. And when the bells rang, when the drift came, they were slaughtered where they stood. Shot, piked, left in their filth.

  Then the Cathedral—our pride, our dome of Joseph. There too the Touched had gathered, those deemed pitiable enough to receive alms, crumbs, the theatre of mercy. They turned in an instant, swept through clerks and novices alike, desecrated altar and aisle. And there they were met, so it is told, by Saints. The Saints prevailed, yes, but I shall not set those visions to paper. Some horrors are not for ink.

  And here, in my poor corner of Hasholm, another battle had raged. My friend Lotte. My companion in silence. He against a devil that once bore a face I knew. An old acquaintance of the Touched. I had seen him on the steps many times—silent, patient, asking for nothing save a glance, a coin, a drop of mercy.

  Now that same man, or what mocked his shape, had burned five riders, two footmen, and driven Lotte to the edge of unmaking.

  In truth, perhaps the wretch had driven him further still. For I was not certain—no, I am not certain now—that Lotte would rise again.

  When at last the flames guttered out, when the smoldering carcass of our familiar beggar lay slack upon the stones, I forced myself forward. Toward him. Toward Lotte.

  He was ruined. His hide seared and flaking, his flesh punctured by claw and tooth and musket-ball alike. His frame—once iron oak—now mottled blue and red, bruised and broken as if heaven and hell had taken turns with him. He could not form words when I reached him. Breath came ragged, shallow, a sigh stretched thin.

  And from that vast brow of his—sweat, smoke, and tears slid downward in one stream. He offered no roar, no defiance. Only that. Only the tears.

  And then he yielded—slipped beneath the torment, beneath the weight of pain and ruin, into silence.

  There was little I could do for him then. God forgive me, but it pains and shames me to confess it:

  They carried him to the Festningsanstalt. My Lotte—my Wigburg—laid among the others, the wide-chested Blemmye gathered up like wayward cattle. The soldiers who bore him away swore he would be tended, given relief, honored for the stand he had made. They had seen with their own eyes how he wrestled our doom to the ground, how he spared them fire and ruin. And I think—perhaps—I think they believed their own words.

  But what succor is found behind thick walls, under the gaze of scornful eyes? What care blooms in a place built for locks and chains? That answer lies beyond me.

  The decree was simple, stamped into the city like a brand: all Others to be penned, every anomalous shape to be bound. It scarcely mattered; the storm itself had taught us that the world can twist in an instant.

  And I, newly fanged as the city’s Chronicler of the forgotten, was stripped without ceremony of that meager dignity.

  Now my commission is plainer, fouler: I am to tally devils.

  “This ’ere one was sculkin’ under the pulpit, screamin’ as it gulfed down Prector Gimle.”

  The words came from a guard of some girth, his cuirass straining over the swell of his belly. He pointed with a soot-blackened gauntlet toward a ruin on the stones—a dark pool where blood and ash had married into something half-liquid, half-memory.

  I dared to look closer. Tufts of scorched fur clung stubbornly to the flagstones. A face—or what mocked the shape of one—still writhed there, frozen in an expression that seemed carved from agony itself.

  And mingled in that horror lay what I, to both soul and stomach’s despair, could only take for Gimle.

  “We gave ’m a volley,” the guard went on, pride oozing through his broken accent. “Fourteen o’ our finest shot. Bled like a sieve it did. Fire an’ blood all over, made a racket unheard of, an’ then it fell.”

  His voice carried through the Cathedral, echoing too grandly for the words it bore. It rang against pillars and vaults as if the very stones wished to remind me of where I stood. I lifted my gaze—a chance to turn my eyes from the ruin at my feet. To let painted saints spare me from the sight of fresh devils.

  Above, the vast arch unfurled its mural. Few years after the Cathedral was first raised, the brush of Rintel Tordenskjold had laid it there—he, that prodigy both admired and despised, who drank his way into the grave by the age of thirty. A swollen liver claimed him; brilliance and bitterness had consumed him in tandem.

  The mural showed Joseph in radiance, the Saviour’s hand outstretched, blessing the tribes of old. At his feet lay spears and axes—rendered not as threat, but as ornaments piled in surrender. Tordenskjold, in his cruel wit, had made weapons beautiful only in their discard, a painted hymn to the peace Joseph had once brought.

  Peace.

  What I would not give—what I would not bleed—for a sliver of it now.

  “So, will thee write’r not?”

  The voice tugged me down from Joseph’s painted calm. I let my eyes fall from the mural’s radiance to the soldier beside me—a face swollen red with heat and smoke, veined with drink or rage or both.

  “Aye, Master Soldier,” I said, smoothing my coat as if that gesture could shield me. “I will tally with the rest. But tell me—was there no remembrance? No name for the ledger? Any tally of who he was?”

  The man snorted, lips curling as though the thought itself were rancid.

  “Who that was? A beggar’t best, murder’t worst. One tallies not refuse.” His eyes flicked toward the blackened smear on the stones. “Yer job’s to count’t dead.”

  Indeed. So little had changed—only the mask of the hour, never the face beneath.

  And three weeks after the Blemmye first spoke, the Storm once again rose in anger, and took its unfortunate children with it.

  There. That I would set to paper. A line for the record, a sentence to bind this carnage into order. The next page in the ledger, black as the rest. The latest beat in the slow percussion of our undoing—the measured death-rhythm of a world collapsing upon itself.

  I counted six beggars, once harmless fixtures of the square, now transfigured into hell’s grotesques. Fourteen souls lay around them—remains of their victims, charred or torn, scarcely human any longer. Three soldiers too, struck down in their loyal pretence of guarding Hasholm, folded into the same ledger of ruin.

  I counted frescos as well—two of them, the proud works of Fjell B?, that long-spiteful rival of Tordenskjold. Once, he had stood at the fore of humane arts, chasing mercy with his brush. Now his painted saints and supplicants were ash, their faces scattered in dust across the nave.

  And the pulpit—once a marvel of craft, carved by orphans led by the Carver League, under the exacting hand of Helmut Spiegel. It now stood riddled with flame-burns and bullet-holes, its beauty perforated, its history scarred into a grotesque ledger of its own.

  And with that, the tally was finished. The dead, the doomed—memories scraped clean and replaced by numbers in neat lines.

  I stepped out from the Cathedral into a sky that bore no sun, only a ceiling of swollen cloud. The air hung heavy, still thick with omen. At my feet lay what the people had left: wooden effigies cut in haste, branches bent and knotted into shape, scraps of metal hammered into crude tokens. Offerings to the Skies of God—the eternal watcher, the lightning-bearer, the one who struck the unjust. Yet now the heavens above mirrored no promise, only the same storm-dark vault that had vomited doom upon us, and lingered still.

  I thought to record them, to number these tributes as I had numbered corpses and frescoes. To bind them into the memory I was fashioning. My quill was in hand.

  But it fell. My arm faltered, slack.

  Instead I clutched at my brow, pressing thumb and forefinger into the bone, trying to dam the salt that came unbidden. I brushed the tears away, yet more followed, unashamed.

  For I had seen too much for one life.

  And done too little to spare it.

  What had I done? What mark had I left? Page upon page I had filled—first with lofty stories and playhouse wit, then with lists of names destined never to return home. And now, at the last, with the tally of devils and their quarry, their ruin measured in strokes of ink that mocked remembrance.

  And my proudest charge—my one true task—the light that pierced the black canopy above us, was Lotte. I was to aid him, he was to anchor me. Yet when the hour came, I scribbled while he bled, I hid while he stood. He poured out his strength, his blood, his very frame, to hold the storm at bay. And I—the chronicler—offered nothing but witness.

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  I wept, but not for the pity of myself. No.

  I wept because I was pitiless

  And as I stood there, pages blotched with salt, my tears striking the dead in their place of record—

  A disturbance. Hooves clattering against stone and mud. The rattle of a coach.

  I blinked through wet lashes, vision bending, until the shapes resolved: riders flanking a lofty wagon, crest polished but mud-splashed from haste, all of it barreling toward the Cathedral. Toward me.

  They drew up short, reined to a halt a few paces from where I stood. The riders kept their saddles. The coach door remained shut.

  “Sire Adalbert?” One voice called—steady, official. Its owner sat stiff in the saddle, rank stitched in braid upon half-armour, half-finery, the garb of a man too proud for war yet too proud not to be seen near it.

  I sniffled once, straightened my collar, tried to stitch dignity back upon myself before it abandoned me entirely.

  “Aye, Master Rider. It is I.”

  He dipped his head, a motion at once deferential and proud—as if to say my name carried weight, yet his duty carried more.

  “Ye are summoned. It is of great import, and must be done in haste.”

  “And who calls me so, Master Rider?” My voice cracked but steadied. “The day has been long, and I am worn with suffering.”

  “Commander Dreml,” he replied. “He wishes to suffer with you, Sire Adalbert.”

  Dreml. The Dreml.

  Master of Hasholm’s armies, that warrior-poet spoken of in both tavern song and council chamber. The protector of our walls. And now—he had turned his eye upon me.

  To such a summons, there was but one answer.

  “Oh. Very well, Rider. Take me there.”

  The ride was brisk, urgent—the horses driven to a pace that might have unsettled me, had I not been already sodden with guilt and loss. Their rhythm beat against the stone like a drum of summons, yet I sat hollow, dulled by the weight of what I had failed to do.

  We crossed northward, toward the island fortress. Hasholm’s crown. Grenzland’s proudest bastion. A sheer cliff cut the main isle from its northern sibling, and upon that rock stood a citadel of walls and angled bastions—sloped triangles of dread sharpened against time itself. It rose not merely as defense but as a monument, carved to tell storm and stranger alike: I will be what remains. I will never fall. And in truth, for a moment, I believed it.

  The wagon ground to a halt before the central bastion. Here, baroque offices hemmed the plaza, each row arrayed with deliberate symmetry. Stone facades bore pilasters and cornices in the old style—ornament not of this continent, but imported pride, Old World arrogance raised anew upon these alien shores. Their windows stared down with tidy disdain upon the battered city beyond.

  It was as though here, at least, the New World still dared to dream of splendor. Of order. Of permanence.

  A conceit I could almost share.

  One of the riders stepped down, unlatched the coach door, and with a curt bow and a hand half-formal, half-commanding, bade me move. I obeyed.

  Cuirassed men fell in at once, pikes in hand, their boots striking the stones in neat succession. They made a wall at my flanks as we advanced into the bastion’s yard. On any calmer day the sight might have soured my gut, left me certain I was being escorted not to an audience but to an axe. Too many doors in this world open onto execution.

  But not this day. Or rather, this day had stripped me already of such tremors. What more could it take? What could they threaten me with that grief had not already rehearsed? I found myself emptied, yet oddly stirred—hollow enough to be filled by whatever design awaited me.

  Very well, then.

  Unfurl your plans before me, World.

  A turn of the corridor, a door swung wide, a brace of salutes, and I was brought at last to the Commander’s abode. It bore the rigid dignity only bureaucracy can conjure—an air of “here our servant shall rest until his task is done,” though rest was clearly scarce within these walls.

  One of my pike-guards rapped a firm knuckle against the dark oak and pushed it open.

  Heat met me first: a fire stoked bright, its glow joined by the labor of perhaps three dozen candles. Light bled across maps strewn in chaos over an ornate dining table, and onto a desk nearby no less cluttered—inkpots, charters, scrawled notes layered thick as trenchworks. In one corner, a bed stood immaculate, tucked and pressed with the precision of ritual, and with the sterility of a thing rarely used.

  And then—the art.

  The walls held riches beyond even the Studium’s jealous galleries. Old World masters: Widerberg’s stark clarity, Nupen’s holy dramas, others whose names row above us mere mortals in command of brush and vision. Heavenly splendor and rending agony—each fixed forever in oil, each reminding the beholder of glories lost.

  But my eye caught on something nearer, something of this soil: a canvas by Eilif Heske, one of Divina Terra’s own. It showed a blasted no man’s land, sodden earth slick with fire’s reflection, sparks bleeding into pools of blue, red, green. Carcasses lay scattered across the mud, half-buried, half-exposed. Above it, a black cloud hung swollen, a bruise across the sky.

  I confess, I absorbed the room entire before my gaze settled on the man himself.

  Dreml.

  He stood already forward, as though he had been waiting for my entrance with measured eagerness. A tall man, shoulders proud, black curls spilling toward a moustache thick enough to veil a polite smile. He wore a coat, waistcoat, and breeches in brilliant red, set alight in the candle-glow. At his side hung a bandolier, and with it an ornate blade—gleaming, unambiguous, a reminder that his station was not merely rhetorical.

  He regarded me first, then turned his eyes to Heske’s painted ruin, and back again.

  “It is haunting, is it not?”

  I nodded, but let silence answer in my stead. For once, I chose to keep my tongue sheathed.

  “It is of the northern frontier,” Dreml began, his voice a low cadence, worn with memory. “Close to the unmapped forests. I rode there in my day, when we surveyed what might be claimed, what might be settled—or abandoned.” His finger rose, steady, to the painted mire. “Undeniably beautiful. I thought the same when I rode it.”

  He paused, gaze fixed on the canvas.

  “But it will never hold life. Never bear crops. Never sustain the hand of man, save as fodder for artists.”

  “You put it succinctly,” I replied, the words dry, pared down.

  He turned his gaze upon me, brows arched, mouth curved with a shade of amusement.

  “I seem to recall you as an eager blabbermouth. I know your weakness for the arts—your eyes lingered long enough to betray it.”

  “I am sorry, Lord Commander,” I answered, my voice stripped of polish. “The weeks have been long, and this day longer still.” Too weary to gild the truth, too hollow to sweeten it.

  Dreml inclined his head, the firelight sharpening the weight in his face.

  “We have been struck a blow, Van Aarden. First we are cut off, then we are assaulted. The storm closes in.”

  He turned from me to the table, uncorked a decanter, and filled a heavy chalice with deep red. The fire caught its surface, turning it near-black. He extended it across the space.

  “A ‘no thank you’ will not suffice. Here.”

  The scent met me before the rim—herbs, a trace of peach, something rich enough to mask the rot still clinging to my coat. I took it.

  “Thee have been summoned, Van Aarden. Once before. And you declined.”

  I lifted the glass, sniffed the bouquet, and let the memory sting before answering. “Yes. Brenda offered me a seat of supervision in the council. But her words tasted of muzzle and bind.”

  “You did good in declining.”

  I paused, chalice at my lips. Oh? A sip was needed before digging further.

  “And how so, Commander Dreml?”

  “Because your instinct was correct. It was a muzzle. They would have you a mere state reporter, censured at every line. A pen caged, a tongue cut to fit.” He leaned forward slightly, voice hardening. “A decision I objected to, I would have you know.”

  “And what would you have me do instead?” I asked, my voice fraying. “They told me you summoned me here so we might suffer together. Well, the suffering clings to me still. Many are dead, Hasholm has been torn apart, and my subject lies struck down, clinging to life.”

  “Yes. Lotte.” Dreml’s tone softened, though it carried no less weight. “He showed his dignity. He will be tended with what we can muster.”

  The wine turned bitter on my tongue. “So—you know?”

  He raised his own cup, sipped, and set it down with deliberate calm. “Look here, Van Aarden: you refused a Council summons. Yes, you thought it voluntary, but they see otherwise. Spies have been set upon you.”

  “Spies?”

  “Of course. Does that surprise you?” His moustache twitched faintly with amusement. “You were with the theatre once, remember. A lauded playwright. Tell me, what ended that promising career?”

  I lowered my cup to the table. “…The Ballad of Six Wives.”

  Dreml chuckled—warmly, but in a way that shrank me nonetheless. “Very funny! I laughed harder with each ‘wife.’ To think the Barony of Kanton nursed such secrets! A pity, truly, that they carried their spite into the highest seats.”

  He drank again. I let my own cup cool on the table.

  “It is good to see, at least,” he went on, “that your talents were so easily converted to chronicling.”

  “They are both stories, after all,” I answered, a tired edge sharpening the words.

  “Now—you have been fortunate,” Dreml said, looking at the glow of the fireplace,, the fire picking out the sharp edges of his face. “The purveyor of Intelligence and Stately Affairs answers to me. And what they have reported…” he let the pause linger, “intrigued me.”

  “You must be speaking of my writings,” I murmured.

  “Indeed. Your clandestine chronicle. Interviewing laymen, soldiers, even the Blemmyes…” He lifted his chalice again, sipping as though to savor not the wine, but my unease.

  “I will be plain. Continue your writing. Let no one hinder you. Keep your ear to the cobbles, measure the heat of the street, the voice of the downtrod.”

  He leaned forward slightly, and in that instant the fire behind him seemed to lean too. “Do this, and I will see to it you never need to tally another lost soul again.”

  The wine, so bitter before, now seemed almost sweet. I studied him over the rim as I raised my chalice once more. His smile was easy, disarming—but behind it lay the scent of weight and consequence, the kind that makes a man tremble if he stares too long.

  “And what do you gain from this?” I asked.

  Dreml chuckled, shook his head slowly, as if caught between amusement and pity. He looked at me as one does a curious fool—or perhaps an uncut tool.

  “I will read it, of course.”

  Then his eyes hardened, and the smile fell away. “We are at the cusp, Van Aarden. Stranded. Poised on the edge of undoing. To prepare for the future, one must see what stirs beneath.”

  “And you, will be my eyes to the lowly.”