Ashes of the Forgotten Pact – Part 1

The stench of old smoke still clung to the stones of Saint Aurellian’s Abbey, three days after the fire. It drifted on the breeze like a whispered warning, curling through the shattered archways and scorched pews. What remained of the great altar stood blackened and cracked, its once-glorious marble now spiderwebbed with ash-gray fractures. Wax from a hundred candles had melted into grotesque shapes, like tears frozen mid-fall. A relic of divine sanctuary—defiled.

Aric dismounted at the edge of the clearing, boots sinking into churned earth where grass had burned away to blackened roots. His steel breastplate caught the wan light of dusk, but it did nothing to warm the chill threading his spine. The crimson tabard over his armor bore the golden sigil of the Cleansing Flame, though even that felt heavy, like a burden more than a badge.

Behind him, twelve Knights dismounted in silence. They wore the same colors, but none spoke. They didn’t need to. They had seen the same thing at three other temples this month—holy ground defiled by abyssal scrawlings, sacred relics shattered, entire towns gone silent. Each time the signs grew clearer. Each time the same sigil was found.

Raelyn approached from the right flank, her white robes mostly clean despite the muddy ride. She held her staff tight to her chest, and her bright eyes scanned the ruins with something between awe and dread.

“They really burned it,” she said, her voice a hush against the sifting ash. “The altar, the reliquary… even the saints’ bones.”

Aric nodded once. “And they left a message.”

He stepped through the threshold of the old abbey. Black soot crumbled underfoot. Every echo in the ruins felt too loud, as though the walls remembered what had happened here and were loath to forget. He reached the front of the nave, where a wide mural once showed Saint Aurellian casting back the tide of shadows. Now, that mural was desecrated—an abyssal spiral burned over it in cracked black stone, bleeding outward like a wound.

Raelyn stared, knuckles white around her staff. “It’s the same mark again.”

“The Spiral of Binding,” Aric said. “Old abyssal rite. Long outlawed. Most of the scrolls were destroyed in the Fifth Inquisition.”

“Then how—”

“They were never all burned. Just hidden.”

A gust of wind stirred through the ruins. Ash lifted from the altar like breath. Aric took a slow step forward, gauntleted fingers brushing the marble surface. Cold. Too cold for a stone that had stood under the sun for hours.

A whisper tickled his ears.

He jerked back instinctively, sword half-drawn. But the sound faded like it had never been. Just the wind, maybe.

Raelyn’s eyes narrowed. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing I can explain.”

Another movement stirred in the forest’s edge. A shape emerging from the trees—slow, careful, cloaked in grey. A lone figure stepping into view.

Aric’s hand dropped fully to the hilt of his sword.

The man limped slightly, but his stance was familiar—balanced, wary, dangerous. His coat was worn black leather, stained with soot. Ash clung to the edges. But it wasn’t the clothes that gave Aric pause.

It was the face.

Older now, sharper, tired—but unmistakable.

“Verin,” Aric said, disbelief and something colder sitting in his throat.

The man stopped ten paces from the broken gate, lifting both hands slowly. “I didn’t set the fire,” he said.

“But you came to watch it burn.”

Verin shrugged. “I came to see what was left.”

The knights behind Aric shifted. Raelyn stepped forward, her staff igniting with a soft flicker of golden flame.

“You know this man?” she asked.

Aric’s voice stayed low. “He was once a brother of the Order.”

“And now?”

“Now he’s a ghost who walks where he shouldn’t.”

Verin smiled faintly. “Still love your drama.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Aric said. “You forfeited the right to stand on consecrated ground when you walked away.”

“I walked away from orders that would’ve had me burn a family for the whispers of shadow,” Verin said calmly. “That’s not the same.”

Raelyn’s voice cut in. “Are you with the abyssal cults?”

“No.”

“Are you protecting them?”

“That depends,” Verin said, turning toward her, “on whether you think children born to bloodlines they don’t understand deserve to die for it.”

Her jaw clenched. “You deflect like a heretic.”

“And you condemn like one.”

Aric took a step forward. “Enough.”

Verin looked back at him. “You came to cleanse this place?”

“We came to find who did this and stop the rot from spreading.”

“You can’t stop it. Not like this. Not with flame and sword. The pact’s breaking, Aric. The old one. The one that kept this spiral buried.”

Aric frowned. “What pact?”

Verin hesitated. That pause told Aric more than he liked. There was something there—something old, and buried deep, the way secrets wrapped around graves.

“You really don’t know,” Verin said softly. “Ask your Archivist. If he hasn’t already vanished.”

“Try me now.”

Verin shook his head. “It’s not a story for a ruined altar and an armed escort.”

“You expect me to let you walk away?”

“No,” Verin said. “But I’m not running.”

Aric stepped forward, blocking his path. “You walk away again, and I will hunt you. I don’t care what we were.”

Verin’s gaze didn’t flinch. “And if hunting me leads you to your own family’s grave? To the truth buried beneath your name?”

Aric’s hand trembled slightly on the hilt of Oathrender. The sword burned faintly with holy light, reacting to the old magic still clinging to the air.

“I have nothing to hide,” he said.

“I hope that’s true,” Verin replied. “Because if the Spiral uncoils completely, you won’t be able to hide from it either.”

Then he turned, and the shadows of the forest swallowed him without a sound.

Raelyn stormed up beside Aric. “You let him go. Again.”

“He’s not the enemy,” Aric muttered.

“How can you say that? He admits he knows about the Spiral!”

“And he just saved your life by warning us.”

She folded her arms, frustrated. “You still trust him.”

“No,” Aric said. “But I remember who he was. And I know what it costs to walk away.”

That night, Aric sat alone in his tent, unrolling a fragment of stone pulled from the abbey’s altar. Carved into its edge, beneath layers of soot, was a sigil—a family crest, halved by fire.

A name burned faintly beneath it.

Varyon Althis.

He stared at it in silence. His grandfather’s name. The man the Order never spoke of. The man who had supposedly died in obscurity.

Aric touched the mark. Cold radiated from it.

And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he heard the whisper again. Closer this time.

Welcome home.

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All Parts of the Series

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 1

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 2

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 3

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 4

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 5