The morning Serai steps into the main hall, barefoot and rubbing sleep from his eyes, he stops. He yawns, glancing at his niece, Rochelle, as she bugs a disgruntled delivery boy about ladybirds and lambing season.

“Uncle Serai!” She squeals, running up to him. His tired body misses a beat, before scooping her up in his arms.

“Hey, beetle. Where’s your mother? What’s all this?” He asks, gesturing to the large wrapped parcels scattered around the hall.

Rochelle points out the window, to the sun-speckled courtyard where Mimi is meditating at the shrine’s pond.

Serai sighs, placing the little girl down, circling back around to the kitchen to pick up a hunk of bread and honey, nodding to Laurel and Irena as they help Brother Finch with breakfast. He wipes his hands on his linen sleep-clothes, and heads outside.

“Mimi,” he calls, holding out a bowl of pine nuts and berries. “Morning.”

His sister looks up slowly. “Serai. I was meditating.”

“I know, I’m sorry. But, hey, what’s with the delivery? The Sanctum is all stocked, and we aren’t due any more farm equipment for ages. That stuff seems heavy duty.”

Mimi rises, stretching slightly. “They’re drums.”

“We need replacements? We never use the ceremonial instruments.”

“Not for worship. For us.”

“What?”

“War drums.”

“War drums?” Serai didn’t so much question as much as shout. “Mimi, you are an armed guard, not a militia. The Herdsmen do not offend. You do not announce. You protect. We serve. We heal.”

“The Herdsmen keep you safe. If that is through fear, or preemptive attacks, it is for a reason.”

“Mimi, we could use that money, on more beds, on more healers—“

“If you didn’t have us to fight, there would be more casualties than you could treat with any amount of money. It’s not an easy choice—“

“It is for you,” he spat out. “Does Irena know?”

“Yes. She had no objections.”

“No objections to her wife charging into battle?”

“No. Because she understands the importance of a strong defense.”

That evening, Serai is roused from his work by the bells ringing from the courtyard. Yes, he remembers. It is the Day of The Wheel. He rises with all the ceremony of a man who has scarcely noticed the fortnight go by. He carries himself with as much grace as he can, carrying his leather anointment bag, meeting Brother Finch and Mimi in front of the fountain and its cracked statue of Dia Brigantia. They greet, and make their way to the pastures, Finch holding onto his hand as he leads him through the mud and muck. Serai steps forwards into the field, sky dimming to a deep, bruised purple above him, and whispers a prayer. Then, he scans the field.

Immediately, he spots his chosen one: an old ram, curled in on himself by the far fence. He is ailing, but he is large, and he will sustain the parish for a week or two at least. Serai nears the animal, placing his hand upon its nose. The ram breathes back in response. Serai takes Finch's hand, placing it upon the same spot.

"This one?" He asks, turning his face to Serai.

"This one," Serai nods.

Finch moves his hands to the animal's neck, placing a length of rope around it. Serai takes the other end. Together, they lead him back to the courtyard, where Mimi stands, sword at her side. Irena stands behind her, head bowed. Finch stands before the ram, whispering a prayer over it:

May the wheel continue to turn;

Spokes of life and spokes of death

Let neither be joyous,

Let neither be mournful,

May you carry us far as we have carried you

By Brigantia's light.

He rises, and gestures to Serai, who kneels beside the creature, anointing it with rosemary oil and lavender. He find's the animal's heart, and uncaps the bottle in the bag, smearing a little of the mixture across the ram's skin. It only exhales in return, then bleats softly. Its wool begins to glow a soft, gentle golden, emanating a warmth that Serai can feel through his gloves. The ram closes it's eyes, sedated.

Mimi rises, sword glinting in the last of the moonlight, though it remains cloaked in grey and black, the remnants of last week's storm. The ram is silent: its flesh is not. Blood still pools from its neck where Mimi has cut into the animal, staining the cobbles at their feet. Serai presses his hand to the sheep's heart once more. It has stilled. The three of them raise the corpse into the waiting fountain, letting Dia Brigantia's waters cleanse them.

The wheel has turned once more.

Finch remembers the lanterns.

That’s how it always begins, with the lanterns drifting above the fields like a slow constellation, light swaying in the wind. Every year, on the longest day, the children would carry paper lanterns down to the river. They were shaped like birds, or houses, or the long curling horns of the goddesses’ mounts, and as the sun set, they were set afloat to follow the current toward the lowlands. It was said Brigantia watched from the water’s edge, counting each one before dawn.

He remembers Serai’s hand on his shoulder, warm and steady. He remembers the scent of crushed mint and smoke. He remembers laughter: his own, high and thin, carried away by the river. He remembers whispering a wish into the lantern’s paper belly before setting it free.

He remembers saying, “For everyone to be happy.”

He was small enough then to believe wishes needed no precision, that belief was enough to steady clumsy words.

The image is bright in him still; the ripple of flame reflected in water, the gentle touch of Serai’s fingers when he pushed the lantern into the current, the way the whole river glowed like a string of stars. When he was sick, that’s what he would close his eyes and see: not the fever, not the walls of the Sanctum ward, but the light drifting away and the world briefly beautiful.

But he dreams it again now, years later, after the fever, after everything, and the river is wider than it should be. The banks are choked with reeds that weren’t there before, blocking him from reaching the bank. The water moves too fast, too deep. The air smells not of mint but of vinegar. And Serai isn’t beside him. Someone else stands there instead, taller, voice like dry grass: “Light it. Quickly, before the wind.”

When Finch lifts his lantern, it isn’t made of paper at all. It’s bone — thin ribs wired together, hollow-eyed, glowing from within. The flame inside is wild, eating through the kindling like rot through flesh. He sets it in the water and watches it sink. The current takes it under without a trace.

He looks for Serai, calls his name, but the river answers first, a low rushing that sounds almost like a voice.

When he wakes, there is little light. He pushes open the door to the Sanctum office. There’s the smell of damp herbs, the clink of glass, the quiet of work beginning. Serai works over dried flowers, grinding them into dust.

“Finch. It’s cold,” Serai says, getting up and draping something soft across Finch’s shoulders. “You need a shawl.”

“Did we used to send lanterns down the river?” Finch asks, sitting down. His voice feels too soft for the question.

Serai pauses, pestle quietening. He stays silent for a long time. “We did,” he says finally. “Not every year, but once. The year before you got sick.”

Finch nods. “I thought it was beautiful.”

“It was.” Serai's smile is audible, but there’s a shadow behind it. “It was our first vigil. We sent the lanterns for the ones who’d already died.”

“Oh.”

Finch feels the shape of his memory shift, like a reflection disturbed by a thrown stone. He still sees the lights — hundreds of them — the names, the prayers, the farewells. He remembers the silence. Serai’s hand trembling when he lit his own lantern. He remembers the smell of smoke from the pyres downriver, masked with mint and lavender. He remembers that when he whispered his wish, Serai closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to hear it.

The memory settles back into place. Heavier, but no uglier. Because even then, even surrounded by death, Serai had helped him light the lantern and had smiled, as if to say that wishing was still a kind of healing. He keeps the image of it: a thousand small flames, carried away by water, their glow trembling in the wake of loss.

Outside, the river keeps flowing. The lanterns are long gone, but sometimes, when the evening catches right, Finch swears he can still see them.

Mimi remembers the first time she drew her sword.

She was young, seventeen, or thereabouts, and the day had been bright. The kind of sunlight that made the trees shimmer like they were already blessed. Brigantia’s warriors began that way: sun at their backs, conviction in their chests, or so they said. She remembers kneeling in the Sanctum courtyard, the air rich with incense and oil, the voices clear as bells.

You are the blade that cuts rot from the flock. You are the flame that drives out the frost.

When she tells the story now; when the younger Herdsmen and women ask about her first mission, she makes it sound clean. A small village struck by fever, its dead unburied, its wells fouled. She tells them of was mercy. Of necessary evil. That’s how she’s remembered it for years: a single day of righteous fire. A test she passed.

But tonight, the memory just won’t hold.

She sits outside, near the stables, lighting a small fire in the dark of the early morning with her sword beside her. It burns low; the horses stamp in the dark, and an early rising sheep bleats far behind her. She’s been home now for a while, but the smell of sickness clings to her like a second skin. She sits awake, twirling the blade on the ground, baptizing herself in fresh smoke.

The village wasn’t small and the smoke wasn’t clean. It never is. But that day­ it was heavy and wet, sticking to her throat. The flames had eaten through everything, thatch, cloth, metal that screamed when it burned. And there had been sounds. She’d told herself they were echoes, the moans of the sick. Herself, sword drawn and shouting. A woman with a child on her hip, shouting words Mimi didn’t understand.

When the orders came, she obeyed. Her faith was obedient. Her goddess was the torch she carried.

But when the smoke cleared, she had to turn a body with her boot to see the face. The woman. The child still clutched against her. The fever spots faint, maybe fading, maybe healing. She’d told herself it was infection, not innocence, she’d burned. She’d told herself she didn’t remember the child’s hair catching light like gold.

Mimi stands and feeds another stick to the fire. The heat presses against her face, familiar. The sword glints in the firelight. The words of her oath echo again: You are the blade that cuts rot from the flock.

She touches the flat of the blade, cool despite the heat: Then who cuts the rot from me?

No one answers.

But she remembers Serai, hoarse, pleading: “Brigantia tends the flock; she does not count them.”

The fire pops. A spark lands on her glove, burns out.

She sheathes the sword.

The sunlight breaks across the horizon, pale and thin. Mimi watches it rise and thinks, not for the first time, that fire was never Brigantia’s gift at all.

Serai used to tell himself the story often, because it was the only one that made him feel worthy of surviving.

When he was first taken into the Sanctum—barely twelve, hands still rough from bakers’ work—one of the older healers, Mother Ellas, had brought him to the river. She had been slow-moving, soft-voiced, her skin creased like folded parchment. The day was summer-bright, and the river was clear enough to see the pebbles glinting below the surface.

She had told him, “This is Brigantia’s first altar. The river does not choose where it flows; it goes where it is needed.” Then she’d picked a smooth, white stone from the shallows and pressed it into his palm. “Keep this. When you falter, place it in water. Ask if your hands still serve the flow.”

He had done as she said. For years afterward, the stone had been his tether, tucked into his satchel, warmed by his hand before every act of healing, placed in the flowing water he had cleansed his hands in before every act of healing. When the Sanctum hardened and the Herdsmen rose, when faith became ledger and triage, the stone reminded him that once, the goddess had been river and mercy both.

He sits in the Sanctum office, grinding flowers into dust. Outside, the rain has swept the earth into mud. He hasn’t seen the river in weeks, but he can hear it somewhere beyond the hill, swollen and restless.

He reaches into his satchel and takes out the stone. It’s smaller than he remembers, gray, veined, edges roughened. He turns it over, thumb catching on a scar across its surface. For the first time, he realizes it’s not river-polished at all.

He remembers now: her eyes wet, not from reverence but from smoke. Her voice steady only because it had to be. He’d believed she was teaching him faith. But she’d only been trying to save his hope.

He goes outside. The rain’s turned colder, sleet tapping against his hair. Down the slope, a rivulet runs through the mud—thin, brown, sluggish. He crouches and drops the stone into it. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the current catches, washing a thin ribbon of clean water through the dirt. Only a thread, but clear. It slides around the stone and keeps going, cutting its own path downhill.

Serai watches it run until his knees ache.

Somewhere in the distance, a fire goes out.