Eryshae

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Chief Corven

The Cathedral

The Cathedral groaned as its great doors yawned open, etched with vinework and veined with age. The sound echoed like the throat of the earth clearing itself. Cardinals, already robed in elemental hues, shifted in silence. A shaft of sunlight pierced the vaulted dome high above, catching golden pollen adrift in the sanctified air. The incense burned low, cedar and myrrh threading with the iron tang of old rituals.

Chief Corven stood at the apex of the dais, framed by the hulking forms of the raccoon Eryshae, stone fangs bared, gemstone eyes glaring forward with eternal judgment. His hands were clasped before him, steady despite the thrum beneath his skin. The court was full, ninety-nine Cardinals ringing the room like the layers of a living tree.

One seat, the one wrought of whitewood and dormant vine, crowned in old runes, remained empty. Durnan's absence was a silence all its own.

"Bring him forward," Corven intoned. Ruwan Eberflame stepped into the light. Once heir to the Eberflame house, he now looked carved from hubris and defiance. His hair was swept back with careless pride. His shackles gleamed like mockery. His lawyer Silva Veradine walked beside him, charcoal robes whispering, her pale hair braided with copper rings that glinted when she bowed slightly to the dais.

"Silva Veradine, you may speak." Corven stated as he stood at the head of the Cathedral. Her voice rang with deliberate clarity. "The Eberflame heir stands accused, but not yet condemned. Let the evidence speak before the judgment falls."

"So it shall," Corven said, and his voice deepened into ritual cadence. One by one, the charges were laid out, not by a single voice, but by the collected tongues of the Cardinals themselves. A fire Cardinal read the report of attempted poisoning. An Earth Cardinal recounted the ambush plan, complete with orders to kill sentries and stack their corpses like cordwood. A Metal Cardinal listed the logistics: forged permits, conscripted youth, city infiltration, and rebellion. Water read the names of the dead. Wood delivered the worst: "He wished to break her mind before he touched her skin. He said she would beg to be spared the choice."

A hush fell so thick the incense seemed to choke on it. Ruwan's mouth twitched. A muscle beneath his eye jumped once, twice. Silva laid a hand on his arm, a warning touch, gentle, practiced.

Then came the account of the Titan's Amber. "He gave Mira the shard," a Cardinal said. "Knowing full well it would twist the soul and mind of Samael Faeloc. He called Kaeli's fate, writhing bark, clawed limbs, howling hunger, a 'success.'" There was a sharp inhale somewhere in the tiered chamber.

"Enough," Ruwan growled. All eyes turned. "I… I told her to hold back the shard," he hissed, voice cracking. "Mira... she promised, " His eyes darted to the Cardinals, to Corven, to the shadows where his father should've stood. "You think this is justice? You think Vael is innocent? She conspired with the Outsider. She invited ruin!"

"Silence, Ruwan," Silva whispered. "You must not, " But it was too late. He stepped forward, straining against the chains. "You call me a villain while she walks free? I could've saved us. I would've made Emberhold essential. Invaluable. You fear what I could have built. You fear what I am."

"You are a man undone by his own ambition," Corven replied, voice low but vast. "You sought to wield the Titan's Amber and reshape the world to kneel beneath your family's sigil. That is not salvation. That is madness."

"I would've burned the false forests!" Ruwan roared, madness taking him. "I would've unmade your brittle oaths and cast down the rot of the Guardians, starting with Eryshae, then Ni!"

The pollen in the air seemed to swirl. The raccoon statues loomed. The vine-veined floor beneath Ruwan's feet pulsed once, faintly, as though the Cathedral itself had heard enough. Corven raised a single hand. Silence. "Ruwan Eberflame," he said, voice colder than the incense smoke curling toward the skylight, "you stand condemned. Not by hearsay. Not by speculation. But by your own words, your own orders, and the wreckage you have wrought."

Ruwan laughed, a raw, splintered sound. "Then damn you all," he spat. "You'll remember this day when your forests are burned and your roots are salted by the ocean." Silva turned away from him, slow, silent, her jaw tight. The dais fell into a hush, thick as loam.

Ruwan stood heaving, spine taut, eyes burning with unrepentant fire as the vines tightened around his wrists. The scent of cedar hung heavy, suffocating in its purity. It should have ended there. But the rustle of robes stirred behind the outer ring of Cardinals. From the third tier, Serene Liri stepped forward.

Her movements were slow, reverent, as though she moved through water instead of air. The blue-gray of her robe shimmered with the subtle sheen of moonlit dew, her silver sash knotted. Her face, severe and unadorned, carried the calm gravity of one who had survived many tides and wept for more than she'd saved. She did not bow. She did not seek permission. She simply spoke. "There is one law," she said softly, "older than judgment. Older even than this Cathedral."

The Cardinals stirred. A few turned toward her. Chief Corven did not blink. Serene Liri descended the steps, each one echoing louder than it should. The golden pollen swirled around her like a current. "The Backwards Law was not made for the guilty," she continued. "It was made for the damned. For those who have broken the roots of the world so deeply that not even death offers clarity. It is a trial by the elements themselves. Wood. Fire. Earth. Metal. Water."

Gasps fluttered across the circle. "If he survives them," she said, eyes fixed on Corven now, "his slate is wiped clean." Even Ruwan blinked. "And if he fails," Liri whispered, "he dies not by our hands... but by the will of the elements he betrayed." Silva Veradine's head turned sharply, her mouth parted in controlled disbelief. She seemed ready to object, but didn't. Perhaps she sensed the shift in the room, the deep, ancestral hush as old as the trees themselves.

Corven's eyes narrowed. "That law is older than any of us. It is invoked only when the outcome must echo through generations. Are you certain it applies to him?" Serene Liri did not flinch. "He is not merely a traitor. He is a turning point." A ripple passed through the floor, barely perceptible, but real. The stone-veined roots glimmered faintly beneath their feet. Even the twin raccoon statues seemed to lean in, ever so slightly.

Corven lowered his gaze to Ruwan. The condemned man stood very still, expression unreadable. "You would accept this?" Corven asked him.

Ruwan's laugh was quieter this time, but jagged. "You think I fear trials? I am the fire. I am the forge that will break your brittle world. I'll survive your little games, and when I do..." He looked straight at Corven, then to Serene Liri. "You'll wish I hadn't." Silva inhaled slowly, as though regretting every step that brought her here.

Chief Corven turned to the Cardinals. "Let the record state," he said, voice like a funeral bell, "that Serene Liri, the ninety-ninth Cardinal, invokes the Backwards Law." He paused. Then raised both arms. "So let it be decided by the roots, the flame, the stone, the blade, and the tide. Five trials. One condemned soul. No intervention. No sanctuary." The pollen in the skylight flared gold. And somewhere far beneath the Cathedral, in the hidden dark reflections, something ancient stirred.

The forest swallowed him without ceremony. No guards. No chains. No Silva. Just roots. They had taken him from the Cathedral in silence. Not by corridor, not by carriage, but by rite. The Backwards Law demanded he arrive unescorted, barefoot, and unbound. His footsteps had passed over stone, then soil, then moss. Until he could not tell if he was walking or being walked, guided by invisible will. He stood now in a clearing that had no sky.

The canopy above was dense, braided into a lattice of dark leaves and hanging moss. Sunlight did not filter through; instead, everything was lit from within, bioluminescent roots and veined bark glowing faintly with the green-gold of breath and judgment.

The trees were ancient. Not dead. Not dormant, but watching. In the center of the glade stood a figure woven of vines. Its limbs were sculpted from willow and bonewood, its face a mask of bark with no eyes, just hollows weeping sap. It raised a hand of thorn-wreathed branches.

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A voice spoke, aloud, threading through the marrow of his spine. "You severed the natural bond. You sowed violence into the growing places. You broke the soul of wood. Prove yourself worthy to be held by us again."

The ground erupted. Vines lashed up around his legs, wet, living, scented like rot and rose. Thorned branches snapped from the trees, coiling in a circle. A ring of wood-born sentinels rose, faceless and slow, dragging bark-blades and root-hooks. Their bodies creaked with every motion, half-living, half-ritual.

Trial One: Wood.

Survive until the forest deems you remembered.

Ruwan staggered back, teeth bared. "You dare test me with puppets?" One of the vine-beasts lunged. He ducked low, sweeping out with a shard of flint he had concealed from the transport, his only cheat. He cut the beast's limb, but sap spurted, not blood, and the gash sealed instantly. The creature reared back, its vine-head splitting open like a blossom to reveal a rotting face.

Kaeli.

Twisted. Bark-wrapped. Her voice a whisper from the grave. "Was I a success, Ruwan?" He froze. For the first time, truly, he froze.

The other vine-beasts began to shift. Their faces bloomed open. Mira. The sentries he had ordered slain. The boy who had begged for his mother during conscription. "We remember you," they said. "Now remember us."

Ruwan howled. He fought, clawed, burned, lashed out with everything he had. But for every vine he cut, another wrapped around his ribs. For every step back, roots rose to tangle his feet. It wasn't the pain that broke him. It was the recognition that the forest knew. That it didn't care about justice or revenge. Only memory.

And he was being digested by it. At the center of the ring, he fell. His breath rattled. Blood streaked his arms. His ghosts loomed.

Then, silence. The roots drew back. One by one, the vine-beasts turned away, folding back into the trees. Kaeli was last. Her bark-mask closed, and she stepped into the light like shadow into shadow. The vine figure extended its hand again. This time, it dripped sap like tears. "You are not forgiven."

"Rise." Ruwan did, barely. On torn feet, beneath a canopy that still watched. Somewhere distant, the next element stirred.

Trial One: Survived.

He awoke to heat. Not the warmth of a hearth, but the furnace-breath of judgment. The air shimmered with it. His skin, still torn from the Trial of Wood, cracked as he moved. The scent of sap and blood had been replaced by smoke, sweat, and ember-char. He was no longer in the forest. The world had changed.

This was a forge hollowed into the heart of the city, walls of obsidian streaked with magma veins, breathing in slow pulses like a sleeping beast. Above him rose the blackened skeletons of furnaces and bellows, now silent. The only sound was the whisper of coals shifting below, and creaking. He was bound to a wheel.

A vast one, carved from dark timber scorched black along the edges, the spokes reinforced with iron bands. Straps of leather and root held his limbs tight. He couldn't move. Could barely twitch. Below him, a trench of glowing coals yawned wide. They pulsed in rhythm, veins of white and orange, flecks of ash rising like fireflies. The air was thick with it, burning. Waiting. From the gloom, a Cardinal cloaked in flame-colored silk stepped forward.

Her eyes glowed like embers. "You stoked fires to burn cities, not warm them. You forged fear, not protection. You sought divinity through heat, not understanding. Now the flame asks, are you tempered... or are you ash?" She touched the wheel. It began to turn. Slow at first. A single rotation. His back passed over the embers.

The first pass blistered his skin. The heat didn't need to touch him directly, the air alone peeled layers. His body arched, but the straps held fast. His scream was swallowed by the forge. The wheel turned again. Second pass. His breath hitched. The flames no longer obeyed. They watched. "You called yourself fire," the Cardinal said, her voice distant. "But you were smoke. Hollow. Unanchored. Flame consumes, but it must also renew. What did you build, Ruwan?"

"Emberhold!" he snarled, through cracked lips. "Built on fear," she said. "On conscripts and lies. Try again." Third pass. His skin sizzled. His shoulders convulsed against the bindings. The scent of burnt flesh rose like a banner. The coals beneath hissed in pleasure. The wheel paused. He hung there, face inches from the bed of embers. Eyes watering, lungs seared. "What do you burn for now?" the Cardinal whispered.

Ruwan's voice rasped out, barely audible. "To be seen. Not just feared. To be... remembered." The coals pulsed. The wheel turned backward. A single, jarring jolt. His back hit the heat again. A breath passed through the chamber, deep and echoing. The Gaelic slowed. Then stopped. His restraints uncoiled like living snakes.

He collapsed onto the obsidian floor, smoke rising from his skin. His hair was singed. His body a ruin. But he still breathed. The flame did not love him. But it had not rejected him. The Cardinal vanished into smoke.

Trial Two: Survived.

A Cardinal in lacquered red stepped forward, her ceremonial robes stitched with runes of reflection. Her voice rang like glass across the chamber: "He has been judged by voice. Judged by flesh. Now let him face himself." With a gesture, the wheel was lowered. Ruwan's feet dragged across the floor as attendants rolled him forward into the Hall of Earth, a sanctum beneath the cathedral, lined with obsidian and silver mirrors. No reflection was true in that place. Each pane shimmered with a different version of the condemned, some twisted, others younger, some monstrous. One wept. One smiled.

Chains hoisted him upright again, this time before a vast, shimmering mirror at the end of the hall. It rippled. And then, it spoke, in his voice. "You were meant to be a savior."

"You let her die."

"You thought you were different. But you were only hungry."

Each phrase echoed through the chamber as the mirror peeled back memory and guilt, private sins dragged into public air. One by one, the Cardinals began to chant a single phrase:

"Let him be made whole by knowing what he is."

"Let him be made whole by knowing what he is."

Ruwan's face twitched. A tremor ran through his legs. And still, he said nothing. But his jaw clenched as his mirror-self stepped forward, from within the reflection, and reached out. For a moment, the barrier vanished. They touched. And Ruwan screamed from the pain of the suffering his actions caused. The light from the mirror shattered. The chamber plunged into darkness.

A pause.

Then Corven's voice rang out: "Three trials passed. The fourth begins at dawn. Let him rest in the absence of mercy."

Dawn cracked against the spires of the Cathedral, a thin golden blade tearing through the veil of night. Below, in the shadowed courtyard known as the Cincture of Metal, the gathered Cardinals waited in a rigid crescent. Their robes were blood-red in the morning chill, trimmed in threads of ash and bone.

Chief Corven stood at the apex of their arc, hands clasped at the small of his back, his breath clouding in the pale light. His face was unreadable. The trials had stretched into their second day, and still the man they condemned did not break.

Ruwan was dragged forth between two Eryshae raccoons, his body limp but eyes open. His wrists and ankles had been bound in glistening bands of bramble-steel, the thorns biting deep. Blood painted a map of old pain across his ribs and thighs. His breath rasped in his chest, but he remained conscious, conscious enough to look directly at Corven as he was thrown to his knees.

"A thousand blades," Corven intoned, his voice echoing across the stone. "A cut for every lie, every soul misled, every oath twisted into ruin. Let the body be marked, as the soul has been marked." The attendants moved with ritual precision. Ruwan was bound upright to the Post of Submission, an ancient, carved totem of living wood, its grain marred by centuries of blood rites. A carved basin was placed below him to catch what spilled.

The first blade sang. It was a slender thing, curved and ceremonial. The Cardinal who wielded it wore a mask of polished bone and made no sound as he stepped forward.

The cut was shallow.

So was the second.

And the third.

But by the thirtieth, Ruwan's shoulders were trembling. By the hundredth, blood ran in rivulets down his chest. The crowd was silent. Even the morning birds refused to sing. Corven did not blink. He bore witness. That was his charge.

By the two-hundredth cut, Ruwan's body slackened, and one of the attendants poured a draught into his mouth, reviving him cruelly.

Somewhere near the five-hundredth, the wind shifted. Whispers stirred. Even some of the Cardinals began to avert their eyes. By the eight-hundredth, Ruwan began to speak. Soft, breathless things. Not words of defiance, but names. Names only Corven would recognize. Names that should not be spoken aloud.

The ninth-hundredth cut struck his shoulder, and pain erupted where the blade met flesh. Just for a breath. Corven's jaw tensed. By the final cut, the sun had cleared the horizon. Ruwan's body was no longer simply bleeding. It shimmered faintly, as though his flesh was no longer connected. The blade paused, and Corven raised a hand. "Enough." Ruwan slumped, barely breathing. His head lolled to the side, but his eyes were open.

The morning mist clung to the cathedral's stonework like breath on cold glass. Outside, the air lay still, heavy with the hush of anticipation. Within the sacred courtyard, the final trial had been prepared in silence. A black pool of water, deep and unmoving, reflected the pale dawn above like a mirror to another world.

Chief Corven stood at the pool's edge, his white robes damp with dew, the hem darkened like blood. The Cardinals flanked him, ninety-nine silent sentinels wrapped in ceremonial black. Their faces were hidden behind veils. No one spoke.

Ruwan was brought forward, barefoot and shaking, stripped to the waist. His skin was a roadmap of bruises, gashes, and burns from the previous trials, testimony etched into flesh. His eyes no longer flared with defiance; they were dull, sunken, the fire gutted but not gone. Something still moved behind them. Something silent and coiled.

His hands were bound tightly behind his back. His ankles lashed together with wet rope. He could barely stand. "The Trial of Water," Corven intoned, voice deep and measured, reverberating across the courtyard. "As the Ancients once tested the spirits of traitors beneath the river's skin, so shall we. If you are innocent, the water will release you. If guilty… it will claim you."

No one believed in mercy here. At Corven's signal, the guards hoisted Ruwan and carried him to the pool. His head lolled, and for a moment, he appeared unconscious, until his gaze found Corven's. A ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his bloodied mouth. "I dreamed of this," Ruwan whispered hoarsely and with a touch of madness. "Your death came first."

Corven gave no response. With a practiced motion, the guards tossed Ruwan into the pool. He struck the surface like a stone, vanishing beneath the black mirror with barely a ripple. Seconds passed. A minute. No bubbles rose. The silence deepened into something cavernous. Even the birds had ceased their dawnsong. Corven did not look away.

Only after the stillness stretched unbearably long did a faint disturbance bloom in the center of the pool, one ripple, then another. Something moved beneath the surface. Not a body. Not breath.

A reflection of shadow and envy.

Then the water was calm once more.