The chamber was cold and still, lit only by the pale gray of morning seeping through a narrow slit in the stone. Harmand stood in the highest tower of Caorran, surrounded by the wounded, the children, and the women, souls too fragile for the carnage that had ravaged the city below. The silence hung heavier than any armor. He moved softly among them, tending wounds with trembling hands, whispering prayers to soothe them in what he knew would be their final hours.
Below, the banners of Caorran no longer flew, torn down, trampled, forgotten. In their place, the golden sun on black of the Imperium snapped in the wind like a sentence already passed.
He leaned toward the narrow window, resting one hand on the cold stone frame. Far below, Imperial legionaries moved like ants, disciplined, relentless, methodical. There was no one left to kill. The defenders were gone, slaughtered.
He counted them in his mind. Hundreds. Their armor glinted dully beneath the overcast sky as they formed ranks around the great oak doors at the base of the tower, battering them in rhythm. The sound echoed upward, a steady, distant thunder.
Harmand had held the walls for weeks, four, maybe five. He no longer knew. Time had dissolved into hunger, fire, and smoke. His own retinue, a small and simple militia that he had assembled among the Faithful on the first days of the siege, was gone, slain one by one. There was nothing left to defend, and no strength left to try. So he had gathered the helpless and climbed the tower, seeking not salvation, but stillness.
He had fought beside heroes, brave nobles, relentless knights, fearless men-at-arms. All of them were dead. He alone remained: a simple preacher, armed with nothing but a wooden staff and clothed in a threadbare woolen robe. Braver men had died. Better men that could have turned the tide of the battle. So why? Why was he the one left standing? Why him? Why not someone better? Someone braver! He couldn’t understand.
“Is this it?” he murmured, looking down at the legionaries, a breath meant only for himself, or perhaps for something more.
“All these men, to take an old priest? To slaughter children, women, the elderly? Five hundred, perhaps more. Why? Is this the fear the Imperium holds for the word of the Divine?”
He closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, he saw them, the faces of those who had stood beside him on the battlements. Men of Faith. Men of courage. Now broken and scattered through the bloodied halls of Caorran. Gone.
“Is this, then, O Divine, Thy plan for me?” His voice rose louder now, firmer, echoing through the stone chamber. “That I should watch all this carnage without a hand to stop it?”
No answer came, only the relentless rhythm of the ram below.
Some within the chamber looked toward him, but their eyes were dulled by grief. There was no strength left in them to draw hope from any word he might offer.
He turned from the window, broken, and walked to the heavy wooden chair by the door. He sat, hands folded in his lap, head held high, doubt in his eyes.
And then, a single beam of sunlight slipped through the narrow slit, falling across his face. It was warm. The whole room seemed to change. His heart swelled. Peace... radiant, silent, and unfamiliar, filled him like a breath he had waited a lifetime to take. Tears welled in his eyes and slid quietly down his cheeks.
“Thank You, Divine,” he whispered. “I understand now.”
He closed his eyes once more, letting the warmth linger.
“Let them come... Our Light will remain.”