Somewhere over the rough ocean waves, across the burned and blackened landscape of Atrata. Through the peachy pink and orange forests of the hinterlands. Past the small farmstead at the foot of the Farcaster peaks.
Along the king’s road through Oxborn and Dawnvale, all the way to Godmere, the jewel of the west.
Snow falls on the city. Our view drifts down with it, into the streets, beneath them, through the bedrock itself.
Into a secret cathedral, known as the Sanctum. Beneath Godmere.
5 years ago
Benny LeBeau stood with his twin sister Claire LeBeau, surrounded by figures in red cloaks and golden masks bearing the face of Mammon, the demon of greed. She was unnaturally calm. He was shaking.
The cathedral had been carved into the bedrock, its pillars shaped from twisted ribs, skulls lining the walls. This was the heart of The Ghostwalkers, an organisation you are not recruited into. You are born into it, shaped by it before you are old enough to question it.
Tonight was the Fold. The moment every Ghostwalker reaches eighteen and learns the true nature of the family. They kneel before Mammon, and their soul is bound to uphold the pact.
This was what Benny and Claire had been raised for.
The chanting began, and the air at the altar folded in on itself. Mammon emerged. Half man half snake, gold-veined flesh and obsidian claws. He looked at the twins like livestock.
Claire was called first. She knelt without hesitation. Mammon drew a claw across the back of her neck, split his own palm, and pressed it to the wound. A sigil bloomed across her spine, burning gold, branching like fire finding its path. She made no sound. The mark flared once and was gone. No scar. No trace. Just Claire, kneeling, owned.
Benny watched his sister and said nothing.
Then they turned to him. He stepped forward. He knelt. He had been told his whole life what this would feel like. Purpose. Belonging.
Mammon smiled, and the claw came down.
The sigil began to form just as it had on Claire. But the lines fractured. The gold turned white, then blinding. Fire erupted outward from the wound and Mammon tore his hand away with a scream. His blood scorched away to nothing where it had touched Benny’s skin. The sigil collapsed and was gone.
The chanting stopped. Every masked face turned.
Mammon staggered backward. “This blood is not yours to give.”
His burning eyes found Benny. Not with hunger. With fear.
“You are already owned.”
He turned on the Ghostwalkers. “You dare offer me what belongs to a god? You have no idea what debt you have just bought yourselves.”
The air ignited and in a blink, Mammon was gone.
Pelor’s divine spark had protected him. The sun god’s blood ran deeper than any contract Mammon could write, and the Fold could not touch it.
Terrified by what they had witnessed The Ghostwalkers did not kill Benny. Not out of mercy. Out of fear of Pelor’s divine retribution.
Instead, they exiled him.
Banished from the city, the Sanctum, the family.
Never to return. Not as a son. Not as a brother. Not as a Ghostwalker. Not as anything.
The last thing he saw was his sister. Still kneeling. Marked. Bound. Unable to follow. Unable to choose.