The fires roared in the countryside.

  The hills had been alight since the arrival of the host. They came like a tide in twilight—figures cresting every rise with torches in hand, trailing smoke like banners of purpose. Drums, flutes, rattles of different make and pitch filled the air. The rhythm was loose, but never aimless.

  And the hymns.

  They had not stopped. Not once. Not while the procession advanced toward the gate. Not while Sul, tall as legend, led the giants to our walls. Not when we watched from parapets and porches and doorframes, pretending not to fear.

  The other sounds—drums, bone-flutes, hoots and ululations—they were alien in a familiar way. The way I imagined the Others might sound. The ones from our books. The ones whispered about on storm-wracked nights.

  But the hymns...

  They did not sit right with me. Or anyone.

  Because they weren’t foreign.

  They sang like our fathers sang. With the same rise and fall. The same aching intervals. The same weight. As if the voice of the Prophet still moved beneath their ribs. As if the memory of Joseph himself had settled in their throats.

  And it came from them.

  I let my eyes drift across the dust-slicked hills, resting my gaze on every bonfire. Each flame licked the night, throwing shadows long as ships across the earth. In their glow, I saw the skin of giants catch the light.

  Green. Red. Some shades nearer to human. But none that could truly be called so.

  They moved in slow ranks, deliberate, unhurried. Their eyes caught the fire and held it without blinking.

  The hymn wove through them all. Binding the strange to the familiar. The monstrous to the remembered.

  For now, it was all that connected us. The song. And the silence between verses.

  I did not knock as I entered Grave’s chambers.

  He was watching, same as I had been, through the high-set window. His back was to me, stiff with the kind of stillness that comes after too much movement.

  I’d seen him near tears at the parapet—face cracked open by what he could not name. I imagined those tears had dried by now. The emotion scoured out and replaced with more worldly worries: supply ledgers, chain of command, what few men could still be trusted to stand a post.

  Mine had dried, too.

  “Commander.”

  He didn’t reply. A wave of the hand sufficed. I entered.

  I had brought my ledger. No words had been written today. I hoped to rectify this—an empty page, in a moment like this, felt like treason against memory.

  No delay.

  “The sentries are on extended duty. All cannons loaded and readied, as are the men.”

  Grave remained motionless.

  “There is little indication it is needed,” I added. “But the men would not relent.”

  “There is wisdom in caution,” he said, still watching the distant fires. “No parley. And yet, no attack. Sul—damn brick of a being—wanders to and fro our bastion as if he were the saviour himself.”

  “Can he be blamed if he thought so?” I said, quiet enough that the drums could be heard. “In most eyes, he is. He greeted their kin in a fashion they found agreeable.”

  “He greeted them in the words of God,” Grave said, finally turning. His eyes met mine—lit with the fire of something old. A fire reflected from the hills, but burning deeper. “And they greeted him back.”

  We build as one.

  The words fell between us like stone dropped into a dry well.

  A shiver passed through me. The phrase—the phrase. The core tenet of our Lord. The covenant. The breath of the Prophet, brought down by Joseph himself.

  We build as one.

  And they had said it. As if it had always belonged to them.

  As believers.

  “We cry. We anguish. We build again.”

  Grave raised a finger toward the ceiling as he spoke, slow and deliberate. No ceiling could block the trace to heaven, not if the words were true. Not if the speaker meant them.

  “Have not every priest who’s given you sermons—scorn or solace—passed those tenets on to you?”

  I nodded. No words sufficed. The marrow knew what the tongue could not bear.

  Grave’s gaze burned through me now.

  “How have the words from our very core found their way to beings who are, at best, half beast and half man—and at worst, plunderers and murderers?”

  “Who were beasts, Grave. What are they now? What have they maybe always been?”

  I felt the words claw their way up from somewhere old, somewhere shaken loose.

  “Too much has changed. No core exists anymore—or worse… we’ve discovered a true core.”

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  I looked back to the window, to the fires still rising from the hills.

  “What has always been. Or should always have been.”

  “The Blemmyes found their voice. Their memory. Surely they weren’t the only ones.”

  I kept my tone level, but the weight of it pressed my ribs.

  “Why else would they leave in droves? Why have they not been sighted in weeks? They weren’t fleeing. They were preparing.”

  “For what?” Grave asked, voice low. “The invasion?”

  “Maybe, Commander.” I met his eyes. “But who is invading? Do you truly think it’s the Natives?”

  His silence wasn’t agreement, but it wasn’t denial either.

  “So many stones cast,” I said. “So many pieces in play. So many changes.”

  Grave looked down. It was clear to me he was tired.

  “The world is closing,” I said. “It’s waiting. Holding its breath.”

  A pause.

  “Waiting for a final pulse.”

  Grave looked out the window again. He couldn’t help himself. Neither could I.

  “It’s still hard to resist the sight,” he murmured.

  “We had dealings with natives. They herded our flocks. Goats.” His voice was distant, remembering aloud. “They led travelers through perilous routes. They sensed things before we did—forces, anomalies. They were closer to the pulse of this land than any priest I ever met.”

  He turned back to me then. His face was drawn, but sharpened by certainty.

  “But, Fractor…” His voice dropped. “They did not look like this.”

  My mind stopped.

  A new calculation began, one I had not anticipated.

  “They were like us once. Ugly, yes. Misshapen. Faces like beasts. Eyes in places no man’s should be. But still—they bled like us. Broke like us.”

  He stepped forward, voice tightening.

  “They were few. Their young seldom lived past birth. Weak things. No breath in their lungs. No strength in their limbs. I saw them die.”

  He gestured toward the hills, his voice now low and deliberate.

  “I can still see traces of that form. But whatever they are now... they are formidable. Two score of them could kill us all, if they set their hearts to it. And my scouts count a hundred and fifty.”

  “This could be true for the touched as well,” I thought aloud, dragging Grave’s mind back from the fire-lit hills.

  “The Blemmyes looked different too, once. Vacant eyes. Movements like dolls. Like cattle led to slaughter.”

  Grave didn’t speak. But his silence was no longer still.

  “The storm and the closing changed much,” I went on. “Some for good, some for worse. But if their strength is what you say—if they truly could tear us apart and yet haven’t—then that restraint speaks volumes, does it not?”

  Grave’s jaw tensed. Still, he said nothing.

  “Grave,” I said, voice low. “They have our voice. Our belief. They sing to Him.”

  “They sing to God!” Grave shouted, his face reddening, eyes wide and wild with something too large for the room.

  I stepped back—pure reflex, from the sudden shift. I had not seen this fury from him in the field, let alone in firelit quarters. It came not from rage alone, but from something closer to betrayal.

  “Who taught them this?!” he roared. “No native ever sat through a sermon here! They nodded to the sky and thunder when the more fire-eyed missionaries passed through. It never seemed real. They never partook!”

  He was pacing now, hands trembling. “They were disarmed with a belief no man gave them! Did Sul give them the words?”

  “Grave,” I said, raising my voice to meet his. “Sul rang a bell!”

  I took a step forward.

  “They responded. They knew the words!”

  Grave turned on me, eyes blazing.

  “Those words came from us!” he shouted, slamming his hand down onto the table. A cup jumped, lifted, and clattered to the floor.

  “Did God speak to them too?”

  “Maybe God did, Grave!”

  The words tore from me before I could think. A heat rose through my chest, into my throat. My heart thundered like a war drum.

  I closed my eyes. Drew in a breath. Let it steady me.

  “Maybe God did.”

  Grave’s face was red, his breath ragged. Then—he slumped. His gaze fell to the table. The spilled wine had run in thin rivers between old scratches in the wood. Slowly, with the grace of a man who had once known ceremony, he set the cup upright again.

  I exhaled, the tension in my spine easing as if unstrung.

  “Allemand,” he said softly. “I have prayed.”

  “I have read the words of Joseph. I like to think… I live, at least partly, in a way I hope God would find acceptable.”

  He looked up at me, firelight flickering across the lines of his face.

  “But I have never truly believed in God.”

  “There are many wonders in this world that cannot be explained,” Grave said, barely above a whisper. “The land that kill. The Saints—touched by darkness and light alike. The horrors beyond our borders… so like us, and so far from us all the same.”

  Tears.

  I saw them.

  Grief, grief over the world he knew, suddenly given shape.

  “But they speak our words from the heart,” he said, and his voice cracked on that last word. “It is the truest miracle. Factor, it shakes me. It tears my world apart.”

  Grave is being torn apart. And me with him. Our whole world with him.

  This would not do.

  “And will you refuse the messengers of God?” I said, sharper than might be considered diplomatic.

  He looked at me then—really looked. Like a deer just before the bolt strikes. I winced. The words had cut too deep.

  I shook my head. Softer, now.

  “They are one with us, Grave. They sing at our walls. They are tall, yes. Different. But still us. Would God share His song with them if it were otherwise?”

  I flicked open my ledger—a sure way to bring us back to the ground, to numbers, to our world.

  “We’ve rounded eight thousand people now under our care. Seventy villages and towns, Gaards and farms. Our ranks swell, yes, but so do our dependents. The weight grows.”

  I scanned the empty page. Still nothing written. Still nothing recorded.

  “Something is out there, Grave. Be it storm or something worse.”

  I looked back up, met his hollow gaze.

  “Will we refuse the help of giants?”