The Last Strokes Of Divine

The scent of ink and ash clung to the air like a memory that refused to fade.

Auren stood in the quiet breadth of the Inner Sanctum's outer study chamber, pale morning light catching in the creases of his sleeves as he sifted through another set of parchment records. One of the senior scribes had misfiled half the day's relic inspections again, and the warding rotas were overdue. Normally, he would have addressed these issues without pause,his mind trained for order, precision, and silence.

But this morning, silence felt… unsettled.

He set the parchment down and leaned back in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His ash-blond hair fell across his brow, disheveled from hours of restless work. Behind him, the Sanctum's great doors loomed shut, those massive duskwood guardians carved with flame and ink. He'd stood before them a hundred times. Yet ever since Azeriah's fall, even the air around them seemed heavier.

Azeriah.

His breath caught for the briefest moment.

They hadn't been close, not in the way most thought. But she had trusted him. Enough to allow him oversight of her schedules, to consult him during moments of quiet deliberation. She had always spoken with precision, her presence radiant, a strange mix of serenity and fierce intent. Never once had she failed her duty.

Until things went wrong .

They said she collapsed in the Sanctum without explanation ,divine brush clattering to the floor mid-ritual. That her relic-in-the-making turned to ash before it could be sealed. Some whispered she had betrayed her oath. Others said madness. But Auren had seen her just days before, focused, calm, and resolute.

None of it made sense.

And then, Soleil.

She had weighed his mind since he caught her snooping around the sanctum.

For some reason he couldn't just keep her off his mind.

So, today, he had decided to end it.

He issued a formal call through the steward line: Bring the servant named Soleil to me.

But no one came.

He repeated the request with clarity. name, task, location. Still, no one arrived. Instead, he received confused looks. Shrugged shoulders.

The quartermaster had no record of any maid named Soleil. Not in the day shifts, not among the new recruits. She didn't exist in the internal logs or the parchment duty slips.

At first, he assumed a clerical error.

He rose from his chair sharply, his legs scraping slightly against the desk .The name still felt foreign on his tongue. Soleil. She had Said she was assigned by someone named Kessa.

Very pissed as he strode toward the steward's log.

He flipped through the pages until he found the current rotation of names. There was no "Soleil" listed anywhere. Not under the Sanctum staff. Not under the general servant rosters. Not even under provisional or new initiates.

Auren's jaw tightened. Soleil had said her task came from Kessa, But that couldn't be right.

Kessa was a lowly maid, barely trusted with laundry rotations and the scouring of floor tiles. She had no authority to assign tasks or chores, let alone in restricted wings and certainly not near the Inner Sanctum. Yet this person soleil had dared lied to his face

He crossed the room to the records chamber, eyes scanning each shelf. He lit the sigiled lamp hanging from the wall, It casted a long shadows on the scrolls as he searched every roster, every sanctioned personnel update and even the hall pass slips.

"Nothing," he murmured aloud.

Still no trace of her

Auren's breath slowed, his hands resting on the edge of the archive table.

He had been deceived.

More than that he had allowed it.

The moment played again in his mind, a girl with the linen basket obscuring her face, her presence unsure yet determined. Something about her had struck him as…off.

 He had let his guard down that day. Trusted too easily. Her face had been obscured. Her words too rehearsed. And yet… something about her had disarmed him.

He should have stopped her then. Asked more questions. Called the guards. But he hadn't. And that failure scraped at his discipline like a dull knife.

Now she was gone

if she ever existed at all.

But he remembered her. Vividly. Which meant she had a purpose.

And if she had intentions toward the Sanctum that day, then she might hold answers, answers to the one thing still haunting the palace:

Azeriah's fall.

Determined. He turned toward the corridor leading into the Servants' Wing.

He would find her himself.

He would search every room if he had to. Turn over every cot in the servant wing. Question every steward and scrape the truth from Kessa's mouth himself. He needed answers. Not just about Soleil, but about what really happened the day Azeriah fell.

And if the maid held even a single thread of that unraveling…

He would tug it until the whole truth spilled loose.