A Spark Beneath the Blindfold

Date: Unknown
Location: Solrest
 
Tonight, I met one of them. Not in battle. Not in chains. Just… on the road. Like any other traveler.
 
He wore the white vestments of the Church of the Radiant Flame—simple, unadorned, yet unmistakable. His blindfold was real, golden-threaded and worn tight. His name was Brother Malric.
 
We crossed paths at a ruined shrine along the edge of the old road, just as the sun was bleeding into the horizon. I could’ve struck him down. My hand hovered near my weapon more than once. But he didn’t flinch, not even when he looked—or felt—the infernal pulse behind my eyes.
 
He spoke softly. Too softly. Like a man still listening for divine approval in every word he said.
 
“I sense burden in you,” he said.
I replied, “I carry fire.”
He nodded. “Then you understand Solmara’s pain.”
I said, “No. I understand her mistake.”
 
That’s when he really looked at me—blindfold or not, I could feel the tension behind his quiet faith start to twist. He asked if I’d ever heard the Testament of the Ninth Flame, some obscure passage scrawled in burn-char across the base of the old cathedral ruins.
 
He recited it for me. Something about enduring until your skin sloughs and your soul is laid bare before judgment. That the fire only spares the obedient.
 
I asked him if the fire had ever spared him. He hesitated.
 
It turns out Malric wasn’t an inquisitor. He wasn’t Ember Chain. He was a scribe—one who had spent the last decade transcribing the journals of other men. Torturers, zealots, martyrs.
 
“I never hurt anyone,” he said. “Only wrote what they saw. What they believed.”
 
I asked if he believed it too.
 
His answer came slowly: “I did. Until I read about the girl in the dungeon.”
 
I didn’t move. My heart thundered once. Maybe twice. He didn’t know it was me—not really. Just the story. The “case” that cracked something in him. He said her name wasn’t recorded. That she screamed through every branding, never broke, never begged. That her fire burned brighter with every purge they tried to force.
 
“They called her the Unburnt Sin,” he said. “But I don’t think she was the sinner.”
 
We were quiet for a long time after that.
 
Then I told him, gently, “She remembers every scream. Especially the ones from her father.”
 
His face paled. The fire between us crackled. I let the truth settle in the air like smoke. He didn’t run. He didn’t cry. He just bowed his head.
 
“Then may I bear witness to your flame,” he whispered.
 
I left him there, kneeling at the shrine, blindfold damp with tears. I don’t know if he’ll leave the Church. I don’t know if he can.
 
But I saw something rare in him.
 
Doubt.
 
And in a place like Cathlidia, where blind obedience is currency and fire is god, doubt is the first spark of rebellion.
 
May he burn the right bridges.
 
—V