The Seers of the archipelago had requested an audience, and so Graen had gone to meet them. Though the Trifecta often refused their ordinary requests, an audience was always granted when it was sought. The union of Grievers and Fateweavers knew not to abuse it. Their temple searched for omens and told the future; they knew well what would be lost if it was misused.

Graen normally wouldn’t have gone himself. He was the senior of the current Trifecta members, after all. Tannel was the newest, but too new; he still needed tempering before he could be trusted. And there wasn’t a chance that Graen would have let Arrek take the spot. The man was a schemer by nature, and Graen wouldn’t get the truth of the meeting without weeks of trouble. So instead it was him that stepped off the ship at Branning Harbour to meet the small delegation sent to escort him.

He cut the customary greetings short, uninterested as he was in the manoeuvring of underlings. He had no interest in their desires and made sure they knew it. The walk to the temple after that was quiet, with only the mandatory explanations of the history of the site they were to visit. He didn’t bother to explain he’d heard the speeches before.

Instead, Graen amused himself by counting how many times they’d sneak a glance at his glass eye. It wasn’t disguised in the slightest, shimmering with the edges of Porial’s sigil that lay in the place of an iris, and he’d had the edges dyed to make it appear inverted; colours mixed and ran where there should have been whites, and only the center was the colourless glass of purposeful constructs. His guides had clearly been warned, but not well enough.

Graen was the tallest of the party that walked up the rough path and the odd one out to even a cursory glance. His hair was long and bound back in a ponytail, the grey in it undisguised. He wore a thick jacket and trousers that were nearly leather armour and styled to appear more so. The clothes were well fitted and not cut to exaggerate or hide his physique, but the sewn lines on them seemed designed to distort where the normal lines of bones and joints would press. As a silhouette, he was unremarkable. In the daylight, he resembled more a human-shaped patchwork.

But there were few around to notice this contradiction. The route was tended to but never paved, and the surroundings quickly changed from farms and cultivated forest to unkempt foliage, wild and impassable with undergrowth. And as they ascended the slope the ocean grew ever more visible, twinkling with shattered sunlight. There were fogbanks visible bordering other nearby islands, but he’d found one of the few days of clear skies the western isles would know this year. He smiled at the warmth and increased his pace, heedless of the sweat running down the brows of his escorts.

By the time he’d arrived at the temple they were gasping for breath and had abandoned any attempt at meaningless chatter. He thanked them for their attention before they could recover and stepped inside.

The building was the same as every other time he’d come through, the same as it had been for centuries if you trusted the words of the Sages. The joists and beams that held up the high ceilings and curving roof were uncovered, showing the rugged construction from when the temple had been built. The walls were paper-thin panels of pine and he could hear the sound of shuffling steps around him. Elegantly painted prayers covered every beam and floorboard. He knew they were scoured and repainted at even the slightest damage, that rituals were held with ruthless adherence to time and place, and guests were only entertained in certain hours. The temple exuded a permanent sense of wariness. It would seem excessive, if the temple hadn’t sat ten feet from an unmanaged forest for all those years without so much as a fallen limb breaking a gutter. Their devotion to the gods that wove fate had been rewarded, after a fashion.

He took two paces in from the doorway, hesitated, and then stepped abruptly to the side in three short steps as he had every time before. He’d designed his own ritual after hearing about their unyielding ways and would repeat it until the day he died. He’d come for visions of a future, and it would be the soul of arrogance to muddle it by his inconsistent arrival.

He’d only waited a few minutes when a young Griever came to guide him onwards. He remained silent as he walked through the temple, but was observing his guide carefully. He’d never been escorted by a Griever before, and was looking for differences in their garb and habits. Her cloak was dark grey and hooded, unlike the undyed tunics of the Fateweavers. He followed in her footsteps exactly, matching her cadence to hide the sound of his passage under her own. When he was brought into the empty meeting chamber, he sat in one of the two chairs and again waited.

It was quite a display of power, he mused, to have a Trifecta member emulating your own rituals through only the force of reputation. He could imagine it cutting at the pride of visitors to be so thoroughly controlled, to be denied any form of impact on the managing of the temple. To have their very presence be mitigated rather than welcomed, an idea quite near to not being tolerated at all. But it fell apart at the realization that his ritual ended at their doorstep. The extent of their power was demanding his temporary presence, and their words could be ignored no matter how insightful.

The most they could claim was a sort of independence within their walls, having cut off the outside world from any influence on the temple’s actions. And it was only because they were allowed that independence that they could practice their craft at all.

Graen cleared his thoughts, suppressing the urge to shake his head in the process. Instead, he recalled the pattern of conversation he’d made in his previous visits. He was reviewing the sequence a second time when the door opened. Another Griever entered, and Graen felt a suspicion looming. He waited for her to sit opposite him before he spoke.

“Thank you for receiving me. Has a glimpse been granted to those who seek?” Graen remembered crafting the question when he waited the first time. It was a question that could only have one answer, and so would establish the pattern as a ritual. Moreover, it would be an indirect request to allow him, a Seeker, access to the knowledge of the Seers.

“Yes,” the Griever answered. Her head was bowed low, and he could see nothing of her face beneath the heavy hood.

He suppressed the urge to nod. “Will this glimpse shape the actions of our people?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Griever answered. Her voice was soft, though completely audible in the near-silence of the temple.

“May I pass along the glimpse as it is presented to me?”

“Yes,” the Griever answered.

Graen felt himself relax a fraction. In the house of order, all was the same as it had ever been. The way he approached receiving these messages was likely unnecessary, but he felt that any morsel of approval granted by Ontam would be worth having. He would have been content, but it was not a Fateweaver of Ontam he spoke to. He continued on regardless.

“What has been foreseen?” he asked.

“A shadow from the east has been given form once again,” the woman answered. “Soon it will darken our skies.”

Graen paused. Just as he had used his questions to connect the people of the empire with the Seers, the wording of the glimpse was ambiguous. “Where will this shadow be fought?” he asked.

“From the eastern grit to the gates of Derudt, the shadow will fight again.”

Now Graen nodded. The warning was given, the scope explained. He’d never known Ontam’s worshippers to say more than they needed to, and this Griever seemed the same. “Is there anything more that need be known?” he asked. As ever before, he would end by confirming that their words had been heard. It was validation of all they stood for, and a way for him to depart without the chance of insult or gaffe.

“Yes,” the Griever answered, and his breath caught.

He froze for a moment, phrasing a question to ask for guidance without demanding what was not freely given. Before he could manage his reply, the Griever continued.

“An image was granted that must be known, and that we weep to see.” The woman sighed, and raised her head to have her gaze meet his eye. “The shadow will reach the gates of Corinth, and will claim his sword.”

Graen felt his glass eye twitch, turning in the socket to point back towards the capital. He sat, unwilling to move, as the Griever rose to leave the room. The door shut with a quiet tap, and he allowed himself to give voice to the churning of plans and fears inside him.

“That’s not good.”