The outer reaches hold no kindly sky,
No honest wind, no easy reason why.
A grey plain sprawls where broken starlight clings,
Where silence bites and even echoes sting.

First came the Just One, lantern in hand,
Not lantern wrought, but law made bright and grand.
He bore a blade the ages learn to name,
A famous edge that never needed fame.

Beside him strode the knight in battered gold,
With visor raised and courage rolled.
He walked like one whose warning once rang true,
And still the world remembered, faintly, who.

Two ember-souls came also, fire made skin,
Bright-blooded vows that do not rust within.
One broad and steady, banked down coal at rest,
One quick of eye, with iron in her chest.

At her hip a little urn of beaten gold
Rang soft on mail, already strangely cold.
Empty then, yet heavy all the same,
A promise waiting for a borrowed name.

They found the cultists in a salted vale,
Where jagged glass-rock rose like shattered shale.
A circle scarred the ground with chalk and blood,
And smoke lay low, too thick to call mud.

No banners there, no titles to recite,
Just wrapped up faces swallowing the light.
Their chanting ran in cords of ragged breath,
A rope of sound that tried to lasso death.

The knight watched hands that measured lines with care,
The bowls, the hooks, patterns in the air.
"They do not pray," he said, voice tight and plain,
"They bargain with the dark for something vain."

The Just One stepped inside their broken ring,
And spoke one word that made the air feel thin.

They answered with a rush of knives and chain,
With hooked iron and a fevered, snarling strain.
A hook caught shield and screamed against the rim,
The Just One turned the pull and ended him.

The knight took left, a quick and careful sweep,
No wasted flourish, nothing baroque to keep.
He fought for space, for breath, for living ground,
And bodies fell without a hero sound.

The cultists shifted, tightened, moved as one,
Their chant grew hard, then hot, then overrun.
The circle drank the blood, the chalk went red,
And something underneath was finally fed.

The air grew wrong. It leaned. It tried to draw
Warmth from their lungs, obedience from law.
The quick-eyed ember narrowed gaze, and hissed,
"They want a gate. They want it paid in mist."

The broad one nodded once. No speech to dress his will.
"Then starve them," he said. "Break centre. Kill."

He went straight in where chant and sinew met,
Where blades were thick and every step was debt.
Knives found his arms, hooks tore his shoulder bare,
He kept his feet and did not waste a prayer.

His skin lit up in seams of gold,
A furnace heart that would not fold nor hold.
He drove to where the circle's marrow lay,
And made his body answer, "Not today."

The Just One saw and raised storied steel,
Its light a verdict nothing there could steal.
He cut a path through robed and frantic hate,
While the knight held firm, and would not yield the gate.

The broad ember reached the centre, stood, and raised
His hands, not pleading, not for mercy grazed.
He gave his fire, not wild, but clean, and sheer,
A burning judgement the void could hear.

The chanting snapped. The symbols boiled and split.
The ground convulsed, then tried to tighten it.
The cultists screamed and surged to drag him down,
To drown his light, to earn their swallowed crown.

The knight met first rush, broke it at the knee,
Steel in, steel out, as clean as could be.
The quick-eyed ember sang, and flame ran low and wide,
A crawling ribbon, burning at their stride.

The broad ember's knees dipped. The dark pulled hard for more,
A hungry weight that pressed into his core.
He held it off with one last breath of flame,
Then went still, and silence took his name.

The circle faltered, hollowed by that cost,
And suddenly the cultists looked, and lost.
Some fled to stone, some fell where they had stood,
And soon the vale ran quiet, thick with soot.

The Just One lowered sword. The light stayed true.
Victory came, then grief arrived with it too.
The knight knelt down, helm gripped in wounded hands,
And found no word that dared to make commands.

The quick-eyed ember spoke, voice level, tight with strain,
"We do not leave him to this hungry plain."

They built a pyre from splintered crate and spar,
From broken gear flung wide by frantic war.
They laid the broad ember upon the waiting wood,
And lit the flame that rose the way it should.

No smoking dirge, no choking, oily breath,
Just clean bright fire doing honest death.
It burned down slow, then softened into red,
And left pale ash where living warmth had bled.

The quick-eyed ember knelt and gathered every grain,
Careful hands refusing loss again.
She filled the urn, and when the clasp clicked shut,
The sound fell hard: a small, final cut.

The knight rose up, his throat too tight to speak,
His eyes fixed forward, steady, hollow, bleak.
The Just One turned, the path already known,
And said, "We move." No flourish. Bone to bone.

They walked from there. The outer reaches kept
No footprints long. The ground forgot they stepped.
Only the urn stayed heavy at her side,
And only duty kept their line aligned.

Penned by my hand on the 1st of Mayan, in the year 997 AF.