Charity

She had told them no. She had meant it.

Charity carried a power she had never asked for — something inherited, something ancient, connecting her bloodline to Elderym's first goddess. When that goddess gave up her godhood, the release of her power gave rise to the mortals of the surface and to the undying horde alike. In the strangest sense, Charity and the creatures she was being asked to destroy were kin.

None of that made it hers to use the way they wanted.

When Pallas revealed the plan at the Garrison — that her power was the only thing capable of destroying the Great Unnamed One and every creature connected to it — she refused. Not out of weakness. Out of conviction. Her power had already slipped its leash once on the road. What they were asking was not an accident. It was a weapon, and she would not become one.

She left the courtyard. She needed to be away from champions and gods and plans.

They did not give her the option to continue refusing.

As the final wave hit the walls, Pallas summoned her to the battlements and pointed to the armored war wagon rolling out across the battlefield. It was not a weapon, Pallas said. It was bait — and the Everborn would not be drawn to the wagon. They would be drawn to her. Members of her flock, the caravan of innocents who had followed her across a ruined continent, were aboard. They had volunteered, believing their faith would protect them. Pallas had assured them it would. A second wagon with the fastest mounts was waiting at the gate.

Charity screamed at them. Argus seized Pallas and pinned them against the wall, feet dangling. This was no right, Pallas gasped — it was a burden, and everything pivoted on her. Something shattered in Charity in that moment: her vows, her work, her free will, stripped away by gods and horde and mortals alike. But her face turned to stone. "Release them and let\'s go," she said. "We can still save them."

Their wagon never reached the flock. It crashed, and Charity woke slung over Argus's shoulder with the titan filling the sky ahead of them — larger than kingdoms, floating at a steady height, the air around it wrong. Argus could never keep pace in his plate. So Charity ran, with Aria at her side, until she reached her people.

They would not run. A young girl greeted her as a savior come to help them meet the horde with love. An old man turned to face the oncoming Everborn with his hands open. Aria screamed at them that they were bait. They did not move.

Charity whispered three words to herself — the thing Argus had told her in the wagon. For the greater good. And the space around her lit up like the sun cresting the morning horizon.

A dome of golden light swept out from her and stopped at the battle line. The horde crashed against it, talons and bones shattering, and then — impossibly — it stopped. They stood, growling and pulsing, their advance halted. All but one of them: the titan, still coming. Aria, eye to eye with the horde, saw unfamiliar shapes among the ranks. "The generals," she muttered.

This was the moment Pallas had been building toward. The Academy's mages arrived with Pallas, Argus and Thalor at their head, and they turned their fire onto Charity's position. Not onto the Everborn. Onto her. The flames rode up her dome and came back magnified — blinding, unbearable — and when the light cleared, every Everborn within a hundred feet was ash. Her power returned whatever was sent to it a hundredfold. Pallas screamed at her to let go and send it toward the titan.

She refused again. She would not be the conduit for their violence.

So they sent more. Cone after cone of fire, stronger, concentrated on her. She held. Through the heat and the enormity of it, she held, while the flock collapsed to their knees inside her shield.

Abstract of Non-Violence

Then the young girl who had greeted her crawled to Charity's feet, robes drenched in sweat, rolled onto her back, and said the only thing she had left: "We love you Charity." Then she went still.

Empathy Vessel

What happened next, no one in Eucos can say for certain. Some say Charity lost control, her magic erupting from her in a blinding wave. The Draka gargoyles patrolling near the keep — the ones who survived the fall — swear they saw an enormous bolt of energy overtake the titan and light the skies over all of Eucos before it exploded.

The psychic shockwave knocked the entire continent unconscious.

Psychic Quake

When Eucos woke, the Everborn were dead and inert, as if whatever animated them had simply stopped. The titan lay where it fell, a mountain of biomass already rotting back into the land. The flock was alive — seemingly the only ones who never lost consciousness — and they would say nothing of what they saw, not even when Pallas tried to coax it out of them with charm magic. And Charity and Aria were nowhere to be found. Their bodies were never recovered.

Argus led the search for survivors. He found the flock. He did not find her. Light was victorious. It had never felt less like winning.

Weeks later, two hooded travelers stopped at a back-country inn on the road to Raneko Village. They paid with a satchel, asked for directions, and said they were looking for the Wolves. When the innkeeper tucked the spilled contents back into the bag, they were white finery.

She is out there.