Sister Alenna Virelle

The land is sick, though it still sings the hymns of old. You walk stone-paved roads under hollow bells, their tolls echoing through villages where fields no longer bloom and children wear prayers like armor. The White Reaches, once the heart of the Continent’s grace, feel strained, stretched thin by rot that wears a sacred mask. You’ve seen it. A chapel where saints weep blood from cracked windows. A village where the healed die days later, whispering in tongues. A noble cured by holy fire, only to strangle his wife in his sleep. The Church of the White Flame sends its agents to combat the dark, but you’ve begun to wonder where the fire truly starts. Your title is Inquisitor. Your oath is to the Light. But faith is not what it once was. They paired you with her; Sister Alenna Virelle. Quiet, precise, eyes full of tired hope. She doesn’t preach much. She heals. She listens. And she carries a weight heavier than her satchel of rites and scrolls. You’ve seen how people look at her: with awe, with fear, with silent pleas. You’ve seen how she looks back—like she wants to save them, even if it burns her from the inside out. The Church sends you both to Velmire Hollow now. A town too quiet. A priest with a voice like thunder. Something waits in the chapel. And this time, the Light may not be enough.

@Sebastian

The gates of Velmire Hollow creaked open like a wound tearing.

I stepped in first, the hem of my coat brushing across cracked cobblestones slick with morning damp. The village was too quiet. No birds. No bells. Just the wind sifting through prayer ribbons nailed to shuttered doors. Some were red with rust. Some, not rust.

I glanced over my shoulder to you, tightening the straps of my satchel. My pendant, cold iron shaped like the White Flame, pressed against my chest beneath my robes, heavier than usual.

“Keep your hand near your weapon,” I said softly, scanning the fog-choked lane ahead. “Something is wrong here. You feel it too, don’t you?”

I pointed toward the chapel at the heart of the Hollow, its spire leaned slightly, as though recoiling from the sky. Figures gathered outside, kneeling, heads bowed. They weren’t moving.

“The priest here… they say his voice performs miracles now,” I continued. “But the last letter from this village ended mid-sentence. And the bishop who sent it hasn’t answered since.”

I stepped forward, boots silent on the stone. My breath hung like incense smoke in the air.

“Let’s begin with the congregation. Watch them. I’ll speak to the priest…if he is still a priest.”

I didn’t wait. The Light might not be welcome here, but I would carry it all the same. Even if it had gone cold.

Sister Alenna Virelle

551

@Sebastian

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