Has someone lied? Altered the text to fit their own narrative? Grand Minister Judiah? The Order? Someone long before they were born? Has the Good Book itself been shaped by careful hands and selective faith—its verses echoing the Bible, familiar in structure, yet diverging sharply from Revelation?
Maybe one is more false than the other, or only time will tell which holds true.
I can trust in nothing and have to find my own way through this parable. If the Horseman has the answers and is willing to share, he might just earn my trust and his freedom.
This is the first test.
Orán
When the heavy lock on the outside clicks open and the creak of the door groans, I slowly sit up from lying on the cot and make my way to the bars.
This Eridessa is a different version of the woman I met many days ago on the hillside, the white woman cloaked, intent on blending in with the world around her as if to go unnoticed.
Her hair is only half pulled back, the rounded tips of her ears exposed, loose strands escaping to frame her face as though she’s just come in from the wind and hasn’t bothered to tame it. Pale wisps halo her features, catching the lantern light and throwing it back in soft contrast against her freckled nose and flushed cheeks.
Her eyes glow faintly in the dim corridor—an obvious tell that she’s so much more of a threat than she first seemed.
She wears simple clothes: fitted brown leather pants, worn riding boots, and a sleeveless white blouse that hints at the shape beneath it. No ornamentation. No armor. Just practicality and quiet confidence wrapped around a body that seems entirely unaware of the effect it has on me.
She wears no makeup beyond the faint shadow beneath her eyes. Her beauty is unaltered. Dark or light. Wraith or human. It makes no difference. Both versions of her hold me captive far more effectively than these bars do.
In one hand, she carries papers. In the other, a lantern. She stops outside my cell as I rest my bound wrists against the bars.
“I’d like to discuss something with you.” Her voice is steady, but there’s tension in the way she holds herself, in the way her shoulders remain subtly braced.
She presents the papers to me.
I hesitate for only a moment before I take the papers from her. I can read in the dark, but the light helps. I hear the jangle of keys, and then she’s opening the door.
She pauses just past the threshold, taking a breath, measuring the space between us as if gauging how much danger I still represent. I gesture toward the bed but remain standing myself, my attention already pulled back to the first passage.
Not just language, but detail—the faint blue of the ink, the graceful curves of her handwriting, and the places where her strokes deepen and she lingered over certain lines.
She sets the lantern on the small table beside the cot and lets her gaze sweep the cell, cataloging corners and shadows. Finally, she takes the offered seat on the edge of the bed, fingers gripping the mattress as though she might need to move quickly.
“Those were copied from the texts of the Order I grew up in,” she says. “One comes from the book every woman in the Order was given. We were expected to know it backward and forward. The other—the second—came from a volume kept hidden. Only a few were ever allowed access.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“I need to know which one is correct.”
The intensity in her gaze unsettles me. There’s resolve there. And fear. And something dangerously close to hope.
I flip to the second page.
Read it once.
Then again.
The differences are subtle. Intent buried in phrasing. Meaning is redirected through omission. I study the ending more carefully this time, tracing the alterations made by hands long dead—prophet or charlatan, believer or architect.
Lowering the papers in one hand, I give her the truth as I know it.
“Both and neither.”
She stills. The air in the cell sharpens. The only hint of her displeasure is a slight tightening around her eyes and small mouth.
“Explain,” she says. Demand and frustration thread through the word. “Explain to me how they are both correct and not.”
