Saints & Sinners, Ep. 2

When Orion opened his eyes, the world was still dark.

He didn’t remember much after the fall, but he remembered plunging into the Rift during the day and coming out the other side of it swallowed by darkness that behaved like night without belonging to it. It wasn’t the gentle dim that comes before sleep, the honest quiet of a world exhaling. This darkness pressed close, deliberate, as if it had a will. It sat on his chest and cooled his breath. It covered the room like a veil drawn by a careful hand.

Shadowvale, he thought, with a shiver that felt older than today. A place stripped of its Hallow and replaced by Shadow. A place named in whispers. A place Hallowmere pretended wasn’t real and feared just the same.

Memory uncoiled in fragments he could not hold all at once: the runes in the cell below the Sanctum binding him like a criminal; Madeleine’s hands, quick and shaking; her voice telling him to run, to fly, to aim for the Rift; the sudden split of radiance and cold and the way it bit through feather and bone; his wings buckling as fire and frost met in a bruise of pain; the ground rushing up; the shock that swallowed his voice. Then arms. Then a voice urging him to breathe. Then nothing.

A gruff voice sounded from beside him; the tone cautious, as if checking whether Orion was truly present or drifting between worlds. “You’re awake.”

Orion hadn’t imagined the man from the forest, the stranger’s arm around his ribs, or the voice urging him to breathe. He hissed as he tried to sit for a better look, shoulder throbbing, linen scraping against the freshly-bandaged wounds.

The man rose to his feet. He was taller than Orion by a head, broader through chest and shoulders, the sort of frame that made doorways look too narrow. His dark hair was damp with chill, swept back from a brow. A small scar at his jaw cut a pale thread through an otherwise perfect beard. He set a steady hand at Orion’s shoulder and kept it there with care that read as patient rather than possessive.

“No,” he said, the syllable more of a cushion than a command. “Stay still—you’ll irritate the burns.”

The warmth of his palm grounded Orion in his skin. He let his head fall back onto the pillow and felt the coarse weave of it through sweat-damp hair. His mouth was dry. The taste at the back of his tongue was ash and something green from an herb he didn’t know.

“Everything is still a bit blurred in my memory,” he managed. “How long was I out?”

The words scratched his throat and intensified the taste of ash on his tongue; he coughed.

“About two hours, maybe more,” the man answered. “You drifted—half here, half not—while I was bandaging you.”

The words scratched Orion’s throat on their way up; he coughed and swallowed and felt the cough jar his back. “I know we met,” he said, needing shape around the edges, “but I don’t remember your name or how I got here.”

“I’m Aiden Toussaint,” he replied. “I was collecting samples close to the Rift when you fell from the sky.”

“And where are we now?” Orion asked, turning his eyes rather than his head. The ceiling beams were dark and low, old timber aged with a gentle patina from years of hearth smoke. Herbs hung upside down from twine, a forest preserved in miniature bundles. Glass jars lined a shelf: liquids, powders, slivers of bark, dehydrated leaves and flowers. “How did we get here?”

“We’re at my observation cottage, just west of the Rift,” Aiden said. “You were walking fine at first, in shock maybe, then your legs gave out from under you and you collapsed. I carried you in my arms the rest of the way.”

Orion’s memories flared again like sparks and settled. He remembered Aiden’s wings in the forest—the first clear thing after the blur: black pinions folded tight, the night’s own feathers, and yet threaded through with white like stars that had wandered and gotten lost in the shadows. All his life, Orion had been taught a lie that felt elegant and easy: light was good, darkness was evil; Hallow belonged to saints, Shadow to sinners; everything else was a tool of one or the other. That lie had fractured in Hallowmere and broken cleanly this side of the Rift.

Sinners were not the monsters he was taught to fear, not nightmarish beasts corrupted because they choose the darkness. Aiden was the same as him. Just a man. One who had even carried him from death’s teeth to safety.

“You woke up once we got to the cottage,” Aiden explained. He had returned to the seat by the hearth and resumed the slow, circular rhythm of crushing herbs in a mortar. The pestle clicked lightly against stone at the end of each pass. “I think delirium set in once the shock of the fall faded because you started to fight me. Don’t hate me, but I had to sedate you or I wouldn’t have been able to dress your wounds.”

Heat rushed under Orion’s skin, a stubborn flush that had as much pride in it as shame. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought all my life that Sinners were the enemy; I think the delirium brought fear with it.”

Aiden expelled a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’ve more to fear on the other side of the Rift than this one.”

“Yeah,” Orion conceded, a rueful sound lodged in the middle of the word. “I’m starting to figure that out.”

Aiden lifted a blackened kettle and set it above the flames. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned Ember and the fire blazed brighter. The air thickened with steam. He spoke without looking away from his work. “I need to change your dressings soon. I made quick work to stop the bleeding and burning before, but you’ll need medicine to help your wings heal and wounds to knit.”

“My wings?” Orion winced at the thought of them remembering the damage in the Rift. “I don’t think there’s much hope left for them.”

“They may look fragile,” Aiden said, “but wings are majick—majick so powerful even the Rift can only damage, not destroy. Think of them less as ornament and more as oath, an extension of your soul. An oath doesn’t vanish just because it’s weathered a storm, and a soul is something even death cannot touch.”

Orion let out a breath and let his eyes close for a minute. “Good,” he said at last, quiet. “I just got them today at the Beatification Trials.”

“Today?” Aiden’s mouth pulled to one side, the shape that comes before a smile in someone who doesn’t give smiles away cheaply. “I remember my Beatification a few years back. But I had my wings before the Trials.”

Show-off, Orion thought and and couldn’t stop the soft scoff that escaped.

“Oh?” Aiden said, dark eyes flicking up as if he’d heard the thought more than the sound. “You didn’t think Shadowvale had Beatification Trials.”

“To be fair,” Orion said, aiming for dry humor and nearly hitting it, “I also thought you were monsters.”

“But as you can see for yourself,” Aiden countered, returning the dryness and warming it a degree, “we’re not so different.”

“What dominion?” Orion asked after a breath, curiosity available again now that pain wasn’t the whole focus inside his head. He was surprised to hear his tone come out warmer than he’d meant it to.

“Braithborn,” Aiden answered. “Hallow, Wasser, and Ember.”

The answer dislodged something in Orion’s chest that felt like a belief he’d been living on. In Hallowmere there were a handful of Rivenborns, but there were no Braithborns that he knew of. And there was him. Aside from Seraph Lysander, he was the only Sageborn. The Sanctum had used the word like praise and leash at once.

Aiden cleared his throat. “Let me guess—Hallowborn?”

“Sageborn,” Orion said plainly.

“I’ve never heard of that one…”

“It means I can control all of the dominions,” Orion explained. He kept his voice even.

“You mean Mythborn?” Aiden asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, Sageborn—”

“On this side of the Rift, we call it Mythborn,” Aiden interrupted. “On this side, Mythborn is just a rumor.”

“Seraph Lysander is also Sage—” Orion cut himself off mid-sentence and corrected. “Mythborn, I mean.”

“Have you ever seen him control all six?” Aiden pressed.

“No,” Orion admitted, “but no one is allowed to wield Shadow in Hallowmere.”

“But you did,” Aiden said, not as accusation but as a fact. “And they allowed you to do it.”

“Only at first,” Orion said, each word stepping carefully and firm. “To be sure I was Sageborn.”

Aiden stared at him, dumbfounded—Orion didn’t know.

“Lysander said that I was the first one since him,” Orion added, “which is why he mentored me.”

In a gesture that was more tender than he’d meant, Aiden reached out and took Orion’s wrist. His fingers were warm; the grip, careful. “Orion,” he said, “if you are able to control all six dominions, you alone are the Mythborn—there’s only one. The Mythborn is said to be the only one strong enough to repair the Rift.”

The room held its breath for the space of a heartbeat and a half. Orion’s mouth shaped a reply that hadn’t made up its mind yet about being belief or denial.

A hard knock splintered the moment.

Aiden’s hand left Orion’s wrist; his other hand rose, index finger at his lips, the universal sign of silence that even children learn before language. “Who is it?” he called, voice pitched too casual but landing enough to fool someone who needed to be fooled.

“Eamon,” a voice boomed through the door—big, blunt, the sort of voice that liked to be the reason a room quieted.

“One moment, Eamon—be right there!”

In one swift motion, Aiden snuffed all the flames but one, darkening the room even more than it already was. He crossed to a floorboard he didn’t even glance to find, slid a calloused thumb along a seam, and lifted a section of the floor as if it were lighter than wood had any right to be. A shallow cellar opened below, a rectangle of breathing dark.

He turned back to Orion and kept his voice to a whisper, “I know you’re in pain, but I might need your help—are you able to lift yourself using Aether and lower yourself into there without making a sound?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really,” Aiden admitted.

Pain bloomed down Orion’s spine as he called upon his majick. His wings pressed against his flesh beneath the wrappings, tried to answer, remembered, and refused. He reached for Aether, and the air obeyed in threads at first, steadier as his focus found the shape of it. He rose through the ache, borne upward on an unseen breath, and drifted toward the gaping hole in the floor—silent, though the sting at his back begged to be voiced. The cellar air was cool against his face when he reached it.

Aiden lowered the hidden door and slid the rug back over the handle in one practiced sweep, then moved toward the front door to greet his neighbor. “What do you want, Eamon? I was asleep.”

“There’s an Archon patrol circling the area,” Eamon answered. The words came with a certain delight. “And a reward for the fallen Saint from Hallowmere.”

Aiden’s annoyed look burned him from across the threshold. “And?”

“And I followed tracks from the Rift to your doorstep.”

“Wow, Eamon, you’re a genius!” Aiden snapped, and the words held just enough humor to be mistaken for amiable by the man on the other side of the threshold who wanted to believe he was liked. “I was at the Rift collecting samples earlier, so clearly you followed my tracks.”

“Are you sure?” The man leaned in slightly to inspect the cottage.

“Am I sure that I was collecting samples?” Aiden asked, eyes moving toward the sample jars upon the table, coaxing a fool to see what he wanted him to see.

“I just want to make sure the Saint didn’t come this way,” Eamon said, the want in the words having more to do with the reward than Aiden’s safety.

“Even if he did, he’s not in my cottage,” Aiden replied. “Do you see anyone else here?”

Eamon looked past Aiden into the cottage once more. There was a moment where Orion could feel Eamon’s gaze, like a hand tugging at a locked door. “No, of course not. But I just wanted to warn you about the patrol.”

“Thanks, Eamon. I’ll be sure to tell them the same thing if they ask.” Aiden slowly closed the door. “Have a good day.”

A pause, the kind a person makes when they think of one more thing and decide it will sound cleverer if said elsewhere. Then footsteps retreated. Aiden didn’t move for three breaths. When he did, it was only to let out air he had not admitted he was holding.

The cellar dark shifted as Aiden lifted the door. “Come up,” he said, offering a hand without thinking about it.

Orion accepted the grip. The pull up was smooth and careful, aided once more by the cushion of Aether. He stood there a moment in the seam between the cellar’s cool and the room’s warmth and let his body calibrate.

“He followed our tracks from the Rift.” Orion said.

“Only mine,” Aiden corrected. “Remember that I carried you most of the way.”

“Why didn’t you fly?”

“Because that would have brought more suspicion,” Aiden replied. “If he truly suspected, he’d have brought the patrol and a speech about civic duty just to collect the reward.”

Orion listened to the words, then to what the words were wrapped around. “You could have turned me in,” he said. “Claimed the bounty. Gone back to your samples and the quiet of your life.”

“I could have,” Aiden said. He didn’t search for the next sentence; he had already decided it earlier, on a path in the woods with a stranger burning in his arms. “But I didn’t.”

“Why?” Orion asked, hoarse now for a reason that had nothing to do with his throat.

Aiden didn’t hesitate. “You’re the Mythborn,” he said with conviction. “And I need to heal you as soon as possible so we can get you to safety.”

Orion returned to the edge of the bed and sat. Something in him that had been vibrating since the cell below the Sanctum quieted a fraction. He didn’t know if he believed in prophecy, but the steadiness in Aiden’s voice felt like a truth independent of his belief.

Aiden moved back to the hearth and lifted the kettle before it pitched to boil. He poured steam and heat into a glazed clay cup and then tipped pinches of what he’d crushed into the swirl. The brew bloomed a dark, almost blue green before it settled back toward brown. “Drink,” he said, returning to Orion’s side. “This will take the edge off and keep infection from thinking it’s invited.”

Orion accepted the cup with both hands and let the heat draw the damp chill from his palms. The scent was clean and bitter with a thin sweetness around the edges, like fruit mingled with medicine. He blew once and sipped. The warmth ran a path down his throat into his chest; some tightness there unclenched. He found his breath behaving better.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nightbloom and thornapple, mixed with ironleaf and a little stone-moss,” Aiden said. “Wasser to soothe. Ember to seal. A touch of Cinder for steadiness.” He watched Orion drink the way a man watches a tended fire. “You should sleep again soon. Your body will spend better coin on healing while your mind is turned off.”

Orion nodded. The nod hurt. He nodded anyway. He set the empty cup on the small table by the bed where a knife lay beside a coil of twine and several smooth pebbles that looked like they had been chosen on purpose. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

“I told myself I brought you here because it’s what healers do,” Aiden said, voice quiet but frayed at the edges. “But the moment you opened your eyes, it stopped feeling like duty. You were no longer just a question I wanted to answer—you were someone I couldn’t bear to leave behind.”

The fire shifted. A knot in the wood surrendered; the flames changed shape to fit the new landscape. The room breathed with it. Orion let his focus drift to the patterns the light made along the shelf of jars, how each curved glass prison held its own little world. He could feel the pull of the Rift even here, a hum beneath the floor that wasn’t sound so much as insistence. The world there and the world here were one wound with its edges refusing to meet.

“Once your fever breaks, we’ll move,” Aiden said. “Cyrus keeps a safe house near the western mountains—still outside the Rift’s reach. We can travel through the old caverns to stay off the main roads. Hardly anyone remembers they’re there, but they’ll keep us hidden. Patrols will sweep this way by morning, and I’d rather be gone before they think to knock again.”

“You sound like someone who’s done this before,” Orion murmured.

Aiden gave a faint shrug as he checked the latch on his satchel. “Not this exactly. But fieldwork near the Rift teaches you how to disappear fast. You start thinking in exits.”

“Comforting,” Orion said, a tired smile ghosting across his face.

Aiden’s mouth tilted in reply. “Didn’t say I was good at it. But I am still alive.”

There was a silence that followed as Aiden finished packing some necessities.

“Before you rest,” Aiden said, setting his satchel aside, “I should change those dressings.”

He gathered fresh bandages and a small jar from the table, the glass clinking softly against the rings on his fingers. “Lean a little toward the light.”

Orion obeyed, careful, bracing his hands on his knees. The motion tugged at his back; he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Aiden murmured. “I’ll be careful.”

The old bandages came away slowly, the edges sticking in places where blood had dried. Aiden worked with patience, cleaning each burn with a damp cloth. His movements were clinical at first, precise and practiced, but when his knuckles brushed skin, both felt the spark of it. The air between them shifted—warmer, charged with something neither of them named.

The scent of herbs filled the room—chamomile, calendula, ironleaf, and something faintly sweet like honey. The crackle of the fire filled what neither could say aloud. Aiden’s breath stayed measured, but Orion could feel how close he was; could feel the subtle tremor of control in the way Aiden’s fingers paused, then resumed.

“You were lucky,” Aiden said finally, voice low. “If the Rift’s current hadn’t caught enough, you could have fell straight down in the Rift instead of on this side of it, most likely with several broken bones.”

“Lucky,” Orion echoed, his mouth curving. “That’s one word for it.”

“Hold still.” Aiden glanced up briefly, met his eyes, then looked away. He spread the salve in even strokes. It burned at first, then cooled, leaving behind the ghost of his touch. “The skin’s knitting faster than I expected. You heal well.”

“Or you work miracles.”

“I don’t believe in those,” Aiden said, tying off the bandage. “Just in the power of the medicine.”

When he stepped back, the distance between them felt wrong, like something valuable had been interrupted. Orion exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”

Aiden gathered the used cloths and rinsed them in the basin, the faint sound of water breaking the silence. “You should try to rest,” he said, not looking back. “Your body’s already fighting to stay ahead of the fever.”

Orion eased down onto his side, careful of the new bandages. “You should rest, too.”

“I will later,” Aiden said, though his voice carried the kind of certainty that belonged to a lie told for the right reasons. He wrung out the cloth and hung it by the hearth. “Someone has to keep an ear out.”

“You really think they’ll come back tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Aiden admitted. “But I’ve learned not to gamble on comfort.”

The fire popped softly. Neither spoke for a while.

Finally Orion said, quieter, “Still… thank you.”

Aiden glanced over his shoulder. His expression softened, almost enough to show what it meant for him to hear it. “Get some sleep, Orion.”

Aiden packed some fresh cloths away and reset the jars with quiet efficiency. Orion watched him, watched the deliberate care of every motion, and thought again of the moment in the forest when those same hands had found him and refused to let go.

The fire had sunk low, washing the room in amber shadow. For a moment, Aiden just stood there, watching the light move across Orion’s face. He told himself it was to check the fever, to be sure the heat had left his skin. But the truth of it sat heavier in his chest than he wanted to admit.

The wind shifted outside. The world seemed to pause, waiting.

Aiden glanced toward the shutter, forcing his breath steady. He could feel the weight pressing in—the cold, the silence, the things that hunted beyond the walls—but what unsettled him most was how much it suddenly mattered that Orion kept breathing.

He swallowed, breaking the moment. “Tomorrow’s going to be harder,” he said quietly. “But at least you won’t be facing it alone.”

He crossed to the door and checked the latch, then smothered the fire with a sweep of ash. The room fell to half-dark, lit only by the ghost of dying embers. He sank back into the chair by the hearth, the old wood creaking under his weight. Shadows curled around the room like a second kind of smoke. Orion’s breathing slowed, steady now, the rhythm filling the space between them.

Aiden leaned forward, elbows to his knees, eyes fixed on the last flicker of light. He told himself he was keeping watch. That someone had to.

But when the ember dimmed to its final pulse, he understood—it wasn’t the dark keeping him awake. It was the fear of waking to find the bed beside the fire empty again.