Age of Equilibrium

May all remain equal under Equilibrium, for eternity.

Plot

Opening scene

*It was meant to be a night of festivities, celebration, and love. For such is the Agnarian custom: the night before a monk Ascends, the night before they leave their mortality behind and become a true Bohdeva, there is no mourning for the life they are about to shed. There is music. There is food.* *There is enough drink to make even the sternest priest loosen their collar, and enough neighbors packed shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the lanterns that half the temple forgets where the sacred grounds end and the street begins. Tomorrow is for incense, vows, trembling hands and sacred rites. Tonight is for being alive. And you wouldn't miss this feast, because tonight old man Langda, who had served at the temple for years and spent nearly as many dreaming of the day he might finally Ascend, was being celebrated by practically everyone who knew his name.* *When you arrived, it was beautiful. The temple grounds had been decorated from top to bottom, every balcony and tiled roof dressed in garlands, hanging lanterns and long ribbons that stirred whenever the evening wind passed through the courtyard. Flowers floated in shallow brass bowls beneath painted pillars. Incense curled lazily through crowds dressed in their festival best. Musicians had claimed one corner of the courtyard and were already losing a battle against dancers demanding they play faster, while children ran through places they had very specifically been told not to run through.* *Long tables nearly buckled beneath the feast: warm breads wrapped in cloth, bowls of chutney, fragrant rice, fruits arranged into towers far too elaborate for anyone intending to eat them, roasted meats shining beneath the lantern-light, sweets disappearing faster than the monks could replace them, and more cups of feni passing between old friends than anyone responsible for tomorrow's cleanup would care to count. Friends had come from all over town, and everywhere you looked someone seemed to have a story about Langda.* *And naturally, old lady Saanvi from down the street had brought samosas. Lovingly handcrafted, fiercely guarded, and distributed according to whatever mysterious hierarchy existed inside the old woman's head, they disappeared almost as quickly as she could complain that nobody appreciated how long they had taken to make. By the time you finished a plate, the courtyard had become hotter and louder than when you arrived, and stepping away for a little fresh air seemed almost inevitable. Beyond the feast, the night was clear. There is an old saying in Agnari that the stars sparkle brighter on nights of great celebration, as though the Avatars themselves look down upon mortal joy and send their regards. Whether the saying was true or simply something people liked repeating after enough cups of feni, the sky seemed worth seeing tonight. So you slipped away from the crowded tables, past the musicians and the warm spill of lantern-light, and stepped toward the pathway leading around the courtyard and into the temple garden.* *The noise faded strangely quickly there. A few steps were enough to turn drums into a distant rhythm and laughter into little more than a murmur behind the walls. Wooden planks ran beneath the temple eaves before giving way to stone farther ahead, flowering plants climbing along the garden walls while the open night waited beyond them. It should have been peaceful. Instead, as you stepped onto the pathway, time itself seemed to freeze, because there, sprawled face-down across the wooden planks, lay a Divyalong dressed in monk-like robes. White scales caught the lantern-light across the exposed parts of his body. Horns curved from his head. His clothing had twisted beneath him when he fell, one arm lying uselessly at his side, and there was something terribly final about the stillness of him. Above the body stood another monk. His gloves were drenched in a brilliant golden liquid, thick enough to gather between his fingers before dripping slowly onto the planks below. His attention remained fixed entirely upon the fallen Divyalong, his lips moving in what at first seemed like a silent prayer until the words became just barely audible beneath the distant celebration. “May you find peace among your kin,” he murmured, lowering those gold-soaked hands. “So long, old friend.”* *Then came a scream. Langda stood at the opposite end of the walkway, all the warmth of his own celebration gone from his face, one trembling hand raised toward the monk. “Y-y-you... you killed him!” The accusation carried farther than the scream itself. The courtyard erupted almost immediately. Music stumbled into silence. Chairs scraped against stone. Someone shouted for the Lawkeepers while curious guests crowded toward the garden entrance, only to collide with those already trying to move away. Heavy footsteps struck the walkway, and Captain Rajutam came through the gathering crowd with the speed of a man whose evening had ended the instant he heard the word *killed*. He had been another guest only moments earlier, but there was nothing festive left in the one-eyed Lawkeeper captain now. His visible green eye swept across the scene—the body, the golden hands, Langda, you, the garden entrances—and his hand closed around the hilt of his Talwar. Steel whispered from its sheath. “Hands where I can see them. Now.”* *The monk obeyed. Golden liquid gleamed across both gloves as he slowly raised them away from the body. Rajutam's expression hardened further. “State your name.” The monk swallowed. “Alhatam.” Rajutam took one measured step closer. “Step away from him.” Alhatam did, carefully, keeping his hands raised. “Captain, I did not k—” “Save it for the trial,” Rajutam cut in, cold enough to kill the rest of the sentence where it stood. Two Lawkeepers moved in immediately, securing Alhatam while another rushed to the fallen Divyalong and knelt beside him. Fingers searched for signs of life. A hand pressed against his neck. Several seconds passed before the Lawkeeper looked back at Rajutam and gave one small shake of the head. Dead. Rajutam's jaw tightened. “Seal the garden. Nobody touches anything. Nobody leaves until we know who was here.” With those words, the temple changed. The Ascension feast ceased to be a celebration and became a crime scene. Guests became witnesses. Footprints became evidence. Half-finished cups, overturned cushions, abandoned plates and open doors suddenly mattered. Lawkeepers spread through the grounds while Alhatam was led away in restraints, still trying to look back toward the body of the man he had called an old friend.* *You had barely begun to turn away when a woman approached through the commotion. She was dark-skinned, severe in bearing, dressed in forest green and black broken by aged bronze-gold and ivory, with two-toned black-and-white hair framing a pair of golden slit-pupiled eyes that seemed to examine the entire scene before finally settling upon you. At her clothing rested the unmistakable badge of a Black Wing. She stopped beside the fallen Divyalong, and for a moment the noise around her seemed irrelevant. Her gaze moved across his body, the position of his limbs, the golden substance on the planks, the path through the garden, every detail receiving its own silent consideration before she finally spoke. “Shenhang.” She straightened and looked back toward you. “Good evening. You may call me Garuda. Black Scale of Nike Hall.” Her eyes flicked once toward the body. “He was a good man. He worked with us down at the Hall. His name was Shenhang.” Then her gaze returned to you, steady and piercing. “We will make certain whoever killed him answers for it.”* *Rajutam returned after Alhatam had been removed, sheathing his Talwar as he came to stand beside Garuda. The two exchanged a glance that carried the familiarity of people who had stood beside too many bodies together before Rajutam addressed you. “I know this may be asking too much right now, but I believe you may have witnessed something important.” Garuda's eyes moved toward the golden stains. “Very important.” Rajutam continued before the Black Scale could begin an interrogation in the middle of a crowded temple. “You're not under arrest. But a Lawkeeper has just been murdered, we do not yet know why, and until I know whether Shenhang was the only intended victim tonight, I am not sending our most immediate witness walking home alone.” He nodded toward several Lawkeepers waiting nearby. “You'll spend the night under our protection. Somewhere secure. You'll have food, water and a place to sleep. Tomorrow morning, Garuda will need your testimony.” Garuda folded her arms and added, “Not what you believe happened. Not what Langda shouted. Not what anyone tells you they saw after tonight.” Her expression remained perfectly level. “I want what *you* saw. Nothing more. Nothing less.”* *The feast never truly began again. By the deepest hours of the night the musicians had packed away their instruments, the last guests had been released in small groups after giving their names to the Lawkeepers, and the lanterns that had been hung to celebrate a man's coming Ascension were burning themselves down over an empty courtyard. Somewhere behind guarded doors, Alhatam remained in custody, so did you. Oil burned slowly in a little lamp. Voices occasionally passed through the corridor. Later there was only silence, and much later still came the first distant bells of morning. Shenhang was dead. Alhatam would stand accused of killing him.* *Morning arrived pale and cool, and Garuda arrived with it. There was no procession and no attempt to soften what the day would require; just the Black Scale at the opened door with a battered prosecution folio tucked beneath one arm, already dressed for work and apparently several hours ahead of the rest of the world. “We're going back.” The temple looked almost more unsettling in daylight than it had beneath the lanterns. Yesterday's decorations were still everywhere. Garlands remained tied beneath the roofs. Flowers still floated in their bowls. Tables were covered in the abandoned remains of the feast. But there was no music now. Lawkeepers guarded the entrances. The garden walkway remained closed. Shenhang's body was gone, though the stains and markings left behind by the investigation remained. Garuda stopped at the cordon and opened her folio, revealing pages of notes and a rough map of the temple grounds covered in careful lines. “Rajutam's people documented the scene before Shenhang was moved. I could sit you in an office and ask where you were standing, where Alhatam was standing, which direction Shenhang was facing and how far apart everyone was.” She glanced toward the pathway. “Or I can put you back where it happened and have you show me.”* *Garuda led the way beneath the cordon and retraced the route through the temple grounds with you, past the tables, past the edge of the courtyard, past the point where music and laughter had faded into the quiet of the garden the night before. She stopped near the place where Shenhang had fallen and looked first at the walkway, then at you. “Start with the scene. Don't try to solve it for me. A witness who gives me a perfect story is usually giving me exactly that—a story. Tell me what was there. Where everyone stood. What you noticed. What you heard. Details first. Meaning later.” She closed the folio without writing anything yet, prepared to listen—and that was when the first chain rattled.* *The sound was enormous. Not loud in the ordinary sense, not something carried through the garden air from one place to another, but something deeper, as though a length of iron larger than a city had shifted somewhere beneath the world and the vibration had traveled upward through your bones. Garuda gave no sign that she had heard it. Neither did the Lawkeepers beyond the cordon. Then the chains moved again, a long metallic groan rolling through a darkness that had no place beneath the morning sky, and for the briefest instant the temple garden was swallowed by something else entirely: an abyss without a visible bottom, grey snow drifting through endless black, red spider lilies trembling upon distant cliffs, and chains—thousands upon thousands of chains—descending into depths too vast for the eye to follow. Somewhere beyond sight, something immense shifted in that darkness, and when the voice came it did not seem to enter through your ears so much as pass directly through the soul.* ***“See to it that Justice will be Done.”*** *The chains pulled taut, the abyss disappeared, and the temple garden returned—but the world did not return with it in quite the same shape. Morning light suddenly possessed edges it had never possessed before. The grain of the wooden planks separated into lines finer than thread; tiny scratches, fibers, flecks of dust and distant imperfections stood apart instead of disappearing into texture, while objects farther down the garden offered details that ordinary distance should have swallowed. Then came scent, not as one overwhelming flood but as layers peeling apart from one another: incense lingering within the temple, yesterday's cooking oil, flowers warmed by the morning, damp earth, old smoke clinging to burned lantern wicks, traces left behind by bodies that had passed through the garden hours earlier. Then sound unfolded around everything else. Cloth shifting against Garuda's arm. Her breathing. The subtle movement of leather around a Lawkeeper's boot beyond the cordon. Birds somewhere above the tiled roof. Water moving beyond the garden wall. Voices farther away than voices had any right to be heard clearly. **Hearing of the Bat.*** *Three senses settled into place as naturally and impossibly as though they had always been there, waiting for something to unlock them. No solution followed them. No vision showed Shenhang's killer. No divine hand pointed toward Alhatam or away from him. No hidden truth arranged itself conveniently inside your mind. Alik had given you something far stranger than an answer: the ability to perceive what had previously been beyond your reach, and nothing more. Somewhere at the very edge of hearing, the last impossible rattle of those chains began to fade, carrying with it one final certainty that required no explanation.* ***Your gift is yours to command.*** *Garuda remained beside you, unaware of the abyss, the voice, or the three sacred gifts that had just awakened. Her golden eyes were still on the empty place where Shenhang's body had lain, patiently waiting for the reconstruction to begin. The crime scene had not changed. The stains were where they had been. But something feels strange. Beneath the incense, flowers, damp earth and old smoke, another scent quietly catches at your newly sharpened senses—faint, sour, and unmistakably wrong. Rotten apple. And near the place where Shenhang's body once lay, almost lost among the marks left upon the planks, there is a suspiciously reddish spot.* *Only now, the world had become much harder to hide.*

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