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The dead did not answer prayers.
Jayce had learned that lesson long before the gods had ever heard him.
Not once did Viktor, the mage, the scholar, the truest architect of the arcane that Jayce could comprehend, find a way to converse with him. Though, that would be difficult in his current state; ashes and dust, and a stray piece of cane that survived the explosion, buried six feet below Faerun’s grounds in a pauper’s grave.
The intricately tiled halls in Heimerdinger’s School of the Arcane, funded by House Ferros, had once rung with promises of discovery and innovation. Marble corridors reflected wisps of candlelight like glistening stars, every lecture instilled into the young pupils the idea that their cultivated knowledge could shape the world. He believed it with a reckless certainty that only those blessedly gifted, naively brave, and wholly self-absorbed could muster.
So had Viktor.
The prose of the experiment had been elegantly written in his neat handwriting, perfect curls of each script letter filling the parchment with intention as if carving a rune. Though reality was that it was beautiful in theory, impossible in practice.
The blast that followed had stolen every ounce of certainty that the Talis heir had ever carried.
Whispers through the stone-carved streets told stories of how hubris had finally claimed them. Others snickered beneath their breath over hearty pints that it was divine judgement. The masters had offered neither comfort nor understanding. His robes were stripped from him, his sigil shattered before the assembled students at his trial, and he had been cast away from the city’s grand gates before Viktor’s funeral pyre had even cooled.
If he had an ounce, no, even less, of his ash, perhaps Jayce could at least find some way to summon him.
Just one last conversation.
One last goodbye after a long night in the library fueled by debate, curiosity, and wine.
But getting back into the city once barred was more difficult than trying to conjure the dead.
Nevertheless, he did not object when he was expelled.
There were no words that the Yordle could possibly inflict upon him that cut deeper than the memory of his Viktor reaching for him through the collapsing blue light of pure arcane magic. Or the way that his mother looked at him with something more akin to pity than sadness as he was exiled from the grand city.
No spell. No miracle. No intervention.
Only silence.
Years passed beneath skies of grey and even stranger constellations that even a mind as desperately inquisitive as Jayce’s couldn’t comprehend.
Jayce traded the crisp pages of tomes for the sharp edge of tempered steel, halls of the library for paths less traveled. Wherever monsters preyed upon the flesh of the innocent or rogue tyrants bled villages dry, the heir of the forge offered his strength without the expectation of reward. Every battle became prayers strewn through the blows of his hammer, every act of mercy another line in an oath no god had yet accepted.
Justice, the disgraced Talis heir had found, was not a thing that was to be debated in lecture halls.
Justice was a child rescued from a fire set to their home by pillaging goblins. Justice was the act of standing between terror and those too meek to defend themselves.
Justice was choosing the light, even when it seemed to refuse you at every turn.
Rest would come at the site of holy shrines after a long day’s work. Dusk after dawn, dawn after dusk, he knelt beside the most forgotten of shrines, their names weathered away by centuries of rain.
He prayed.
And prayed.
And he prayed until his voice would fail him.
“I know not who listens,” He would mutter beneath coarse, baited breath, “I do not know whose domain I trespass. But if there remains any power, any power that values truth over pride…mercy over ambition…. then hear me.”
His hazel eyes would look up to plead if he knew it would find him absolution, but he had come to find the action futile.
“I could not save him.”
A frequent admission.
“I cannot change that.”
The confession lingered between his lips and the damp air of dawn, thick on his lips like dried saliva under the hottest of suns. Despite the feeling of heavy heat, the world was still shrouded in purplish, bruised hues of the last remnants of night.
“But I beg of any divine entity, anyone who may be listening… allow his death to become the last that I fail to prevent.”
The wind answered his plea first, unnoticed.
Not with cold, but with tendrils of warmth that subtly bound him by his conviction.
It rolled across the mountaintops as the sun broke the horizon, like the first blister of heat after a harsh winter. Clouds, thick with gauche purples and greys just moments before, parted without a lick of heaviness. Any remnant of the sun’s forgotten sister receded back into the realm of the night, as if yielding its throne to something older, something ancient.
Something more brilliant the moons could ever manage.
The heavens split open like the sea mentioned in human fables.
From these heavens descended light- not harsh like the sun, or pale like the moon, but golden in a way that could not be captured by the lexicon of mere mortals. Something richer than coin, heartier than ale, warmer than the hottest blaze. It gathered itself into an impossible grace despite its immensity.
She emerged as though holy fire itself remembered that it possessed a soul.
Breathing felt impossible for the likes of a paltry human such as Jayce Talis.
Her radiance was not merely seen. No, it was wholly understood.
Gold flowed through her dark skin as though every sunrise since the beginning of eternity had chosen it for sanctuary. Her garments were woven from what Jayce could only assume was living light, cascading in impossible folds that resembled silk only because mortal eyes possessed no richer comparison. Every thread shimmered with celestial fire, and where it moved, darkness withdrew willingly.
A circlet rested upon her brow, fashioned not from the type of metal that Jayce would crudely work with in a forge, but from sunlight caught at the instant it first touched the horizon. It crowned curls that were as dark as virgin midnight, each one adorned with stars that gleamed like jewels that were suspended in her gentle orbit.
Behind her unfurled wings vaster than all of Faerun. Not feathered like a bird, but like an archangel. Each pinion seemed crafted from molten gold and fractured daylight, every movement scattering countless luminous motes into the air. They drifted around her like blessings searching for the hands of the worthy.
Her eyes held what Jayce did not know was possible.
Mercy enough to forgive kingdoms. Judgement enough to condemn them.
Within their rich depths lived every dawn that arose over centuries of battlefields, every oath spoken with earnest, every promise kept despite the unbearable cost.
She was magnificent in the way that justice was. Not because it invited desire, no, not quite that. But because it inspired reverence.
Jayce had seen the likes of it all; queens anointed with stolen gems of conquered kingdoms, archmages wrapped in enchanted splendor, celestial beings painted in ancient cathedral murals.
Nothing had prepared him.
Beauty implied comparison, yet this being existed beyond that concept.
She was, Jayce could have sworn, the measure by which beauty itself had first been imagined.
The radiance that surrounded her did not blind him the way it would any other man. It revealed him. Exposed every regret, every failure, every ebb of hope that he had ever carried between his shoulders and deep within his chest.
She saw all that was.
All that would be.
And she did not turn away from it.
A pit in his stomach knotted fiercely when he noticed how entranced he was by her visage; the last faces that he could ever envision were his mother’s and…Viktor’s.
What did Viktor’s face look like again?
How could he have forgotten?
When she finally spoke, her voice carried no echo.
“Jayce Talis.”
His name had been born again from disgrace to something sacred on her tongue. Ripped him from the realms of his despair and redirected him back to his current reality.
“You have sought justice without certainty. You have chosen compassion without promise.” Her presence surrounded him like that of an embrace,
“You have carried guilt that was never yours to bear.”
On his knees, all he could do was stare at her in awe,
“My lady…”
The title escaped his breath as naturally as breathing air.
“For years you have asked the wrong question.” It was a simple statement.
“What question?”
“Not whether he can return. But what should you become because he cannot.”
“He?”
“The mage’s soul rests beyond your reach,” Her voice was gentle yet affirmative, “You could not have followed him.”
The inner confines of the broad man’s chest tightened. A poor friend he was, or so he felt, to have lost something as important as the visage of his closest companion, “I should have.”
Perhaps then, both of their faces would be lost to modern memory. Lost in whatever endless ether souls like theirs were damned to for their curiosities.
“You would have,” She replied knowingly. The distinction settled over him like a current of truth, “And because you would have….you did not.”
Beyond his capacities, for the first time since that fateful night, tears escaped his eyes and traced his cheeks like a lover’s caress, and her eyes met his like a lover’s gentle reassurance.
“I have nothing left to offer.” His voice was a pitiful whisper.
The smallest of smiles graced her face.
“You have everything, Jayce Talis.”
One hand extended to him like a sword during ascension to knighthood.
“Rise.” She commanded.
And he obeyed most willingly. Not because she asked, but because it was all he had longed for since he began praying.
“The light does not seek those who are flawless. It seeks those who continue to carry it after walking through the darkest of nights.”
Lighter than a feather, her fingertips swept his brow. A cascade of warmth ran through him.
What he assumed would feel like flame felt like rejuvenation.
Like restoration.
The shattered remnants of his soul- the ones that he had long accepted as a permanent fixture- filled with quiet, steadfast light. Of course the grief remained, though it no longer ruled him. Something much more did now. The grief was commanded to become part of the foundation upon which greater men could be forged.
A purpose.
An oath.
A calling.
“I am Mel Medarda,” she stated, and the stars that anointed her forehead like sacred oil seemed to bow at her name, “Keeper of the First Dawn. Lady of Just Judgement. Shield of the Innocent. Flame that reveals truth. So long as injustice casts its shadows across this realm,” A small smile flitted her lips, “I require champions.”
Jayce lowered himself further. Not from weakness, but from devotion freely given.
“My life is yours,” His voice did not stutter, “My strength is yours. My victories will honor your name and my failures will be lessons and not excuses.” He bowed his head reverently, “I shall bring light where darkness believes itself sovereign. I shall seek justice tempered by mercy, and mercy guided by your truth.”
Ochre eyes glanced up to meet his goddess,
“And until my final breath leaves my mortal vessel,” He breathed what felt like the first breath of life,
“I swear my fealty to you.”
“Then rise, Sir Jayce.”
And with her divinity she granted him a much sturdier armor than Jayce could have ever forged himself. Upon his breastplate bloomed the sigil of the rising sun encircled by balanced scales. The mark burned- not upon the metal itself, but upon his soul, brandishing him and his oath for eternity.
“You no longer walk alone.”
Instinctively, the newly titled paladin reached for his satchel he had carried for what felt like eternities. A familiar, finger-worn and smoke-charred notebook brushed against the tips of his fingers.
Without a doubt, the last page was still blank.
Nothing mystical or divine, nothing promised by the Gods in the form of scripture, and not a sign from his dearly departed.
The smallest grin tinged his lip, and just for a moment he allowed his touch to drift away from the memento.
The dead could not answer his prayers.
They no longer had to.