The holy city was a scene of chaos. Hordes of Tierran soldiers ran through the streets, recklessly setting fire to homes. The surging tide of the invading army pressed forward, neighborhood after neighborhood. Aidenist slaves escaped from their work camps, turned on their masters, and joined the frenzied battles.
Shopkeepers and family heads tried to defend their property; some used makeshift weapons, ready to die at the doorways, while others huddled with their wives and children in any shelter they could find. Brave or desperate, people tried to extinguish the spreading fires.
An old man walked through the city, cloaked and calm. His step was not hurried. A brown hood covered his face. None of the fighters paid the slightest attention to him. Swordsmen clashed nearby, shield against shield, hacking and screaming and spilling blood while the old man walked past. No one lashed out at him, no one barred his way. With a determined step, he toiled up the steep Pilgrim’s Path to the top of Arkship Hill.
As he moved through the Tierran soldiers that marched up to the summit, a vortex of quiet surrounded him. Soldiers stopped fighting. They paused with swords upheld, as if they could not remember why they were there. The combatants blinked at one another, perplexed.
In the air, the fifteen colorful sand coracles hung as if suspended by thin wires in the breeze. The fighters crowded in their baskets shot arrows and threw small explosives down onto the battlefield. But when the hooded man looked up at them, the archers ceased their barrage. No more firepowder bombs dropped.
The old hermit reached the top of the sacred hill. He was not out of breath, he did not speak a word, but the clash died down with his arrival. Destrar Broeck and his fighters paused with their bloody swords in midstroke, then backed away from their Uraban enemies. Soldan-Shah Omra appeared stunned, like a puppet held up only by the last thin threads of his anger, while Queen Anjine cradled the body of Mateo in despair.
Time seemed to stop, like a held breath. Silence descended upon the hilltop. The hermit shrugged back his hood to reveal a contented visage.
Ciarlo gasped. “The Traveler has come back!”
“Yes, I am the one you call the Traveler.” His skin began to glow. The air around him crackled with the smell of a thunderstorm, and his figure seemed to fill much more than the space he occupied. “I am also the man you call Holy Joron. And I have come to put an end to this violence.”