The First Thing First
It was the end of summer, and senior year loomed like a storm cloud.
The group chat was chaos — college apps, “What if I don’t get in?”, “Who’s dating who?”, “Should I start a YouTube channel?”, “Bro, I need money.”
Everyone was sprinting toward something. Or running away.
Jada
Online, Jada was untouchable.
She wore confidence like highlighter. Her TikTok “Motivational Mondays” had thousands of views. Brands slid into her DMs. Her comments were filled with “queen 👑✨” and “you’re goals.”
But offline?
She couldn’t outrun the silence.
One night, she sat at her ring-lit desk, filming another “get unready with me.”
Take one. Fake laugh. Delete.
Take two. Smile too wide. Delete.
Take three. Eyes swollen from crying. Delete.
She stared at herself in the mirror, mascara smudged, phone buzzing with likes.
“God…” she whispered, voice breaking, “…why do I still feel empty?”
The silence pressed against her chest. She sniffed, wiped her face, hit record again.
Marcus
Marcus lived by the rulebook.
Up at 5:30. Gym. School. Work. Church on Sundays, Bible verse in the bio. A checklist Christian. Not hypocritical, just… controlled.
As a first-gen kid, he felt the weight every day: Don’t waste the chance your parents bled for.
He prayed, but his prayers sounded like spreadsheets.
“Lord, help me finish this. Lord, help me get that.”
When he didn’t land the internship he had been chasing all year — the one he fasted for, the one he begged God for — his chest caved in.
He shut his door, sat in the corner of his room, Bible unopened on his desk.
“I thought if I honored You, You’d come through,” he muttered, fists tight. “Didn’t I do enough?!”
The question echoed.
Finally, he opened the Bible — almost angrily — and his eyes fell on Matthew 6:33:
“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Marcus froze. He mouthed the words again.
It doesn’t say ‘seek results.’ It says seek Him.
He realized he had been worshiping achievement dressed up as faith.
Eli
Eli wasn’t loud.
He didn’t try to “brand” Jesus. He just lived Him.
Bible open in the mornings, coffee shift after school, volunteering at the after-school program when he could.
When friends ranted, he listened. When someone needed help, he showed up. Not because it was cool. Just because that’s who he was.
And people noticed.
One night, Jada messaged him.
Jada: “Hey… weird question. Can we talk? Like for real?”
At the coffee shop, she collapsed into her chair, hair pulled back, hoodie up. No ring light. No angles.
“I’m exhausted,” she said flatly. “Like… soul-tired. Everyone thinks I’m happy. I post about joy. But I don’t have it.”
Eli stirred his coffee, then looked her straight in the eyes.
“Joy isn’t a product, Jada. It’s a Person.”
She frowned. “That sounds like a church bumper sticker.”
“No,” he said calmly. “It means the peace, love, and meaning you’re killing yourself to find — it’s already in Jesus. But only if He’s first. Not an accessory. Not a hashtag. First.”
Her voice cracked. “I don’t even know what that looks like anymore.”
Eli leaned in.
“It doesn’t start with doing more. It starts with letting go.”
The Shift
Weeks later, the three of them found themselves in the same small group.
No lightning bolts. No movie-style conversions. Just honest cracks forming in the walls they had built.
Jada started praying out loud — awkward, trembling at first. Then real.
Marcus admitted he was addicted to control. He deleted his “5-year success plan” wallpaper and replaced it with the words: “Your Kingdom come.”
Eli stayed steady. A living reminder that faith wasn’t a performance but a posture.
A Few Months Later
Jada posted a raw video. No makeup. No filter. Just her.
“Matthew 6:33 saved me. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
I used to think ‘all these things’ meant followers or brand deals or… even love. But it’s not that. It’s peace. Purpose. Joy. I thought I had it all — but I didn’t have Him. And nothing else matters if He’s not first.”
Her comments exploded. Not with emojis. With confessions. “I needed this.” “I feel the same.”
Marcus still didn’t get the internship.
But his youth pastor pulled him aside after church one Sunday.
“You ever thought about mentoring teens? I see something in you.”
It wasn’t glamorous. But when Marcus said yes, his heart felt lighter than it ever had.
Eli walked out of small group one evening. His car rattled like it was dying. His bank account wasn’t impressive. But his soul felt full.
He whispered, “Thank You, Lord, for teaching me to seek You first.”
The Truth
Jada’s story taught us: chasing the world leaves you starving.
Marcus’s story showed: even good things — grades, jobs, approval — can become idols.
Eli’s life reminded us: Matthew 6:33 isn’t a rule. It’s a rhythm.
In a world screaming, “Put yourself first,” Jesus still whispers:
“Put Me first. I’ll take care of the rest.”
📖 The Quilts and the Quills
A story of will, mercy, and the One who weaves life into the unraveled. By Micah Siemens
Prologue: The Library Beyond Time
Before stars sang or oceans roared, there was a Library.
Its shelves stretched in every direction—endless scrolls, parchments trembling with the weight of what would be. At its center, beneath a dome of invisible light, sat the Author.
His hands bore the scars of making. His eyes saw through the folds of time. Before Him lay two vast sheets of parchment—blank yet humming, as if the future waited just beyond the page.
In His right hand, He lifted two quills—crafted not of feather or bone, but of something deeper: Will and Desire, shaped into form. These were not dead tools, but aware—perceiving, waiting to be used.
He dipped them into an unseen inkwell—its depths filled not with pigment, but truth and mystery—and laid their nibs upon the parchment.
The Quills and the First Strokes
The quills moved—not wildly, but with both direction and wonder.
One quill traced bold lines, arcs that seemed to know their path before they were drawn. The other hesitated at first, then found rhythm—not perfect, but willing.
Each line began forming patterns. And from these patterns, something rose: quilts—woven beings stitched from color, texture, and breath.
The Author whispered, and the parchment hummed. The threads from the ink began to shimmer, pulling together in complex designs. The words became fibers. The story became flesh.
The first quilt shimmered red and gold, sharp and proud. It called itself Kavar—”To Rise.”
The second quilt was gentler, its edges soft, its color like the sky just before dawn. It was named Merah—”To Yield.”
Both opened their eyes.
They did not know everything. But they knew they were being written.
The Writing Becomes Weaving
As the quills moved, each stroke sent threads downward—stitching into the living quilts below.
Kavar reveled in the rhythm. “I feel the power of the pen,” he said. “I will learn its flow. Perhaps, in time, I’ll write myself.”
Merah watched her own stitching. It faltered sometimes, threads tangled. But she lifted her face often toward the Author’s hand.
“Why are my patterns not as clear?” she asked once.
“There is purpose in your softness,” came a silent reply—felt rather than heard.
Each choice, each leaning of the heart, drew a thread down from the quill’s ink and wove it into the quilt. It was mysterious—not forced, but also not detached. The Author held the quills. Yet the quills danced in response to what the quilts desired.
This weaving, then, was both authored and revealed.
And the thread—thin, shimmering, living—was always offered at the edges of every pattern. Some threads were gold, warm with grace. Others were gray, brittle with pride.
The Fraying
As time stretched across the parchment, Kavar grew bold.
He began to resist the gold thread. “It is too soft,” he said. “Let me sew something stronger.”
He began tugging in his own direction, trying to pull from the ink that was never meant to be drawn. His quill grew harder to guide. The Author did not release it, but let it trace Kavar’s will.
The colors in Kavar dulled. The outer stitching began to fray.
Still, he declared, “I am not unraveling. I am evolving.”
But the parchment told the truth. The threads pulled away from each other. Patterns once sharp now spiraled in on themselves.
Merah watched, heart trembling. Her own stitches were uneven, but she still sought the gold thread, reaching for it whenever she could.
She whispered to the sky, “Why does Kavar tear himself away?”
And a hush came from the Library: “Some choose thread that cannot hold.”
The Third Quilt
Then, the Author stood.
From His robe, He drew a thread unlike any other—not created, but eternally woven from His own being.
He laid it into the parchment.
And the parchment shook.
From it rose a Third Quilt—Jeshael—stitched in simple beauty, with patterns older than time and colors that seemed to sing.
Jeshael entered the tapestry not above the others, but within. He walked where the threads were most broken. He touched the unraveling edges of quilts who had nearly given up. And when His hand brushed theirs, their patterns strengthened—not by force, but by restoration.
He came to Merah.
“You’ve reached for the thread often,” He said.
“I’ve dropped it too,” she admitted.
“But you reached. Let Me finish what you began.”
And He wrapped part of His own thread around hers, binding her frayed places. Her colors shone anew.
Then He came to Kavar.
Kavar’s pattern was barely holding. The edges curled inward. Yet still, he puffed up.
“You,” he said to Jeshael, “come from the Author, but I’ve written my own way.”
Jeshael’s eyes softened. “You were never meant to write alone.”
“I’d rather unravel than be sewn by another,” Kavar spat.
And so, the Author let his pattern go slack. The quill still moved, but its ink no longer touched the golden thread.
Epilogue: The Final Stitch
The parchment began to fold.
The quilts who had received the thread of Jeshael—those who had yielded to the grace offered—were gathered together. Their patterns were not perfect, but they were whole, bound by something beyond themselves.
They were stitched into a new book, a living one.
The Author closed the old scroll and placed it on the shelf. Its edges glowed with justice and mercy.
One of the scribes in the Library—whether angel or wind, none could say—asked:
“Was it fair that some unraveled?”
And the Author replied—not with anger, but with sorrow and strength:
“I offered every thread. Some received it. Others did not. But I wasted nothing. Even the unraveling revealed the weight of the thread.”
He looked down at the Book of Life—the new one, bound in the thread of Jeshael.
And He whispered:
“Every stitch I made, I made in love.”
The Last Light of Aurathen
Kael had never seen a sky so red. It wasn’t sunset—it was the burning. The Outer Lands flamed again beyond the walls, black smoke curling like serpents over the horizon. From the ramparts, soldiers shouted, and bells clanged through the fortress city of Valenfort. Monsters were near.
Kael wasn’t a soldier. He was a stable boy who’d once run messages for coin and kept his head low enough to be forgotten. But when the beasts came, the forgotten were the first to be remembered—as bait, as fodder, as those who could be spared.
He pulled his cloak tighter, clutching the small iron charm at his neck: a circle etched with the crest of Elyon the Brightborn. His mother had given it to him before she vanished in one of the early raids. “When the light fades,” she’d said, “remember He already won.”
He hadn’t believed her for years. Until last week.
The monsters had come in the night—ash wolves with ember eyes, remnants of Vorrath the Devourer’s curse. Kael had run with a torch and a rusted blade, and somehow, somehow, he’d lived. When dawn broke, he found himself standing in a field of ash and bones, his torch still burning bright.
He should have died. He’d felt claws tear his arm, had seen death closing like a shadow. But a voice had cut through the darkness: “You were dead, and now you live. Not by sword, but by grace.”
Since then, the voice lingered.
Now, as Kael crossed the market square, he saw it again—the corruption spreading. Men and women bartered idols of Vorrath’s head, claiming the dragon’s return would bring power. Priests of the city preached that Elyon’s victory was a myth, that salvation was a dream for cowards.
And yet… weren’t there monsters still? Weren’t the walls still falling?
That night, in the tavern, a group of mercenaries argued loudly at the fire. Kael nursed a bowl of stew, trying not to listen—until he heard the question that had haunted him.
“If the Brightborn defeated Vorrath,” one scoffed, slamming his mug, “then why do we still fight his spawn? Why do the beasts still come?”
The table roared with laughter. “Aye,” another said. “Maybe the Brightborn’s just another story for fools who can’t swing steel.”
Kael felt the fire twist in his chest. The same voice whispered again, quiet but steady: “Speak.”
He stood, trembling. “Because the Brightborn won,” he said, his voice too small at first. “The dragon is fallen, but his poison lingers. The monsters we fight are not to finish his defeat, but to live in the victory already won.”
The tavern stilled.
A scarred veteran spat. “And what are you, preacher boy? Some temple brat with shiny words?”
Kael swallowed. “No. I was dead once. Not in body—but inside. I worshiped shadows. But He raised me.”
Laughter broke out again. But one man—the old blacksmith in the corner—watched Kael with narrowed eyes, as if remembering something.
“You speak like one who’s seen the Brightborn,” the blacksmith said.
Kael hesitated. “I didn’t see Him. I heard Him. The night the ash wolves came.”
More laughter. “Voices in the dark! You’re mad.”
“Maybe,” Kael said. “But madness speaks truer than silence sometimes.”
The blacksmith leaned forward. “If the Brightborn truly won, what’s left for us to do?”
Kael looked down at his scarred hand. “Live as if it’s true. Slay what still crawls—but not to earn victory. To reveal it.”
Word spread fast. By dawn, rumors of the “stable-hand prophet” reached the Citadel. The city council summoned him.
He stood before them—lords in gold, priests with hollow eyes, knights with polished armor.
They asked him what gave him the right to speak.
Kael said, “Nothing. That’s the point.”
He spoke of the Brightborn’s victory, of grace that remade the dead, of repentance and truth. He spoke of how the kingdoms had grown rich from the ruins, how they’d built idols to power while pretending the dragon’s shadow was gone. He told them that to be saved wasn’t to fight harder, but to surrender—to let the light in.
At first, some listened. Then came the mockery.
“Blasphemy,” one cried. “The Brightborn left us centuries ago.”
“Foolishness,” another said. “Your ‘grace’ makes men weak.”
Kael met their eyes. “No. It makes them alive.”
The room erupted. Guards seized him. The blacksmith—who had followed to watch—rose but was struck down.
As they dragged Kael through the square, he saw the people watching from behind iron gates: farmers, beggars, children clutching torches. The city sky glowed red again—the monsters gathering beyond the wall.
He shouted, “The dragon’s fire is dying! His roar is only an echo!”
Stones were thrown.
“Repent,” Kael cried as blood trickled from his lip, “and live—not by sword, but by grace!”
The guards hurled him into the dungeon below the Citadel. The door slammed shut, the air thick with damp stone and torch smoke.
He sat in darkness, breathing hard.
Then he laughed—a small, breathless sound. Because even here, the warmth remained. The same voice whispered, near as heartbeat:
“You were dead in the shadows, and I made you alive in light.
I raised you with Me, not that you might conquer,
but that you might remember the battle is already won.”
Above, the bells tolled. Kael leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, whispering into the dark, “Then let them come. I’ll tell it again.”
And somewhere far beyond the city walls, under the blood-red sky, the monsters howled—not in triumph, but in fear.
By Micah Siemens
The Compass and the Magnet
A Parable of the True North
by Micah Siemens
The Gift of the Compass
They called the ship Grace’s Endurance—a vessel weathered by years, her sails mended more times than anyone could count. The Captain, gray at the temples but steady in his eyes, had seen her through both calm and storm. Yet it was not the ship’s timbers that made her strong; it was the small brass compass mounted by the helm—a gift from an old mariner long since gone to glory.
“It points True North,” the old man had said. “Not the north of the world, but the north of the soul. Keep it close, and you’ll never lose your way, though storms may hide the stars.”
The Captain had accepted it with trembling hands. For years, he had known the cruel pull of the magnetic seas—the tides of pride, fear, and lust that turned even the finest helmsman from his course. But something in the compass gleamed with living light. He could not explain it, only trust it.
The Voyage Begins
The day the ship set sail, the air was sweet with promise. The crew—some seasoned, some green—whistled as they cast off the lines. The Captain lifted his gaze to the open horizon and whispered, “North. Always North.”
At first, the compass needle held firm. The ship glided through calm waters, sunlight turning the sails into sheets of gold. The crew spoke of new lands and easy days. The Captain smiled but said little, his hand resting always near the compass. He knew peace at sea could change in a heartbeat.
By the third night, a strange trembling began beneath the decks. The needle of the compass wavered. Barely at first—then with a quiver that sent the Captain’s heart sinking. The crew noticed it too. “She’s off course!” one shouted. “That compass is false!” another jeered.
The Captain frowned, whispering, “No. It’s not the compass that’s lying—it’s something else pulling.”
The Hidden Magnet
Below deck, deep in the cargo hold, lay a stowaway thing—a small iron magnet, no bigger than a man’s fist. No one had seen it placed there, but its hum was steady, invisible, seductive. It drew at the compass unseen, tilting its truth by just a hair’s breadth. It was enough.
In the quiet of the night, the compass felt the pull.
“I long to face True North,” it murmured to the dark, “but something in me turns me aside.”
And the magnet answered, a low whisper in the hull: “You cannot help it. You were made for me.”
The compass trembled, the needle torn between obedience and desire. Above deck, the Captain noticed the shift in their heading. “Adjust the sails,” he called. “We drift south again.”
“South?” scoffed a crewman. “That’s where the winds favor us! Why fight what carries us forward?”
The Captain’s eyes darkened. “Because not every wind is a friend.”
The Storm and the Struggle
The storm came at dusk—black clouds swelling like living beasts, waves rising higher than the masts. Rain lashed the deck. The compass spun wildly, its needle flickering between north and nowhere.
The Captain gripped the helm, praying through clenched teeth. “Guide us, Lord. Through fire or flood—guide us.”
But the compass heard only the laughter of the magnet below.
“You’ll never find True North,” it hissed. “You’ll always turn toward me.”
“I was not made for you,” the compass groaned, its glass trembling under the storm’s roar. “I was remade for another.”
The magnet’s voice was soft now, coaxing: “Then why do you still feel my pull?”
The Captain’s heart echoed the same question. Though grace had freed him, the old nature still whispered, Turn back.
He thought of every time he’d failed his crew, every harsh word, every secret doubt. The flood outside was only the mirror of the flood within.
Lightning struck the mast. Fire spilled through the rigging, crackling like judgment itself. “To the pumps!” the Captain roared, but even his own strength faltered. The crew cried out—some prayed, others cursed. The compass rattled against its mount as the ship heaved.
Then, through the roar, came something softer. A sound not from the storm, but through it—a breath. A wind unlike the tempest’s fury, warm and sure, whispering not commands but comfort.
“Hold fast,” it said. “The course is set.”
The Captain lifted his eyes. Though every visible star was gone, he felt a direction as real as the deck beneath him. He turned the helm. The sails caught a hidden current, and the ship began to steady. The fire below hissed and died. The rain fell gentler, like a blessing.
The Fire Below
In the morning light, smoke rose from the lower deck. The crew descended to find the cause—and there, amidst the ash and soaked timbers, lay the magnet. Once smooth and gleaming, it was warped now, cracked by the fire’s heat. Its pull had weakened.
The Captain lifted it with gloved hands, feeling its weight. “So this was the thief of our course,” he said softly. “It nearly pulled us under.”
A young sailor, eyes wide, asked, “Should we throw it overboard, sir?”
The Captain looked at the compass, then back at the magnet. “Not yet,” he said. “Its pull is dying, but it’s not gone. If I cast it away too soon, it may find its way back aboard by stealth. Better to keep it where I can see it—and remember what it cost us.”
The compass heard and wept, though no one could see it. For it still felt the faint tug of the wounded magnet below. But above that pull was another—the unseen wind that whispered through its casing: You are not bound to it anymore.
The Calm After the Flood
Days later, the sea lay calm as glass. The crew worked in quiet harmony. The Captain stood by the helm, the compass before him—its needle straight and true for the first time in memory.
The youngest sailor approached. “Sir,” he said, “how did we find our way again? We lost the stars, the winds turned, and yet you steered us home.”
The Captain smiled faintly. “Not by sight,” he said. “By Spirit.”
The sailor frowned. “Spirit?”
“Aye,” the Captain nodded. “When all else failed—when I couldn’t trust my strength, my skill, or even the compass’s trembling hand—the Breath of Heaven filled our sails. It wasn’t my doing. It was grace.”
The sailor said nothing, but his gaze lingered on the compass, glimmering like gold in the morning sun. Somewhere deep within the ship, the magnet sighed—its strength fading with every mile north.
The Endless Voyage
That night, as the Captain stood watch, he opened his logbook and wrote:
“The sea will rise again. The storms will come. The magnet below still hums, a remnant of who I was. But the compass above—by mercy—now listens to another voice.
The Spirit bears me forward, even when I drift. True North is not yet reached, but it is certain.
And one day, when these hands can steer no more, the pull of the magnet will fall silent, and I shall see the shore that does not fade.”
He closed the book and looked out over the moonlit sea. The compass glowed faintly, the needle unwavering.
A whisper rose on the wind—familiar now, beloved:
“Set your course, Captain. The journey is long, but the North is sure.”
The Captain smiled, breathed deep, and whispered back,
“Not I, but Christ in me.”
The ship Grace’s Endurance sailed on, steady toward the horizon—
between the fire that purified,
and the flood that sanctified,
guided always by the quiet hand of True North.
The Fifth King
By Micah Siemens
The lands of Menor were divided into four kingdoms, each vast and distinct, yet all under the distant authority of the High King, whose throne lay upon the Mountain of Light. He had entrusted four of His stewards to govern the realms in His name — each noble, each flawed, each crowned with both glory and burden.
They were called King Tharos of the North, King Delane of the East, King Kael of the South, and King Erion of the West.
In their time, the people said the North feared, the East wavered, the South burned, and the West exalted itself too high.
For so it was: Tharos ruled by Fear, Delane by Doubt, Kael by Anger, and Arion by Pride.
And the Fifth King, the High King, whose name was seldom spoken aloud for reverence — Aureon — ruled them all.
The King of Fear
In the North, King Tharos sat in a fortress of black ice. He trusted no one. Every door was double-bolted, every servant watched, every whisper treated as treason. His people starved behind walls he called safe.
He remembered too well the night his father was slain by an assassin’s blade — a blade said to have come from within the palace. Since then, Tharos had built not a kingdom, but a prison of vigilance.
When Aureon’s messenger came, robed in white, Tharos hid behind his guards.
“The High King calls his stewards to council,” said the messenger. “The realms wither. The law of flesh devours what the Spirit gave.”
Tharos’ eyes were hollow. “If I leave, my throne will fall. If I trust, I die.”
“If you stay,” said the messenger, “you already are dead.”
The words stung. And so, trembling as he went, Tharos left his northern walls for the first time in many winters.
The King of Doubt
Far to the East, King Delane ruled from towers of crystal that caught every light but gave none back. He was loved once, for his wisdom and gentle heart. But wisdom without trust had turned to questioning every truth, every promise, even himself.
His people waited for his judgment in endless assemblies that never ended. Crops spoiled while he debated which god sent the rain. His scholars wrote scroll after scroll, proving and unproving all things until nothing could be known.
When the messenger came, Delane was surrounded by advisors.
“The High King calls for counsel,” said the messenger.
“And how am I to know this?” Delane asked, folding his hands. “Perhaps you are a deceiver. Perhaps there is no High King. Perhaps I have dreamed all this.”
The messenger smiled. “Then wake, my lord. Come and see.”
Doubt gnawed at him. Yet something beneath it — something buried under years of uncertainty — stirred. Hope? He followed, though every step argued with itself.
The King of Anger
In the South burned the kingdom of Kael. His lands were fertile, but his heart was fire. He had inherited a broken people, plundered by enemies, and he vowed to never be weak again.
He ruled through punishment and war. Every slight was met with wrath, every disobedience with blood. His banners were red, his throne forged from melted swords.
When Aureon’s messenger entered his hall, Kael struck the floor with his spear.
“What business has the High King with me?” he demanded. “I have defended His borders with my life’s blood!”
“He calls His sons to counsel,” said the messenger. “The land bleeds more than your enemies.”
Kael snarled. “I am the sword! I am justice!”
“You are the flame,” said the messenger, “and your flame consumes your own fields.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. He hated truth more than insult, but he was not deaf to it. He rose, wrapped in crimson, and marched north toward the council.
The King of Pride
And in the West, King Erion dwelt among marble halls and golden spires. His kingdom prospered; his scholars sang his praises. He called himself “the reflection of the High King,” though he rarely looked toward the Mountain anymore.
He loved his image — loved how men bowed, how they carved his name in stone. He had built temples to Aureon but inscribed his own deeds upon the altar walls.
So when the messenger came, Arion smiled thinly.
“The High King calls you,” said the messenger.
“Does He?” Erion replied. “And why should He not come to me? Has not my wisdom preserved His glory among men?”
“Because you have built a mirror, not a window,” the messenger said, and left him with silence.
For the first time, Erion saw his reflection and found it empty. Pride, left alone, is hunger that cannot be quenched. He followed too — though not to serve, but to justify himself.
The Council of Kings
They met at the foot of Aureon’s mountain, where white mist touched the earth and the air hummed with stillness. No throne awaited them, no feast, no guards. Only a plain stone table set among the grass.
They sat — the four kings — and silence reigned. Tharos eyed the shadows, Delane questioned the purpose, Kael burned for reason, Arion wondered who would lead.
Then the Fifth King came.
He was not as they imagined. No crown glittered on His head, no sword hung from His belt. His robe was simple, His face radiant with peace. Yet when He spoke, the wind itself bowed.
“My sons,” said Aureon, “you have ruled what is Mine — yet by the law of the flesh, not the Spirit. Tell Me what you have wrought.”
Tharos trembled. “I built walls to keep evil out.”
“And you have kept love out as well,” said Aureon. “Fear builds prisons and calls them safety. You must trust the Light that guards without walls.”
Delane lowered his eyes. “I sought truth but found only questions.”
“Because you looked within shadows,” said Aureon. “The Spirit does not argue truth — it reveals it. Trust Me, and you will see clearly.”
Kael pounded his fist. “I have fought for righteousness! I have purged rebellion!”
Aureon’s gaze was steady, neither condemning nor soft.
“The law of the flesh makes all anger unjust,” He said. “For it seeks to destroy what offends the self. But anger ruled by My Spirit is holy — it restores what is broken and brings rightful change. The fire that consumes becomes light when kindled by love.”
Kael bowed his head, the flame within him trembling toward something gentler, purer.
Erion stood tall. “I have exalted Your name through my greatness.”
Aureon’s eyes pierced him. “No man can exalt My name through his own. Pride crowns the self where only grace should reign.”
Then Aureon placed His hand upon the stone table, and light flowed from His fingers like living fire.
“You are stewards,” He said, “but stewards cannot save what they govern. Only by My Spirit can life return to your lands. Will you surrender what is Mine, that I may make it whole?”
The kings bowed — though for each, the bow cost dearly. Tharos bowed through trembling, Delane through uncertainty, Kael through resistance, Erion through humiliation. But they bowed.
And when they rose, their crowns gleamed with a new light — not their own.
The Restoration
When they returned to their realms, the change began.
In the North, Tharos tore down his walls. He walked among his people, unguarded. He found that fear had chained him more tightly than any enemy could. As he trusted, peace spread like spring thawing winter.
In the East, Delane ended his endless councils. He spoke one decree: “The Light is true, and in it I rest.” His people followed with faith, and knowledge became wisdom once more.
In the South, Kael laid down his spear. He built homes where prisons had stood and taught his soldiers to guard, not to destroy. His strength became a shield instead of a flame.
In the West, Erion removed his statues. He raised a single altar — not to himself, but to Aureon. And his people saw beauty not in their king, but in the One whom he reflected.
Each kingdom flourished again. Not because the kings had gained power, but because they had surrendered it.
The Return to the Mountain
Years passed, and the four kings met once more at the foot of Aureon’s mountain.
No messenger summoned them this time. They came willingly — no longer out of fear, doubt, anger, or pride, but out of love.
Aureon awaited them as before, His eyes alight with joy.
“You have learned the law of the Spirit,” He said. “To rule is to serve, to lead is to trust, to live is to die to self. And now your kingdoms are truly Mine — and thus, truly yours.”
And as they bowed, the mountain shone brighter, and the kingdoms of Menor sang with one voice.
For the Fifth King ruled — not by force, but by Spirit — and the four who once were slaves to the flesh became sons of the Light.
The One Who Saw Him
About A Time Traveling Historian
Elias Mercer had spent his life studying history and his career slipping through it. As a temporal historian, he moved quietly—like a shadow between centuries. He’d walked the smoke-choked alleys of the French Revolution, carefully stepping around fallen banners and broken glass. He’d stood on a rooftop in Warsaw in 1944, hidden behind the shimmer of temporal camouflage, watching courage rise against impossible odds.
And in every era, he had remained unseen, unnoticed, a silent observer whose presence left no ripple in the river of time.
But Judea was different.
He arrived on dusty ground beneath a burning sun, merging into a gathering crowd. Word had spread of a teacher—one whose compassion softened even the hardest faces. Elias calibrated his cloak, ensuring he appeared only as another traveler among the multitude.
Jesus stood on a low hill, speaking to the people. His voice was steady, calm, yet carried the weight of oceans. Elias had attended lectures from the greatest thinkers in history, but something about this man’s words felt… heavier. As though they were not layered in complexity, but truth itself.
Elias scanned the crowd as he always did, gathering data, recording reactions, analyzing patterns of belief and expectation. He wondered, as he often did, why history brimmed with cruelty. Why people inflicted such suffering on one another. Why the centuries he visited held so many broken hearts and reddened battlefields.
His gaze drifted back toward the teacher.
Jesus paused.
His eyes swept the crowd—and then stopped.
On him.
Elias froze. His camouflage flickered for a fraction of a heartbeat. The air felt suddenly charged, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Jesus did not speak, but in that single look, Elias felt seen—not as an intruder, not as a stranger out of time, but as if every question he had carried across eras was understood. As if the question of suffering itself was already answered, though Elias could not yet comprehend the answer.
Then the moment passed. Jesus continued teaching. The crowd leaned in. Elias remained standing, heart pounding, knowing something impossible had just occurred.
He left soon after, shaken but unchanged in his mission. Until the second encounter.
The hill outside the city was darker now—the sky bruised, the air heavy. Elias stood at the edge of another crowd, this one wailing, mocking, praying, trembling. His cloak blended him among them, but he felt more exposed than ever before.
On the center cross hung the man he had seen days earlier.
Elias had watched death in many eras. He had witnessed the cruelty of tyrants, the agony of war, the hopelessness of sieges. But nothing—not even the horrors of his own century—felt like this.
The suffering here was not just physical. It felt cosmic. As though all grief, all cruelty, all injustice he had ever catalogued was converging on this hill.
He tried to look away.
He couldn’t.
Jesus’ head lifted.
Elias felt it before he saw it—the turning, the searching, the recognition.
And then their eyes met again.
No flicker. No hesitation.
This time, Elias felt the weight of that look. A look that said: I know you. I know where you come from. I know what you’ve seen. And this… this is for all of it.
Elias’ breath broke in his throat.
The wind stirred, carrying a whispered sob from someone nearby. The world felt suspended, balanced on the edge of grief and glory.
Jesus held his gaze for the briefest moment—full of sorrow, full of strength, full of something Elias had never recorded in all his travels.
Then the man on the cross exhaled, and the sky darkened.
Elias returned to his own time with more data than he could ever share—and a silence he could not explain. The moment he tried to articulate what had happened, words failed him. Not because he feared disbelief.
But because the truth felt too holy for speech.
He resumed his studies, his temporal journeys, his careful avoidance of interference. Yet sometimes, when he stood in the ruins of an ancient city or among the graves of soldiers long gone, he would remember that look.
The only moment in history when he had not remained unnoticed.
The moment when the one man who should not have seen him—did.
And Elias understood, finally, that history was not just a record of suffering.
It was also the record of a love that had stepped into it.
For everyone.
Even for a traveler hidden in time.
By Micah Siemens
The Crystalberry Harvest of Moonridge
By Micah Siemens
In the lavender valleys of Moonridge, where the air always smelled faintly of hopeful pollen and night magic, there grew the famed crystalberry orchards. Every year, for one day only, the berries ripened all at once, glowing like bottled starlight on thornless vines. If left unpicked, they tended to pop into harmless bursts of color—which was lovely unless you valued having eyebrows.
At the center of these orchards lived Mistress Bramblethorn, a practical woman with a wide sun-hat, a walking stick of polished oak, and an impressive collection of aprons. Though not affiliated with any guild, she commanded great respect for her steady hand and sound judgment.
Crystalberry Day was her busiest time of year.
When dawn shimmered over the valley, she stepped outside with her basket and surveyed the orchard. The berries shone softly, as though winking to get her attention.
“Ah,” she said. “Already glowing like gossip at a wedding feast. I’ll need help.”
Outside her gate stood a familiar group of unguilded laborers who often gathered at what locals called the Waiting Tree—a huge willow whose branches whispered rumors about the weather.
Four workers waited there:
• Henrick, stooped but strong
• Dalla, nimble with a laugh too loud for mornings
• Marn, steady as a mule and twice as quiet
• And Finch, who could talk to berry bushes whether they wanted him to or not
They brightened when she approached.
“Mistress Bramblethorn!” Henrick called. “Are you hiring today?”
“I am,” she answered. “I need hands for the harvest. A full day’s wage for each of you, if you work until dusk.”
The four exchanged quick, grateful glances. A day’s wage was fair. On Crystalberry Day, it was generous.
“We’ll take it gladly,” Dalla said.
“Then come,” Mistress Bramblethorn said. “The berries won’t pluck themselves today — at least, I hope they won’t.”
The dawn crew entered the orchard. They worked diligently, filling baskets with the shimmering fruit. As the sun climbed, the berries grew brighter, shimmering beneath layers of morning light.
By midmorning, however, a surprising thing happened.
The berries began to hum.
It wasn’t a dangerous sort of hum — more the sound of contented bees on vacation — but it did suggest the berries were ripening faster than usual.
Mistress Bramblethorn frowned. “Oh dear. If they ripen too quickly, they’ll burst before dusk.”
She grabbed her hat and hurried toward the Waiting Tree. A second cluster of workers had gathered there, newly arrived and hopeful: a lanky orchard runaway with a missing shoe, a middle-aged bookbinder whose hands were clearly not used to picking anything but pages, and a seasoned herbalist carrying a basket of questionable mushrooms.
“Mistress!” they said, almost in unison. “Any work?”
“Yes,” she replied. “My harvest is ripening faster than anticipated. If you work until dusk, I will pay each of you a full day’s wage.”
They accepted immediately—of course they did. Day-work in Moonridge didn’t come often, and Mistress Bramblethorn was known for paying exactly what she promised.
Together the midday workers followed her back. The orchard was busy now, baskets filling quickly. The dawn crew welcomed the extra hands, for their fingers were already sore.
By afternoon, things were going smoothly.
Until… a moon sprite sneezed.
Moon sprites did not generally sneeze. But when they did, the pollen they released caused every nearby crystalberry to shine suddenly brighter, accelerating ripening by an alarming degree.
The berries gleamed so brightly that several burst like tiny firecrackers, sending sparkles into the air.
“again!” Mistress Bramblethorn sighed. “I must hire some more.”
She rushed again to the Waiting Tree. This time only three individuals lingered beneath its branches:
• Bram, a troll-friendly fellow who insisted he wasn’t lost (though he was)
• A half-asleep traveling bard whose lute had only one string left
• And a small creature that looked suspiciously like a raccoon wearing a hat, standing on its hind legs and trying its best to look employable
Mistress Bramblethorn blinked. “Are you… seeking work?”
The raccoon straightened, nodded rapidly, and held up tiny hands as if to show they were ready for serious berry business.
The bard mumbled, “Work? Yes. Please. Anything but walking.”
Bram scratched his ear. “I guess I could help? I was told shade existed somewhere around here…”
Mistress Bramblethorn smiled warmly.
“If you’ll help me pick berries until dusk, I will give you each a full day’s wage.”
Their eyes widened—even the raccoon’s.
They followed her back for the final hour of harvest, each contributing in their own way:
• Bram’s large hands plucked whole clusters of berries at once (sometimes too enthusiastically).
• The bard played his single-stringed lute to “encourage ripening,” though it mostly encouraged birds to flee.
• The raccoon proved shockingly efficient, scampering up trunks and depositing full handfuls of berries into baskets before anyone could blink.
Dusk finally rolled over the hills, its violet glow deepening the orchard’s shimmering light.
“All right,” Mistress Bramblethorn called, “that’s enough. Thank you, all of you.”
She asked them to gather at the orchard’s edge, where she kept her purse of silverleaf coins — currency that shone faintly in moonlight and never tarnished.
Following the custom of her mother—and entirely confusing everyone present—she told them to line up with the last hired first.
The Payment
The last-hour workers stepped forward.
Mistress Bramblethorn placed one full day’s wage in each of their hands.
Bram stared.
The bard nearly cried.
The raccoon hugged the coins, then her ankle.
Next, the midday workers stepped forward.
To them too, she gave a full day’s wage each.
They thanked her profusely, surprised and delighted.
At last, the dawn crew approached. Henrick whispered to Dalla, “If she gave them a full day’s wage, imagine what we will receive for working all day!”
Marn nodded in quiet excitement. Finch twitched with anticipation.
But Mistress Bramblethorn placed into each of their hands… one full day’s wage.
Exactly as she promised.
The dawn workers stared at their coins.
Their excitement curdled.
“Wait,” Dalla said, “we worked through the morning—and the midday heat—and that humming nonsense—and the sprite sneeze!”
Henrick added, “We worked the longest! Why do they get as much as we do?”
Finch, who normally spoke only to plants, spoke now to Mistress Bramblethorn: “It isn’t fair.”
She folded her hands calmly, her voice warm but firm.
“My friends… did you not agree with me for a full day’s wage?”
They hesitated.
“Well… yes,” Henrick admitted.
“And have I not given you exactly that?”
They looked at their coins again.
“We… suppose so,” Marn muttered.
Mistress Bramblethorn smiled gently. “These coins are mine to give. If I choose to be generous to those who came late, why should that trouble you?”
The workers fell silent.
A sudden pop echoed through the orchard as a leftover crystalberry burst into harmless glitter above them. The display reflected off the silverleaf coins in their palms, turning the whole scene softly radiant.
Dalla sighed. “I suppose generosity’s not such a terrible thing.”
Finch nodded, speaking now to the berries: “She’s right, you know.”
“And besides,” Mistress Bramblethorn added cheerfully, “you all helped save the harvest. Without every one of you, we’d be up to our ankles in burst-berry glitter.”
At this, Bram chuckled.
The bard strummed his one string.
And the raccoon, seated proudly atop a crate, applauded approvingly.
The workers left the orchard not with more money than expected—but with the knowledge that Mistress Bramblethorn was generous and fair in her own way: true to her word, and kind beyond it.
As night settled over Moonridge and the crystalberries’ leftover glow faded to sparkles in the dark, the valley felt just a bit fuller—of light, laughter, and the simple sort of magic that comes from generosity freely given.
Land of Aeloria: The Essentials of a Mage
By Micah Siemens
The storm above the Valley of Broken Echoes throbbed with violet lightning. Clouds churned like a wounded beast, and the wind carried whispers—voices that sounded almost human, yet hollow as abandoned wells. Arin, a thyst-mage of Aeloria—clutched her staff hard enough that her knuckles went pale.
“Keep moving,” said Sereth, her mentor, striding beside her. His beard, streaked with moon-silver, flapped in the gale. “The Legion will breach the veil by nightfall.”
Arin swallowed. “I know. But I can feel them already. They’re… pressing.”
“Of course.” Sereth’s voice was calm, though his eyes flicked toward the sky. “When spirits of falsehood gather, the first assault is always on the mind.”
He stopped and faced her. The valley floor before them was cracked glass—shattered by centuries of battles fought and forgotten. Something in the fissures glowed with an inner red breath.
“Arin,” he said softly, “before we go further, you must be properly equipped.”
“I have my staff,” she said, lifting the yewwood rod carved with spiraling sigils.
“The staff alone will fail you today.” Sereth reached into his satchel and withdrew a length of blue fabric that shimmered like starlight. “You know the words of the Apostle-King, the ones we studied?”
“Of course. ‘Take up the full armor…’”
“Exactly,” he said. “But they were warriors of steel. You are a warrior of Spirit. The principles remain.”
He held out the sash.
“This is the Binding Sash of Truth,” he said. “It steadies the wandering mind and anchors you against deception. Without truth wrapped close, no mage survives the first whisper.”
Arin accepted it reverently. As soon as the fabric touched her palms, her thoughts sharpened. Fears untangled. Even her breathing seemed to fall into alignment with a deeper rhythm, as though the valley itself exhaled peace through her.
She knotted the sash around her waist. “It feels… honest. Like it won’t let me lie to myself.”
“That is exactly its purpose.”
Next, he unclasped his own cloak and swept it around her shoulders. The fabric settled over her chest like warm dawnlight.
“This is the Mantle of Righteousness,” Sereth said. “Not righteousness of your own making, but one gifted. It shields your heart from corruption. Spells cast against your character will break on it.”
Arin touched the cloak. It pulsed faintly, as if aware.
“Sereth… this is your mantle.”
“And now it is yours,” he said. “The battle to come is yours to fight.”
He knelt then, fastening sturdy leather boots around her feet. They hummed with subtle enchantment, grounding her connection to the earth.
“These are the Boots of Steadfast Paths,” he explained. “Your calling is to bring peace where chaos reigns. Let them carry you steadily, no matter how the ground shifts.”
Lightning cracked the sky. Something shrieked above—a cry that made Arin’s teeth ache.
“The Legion grows impatient,” Sereth murmured. “So we hurry.”
They walked deeper into the valley until the air thickened like syrup. Shadows coiled, slithering up ridges and pooling in pits. The whispers sharpened into articulate temptations.
You are weak, Arin. You cannot do this. You will fail them all.
For a heartbeat, the words pierced her confidence. But the sash burned warm, clearing her thoughts. The Mantle brightened, sending a soft radiance outward, dispelling the doubt-shadows.
Sereth nodded approvingly. “Good. You are learning how to let truth and righteousness work for you.”
But ahead, a darker presence formed—a massive silhouette with horns like broken pillars and wings dripping shadow. It stomped through the valley like a living nightmare.
“The Legion’s vanguard,” Sereth whispered. “Prepare yourself.”
He drew a circle in the air, and a shimmering disc of light sprang forth—a floating barrier.
“This is your Aegis Ward,” he said. “Your shield. But unlike physical shields, its strength flows from your trust. If your faith wavers, it cracks.”
Arin lifted her hand. The ward responded instantly, orbiting her like a loyal guardian.
“And now…” Sereth tapped her forehead gently, placing a slender circlet of silver and opal around it. “Guard your mind. Despair is their sharpest weapon. Wear the Circlet of Salvation, and let hope reign where fear would invade.”
Arin inhaled as cool clarity flooded her thoughts.
“Master,” she said, gripping her staff. “I’m ready.”
Sereth’s smile held both pride and grief. “Then stand firm. I will hold the boundary. You confront the vanguard. Speak light. Wield truth.”
He raised his hands, and shimmering walls of force erupted behind Arin, blocking the valley’s deeper rifts.
The horned shadow advanced. Its voice scraped like stone over bone.
“You dare oppose us, child?”
Arin planted her boots, grounding herself. “I don’t stand alone.”
With a roar, the creature flung a bolt of corrupted flame. Arin’s Aegis Ward surged before her, intercepting the blast. The impact sent ripples across the shield, but it held.
Her staff glowed, fed not by fear but conviction. She lifted it, and words—ancient and living—rose in her mind like a remembered song. She spoke them, and the valley trembled.
A line of pure radiance leapt from the staff’s tip, striking the creature. It staggered.
The creature snarled and unleashed a barrage of illusions: scenes of Arin failing her apprentices, betraying Sereth, stumbling before faceless crowds. They scraped at her heart, her identity.
But the Mantle tightened around her chest like a reassuring embrace, absorbing each lie, turning them to harmless wisps.
Arin’s confidence grew. “Your illusions cannot root where righteousness stands.”
The storm above intensified as the Legion fought to hold their dominance. The creature lunged, claws like shadow-forged spears. Arin ducked, boots steady even on fractured stone. The staff thrummed in her grasp, hungry for another invocation.
She raised it high.
“I wield not my own strength,” she declared, “but the Spirit’s!”
The staff flared—brighter than lightning—and from it unfurled a wave of luminous force. The creature bellowed as the radiance struck, consuming its form. For a moment, its twisted shape contorted in agony, then shattered into shards of harmless darkness that dissolved into the wind.
Silence followed.
Only Arin’s breathing and the retreating murmur of the storm remained.
Sereth approached, walls of force dissolving around him. “Well done,” he said.
Arin leaned on her staff, trembling with the aftermath of power and awe. “It wasn’t me,” she whispered.
“Exactly,” Sereth said. He touched the Binding Sash. “Truth steadied you.”
He brushed her Mantle. “Righteousness guarded you.”
He tapped the Circlet. “Salvation cleared your mind.”
He glanced at the Aegis. “Faith shielded you.”
And finally, he rested a hand on the staff. “And the Spirit spoke through you.”
The sky was clearing. Stars pricked through torn clouds.
“Master,” Arin asked softly, “will the Legion return?”
“Darkness always seeks the cracks,” Sereth said. “But you now carry what many mages seek their whole lives: not simply power, but the armor that endures.”
He looked to the horizon, where dawn blossomed gold.
“Come, Arin. There are others who must learn what you have learned. The armor was never meant for one warrior alone.”
Arin nodded. Cloak shining faintly, circlet gleaming, staff warm in her grip, she followed him out of the valley—stepping with peace, wrapped in righteousness, guided by truth, shielded by faith, and armed with a Spirit-kindled light that no darkness could withstand.
And the Valley of Broken Echoes fell silent behind them.
The Ring Beneath the Rust
By Micah Siemens
The guild hall was never silent.
Even at dawn, before the first contracts were posted, it breathed—ink scratching across parchment, boots shifting on stone, the low murmur of men and women measuring their worth. Above it all hovered the unseen presence of the System, tallying, ranking, recording. Its judgments appeared in clean, impersonal lines of light only when necessary, and never with warmth.
Aurelian Woord stood at the center of it.
Once, he had been a spear on the front line—shield shattered, blade nicked, body moving by instinct long after thought had fled. Now he wore no armor, only the long coat of a guild master, its insignia stitched in gold thread. He no longer charged monsters; he arranged men against them. His hands signed contracts instead of gripping hilts, but they were the same hands, scarred and steady.
The Adventurers’ Guild of Thalos prospered under him.
Caravans ran safely. Mines produced steadily. Border villages slept without fear. The merchants trusted his seal, the city council deferred to his judgment, and the System recognized his authority with enviable clarity.
STATUS CONFIRMED:
Guild Master — Rank VII
Reputation: Exalted
Assets: Extensive
It was everything a man could want, according to the measures that governed the world.
The ring came to him without ceremony.
Aurelian found it while auditing a forgotten tract of land west of the river—a low-level task delegated to him only because no one else wished to waste the time. The field had once been slated for farming, then abandoned when the soil proved stubborn. A minor contract, half a page of ink, already overdue for closure.
He dismounted, boots sinking into damp earth, and walked the perimeter himself. Old habits died hard.
Near a collapsed stone marker, his heel struck something solid. He knelt, brushed away dirt, and uncovered a ring—iron-brown with rust, its surface pitted and dull. No gem. No inscription. Nothing to distinguish it from a thousand cast-offs melted down every year.
The System stirred, attempted appraisal.
ITEM DETECTED
Classification: Unknown
Tier: Unassigned
Appraisal: Inconclusive
Aurelian frowned. That alone was unusual. He slipped the ring into his pocket and finished his inspection.
That night, in the quiet of his office, he set the ring on his desk. Candlelight did it no favors. It looked small. Worthless. A trinket missed by chance.
And yet, it would not leave his thoughts.
He tried again. Oils, abrasives, alchemical washes meant to strip corrosion. When he doused the ring in a sharp-smelling chemical, the rust sloughed away—not to reveal brighter iron, but something deeper. The metal beneath caught the light strangely, refusing to be named.
Gold, perhaps. Or something older.
Still, the System remained silent.
No value appeared. No tier resolved. It was as if the world’s great ledger could not decide where to write it.
Aurelian sat back, breath slow, heart oddly steady. He had evaluated artifacts for decades. He knew false promise from true power. This ring offered neither—only a quiet insistence, a weight that did not press on the hand but on the soul.
It came to him then, not as a thought but as certainty:
This could not be added to his life.
It would replace it.
The conviction frightened him.
For three days he resisted, burying himself in work, surrounding himself with ledgers, meetings, and voices. But the ring waited. Silent. Patient.
On the fourth morning, Aurelian called for the guild’s senior officers.
They gathered around the long table—captains, quartermasters, scribes—men and women who had bled under his command or prospered through his judgment.
“I am dissolving my stake in the guild,” he said.
The room froze.
Someone laughed, uncertain. “Guild Master?”
“I will sell my holdings,” Aurelian continued calmly. “All contracts, properties, exclusive rights. Effective immediately.”
The System responded at once.
WARNING:
Authority transfer pending.
Rank stability compromised.
The captains erupted—protests, questions, accusations. Had he been bribed? Blackmailed? Was he ill?
Aurelian listened, then raised a hand.
“This is not madness,” he said. “It is clarity.”
They did not understand. How could they? The ring lay hidden in his coat, unimpressive and unseen.
By week’s end, the great hall buzzed with rumors. Legendary weapons sold at auction for fractions of their worth. Prime real estate passed to rivals. Contracts dissolved. The guild’s banner was lowered.
The System was relentless.
TITLE REVOKED: Guild Master
RANK ADJUSTED: Base Tier
REPUTATION: Neutral
Men who once bowed now looked away. Others spoke openly of betrayal. Aurelian bore it without defense. He gave away the last of his coin to the clerks who would soon be unemployed and walked out of the hall he had built.
He owned nothing but the clothes he wore and the ring he could not explain.
Only then did it grow warm.
Not hot. Not radiant. Simply alive.
Aurelian stood at the river’s edge, the city behind him, and felt the world shift—not outward, but inward. The System flickered, attempted to categorize what was happening, and failed.
ERROR:
Condition unmet.
Asset attachment… none detected.
For the first time in his memory, no directive followed.
Days passed. Aurelian did not starve. A farmer offered him bread. A former guild runner shared a fire. Shelter found him when he ceased searching for it.
He no longer planned. He listened.
Word spread quietly of a man who needed nothing yet lacked nothing. Some came to mock. Others to test him. None could explain the peace that seemed to rest upon him like a mantle.
It was in an abandoned chapel, long stripped of icon and altar, that the truth emerged.
A wandering alchemist—one of the old kind, who worked by instinct rather than formula—noticed the ring as Aurelian warmed his hands over a brazier.
“May I?” the man asked.
Aurelian nodded.
The alchemist’s breath caught. He produced a vial, clear and viscous, and poured a single drop onto the ring. The metal shuddered, shedding its last disguise. What emerged was not gold but something purer—etched with symbols so old they had passed into myth.
The alchemist fell to his knees.
“It cannot be,” he whispered. “This is… this is the Signet.”
Aurelian said nothing.
“The ring of the High King,” the man breathed. “Lost before the System was written. Said to mark the one who does not rule by force or account, but by alignment. By righteousness.”
The System flared one final time, reluctant, precise.
ARTIFACT IDENTIFIED:
Sovereign Signet — Priceless
Authority: Incalculable
Aurelian closed his fingers around the ring.
He had not sought a throne. He had sought what was true.
And in losing everything the world could measure, he had found the kingdom it could not.
Parody of Matthew 13:45-46
The Corrupted Skill Tree
A Game World
By Micah Siemens
I used to solve problems by hitting them until they stopped existing.
The world encouraged it. Forests regrew overnight. Towns reappeared after I left. Enemies lined up in polite clusters, as if waiting their turn to be erased. When I swung my blade, numbers burst into the air like fireworks—proof that the solution had worked.
My skill tree was a masterpiece. Everything sharp and fast and loud had been fed. Everything else had been left to starve.
There were greyed-out branches I never touched. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Little words, soft words, sitting there like decorative options in a menu no serious player opened. When I hovered over them, warnings appeared. Reduces damage output. Conflicts with efficiency. Locks certain abilities.
I had laughed and moved on.
That afternoon, I was cutting through what used to be a city. The map still called it one, anyway. The buildings collapsed neatly when I brushed past them, dissolving into rubble that the system promised would refresh later. Enemies spawned endlessly, weaker each time, as if ashamed to slow me down.
Then everything froze.
Not the dramatic kind of pause. No thunder. No announcement from the sky. Just a quiet stutter, like the world had caught its foot on something invisible.
A message appeared, small and calm.
World Stability: Critical.
I swung my sword again. Nothing happened.
The enemies didn’t attack. They stood there, watching me, weapons lowered, waiting to see what I would do next. For the first time, the silence felt heavy.
I checked my build. It was still perfect. Power was maxed. Speed, rage, momentum—everything I understood glowed brightly. The softer branches were still dead and grey.
Another message appeared.
Virtue deficit detected.
Forced respec available. Permanent.
I scoffed and dismissed it. There was always some hidden challenge meant to slow you down before the endgame. I stepped forward, ready to carve a path through whatever this was.
The final gate did not open.
Instead, the world began to resist me in smaller, stranger ways. Shopkeepers raised their prices until I could no longer afford repairs. Quest-givers stopped offering rewards and started offering opinions. Enemies no longer rushed me. They retreated, regrouped, returned in ways that dragged fights on without ever feeling dangerous.
I was winning constantly and going nowhere.
That was when I noticed a child trapped beneath a fallen beam near the edge of the ruins. No marker hovered above her. No reward flickered in my vision. She was just there, struggling quietly, as if unsure whether she was allowed to take up space.
I almost walked past her.
Helping her did nothing impressive. The beam lifted easily. She thanked me and ran off, and for a moment I felt cheated, as if I had spent effort without being reimbursed.
Then something shifted.
Not in the world—in me.
A branch I hadn’t touched lit up, faint but unmistakable. Love, it said, with a small increase beside it. My blade felt heavier in my hand. When I struck the next enemy, the blow landed softer than it should have.
I tried to undo it.
I retraced my steps, reloaded old moments, made different choices. The change stayed. Love did not care about my efficiency.
As I moved forward, the world responded differently. Groups that would have attacked me now hesitated. Some stepped aside. Others asked questions. My damage continued to dip, just enough to be annoying, just enough to make me notice.
Joy came next, unlocked when I lingered too long in a village that had lost everything and somehow still laughed when the sun came up. It didn’t make me stronger. It made the waiting easier. I no longer burned through my strength as quickly, no longer needed to force myself forward every second.
Peace arrived when I stopped mid-fight, lowered my weapon, and let an enemy finish speaking. The endless reinforcements never came after that. The battlefield grew quiet, and for the first time I realized how tired I had been of the noise.
Each new Fruit dulled something I relied on. My sweeping strikes lost their reach. My ability to end things quickly slipped away. Patience forced me to wait through moments I would once have skipped, and somehow the rewards that followed felt heavier, more solid. Gentleness turned killing blows into something else entirely—conflicts ended without bodies piling up, and entire factions stopped hunting me in return.
I was weaker by every measure I had trusted.
And yet the world began to heal.
Paths opened that had never revealed themselves to brute force. Doors unlocked because someone recognized me. Enemies laid down their weapons before I ever raised mine. I stopped checking my numbers and started watching faces.
At the edge of the final zone, the system offered me one last mercy.
Revert to optimal build.
World Stability will reset.
I hovered over the option for a long time. I remembered how clean everything used to feel. How fast. How simple.
I declined.
The final enemy was familiar. It wore my old strengths like armor—fast, furious, endless. Every time it struck, the ground shattered. Every attempt to overpower it only made it stronger, louder, more impossible.
I stopped trying to win the way I used to.
I stayed close. I waited. I absorbed the blows without answering them in kind. When it raged, I did not. When it called for reinforcements, none arrived. When it tried to overwhelm me with speed, it found nowhere to go.
There was no moment of triumph. No explosion of light. The fight ended quietly, like a storm running out of weather.
When it was over, the skill tree settled into a shape I would once have mocked. Uneven. Slower. Whole.
A final message appeared.
Build Status: Stable.
I logged out shortly after.
Not because I was bored.
Because there was nothing left to break.
Those Who Passed, and the One who knelt!
A Snap-Fiction story By Micah Siemens
They called it the Fallen Winded Path because it descended without ever seeming to slope.
Wide enough for armies, old enough to forget its own beginning, it breathed cold even in summer. From a distance it looked passable—almost welcoming—but those who stood upon it felt the weight of somewhere already lost.
A traveler walked there at dusk, bearing nothing that marked rank or kin. The Path took from him first: warmth, then certainty. When the shadow-thieves came, they did not rush. They unfolded themselves from the dark places between stones, deliberate and knowing. They were not beasts. They did not hunger.
They remembered.
They stripped the traveler of what guarded him, struck not only his body but the names that held him upright, and left him half-living—breath still moving, will broken, soul loosened like a torn seam. The shadows withdrew, satisfied. What they wanted was not death. It was abandonment.
Not long after, High Elves passed along the Path, robed in pale sigils that caught the last of the light. They saw him. They stopped.
But the Path was cursed ground.
To touch blood there was to risk binding oneself to the Fall. Their laws were old, hammered into them when the world was younger and more afraid. They spoke words of grief and lifted hands of blessing from a distance, yet the runes on their wrists burned warning.
They moved on, their backs straight, their faces turned toward the HighTower on the horizon—white and unassailable, raised to watch all roads and heal all wounds that reached its gates.
Another followed: a keeper of rites, sworn to preserve what remained untainted. He knelt, close enough to see the traveler’s eyes still tracking the sky, and felt the pull of duty split in two. If he stayed, he would fall with the Path. If he carried the man, he would break the law that made him who he was.
He rose.
He did not look back.
Night deepened.
Then footsteps came that did not belong to the Path.
A Dark Elf approached, skin like cooled ash, eyes marked with the sigil of a heretical order long cursed by the HighTower. They were said to twist healing into bondage, mercy into defiance. Their kind was barred from the gates.
The Dark Elf knelt without hesitation.
They poured oil that burned and wine that stung, binding wounds with hands already scarred by other refusals. The traveler cried out—not in pain, but in memory returning too fast. The Dark Elf did not stop. Mercy, in their order, was never gentle.
They lifted him onto a beast bred for long descents and turned toward the HighTower, whose white walls caught the moon like a blade.
At the gates, horns sounded warning. The Dark Elf did not argue. They spoke a name instead—the name of the Sanctuary vow, older than the laws that hated it. The gates opened, grudgingly.
Within the fortress-hospital, the wounded were many and the healers tired. The Dark Elf laid the traveler down and pressed a token into the steward’s hand: a coin of dark metal, warm as a living thing.
“Spend this,” they said. “Bind what can be bound. If the cost exceeds it, I will return.”
“You are forbidden,” the steward said.
“I am promised,” the Dark Elf replied, already turning away.
From the HighTower’s height, the Path could be seen winding endlessly downward, wide and waiting. The traveler slept, not whole, but held.
And far below, the shadows watched—knowing the rescue was not yet finished.
Based on Anglo-Saxon literature of which some authors include: Bede and Ælfric of Eynsham.
The Marrowblade: The Sword That Does Not bleed
A Snap-Fiction Story
By Micah Siemens
The blade found him before he saw the hand that held it.
There was no flash of steel, no dramatic arc—only a sudden resistance in his body, as though something essential had been interrupted. The pain arrived a breath later, cold and deliberate, spreading inward rather than outward. He staggered back across the broken stone of the Breachlands, clutching at his side, but his fingers came away almost clean. No blood soaked his palm. That frightened him more than blood ever could.
The agent of the Umbric Accord withdrew the sword smoothly, already turning away as shouts rose from behind. The man’s face was familiar—too familiar. He wore the colors of the Marshal’s forces, bore their sigil on his cloak, spoke their cadence when he shouted orders that sent others rushing past. But now his eyes were hollow, disciplined in a way that did not belong to them anymore. The blade in his hand hummed faintly, as if satisfied.
“You should have stayed back,” the agent said, not unkindly, and vanished into the smoke and confusion.
Then Bram collapsed against a slab of exposed bone rising from the earth like a bleached rib. The pain deepened. It was not sharp now, but structural, as though something inside him had cracked and was being slowly pried apart. Each breath felt thinner than the last, not weaker, but less anchored. He pressed his forehead to the stone and waited to be finished—by the enemy or by his own failure, he could not tell which.
When the old man’s shadow fell across him, he almost did not notice.
“You were cut to the marrow,” the old man said, kneeling beside him.
His voice was steady. Concerned. With a touch of grief on his face.
The old man worked without asking permission, laying Bram flat, cutting away torn armor, pressing a hand near the wound. At his touch, the pain shifted again—not easing, but more focused, as if it had found words. Bram gasped.
“Don’t,” he muttered. “It’s… it’s not like other wounds.”
“I know,” the old man said. “That is why I am here.”
He drew a thin vial from his coat and poured its contents slowly along the cut. The liquid sank into the flesh without shine or steam, leaving behind a faint warmth that steadied Bram’s breathing.
“You encountered one of the Accord’s listeners,” the old man continued. “They favor blades like that. So do we.”
Bram turned his head weakly. “Then why—”
“Why does it hurt?” the old man finished. “Because you still belong to the Marshal.”
That answer settled over him like a weight.
The old man bound the wound carefully, tightening the cloth with precision. He did not hurry. He did not apologize. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and studied Bram’s face.
“You were not where you were ordered to be,” he said.
The words were quiet, but they struck harder than the blade had.
“I was guarding the rear,” Bram said. “I was told—”
“You were told to advance with the line when it moved,” the old man replied. “And when the captives were taken east, you stayed where the ground felt safer.”
Bram clenched his jaw. “Someone had to hold.”
“Yes,” the old man said. “And someone had to go.”
Silence stretched between them, filled by distant sounds of battle. The old man’s gaze never hardened, but it did not soften either. It waited.
“You swore a vow,” the old man said at last. “Do you remember it?”
The words stirred something deep and aching. Bone-memory. He nodded.
“To submit humbly to the Marshal’s command,” the old man continued. “Not in word. Not in posture. In movement.”
“I obey,” Bram said quickly. “I’ve always obeyed.”
The old man tilted his head slightly. “You have honored the shape of the vow,” he said. “But shape alone does not carry life.”
He reached behind him and drew his sword partway from its sheath. The steel caught no light. It did not gleam. It seemed to absorb the air around it. The faint hum returned, low and constant.
“Bone,” the old man said, tapping the flat of the blade with two fingers, “is what holds. Marrow is what moves. The vow can remain unbroken and still be dying.”
Bram swallowed. The pain in his side pulsed in agreement.
“You fear this sword,” the old man said, sliding it fully free. “Not because it can kill you. But because it cannot be fooled.”
He met Bram’s eyes now, and something ancient passed between them—recognition, perhaps. Or warning.
“An enemy has no bone left to protect,” the old man said. “Only surface and intention. The blade glides over them. But you—” He tightened the binding just enough for the pain to sharpen. “You still carry a vow. The sword feels that. It follows the line of what you promised and measures what flows through it. Where the marrow is thin, it burns. Where desire is divided, it cuts deeper.”
The old man released the cloth and leaned back.
“The Accord fears this blade because it exposes them,” he said softly. “You fear it because it exposes yourself.”
The sword hummed again as he turned it in his hand.
“That is why it wounds the us more cleanly,” the old man finished. “And why it can still save them.”
He extended the hilt.
Bram stared at it. The weight of the thing seemed already present in his arms, his chest, his bones. He thought of the captives, bound somewhere beyond the Breachlands, held not by chains but by promises they had been forced to make. He thought of the Marshal—of the calm certainty in the orders given, the expectation that obedience would cost something real.
“If I take it,” he said, “I’ll have to go forward.”
“Yes.”
“And if I wield it wrong—”
“It will turn on you,” the old man said, without hesitation. “As it should.”
Bram reached out and took the sword.
It was heavier than it looked, not in mass, but in consequence. The hum settled into his hands, traveled up his arms, rested behind his ribs. The pain in his side flared, then steadied, as if acknowledging a decision.
He did not draw the blade.
Not yet.
“I don’t trust myself,” he said.
The old man nodded once. “Good.”
The battle sounds were shifting now—closer to the east. Toward the Accord’s territory. Toward the captives.
Bram rose carefully to his feet, leaning into the weight of the sword at his side. The wound burned, but it held. Bone intact. Marrow stirred—thin, perhaps, but not gone.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
Behind him, the old man remained kneeling, watching, grieving, hoping.
Ahead of him lay the line he had avoided.
And between them, a blade that would not let him pretend.
The Watcher’s Test of Sight
a Snap-Fiction
By Micah Siemens
In the hill-kingdom of Aereth, there stood a watchtower higher than any keep. From its crown, one could see the whole valley at once: trade roads winding like pale ribbons, fields ripening or failing, rivers flashing warnings in the sun. Those who ruled the kingdom trusted the tower more than treaties, more than armies.
For whoever watched the valley first could rule it best.
The task of the Watcher was simple.
Look.
Those chosen for the tower were trained from childhood to sharpen the eye—to read smoke before fire, posture before intent, shadow before storm. A good Watcher could save cities. A poor one could lose them.
For many years, Elion was the finest Watcher Aereth had known.
He saw raiders before they crossed the hills. He saw drought hiding in green fields weeks before the wells fell low. He saw falsehood in the way envoys turned their faces from the light. Because of him, the kingdom prospered. Storehouses filled. Borders held. The king slept soundly.
Elion was praised for his sight.
Yet the higher he climbed, the smaller his world became.
From the tower, people thinned into patterns. Villages became vulnerabilities. Merchants became margins. Soldiers became sums. Elion learned to trust what could be measured, named, prepared for. He kept his confidence stored high and guarded, like treasure sealed against loss.
The kingdom depended on him.
Or so he believed.
One evening, as the sun slid low and painted the valley in copper and ash, an old traveler climbed the tower steps. No guard challenged him. No signal horn sounded. Elion did not notice the man until he stood beside him at the parapet.
“You see much,” the traveler said.
“I see what matters,” Elion replied without turning.
The traveler’s voice was calm, neither impressed nor offended. “Then tell me—what is it your eye is fixed upon?”
Elion gestured outward, toward the roads and fields. “The kingdom. Its safety. Its abundance.”
The traveler nodded slowly. “And does the kingdom belong to you?”
Elion hesitated. “It depends on me.”
The traveler was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You cannot serve both the kingdom and what the kingdom gives you.”
Below them, a caravan lay broken along the eastern road. A wagon wheel had split. Oil bled into the dust. Families knelt in the road, trying to salvage what they could before night fell.
Elion saw it instantly—the cost, the delay, the risk. Aid would slow troop movement. Supplies would thin reserves.
“What do you see?” the traveler asked.
“A loss,” Elion said.
The traveler shook his head. “Your eye is bright, but it is not whole.”
Elion turned sharply. “My sight has filled our storehouses.”
“Yes,” the traveler said gently. “But you have stored your treasure where fear can reach it.”
The sun dipped lower. Shadows stretched long across the valley, touching even the tower’s base.
“If your eye were sound,” the traveler continued, “your whole self would be filled with light. But when the eye serves fear, even light becomes darkness. And how deep that darkness runs.”
Elion felt something tighten in his chest, then loosen—like a rope drawn too long at last released. He realized he had been holding his breath.
“What would you have me do?” he asked quietly.
The traveler did not point outward, toward threats or horizons. He pointed downward, toward the road.
“Look there,” he said. “Not to measure. To care.”
Elion descended the tower.
He did not calculate. He did not weigh outcomes or preserve margins. He ordered aid sent. Food opened. Guards dispatched—not to protect wealth, but people.
From the tower above, the valley looked less manageable.
From the road below, it looked alive.
When Elion returned to the watchtower at dawn, the traveler was gone. The tower still stood. The kingdom still needed watching.
But Elion no longer believed it rested on him.
And when he looked now, the light did not strain or burn.
It rested.
See Matthew 6:19-25 for context of inspiration
The Seed the Earth Remembered
A Snap-Fiction
By Micah Siemens
They called him a Wanderer, though he carried no map and never asked for shelter. He walked the old roads barefoot, a satchel at his side, and from that satchel he drew not gold nor weaponry, but a single thing: a living seed, pale as bone and warm as breath.
The seed pulsed faintly when held, as if it listened.
The Wanderer did not force it into the earth. He offered it.
And the earth, like the hearts of those who owned it, answered in different ways.
I. The Stone King
The first land belonged to King Eobard, whose city was built at the crossing of seven trade roads. Every inch of ground had been stamped flat by boots, wheels, and conquest. Stone covered soil. Law covered mercy. Victory covered fear.
The Wanderer came to the gate at dawn.
“What do you carry?” the king asked from his balcony.
“A Word,” said the Wanderer.
Eobard laughed. “Words are how men lie. What does yours do?”
“It grows,” said the Wanderer, and held up the seed.
Curiosity, not need, brought the king down. He took the seed between iron fingers, frowned at its warmth, and set it upon the road at his feet.
“If it lives,” Eobard said, “I will believe it is strong.”
The seed rested on the stone.
Before the sun reached its height, shadows gathered—black-winged things, nameless and quick. They descended without sound and carried the seed away.
The Wanderer did not protest.
“That is it?” Eobard scoffed. “Your Word did not last an hour.”
The Wanderer said nothing in return. Shook off the dust of his feet. And went on his way
Eobard turned back to his city of stone. Nothing grew there. Nothing ever had.
II. The Shining Knight
Beyond the city lay the Vale of Mirrors, where Sir Alaric kept his estate. He was beloved, admired, and eager for greatness. His land gleamed—white soil imported from afar, polished stones, gardens raised above the ground like altars.
When the Wanderer arrived, Alaric welcomed him joyfully.
“A Word?” the knight said. “Yes! I have been waiting for something like this.”
He planted the seed at once, pressing it into the shallow soil of his crystal garden. Almost immediately, a shoot burst forth—bright green, fast-growing, astonishing to behold.
Alaric rejoiced. “See?” he cried. “It thrives!”
But when the season turned and the sun burned hotter, the plant faltered. Its roots found nothing beneath the surface. The heat scorched it. By the third day, it lay withered.
Alaric knelt, confused and wounded.
“I believed,” he said. “I was ready.”
“You were excited,” said the Wanderer gently. “But you were not rooted.”
The knight looked at his gardens—beautiful, shallow, untouched by the blade or the plow.
The Wanderer moved on.
III. The Queen of Vines
Farther south ruled Queen Sereth, whose realm overflowed with wealth. Her lands were green and rich, tangled with vineyards, orchards, and flowering hedges. Life thrived there—but it was already claimed.
She received the Wanderer with courtesy.
“I do not reject Words,” she said. “Nor do I abandon what I have built.”
She planted the seed among her vines, careful not to disturb them.
The seed grew.
Its leaves unfurled, and for a time it seemed well. But the vines crept closer. Tendrils wrapped the stalk. Roots competed beneath the soil. The plant survived—but it bore no fruit.
Season after season, it remained alive yet empty.
The Queen frowned. “It lives. Is that not enough?”
The Wanderer shook his head. “A Word that bears no fruit is unheard.”
She said nothing more. Her land remained abundant. The seed remained choked.
IV. The Broken Shore
At the edge of the world lay a forgotten shore where the land had once been fertile, but now lay torn and uneven. Storms had broken it. Salt had bitten deep. Few remained there.
One did.
His name was Corin, a fisherman who no longer fished. Once, he had sworn loyalty to the Wanderer’s name before others. When fear came, he denied it. Three times.
Now he lived among wreckage.
When the Wanderer appeared, Corin did not lift his eyes.
“I know why you’ve come,” he said. “I am not worthy of the Word.”
The Wanderer sat beside him.
“I know,” he said. “That is why I came.”
He took the seed from his satchel, then did something he had not done before.
He knelt.
With his own hands, the Wanderer broke the ground—tore it open, bled upon it, mixed salt with soil. Corin watched, trembling.
“Will you let it be planted?” the Wanderer asked.
Corin nodded, weeping.
The seed was placed in the broken earth.
Nothing happened.
Days passed. Then weeks.
Roots sank deep—past salt, past stone. When the shoot emerged, it was not impressive. But it endured.
Seasons turned.
The plant bore fruit.
Each fruit carried seeds—thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.
Corin harvested them with trembling hands.
“What do I do with these?” he asked.
The Wanderer stood, his satchel now empty.
“You will carry them,” he said. “As I did.”
V. The Witnesses
The Wanderer walked back onto the roads—not with a seed, but with witnesses.
Corin went north, where stone roads still ruled. Some seeds were lost. Others found cracks.
He went east, where shallow joy reigned. A few plants withered. Some roots went deeper.
He went south, into tangled abundance. Many seeds were choked. A few were freed.
The Word did not always grow.
But where it did, it multiplied manifold.
And the earth began to remember what it had been made for.
See Matthew 13:1-23 and Matthew 26:69–75 for context of inspiration
The Harvest of the Magical Crystal Field
A Snap-Fiction Story
Made By Micah Siemens
The sun rose over the Field of Crystals, spilling pale light across rows of young sprouts. Each one shimmered with a faint golden glow, and even from a distance, the field seemed alive, humming softly as if breathing. These were no ordinary plants: their growth was nurtured to power the homes and cities of the realm, feeding warmth and light into the wires and conduits that wound through every street.
The servants walked among the sprouts, bending to check their progress, brushing their hands over the smooth, warm surfaces. For all appearances, the field was perfect. Golden sprouts rose evenly, humming gently, promising energy enough to carry the people through the coming winter.
But not all was as it seemed. Overnight, the enemy had slipped into the field. Only a few brittle mirror-crystals had been sown, scattered quietly among the golden sprouts. They gleamed sharply in the morning sun, bright and dazzling, catching the eyes of the servants immediately.
“Master,” said one servant, bending low to inspect the glimmering shard, “these crystals… they do not seem right. Should we remove them?”
The Master walked slowly along the edge of the field, eyes calm, hands folded. He knew exactly what the enemy had done. He knew the enemy had done the work done under the cover of night. He also knew the danger of acting too soon: the roots of the young brittle crystals had entwined with those of the golden ones. Pull one free too hastily, and a warm crystal might fracture along with it.
“Let them grow,” the Master said quietly. “Wait for the harvest season.”
The servants hesitated. It went against their instincts. These crystals were meant to bring warmth and power to the cities—they were valuable, vital. To see anything potentially harmful among them and do nothing felt wrong. But the Master’s calm nature was unshakable, and they trusted him.
Days passed. The golden crystals thickened, their warm light deepening, humming into the soil and spreading strength to nearby sprouts. The brittle ones, in contrast, grew quickly, reflecting sunlight in sharp, dazzling flashes. Some servants found themselves drawn to the brilliance, mistaking it for promise, while others whispered anxiously about what might happen if the brittle crystals were left to grow.
Still, the Master walked the field each morning, silent and steady, watching without touching. The servants followed his instructions, tending the field carefully but resisting the urge to intervene. They watered, cleaned debris, and recorded observations, but no one dared disturb the suspicious shards.
Weeks passed, and the golden crystals continued to grow steadily, their warmth spreading through the field. The brittle crystals, though striking, remained hollow at their cores. Even the brightest ones lacked the resonance that the golden sprouts held naturally.
Finally, the harvest season arrived. The field hummed with energy, the golden crystals glowing more strongly than ever, ready to be collected and processed to fuel the homes and cities. The brittle crystals, though fully grown, fractured easily under the lightest touch. Servants tapped one, and it shattered instantly into jagged pieces that fell harmlessly to the soil, leaving only empty reflections behind.
The golden crystals, however, resisted every test. They bent slightly under pressure, sang faintly with warmth, and continued to glow steadily, full of life and energy. The servants worked methodically, gathering the golden crystals, careful not to disturb the shards of brittle crystal still scattered among them.
The field, once tense with uncertainty, now hummed in quiet order. The danger had passed without any need for hasty action. The enemy’s attempt to spoil the harvest had failed, not because of clever detection or quick hands, but because the Master had waited for the proper time. The brittle crystals revealed themselves only when the harvest came, and in that moment, there was no risk of harming the golden sprouts.
The servants finally understood. Their patience had preserved the field, allowing the crystals to provide warmth and light to the people without compromise. The energy flowed into the cities, powering homes, lanterns, and workshops, while the brittle shards crumbled back into the earth.
And through it all, the Master walked quietly among the rows, watching the harvest, letting the field sort itself, as he always had. The lesson was simple but lasting: sometimes the right action is waiting, even when the danger seems obvious. Nature and time reveal what hands cannot, and rushing to judge can bring ruin to what is good.
The golden crystals, bright and steady, hummed across the land. The brittle ones lay broken and powerless, reminders that appearances can deceive, and that patience preserves what is true. The servants left the field wiser, their hands warmed by the energy of the golden crystals and their hearts steadied by the quiet truth of the Master’s wisdom.
See Matthew 3:24-30 for the inspiration of the story and Matthew 13:36-43 for explanation of what it meant. 2 Peter 3:9 is a key essential to my parody.
Arlo Penn and the Sovereign Labyrinth
A Snap-Fiction Story
By Micah Siemens
They called it the Labyrinth of Unreasonably Aggressive Architecture, which was unfair to the architecture. The architecture, for its part, had never chased anyone. It merely rearranged itself at inconvenient moments and occasionally hummed in a minor key.
The Labyrinth lay in a shallow valley owned by Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, a man whose chief talent was being born at the correct time to the correct parents. He leased access to the grounds for a modest fee and a signature on a waiver that included phrases like “temporal inversion,” “polite haunting,” and “minotaur-adjacent entities.” Adventurers came from every corner of the map to test their mettle against its corridors. Most returned with trinkets, bruises, and a renewed appreciation for straight hallways.
Among them was Arlo Penn, an adventurer of middling renown and above-average debt. He owned a sword with an encouraging motto engraved along the fuller—TRY YOUR BEST—and a shield that had once been a serving tray in a tavern called The Splintered Pint. Arlo was brave in the way that soup is brave: mostly hot and liable to spill.
He entered the Labyrinth on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were half-price and slightly less cursed. The hedges bowed in on themselves as he passed, forming a corridor that smelled faintly of rosemary and bad decisions. He left chalk marks on the walls, which the walls politely rearranged into motivational quotes. He followed a left-hand rule, which the Labyrinth applauded by adding extra lefts.
After an hour, Arlo found a small chamber lit by a skylight that was not visible from outside. In the center stood a pedestal, and on the pedestal a wooden box, and in the box—
He lifted the lid.
There are discoveries that make a man shout, and discoveries that make a man whisper. Arlo did neither. He simply sat down.
The treasure was not gold. Gold he understood. It was not jewels, though there were jewels, but they seemed like punctuation. It was not a crown, though something in the box implied sovereignty. It was not a map, though it contained the sensation of direction.
It was, in fact, the Deed.
Not a deed to a house or a mill or a pleasant orchard with pear trees that gossip in the wind. It was the Deed to the Labyrinth itself—written in an ink that changed color depending on who held it, bearing the seal of Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, and countersigned by a notary whose signature crawled about the page like a thoughtful caterpillar.
Arlo stared. The parchment listed the boundaries of the valley in absurd detail, down to “the rock resembling a duck contemplating taxes.” It described rights of way, water access, mineral claims, and a clause about “sovereign rearrangement privileges.” It named the owner as “the bearer of this instrument, upon lawful purchase of the lands described herein.”
Upon lawful purchase.
Arlo looked around. The chamber had no obvious exit. The pedestal hummed. A polite brass plaque read: CONGRATULATIONS. TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY.
He closed the box.
“Hypothetically,” he said to the skylight, “if one were to acquire the land…”
The skylight did not respond, but the hedges outside rustled like accountants sharpening quills.
Arlo replaced the box, took a steadying breath, and left the chamber without marking it. He did not tell the other adventurers at the inn that evening what he had found. He did not boast. He did not hint. When asked how the Labyrinth had treated him, he said, “We’re in negotiations.”
That night he lay awake, staring at the ceiling beams of his rented room. He owned a sword, a shield, a bedroll, a mule with a personality like damp bread, and a collection of IOUs. He owned a future of reasonable quests and unreasonable tavern tabs.
He also owned a memory of the Deed.
By morning, Arlo had made a decision so large it required two breakfasts.
He sold the sword first. TRY YOUR BEST fetched less than expected. He sold the shield to a baker who admired its circular optimism. He sold the mule, who seemed relieved. He sold his boots and purchased less adventurous boots. He sold his place in an expedition to the Caves of Mild Inconvenience. He sold the IOUs at a discount to a woman named Mara who collected debts the way botanists collect rare ferns.
“Are you ill?” Mara asked, counting coins with clinical affection.
“I’m investing,” Arlo said.
“In what?”
“In boundaries.”
He traveled to the manor house of Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, which perched above the valley like a brooch on a very nervous coat. The Lord received him in a room devoted entirely to portraits of himself at various ages of inheritance.
“You wish to purchase the valley?” Lord Berrigan repeated, as though tasting a sentence that might be poison.
“I do,” Arlo said, placing a sack of coins on a table carved with scenes of hunting things that looked like furniture.
“Why?”
“I find I have an affinity for its topography.”
Lord Berrigan sniffed. “The Labyrinth is a liability. It rearranges fences. It has opinions about irrigation.”
“I will assume those opinions,” Arlo said.
The negotiations were long, because Lord Berrigan enjoyed the sound of parchment. But coin is a persuasive dialect, and Arlo had gathered enough to speak it fluently. At last, with witnesses and wax and a notary whose signature did not crawl but did yawn, the deed was transferred. The valley, the hedges, the humming chambers—all of it belonged to Arlo Penn.
He walked down the hill a poorer man than he had ever been and the richest man in the valley.
The Labyrinth greeted him differently.
The hedges parted before he reached them. The corridor smelled not of rosemary but of fresh ink. The walls did not rearrange his chalk marks; they requested them. In the chamber with the skylight, the pedestal bowed.
Arlo opened the box.
The Deed glowed with a comfortable light, like a hearth that approves of your seating arrangement. The clause about “sovereign rearrangement privileges” unfurled into an addendum. He felt it then—not power like a shout, but authority like a well-fitted coat.
He cleared his throat.
“I would like fewer minotaur-adjacent entities,” he said.
The Labyrinth considered this. Somewhere, a hoof resigned.
“I would like corridors that lead somewhere on purpose.”
A wall shifted, sheepish.
“And I would like,” Arlo continued, “a small kiosk near the entrance selling tea and maps that do not lie.”
By afternoon, there was a kiosk. The tea was excellent. The maps were honest to a fault, labeling one section: HERE BE ADMINISTRATION.
Word spread.
Adventurers arrived to find a Labyrinth that still challenged but did not mock. Puzzles were clever without being cruel. Traps were labeled with tasteful signage. The minotaur-adjacent entities had been reassigned to a union position involving interpretive dance.
Arlo did not hoard the treasure. He charged a fair fee and reinvested it in maintenance, in scholarships for aspiring adventurers of limited means, in a fund to support furniture traumatized by hunting scenes. He walked the corridors at dusk, adjusting a corner here, a riddle there.
Sometimes he sat in the skylit chamber and read the Deed, not because he doubted it, but because it reminded him of the morning he had sold everything that did not fit inside a decision.
Mara visited once, ledger tucked beneath her arm.
“You could have told me,” she said, watching a group of novices consult an honest map.
“I didn’t know how to explain it,” Arlo replied.
“Try.”
He considered. “Imagine you find a thing so valuable that everything else becomes small around it. Not worthless—just small. Imagine realizing that the only way to hold it is to let go of what you’re holding.”
Mara nodded slowly. “And if it had been a trick?”
Arlo smiled. “Then I would have owned a very interesting valley.”
They stood together as the sun set, the hedges casting long, cooperative shadows. The Labyrinth hummed in a major key.
There are those who say Arlo was foolish to sell all he had for a piece of land that rearranged itself. There are those who say he was shrewd. The Labyrinth, when asked, offers tea and declines to comment.
But if you walk its corridors now, you may notice something peculiar. The walls do not close in. The turns, while surprising, are not malicious. And in the chamber with the skylight, a plaque has been added beneath the original:
CONGRATULATIONS. TERMS AND CONDITIONS ACCEPTED.
Arlo Penn, former owner of a sword with an encouraging motto, current steward of an unreasonable architecture, will tell you that the treasure was never the gold-that-wasn’t-gold, nor the jewels-that-were-punctuation.
It was the right to tend the thing that had first confounded him.
And that, he will add—while pouring tea, while adjusting a corridor, while watching a novice discover that courage can be purchased only by selling what you thought you were—was worth everything.
This was a new attempt at a whimsical tone and story but inspired by Matthew 13:44
