The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 60: Volume 3: Chapter 57 – The Faithful

Read chapter 60 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 3: Chapter 57 – The Faithful Yara stood at the window, looking down at Aramore’s streets. People moved through them working, trading, rebuilding, but there was something wrong in the motion. Too efficient. Too purposeful. Like watching a play where everyone had learned their lines but forgotten why they were speaking them. “They need something to believe in,” she said quietly. Eliza looked up from her ledger. “They have you.” “I’m not a belief. I’m a fact. A force. You can’t pray to a force, you just endure it.” Yara turned from the window. “We’ve consumed their autonomy. Taken their choice. Given them purpose through binding. But we’ve left them hollow where faith used to be.” “Faith in what?” Harry asked. His fragment pulsed yellow-green, curious. “The gods went silent decades ago. That’s why the Conclave fell with no divine backing, just politics and power.” “Exactly,” Yara said. “The gods abandoned them. The Conclave used them. The nobility bled them. We bound them. But none of that gave them something to believe in. Just things to survive.” She looked at Eliza. “We’ve been consuming. Taking. Using. But consumption doesn’t have to be hollow. It can have meaning. Purpose. Philosophy.” She touched her sternum where the Gem pulsed. “We consume to fill ourselves. We take to build. That’s not emptiness, that’s transformation. And if people understood that, if they believed it, the sadness might lift.” “You want to give them a religion,” Eliza said slowly. “I want to give them meaning that doesn’t require me to be gentle or dishonest about what I am.” Yara’s smile was grim. “Bring me the clerics. The priests. Anyone in this city who still knows how to speak about faith, even if they’ve forgotten what they had faith in. And bring me all the healing potions we’ve managed to create.” “The potions?” Eliza’s quill paused. “We have maybe two dozen. They’re valuable...” “They’re mercy in bottles,” Yara interrupted. “Healing. Salvation. Exactly what we need to anchor this.” She turned to Harry. “How many people in Aramore still think of themselves as believers? People who prayed before the silence, who kept the forms even when the gods stopped answering?” Harry considered. “Maybe a hundred? The old ones, mostly. The ones who remember when temples mattered. They still go through the motions of prayers at dawn and blessings before meals. But it’s a habit now, not faith.” “Good,” Yara said. “We’ll give them faith again. Just… pointed in a different direction.” They came hesitantly, twelve men and women, old and young, wearing the faded robes of priests whose gods had forgotten to be home. Most looked frightened. A few looked curious. An older woman with gray hair and sharp eyes seemed almost eager. “You sent for the faithful,” she said. Her voice was steady, used to addressing crowds. “I’m Mother Celene. Served the Temple of the Dawn for forty years in the silence. These others served different houses, different faiths, but we all remember when prayer had answers.” “And now?” Yara asked. “Now we pray to habit,” Celene said bluntly. “Going through motions because stopping would mean admitting the gods are truly gone. But we heard what you did. The bindings. The transformations. Some call it blasphemy. I call it filling a vacancy.” Yara studied her. “You’re not afraid of me.” “I’m terrified of you,” Celene corrected. “But I’ve been more afraid of emptiness. At least terror has substance.” The others shifted, some nodding, others looking less certain. A young man, barely twenty, spoke up. “Is it true? Can you give purpose? Real purpose, not just the going-through-motions we’ve been doing?” “Yes,” Yara said. “But it costs. Everything I do costs.” “What’s the price?” This is from a middle-aged priest, nervous but determined. “Your autonomy. Your choice. Your ability to question what I tell you to believe.” Yara didn’t soften it. “I can give you faith again. I can give you power, real power, the kind that heals the sick and comforts the g