Chapter 1

Blue in the Gardens green

The monster was running the wrong way.

Kaia Veyne was the first to realize it. Not because she was the best Saint in the unit—she had only been cleared for fieldwork six weeks ago—but because the creature had been bleeding for nearly half a mile, and every drop led away from Veyrath.

Away from the wall.

Away from the people it was supposed to be hunting.

Kaia crouched behind a thick root, her Saint’s dress damp against her knees. Rain whispered through the leaves overhead. Tiny white flowers had pushed through the mud between the roots, their petals trembling in the still air.

Behind her, Saint Harrow exhaled through his nasal filter.

“Track curves east,” he said. “It’s circling back.”

Kaia followed the broken ferns and streaks of blood down the slope.

“No.”

The other two Saints went still.

Harrow turned toward her. He was a broad-shouldered man in his fifties, sealed inside dark green body plating streaked with mud and moss. Thorned guards covered his forearms, the source of his title: Saint of the Thornwall.

Beside him, Nelle adjusted her grip on a hooked spear. Her pale yellow surplice was stained along one side, and monster blood marked her cheek. She had only a little more field experience than Kaia, though she hid it better.

“Why?” Harrow asked.

Kaia pressed two fingers into the disturbed soil.

“It didn’t turn here. The prints are still pointed east.” She indicated the widening gaps between them. “It slowed down, then kept moving.”

Nelle frowned. “Maybe it got scared.”

“Monsters don’t retreat from prey,” Harrow said.

Kaia nearly asked how he could be certain.

She kept the question to herself.

The forest had gone quiet after the chase. Water slid from leaf to leaf. Somewhere deeper in the trees, wood creaked beneath its own weight.

Kaia felt a faint vibration through the ground.

It climbed into her left hand.

Blue light flickered beneath the dark markings that began at her collarbone, curled over her shoulder, and ran down her arm. The outline of the dragon sharpened for an instant before fading again.

“Kaia?” Nelle said.

“I felt it.”

“Don’t surge yet,” Harrow warned.

“I know.”

“You said that last time.”

Kaia rose, brushing mud from her dress. “Saint of the Thornwall, I believe I’m about to be attacked.”

She looked beyond the roots toward two ancient trees leaning together over the hollow.

Something breathed between them.

A deep, wet rhythm.

The ground trembled once.

Then again.

The dragon on her arm lit blue.

Nelle inhaled sharply.

“I know,” Kaia said.

Harrow stepped beside her. “Hold the formation.”

Kaia moved to the right, where she thought she was supposed to stand. Experienced Saints never seemed to think about formation. Their bodies simply found the correct position.

She still had to look.

The ground sloped into a shallow hollow thick with ferns. Weathered stones protruded from the mud, their edges rounded by roots and rain. Kaia had seen similar ruins along other perimeter routes: old guard posts swallowed by the Garden.

These stones were different.

There were no Saint inscriptions carved into them. No district seals. No prayers. Nothing to show who had built them.

A branch snapped beyond the trees.

The monster entered the hollow.

It was too large to be a common stray. Its gray hide stretched tightly over a crooked rib cage, and branchlike horns grew from its shoulders in tangled clusters. Its front limbs hung longer than the rear ones, ending in black hooked claws.

Its face was the worst part.

From a distance, the features might have passed for human. Then its mouth opened, splitting the lower half of its face into rows of narrow teeth.

The creature stopped.

Its white eyes shifted toward the blue light on Kaia’s arm.

Nelle lowered her spear. “Why is it looking at you?”

Kaia did not answer.

The monster’s throat contracted. A series of wet clicks came from behind its teeth.

Harrow moved first.

“Don’t let it take control of the fight.”

He drove one hand into the earth.

Roots tore through the mud and wrapped around the monster’s forelimbs. The creature lurched forward, but the bindings pulled tight, forcing its claws into the ground.

Nelle charged.

Her spearhead flashed gold as she drove it between two exposed ribs.

The monster screamed.

One forelimb ripped free. Roots snapped and whipped through the air.

“Nelle, move!” Harrow shouted.

She tried to withdraw the spear, but it had lodged between the creature’s ribs. The monster twisted. One of the branchlike growths on its shoulder struck Nelle across the chest and threw her into a tree.

Kaia’s mark surged.

Lightning like effects raced down her left arm and through her legs.

The hollow blurred.

She crossed the distance before the monster could bring its claw down on Nelle. Kaia struck its side with her glowing palm, sending blue light through its exposed ribs.

The impact knocked the creature off balance.

It crashed into the mud, dragging Harrow’s roots with it.

Kaia landed beside it and nearly fell. The surge left her muscles tight and trembling, and pain burned through her shoulder where the Mark had flared.

“Kaia!” Harrow caught her by the back of her dress and hauled her away from the creature’s claws.

“I’m fine.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Harrow released her and reinforced the bindings around the monster’s limbs. It thrashed weakly, churning mud beneath its body.

Nelle groaned near the tree.

Kaia moved toward her, but Harrow blocked her path with one arm.

“She’s breathing. Finish the creature.”

Kaia looked down at it.

The monster’s white eyes had lost focus. Its jaws opened and closed around the wet clicking sound. One claw dug into the mud, pulling its body a few inches east.

Away from them.

“It’s still trying to run,” Kaia said.

“It’s trying to break the bindings.”

“No. Look at it.”

Harrow did not.

“Dragon Mark,” he said. “Finish it.”

Nelle pushed herself upright against the tree, one hand pressed to her ribs.

The creature dragged itself forward again.

Its claws did not reach for Nelle.

They reached toward the deeper side of the hollow.

Kaia knelt beside its ribs. Blue sparks moved between her fingers.

The monster turned its head.

Its eyes settled on the dragon marking along her arm.

The clicking stopped.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Kaia felt a pulse beneath her palm—not a heartbeat, but something deeper, answering the current inside her bones.

The monster raised one trembling claw.

“Kaia,” Harrow warned.

Its fingertip reached toward the glowing lines on her wrist.

The movement was slow. Careful.

Not an attack.

The creature’s claw stopped a few inches from her skin.

Kaia stared at it.

The white eyes held no anger.

Only recognition.

Then Harrow’s signal pendant flashed red.

A Saint’s sigil streaked through the canopy, calling the recovery unit to their position.

The monster recoiled from the light.

Its body convulsed. One of its bound limbs tore free and struck blindly through the space between Kaia and Harrow.

Kaia raised her left arm.

The side of its forelimb struck her waist and drove her into the mud. One hooked claw raked three shallow lines through her dress and skin.

Pain flashed down her waist.

Harrow’s roots snapped around the creature’s neck and free limb, wrenching it backward.

“End it!”

Kaia rolled onto one knee.

The monster looked at her again.

Its raised claw trembled in the air, still reaching for the Mark.

Kaia drove both hands into its ribs.

Blue lightning filled the hollow.

The creature stiffened as the current passed through its body. Light shone between the ridges of bone beneath its skin. Its limbs kicked once, then settled into the ferns.

The white eyes remained fixed on Kaia until the glow left them.

She pulled her hands away.

The monster did not move again.

For several seconds it was quiet, except from the rain falling.

Kaia crawled toward Nelle and took hold of her surplice.

“You alive?”

Nelle blinked at her. Blood marked one corner of her mouth.

“Unfortunately.”

“Good.”

“Your priorities are questionable.”

“I’m new.”

Harrow knelt beside the monster and checked the bindings. “Both of you stay where you are.”

Nelle leaned closer to Kaia. “He sounds worried.”

“He’ll deny it.”

“I heard that,” Harrow said.

Red light moved between the trees.

The recovery unit entered the hollow in white coats worn over gray armor. They spread out without instruction, checking Nelle, marking the ground, and covering the monster’s body in pale containment cloth.

One of them examined Nelle’s chest guard.

“Nothing broken,” the recovery Saint said.

Nelle immediately tried to stand.

The Saint looked at the mud on her face, then at the deep indentation in her armor.

“You may be able to limp with confidence, but that’s about it.”

“I’ll take it.”

Kaia sat beneath the tree while another Saint cleaned the wound on her waist. The monster’s claw had cut through her dress but left only three shallow lines across the skin.

Harrow gave his report in clipped phrases.

Creature classification. Route. Injuries. Containment method. Mark activation. Duration.

When he mentioned the Mark, one of the masked Saints looked at Kaia.

The glance was professional and brief.

She noticed it anyway.

The Garden slowly recovered its voice. Insects stirred in the wet grass. Water ran between roots. Branches groaned high above them.

A recovery worker knelt at the monster’s head and peeled back the containment cloth to inspect its throat.

Beneath the loose gray skin was a black shape.

Small. Jagged. Too deliberate to be a wound.

A Mark.

The worker covered it almost immediately.

Kaia stood.

“I saw something.”

Harrow’s voice came from behind her. “Let them work.”

“It had a Mark.”

“You saw damaged tissue.”

“It had lines.”

“So do exposed nerves.”

Kaia faced him. Rain ran down the green crest of his mask.

“Is that from training?”

“What?”

“That answer.”

Nelle made a noise that became a wince when she touched her ribs.

“That was a bad idea,” she said.

Harrow studied Kaia for a moment.

“During their first missions, rookies tend to believe the bodies are trying to tell them something.”

“What does that mean?” Kaia asked.

The corner of his mouth moved beneath the mask.

A bell sounded beyond the trees.

Not one of the strange wooden groans that traveled through the Garden.

A wall bell.

The Gate had received Harrow’s signal and opened the inner road.

Two recovery Saints lifted the monster onto a reinforced carrier. Another sprayed silver mist over the bloodstained plants. The white flowers folded beneath the mist.

A final worker placed a blank stone marker at the edge of the hollow.

Monsters were not given names.

The road back to Veyrath began as a narrow strip of packed earth and roots. Farther from the Garden, it widened between iron posts covered in prayer ribbons.

Most had been tied by children from the Outer Halo schools.

Kaia had once knelt beside this same road and tied a blue ribbon to one of the posts. She had prayed for the Saints to come home safely.

The ribbons brushed her detached right upper arm sleeve as she passed.

Protect my brother.

Thank you for the wall.

Saints keep the Garden sleeping.

Come home.

The trees parted, revealing Veyrath’s Garden Gate.

Kaia had expected something harsher the first time she saw it. Bare stone. Gun emplacements. Steel stripped of decoration.

Instead, the keepers of Veyrath had dressed the wall in beauty.

White towers rose on either side of the Gate, reinforced with dark steel and carved with the names of Dead Saints. Flowering vines climbed the lower stone. Blue glass lanterns burned along the upper walkways despite the daylight, and prayer bells hung beneath the watchtowers, their metal polished by generations of passing hands.

Beyond the Gate, the Outer Halo stretched through the rain.

A small crowd waited behind the safety railing. Trade workers in gray coats had stopped on their way between shifts. Children stood beneath bright umbrellas. A woman carrying warm bread bowed as the Saints entered. An older man raised two fingers to his temple in the traditional salute.

Nelle straightened.

Kaia glanced at her. “You were limping five seconds ago.”

“I’m limping heroically now.”

Without looking back, Harrow said, “Both of you walk normally.”

“Yes, sir,” Nelle replied.

Kaia attempted it.

The return bells began as they passed beneath the Gate.

Three deep notes.

No funeral chimes. No alarm.

The sound moved through the Outer Halo, and the people listening relaxed. A gatekeeper wiped rain from his brow. A mother adjusted the ribbon in her daughter’s hair. Workers turned back toward the rail lines and foundries.

This was what the Saints protected.

Not titles or statues.

This moment when the bells rang and the people behind the wall knew the Garden had been held back for another day.

A boy near the railing pointed at Kaia.

“Look! It’s the dragon one.”

His older sister followed his hand. “Where?”

“Her arm.”

Kaia almost covered the Mark.

Instead, she let him look.

The dragon lay dark against her skin, its head near her left collarbone and its body curling over her shoulder. Its scales and claws continued down her arm, faint traces of blue still glowing between the black lines.

The boy stared without fear.

Kaia gave him a small wave.

He gasped and grabbed his sister’s sleeve.

Nelle leaned toward her. “Do that twice and they’ll start selling dolls.”

“I’m not famous enough for dolls.”

“Not yet.”

Harrow led them away from the Gate and into the city.

Veyrath unfolded in layers.

Rain shone on wide stone streets. Trains ran along elevated tracks between white buildings and dark glass towers. In the distance, the spires of the Bellcrown District rose into the clouds, their cathedral windows bright against the gray sky. To the west, Ironwake’s smokestacks breathed above forge-temples glowing orange at their foundations.

Lower streets disappeared beneath mist and signs. Food carts crowded the transit crossings, their awnings dripping rain. Incense drifted from roadside shrines and mixed with machine oil, hot metal, and bread.

The city was too large to understand from one road.

Kaia felt it through fragments instead.

The banners hanging from balconies. The transit murals showing Saints in battle. The crowds moving in rhythms that belonged to their districts. The blue crystal flowers stitched onto uniforms, coats, and school bags.

She glanced at the mud covering her boots.

Nelle followed her gaze.

“They never look at that part.”

“They should.”

“No one would buy tickets to a parade about mud.”

“They sell tickets?”

“In the right districts, they sell tickets for everything.”

Kaia laughed.

The sound surprised her after the hollow.

At the Bastion transit yard, the squad separated. Nelle was sent to the White Ward for a rib scan. Harrow disappeared toward Perimeter Command to submit his full report.

Kaia expected to follow the usual rookie return circuit: equipment inspection, Mark assessment, decontamination, another lecture about discharge limits.

Instead, the clerk at the intake desk paused while stamping her return papers.

His eyes moved from the page to the Mark on her arm.

“Saint of the Dragon Mark?”

Kaia was still wet, muddy, and sore enough to resent the formality.

“Yes.”

“Report chamber three.”

“My squad debrief is in six.”

“Saint Harrow will submit the squad report there. You’ve been assigned to three.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

The clerk’s expression softened. He was only a few years older than her, with ink stains on two fingers and a polished Bastion pin on his collar.

“Chamber three handles irregular Mark activations.”

“My Mark activates during every mission.”

“I don’t know, it’s just what I was told.”

He handed her the assignment slip.

“Down the hall. Left at the glass doors.” He hesitated. “Saint Veyne?”

She looked back.

“Good work today.”

The sincerity of it caught her off guard.

“Thank you.”

Chamber three was not a tribunal or a vaulted examination hall. It was a plain room with white tile, a circular table, a projection screen, and a window overlooking the inner training yard.

A man in a black suit sat at the table. His hair was brown, and his tablet was aligned precisely with the table’s edge.

“Kaia Veyne,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Sit. This should be brief.”

Kaia sat across from him.

“Saint of the Dragon Mark, you returned from Green Perimeter Route Seven at fourteen thirty-six. Your Mark activated during the containment of a mid-grade Chapel Stray.”

“It wasn’t a Chapel Stray.”

He looked up.

Kaia adjusted in her chair.

“Sorry. Its shoulders had branch growth, and its movement was closer to a Rooted classification.”

“You read the field guides.”

“I try.”

“Good.”

He made a note.

“Duration of full illumination?”

“Six seconds during the first surge. Eight or nine during the second.” She responded.

“Any spread beyond the established dragon pattern?”

“No.”

“Loss of hearing, blueout, muscle locking, or memory bleed?”

“No memory bleed.”

“My left hand locked after the first surge though. No hearing loss or blueout.” She added.

He asked another question.

“Did the creature react to your Mark before becoming aggressive?”

Kaia stopped moving.

Rain tapped against the window behind him.

“Yes.” She answered.

“How?”

“It stopped.”

“Stopped attacking?”

“It hadn’t attacked yet. It approached us preparing to attack, saw the Mark, and froze.”

“Did it look at your face?”

“My arm.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes.”

“Any vocalization?”

“Clicking.”

“Random or patterned?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Did it resemble speech?”

Kaia looked toward the training yard.

The correct answer was no.

Monsters did not speak. Some mimicked voices. Some repeated sounds heard near settlements. Field guides warned rookies not to mistake imitation for intelligence.

“I don’t know, but there was something beneath its throat,” Kaia said.

The agent stopped writing. “What kind of something?”

“Black lines beneath the skin. Harrow said they were exposed nerves.”

“Did they resemble a Mark?”

“Yes.”

The agent continued to write. “Did you feel the Mark respond?” He asked as if he was quickly changing the subject.

Kaia looked at the dark lines along her left hand.

“Yes.”

The agent’s fingers stopped above the tablet.

“Describe it.”

“A spark. The Mark tried to activate before I called on it.”

“Has that happened before?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything at the time?”

“Nothing except the creature.”

“Any unusual scent?”

“Rain. Burned bark after the surge.” Kaia thought about the Hollow. “White flowers.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Small ones. They were growing between the ruins.”

He wrote it down.

“Is that important?”

“All details are useful in a field report.” He responded.

“So is that a yes or a no?” She asked cautiously.

A restrained smile crossed his face.

“No, Saint Veyne. It is not important yet.”

The examination continued for another twelve minutes.

He asked Kaia about pain, breathing, afterimages, emotional state, and the exact shape of the electrical discharge. He asked whether the lightning like energy had formed anything beyond the markings on her skin.

Kaia remembered crossing the Hollow through blue light. For one instant, she had seen a long shape moving in the mud beside her.

That could have been rain catching the current.

“No,” she said. “Nothing outside the established form.”

When the interview ended, the training yard had emptied.

The Bastion corridors were warm after the rain, lit by gold lamps and lined with portraits of Named Saints. Recent portraits were bright and detailed. The oldest had faded to brown.

Saint of the Scarlet Oath.

Saint of the Glass Choir.

Saint of the Last Lantern.

Saint of White Roses.

Every face looked certain of its place beneath the title.

Two Saints passed behind Kaia. Their conversation faltered when they noticed the Dragon Mark.

Kaia continued toward the rookie dormitories.

The washroom was empty. White tile covered the walls. Blue towels sat folded beside silver sinks, and a curved mirror reflected a young woman with wet black hair and exhausted eyes.

Kaia sighed and turned on the water.

Mud spiraled into the drain. Monster blood clung to the edge of her wrist, red against her skin. She scrubbed until the water ran clear.

The Mark remained.

Its head rested near her left collarbone. Its spine curved over her shoulder, and one folded wing spread across the upper part of her arm. Claws and scales continued toward her wrist, where the tail disappeared beneath the heel of her hand.

Beautiful, some people called it.

Kaia traced one dark eye with her fingertip.

A blue spark answered her touch.

She pulled her hand away.

The lights hummed overhead.

Beyond the Bastion, the return bells rang for another squad.

Three steady notes.

Kaia closed her eyes.

Good.

Then she remembered the monster reaching toward her arm, and she washed her hands again.

High above the rookie dormitories, the mission footage played for the third time.

Blue lightning filled the hollow.