The Exile's Litany

Ren leads branded scouts Kael and Vane on a deep reconnaissance into corrupted territory south of the river, observing organized demon trails and discovering a demon settlement with crude organic structures and sixteen demons performing coordinated labor.

Sleepless after Millhaven, Ren confronts Callum at the field hospital and challenges whether the seeded can be saved by alchemy rather than fire. Callum admits the institutional stakes: if alchemy could cure the seeded, it would collapse the theological structure justifying the brands and the...

Ren scouts Millhaven, a living town of three hundred whose residents show early-stage boneglass gestation, and recommends immediate evacuation. A church administrator invokes Doctrine Seven to order a purge instead, and the next morning Ren watches from a ridge as branded soldiers channel...

During a two-day army rest at Thornfield, Ren reunites with his scattered companions: Harsk forging at the anvil, Nella commanding twenty-eight soldiers, Fossick running supply-chain corrections, and Callum tending the wounded.

Ren scouts the abandoned village of Thornfield solo for boneglass contamination, finding it clean after a methodical sweep of all forty-seven structures.