Veylin took the oddly shaped dagger and walked over to Elias.
"Do you recognize this?"
Elias had just finished tending to a wounded knight. He looked up, and when he saw the dagger in Veylin's hand clearly, his entire body froze.
It was unmistakably fear.
He instinctively took half a step back and struck the rock wall behind him.
"The Kiss of the Purifier..." Elias uttered the name, his lips trembling slightly. "The Church's... Witch Hunters."
Nearby, Leg and several Namia warriors heard the term and looked bewildered.
Gideon and his knights, however, paled instantly.
As members of the Duchy's nobility, they understood far better than these islanders what "the Church" and "Witch Hunters" meant.
"They've been hunting me all this time." Elias barely managed to stay on his feet by leaning against the cold rock wall. "Any faction that tries to draw power directly from bloodlines rather than through the Holy Radiance Church is branded as 'Bloodline Thieves'-heretics who must be 'purified.'"
He looked at Veylin, a shadow clouding his gray-green eyes.
"The True Source Sect's scriptures are banned, and its followers are hunted under the Law-Burning Edict. On the mainland, every one of our brethren they discover is tied to a stake and burned. I thought... I thought coming home would let me escape them."
Veylin gazed at the dagger, deep in thought.
The Church. The Church again.
His previous plans had all been built around regional conflicts within the Southern Isles, this "starter village."
The pirates were enemies, the natives were potential allies, and the Empire and the Duchy were merely backdrops.
Now, an unexpected top-tier player had entered the game without warning.
And by taking Elias in, he had already placed himself on the opposite side of the board from the Church.
This had escalated from