ToP Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six: Skyward Prison

Ivin Choerkin awakens in a stone cell in the Tower of Markuun in Bdein, chained and disoriented, five days after the battle at Inster. Iro Adinfin, now missing an arm, visits him, revealing they are the Bishop of Sin Medor’s prisoners and blaming Ivin’s people for slaughtering Hidreng warriors with “witchery”—High Priestess Sedut’s intervention. Ivin, recalling Sedut’s rainbow-wreathed carnage and her healing him, shares her identity and the artifact’s origin from the Steaming Lakes, taunting Iro’s vow to kill her, knowing her power outmatches him. Iro, ordered to torture Ivin for secrets, deems him a naive pawn, unworthy of effort, comparing him to a statue’s alluring but hollow facade, a sentiment Ivin echoes, likening them both to mice in a divine game. Iro predicts Ivin’s slow death, leaving as Ivin wishes for swift ends. Alone, Ivin discovers his cell, high in the tower, has windows overlooking Bdein’s torchlit streets, offering a view but no escape without tools to pick his shackles. His fleeting hope of freedom—jokingly imagining urinating on guards below—underscores his dire situation, trapped by the Bishop’s schemes, with Sedut’s actions and clan politics tightening the noose, as he braces for an uncertain fate.

• ToP Chapter 25 — A Tortured Man
• ToP Chapter 27 — Scented Waters
• Trail of Pyres - Main Chapter Listing