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Chapter Text

The young woman held in the basement of the Chantry had been a suspect for all of an hour before they came to disregard her as a real possibility.

It was still difficult to do so. The Conclave had been obliterated. So many were dead, Justinia was dead, and with every passing minute the sky tore itself more ragged. Nightmares and monsters poured from the Fade in violent spasms of green. 

Lying amongst the ashes they had found a single young woman, unconscious but seemingly unharmed, with a light in her hand that pulsed each time the Breach grew. Her guilt had seemed such a foregone conclusion. The most cursory medical examination had proven it unlikely, when the healer had swept back her hair to reveal another mark. The sunburst branded into her forehead was almost as good as a pardon from the late Divine herself. Even if the girl had been involved, it would not have been a willful act, but the abuse of Tranquil obedience by the real culprit.

Evidence of Cassandra’s need to learn the same lesson again and again. She always lacked the same virtues: caution, prudence, restraint. Every teacher she’d ever studied under had told her the same thing - she acted too rashly. If she had only taken more time to try to understand, she wouldn’t have this misdirected anger at the Tranquil burning in her gut. 

She had been ready to throw the girl into the dungeon as a prisoner, to press for the truth with every weapon and talent at her disposal. Cassandra had learned a great deal in the Seekers, much of it unpleasant, and was more than willing to use those skills on the one who had torn the world apart.

It had just seemed so obvious. The Most Holy was gone, the chance for peace was lost, the world was seemingly coming to an end, and suddenly there was the perfect person to blame. Maybe she should have realized sooner that it was too simple, but there was no undoing the past. 

For now she could only wait for the girl to wake. She had slept on, oblivious to the suspicions placed on her or the danger she was in. The apostate who had volunteered to study the Breach, Solas, had expressed a great deal of doubt that she would wake at all. More likely, he said, the mark on her hand would spread and consume her. But if it didn’t... It was only a theory, but she prayed it didn’t.

Several days passed before she stirred. In that time, Leliana managed to confirm her identity. Aurelia Trevelyan, a registered attendant of the Conclave, brought along with some of the mages formerly from Ostwick Circle. Her papers indicated she’d been employed as a scribe and researcher, typical of Tranquils, and a few of the surviving members of Leliana’s network reported that they had seen her in the Temple of Sacred Ashes before the explosion, acting very much as one would expect. Trevelyan had followed the mages of her party at first, until she was set on a task by one of them. After that she seemed to have spent the majority of her time in a little-used library space far from the main halls. One scout speculated her presence may have been an attempt by the mages to garner sympathy for their cause - an open display of the abuses of the Templars. 

Cassandra held little love for the Rite of Tranquility, but sometimes it was necessary. Judging by the other information Leliana gave her about this girl, though, Cassandra wasn’t sure it had been for her. Her history was unremarkable until it wasn’t. She came from a minor noble family from the Free Marches, the fourth of five children. She hadn’t been formally promised to the Chantry, as the Trevelyan family apparently sometimes did at birth for later children, though it had been a possibility up until her magic manifested at the age of eight. From there she’d been circled at the Ostwick tower and apparently coped quite well for the first few years. And then, only a few days after turning twelve, she’d been made Tranquil. 

Surely there had been a report on why, once. Whether it had been destroyed when that Circle fell, was stored somewhere out of reach of Leliana’s agents, or had simply been lost to time was anyone’s guess. At the moment, it didn’t matter. The reality of the situation was that they had one, desperate guess for how to close the Breach, and it was attached to the hand of an unconscious girl who had been Tranquil since childhood.

Early on the third day, a messenger burst into the War Room. The crash of the door swinging into the wall had Cassandra leaping to her feet, sword already half drawn by the time she saw it was just a harried scout. Before she or Leliana could even speak, the man snapped back into proper posture and blurted out, “The prisoner’s awake.” 

Cassandra and Leliana’s eyes met. Without a word, Leliana dismissed the agent with a nod, and both women were on their way to the cell.

The girl may not have been the mastermind behind the attack, but there was every possibility she was the tool used to carry it out. Moreover, the mark on her hand crackled and spat in time with the Breach, and there was no telling what dangers that thing might hold. Safer to keep her contained. 

When the Divine’s Left and Right Hands entered, the girl was already lucid, kneeling sedately in the center of her cell while her left hand shook, glowing with energy. Though her fingers twitched spastically, the rest of her was unflinching. 

She was young enough that none of them had hesitated in calling her a girl. Nineteen, according to reports, with a build she thought Leliana would probably call petit . She looked weak, soft. Harmless. Though her skin was naturally a warm brown shade, there was an unhealthy sort of pallor to it, though that may have been the poor lighting of the cell and the color reflecting off her hand. Her hair was short, barely reaching her chin, with bangs cut to fall over her forehead and hide her brand. Who had done that for her, Cassandra wondered, and why? The mages she had travelled with, most likely. To hide the truth from those they met while on the run? To save themselves the sight? 

“What is that mark on your hand?” Cassandra questioned. There was no point in delaying. 

“I do not know.” Her voice was quiet and scratchy, and entirely dead.

“Where did it come from?”

“I do not know.” 

“What is the last thing you remember?” Leliana asked, stepping forward. 

Trevelyan’s dark eyes slid to her as she moved into the light. “I was in an unfamiliar place. Demons chased me. Another woman was there, attempting to guide me. Now I am here.”

A woman? There had been stories from the soldiers who had found her, things they thought they saw in the Rift she fell from but Cassandra had not truly believed... 

Leliana took a deep breath. “Do you remember the Conclave?”

“Yes. I attended alongside Senior Enchanter Jonna.”

“The Conclave was destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead,” Cassandra informed her. Against all logic, and despite all her experience with Tranquil mages, she was still disturbed to see the girl accept such destruction as easily as a comment on the weather. “Except for you.”

Trevelyan said nothing. The silence was broken by her mark expanding again. Her hand spasmed once more, like whatever power now resided within her had stolen control of those muscles. 

“Bring her to the Rift,” Leliana said suddenly. Cassandra turned to stare at her already retreating figure. “I will meet you at the forward camp.”
With that, she was alone with the girl. 

“Stand up.” Once that command had been followed, Cassandra led the girl out of the cell and under an open, green-tinted sky. “We call it the Breach. It’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It’s not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the conclave.”

The girl’s manacled hands came up on reflex, but the restraints kept her from reaching high enough to shield her eyes from the bright sun. Unable to block the light, Trevelyan simply bore it. Tears welled up in her lash line, and a few fell without grace to the ground below their feet. 

A natural physical reaction, but the cynical part of Cassandra’s mind - the part she usually did a good job smothering, as sarcasm did not suit someone in her position - imagined it as the next sign of the apocalypse. First, a tear in the very fabric of the world. Now, a crying Tranquil. 

She had not even finished adjusting to the light before collapsing the ground, hand shaking far more violently than it had before. Cassandra knelt to assess her, but Trevelyan was already rising. 

“I apologize,” she said. “It hindered my ability to walk. It has stopped.”

“Each time the Breach spreads, so does that mark,” Cassandra explained, gesturing to the hole in the sky. “And it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn’t much time.”

“I would prefer to help, and to live,” Trevelyan responded, and followed diligently where Cassandra led her. Stares followed them; some curious, some accusing, most frightened. Those people who had assembled for the Conclave but not attended the actual meetings were adrift in the wake of its destruction, and Cassandra understood that many of them looked to her as the Divine’s Right Hand to somehow fix this mess. 

She paused to remove Trevelyan’s restraints, because at this point she doubted the mark would hurt anyone but the girl it was attached to. Several times it flared again, though after the first she stopped falling to the ground at each occurrence. Cassandra continued explaining the events Trevelyan had been unconscious for - the explosion, her discovery in the ruins of the Temple, their tracking of her mark over the last several days. Some would not bother, she knew, and more than likely Trevelyan did not need this information to determine that obeying Cassandra was the most logical choice for her. It was for her own conscience, really. Solas had been the one to theorize that the mark might close the Rifts. Solas had also said the effort of such a thing stood just as much chance as killing the host. 

In the middle of one of her monologues, rocks falling from the Breach blew the bridge out from under their feet. When she staggered upright, she spotted two shades rising from the debris, already slithering forward. Cassandra drew her sword, hardly pausing to yell “Stay behind me!” before rushing at them. 

Fighting was easy. Thankfully these were not any of the stronger demons that had been appearing closer to the main Breach. Cassandra fell into a rhythm, slashing into the half-present forms of these monsters and lifting her shield to block their claws. With a final thrust of her blade, the shade in front of her fell and dissolved with an awful shriek. 

There had been a second shade, though. 

Turning wildly, afraid to see her companion being torn apart, Cassandra only had her long years of training to thank for not freezing at the scene that greeted her. Muscle memory had her closing the distance and taking up a defensive stance in front of the girl. Without too much more effort, the second shade was dispatched as well. 

Breathing heavily, she observed Trevelyan, who was distinctly ruffled and covered in the dust and dirt of the collapsed bridge, but otherwise uninjured. The shade that had landed near her hadn’t even been looking in her direction. The Tranquil and the demon had ignored each other entirely. 

“That was uncomfortable,” Trevelyan commented. “Are you injured?”

Cassandra stared for a moment before silently shaking her head. 

It took longer than she thought it would to convince the girl to carry a few healing potions. Trevelyan insisted that as Cassandra was the one fighting, and therefore more likely to be hurt, it was more practical for her to have immediate access to the potions. In the end, the Seeker was forced to compromise and split the bottles between herself and the girl. From there, she simply did her best to prevent Trevelyan from needing any, planting her body firmly between the unarmed, unarmored girl and the monsters that lingered on their path to the Rift. 

They climbed higher. Cassandra set their pace; keeping the girl behind her seemed important, even if every shade and wraith thus far had been disinterested in her. Their sheer disregard for her might have been suspicious, but rather struck Cassandra as almost sad. The monsters didn’t ignore her on the battlefield as they would an ally; they ignored her the same way they ignored stones or felled trees, inanimate obstacles that required no acknowledgement.

Still, Cassandra instructed her to take cover and hide every time she heard fighting. The girl could not defend herself, and she certainly would not risk what might be their only chance by trusting anything to demons.

Finally they were near enough to the Rift that she could hear their allies. Unfortunately, she heard them fighting - the Rift must have opened again. She pushed Trevelyan behind a tree. “Stay here.” 

The apostate and the dwarf were holding their own, but there were so many more demons here than there had been further back. After a moment’s deliberation, she leapt in to help Varric. Neither of the men were meant to be frontline fighters like she was, but Solas could at least throw up a barrier to deflect a blow. As annoying as the dwarf was, she had no desire to see him torn to shreds by shades. 

A mix of steel, crossbow bolts, and frost magic eventually subdued the last of the creatures that had come from the Rift. It hung in the air like a living crystal, constantly shifting and reforming. Watching sent a by now familiar shiver down her spine. “Trevelyan,” Cassandra called, not sheathing her weapon. “Come out now.”

Without fanfare the girl emerged from the hiding place. There were a few leaves stuck to the back of her cloak, and snowflakes catching in her thick black hair. Solas strode toward her and, without introduction, grabbed her by the arm. 

“Hey, Chuckles-” Varric attempted to interrupt, but Solas paid him no heed. 

“It must be closed quickly,” the elf said. Trevelyan stumbled slightly as he dragged her forward, unable to match his pace. When they stood before the Rift together, he raised her marked hand to the tear in the Veil. A thrumming arc of light jumped between the two, making Cassandra flinch. 

That was when Trevelyan started screaming. 

Chapter Text

He’d thought, shock, maybe. 

The girl that had walked out from behind that little copse of trees - Trevelyan, the Seeker called her - had belonged there. She was hardly more than a kid by the look of her, and definitely not built like any sort of fighter. He might have guessed mage except she wasn’t carrying a staff. Honestly, she wasn’t carrying much of anything. Somehow he found room to be even more disappointed in the Seeker. The girl had just woken from a coma and they couldn’t have found her a decent coat before dragging her up a mountain?

Varric had only heard a few rumors about the survivor of the Temple explosion. Most of the information had been locked up as tightly as she was. He’d gotten the gist of it: fell from the Fade, glowy hand, knocked out cold the whole time they’d held her. Solas had been allowed in to treat her but the elf apparently wasn’t much of a gossip. 

So that distant look on her face when the Seeker shouted for her, he’d thought maybe she was having trouble keeping up. Who could have blamed her?

Then the elf was yanking her around like a misbehaving pet, pulling almost hard enough to trip her, shoving her hand right up to the Rift, and-

Varric had seen a lot of shit in his life, but he’d never heard anyone scream like that. 

The entire time her mark was connected to the Rift, Trevelyan was shrieking at the top of her lungs. Where only a second ago she’d been content to let Solas move her around, she was fighting wildly against the elf’s hold, trying and failing to wrench her wrist from his grip and beating at him feebly with her other fist. The Rift itself shuddered at the connection, reverberating so loudly Varric could hear nothing but it and the girl’s agonized screeching. Her screams broke off into short, gasping breaths only to start up again, louder, ragged in her throat, and Varric himself could hardly breathe for how overcharged the air felt.

It bore down on him with a greater pressure than he’d ever felt before. He hadn’t been this claustrophobic since the Deep Roads, when Bartrand had closed that door between them. Trevelyan’s voice rang in his ears, almost a physical force, or maybe that was the magic of the Veil bearing down on them all. As her screams hit a higher pitch, the crystalline structure suspended above her gave a final tremor.

The Rift broke apart and disappeared in the space between seconds. Either by his surprise or her own determination, Trevelyan broke free from Solas’s hold and threw herself to the ground, ending up face down and curled around her knees. 

The Seeker and the elf both looked shocked at the proceedings, but Varric worried it was for the wrong reasons. Yeah, Rift gone, no more demons here, that’s great, but was that girl okay ? 

Varric sighed. He should probably have realized by now that people don’t get to choose when they’ll be heroes. It really was incredible that she’d closed the Rift, and no matter how badly it hurt, they’d have to ask her to do it again. He wished they didn’t though. He wished it really was asking; it wouldn’t take a genius to realize she wouldn’t be allowed to say no. 

As neither of their other companions seemed inclined to help their new savior, he stepped forward to check on her. He hardly made it two feet before she stood on her own, mechanically wiping the snow from her clothes and face. She spoke then, perfectly serene despite the rasp that had come from straining her vocal chords. “That was strange. I apologize.”

He’d thought she was in shock, that the blank face was part of her processing all the insanity she’d woken up to. But he knew that tone of voice. At the very least, it probably explained why Solas hadn’t wanted to talk about her. “Shit, Seeker, every time I think I couldn’t like you less.”

Cassandra shot him a nasty look, but mostly ignored him in favor of the girl. “Trevelyan,” she began, and hesitated. “...are you alright?”

“I can continue.”

“Are you in pain?” Solas questioned. His posture was strange; he’d stepped away quickly once the Rift was gone, and now seemed caught between moving even farther away from her and leaning in for a closer look. When she nodded, he frowned and asked, “Did it hurt more when you closed the Rift?”

“Somewhat,” she judged, inspecting the light in her palm before letting it fall back to her side. “Not considerably. It seems to have been an effective seal. Should we proceed to the Breach?”

“First you must explain,” the Seeker said, and Varric didn’t think he was imagining how tight her grip was on the hilt of her longsword. “You screamed, fought. Are you not truly Tranquil?”

“I am Tranquil.” Even with whatever that had been, Varric believed her. Nobody else could have a voice that flat or eyes that hollow. “I do not know why that happened. My recollection is unclear.”

Solas spoke up. “For what it is worth, Cassandra, I sense no magic in her.”

“I am Tranquil,” the girl repeated. If she’d been capable of humor, Varric would have thought she was emphasizing her point to be sarcastic. Unfortunately that got burned out alongside everything else when they were branded. He eyed her bangs uncomfortably, remembering all too well the sunburst signs on the foreheads of Tranquil mages outside the Gallows. 

“I suppose we must move on,” the Seeker decided, and led the way. 

Surprisingly, there weren’t any comments about Varric sticking around. There wasn’t any love lost between Cassandra and him, but they were both heading into the valley all the same. Varric took the opportunity to introduce himself and Bianca (and Solas, who was still keeping his distance, like he thought a brand might somehow be contagious) to Trevelyan. 

She didn’t really have the presence to pull off a surname-only address. Usually he’d default to a nickname, but it didn’t feel right, and he couldn’t think of one anyway.

Either way, he talked with her as they climbed down and then up an unholy amount of stairs. It was hard to hold a conversation with someone who couldn’t have feelings, but he would have felt more awkward just ignoring her. And even without emotions, she still had thoughts. She contributed enough to the discussion that it didn’t feel like pulling teeth. They had to take a few pauses to fight off demons, but that was old hat at this point, and while she couldn’t fight, the girl seemed to have grasped the basics of cover and kept herself out of the way.

In short order, he learned her first name, her family’s status, which Circle she’d been housed in, and the fact that she’d been Tranquil since she was an actual child. Which seemed like the kind of awful thing that fit Kirkwall better than Ostwick, but it’s not like any city held a monopoly on mage abuse. Just for kicks, he addressed the rumor on the way up yet another set of stairs. “So... did you blow up the Conclave?”

“Varric!” The Seeker scolded him before she could respond. “Clearly she was not behind this!”

“I have no memory of the attack on the Conclave,” Aurelia said. “Nevertheless, I believe I am innocent. I lack the knowledge, materials, power, or motive necessary for such destruction.”

Fair enough. Well, he knew a lot of people would argue she did have a motive, but there was a slight and significant difference between motive and motivation. Either way, he’d already been sure it wasn’t her before he asked. Memory loss was rough though. Even if it wasn’t through her own volition, Aurelia was clearly tied to the Breach somehow, and therefore to the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. They didn’t have any other clues lying around. 

Just as Cassandra reported that they would soon reach the forward camp, Aurelia announced, “There is another Rift nearby.”

The three of them all stopped short. Cassandra, at the head of their party, turned back with a frown. “How do you know?”

“The mark is reacting similarly.” She held her left hand aloft to demonstrate, and it did seem brighter than it had been before. He wondered if it hurt more already.

“You will have to seal this one as well,” Solas said, exchanging an uneasy glance with Cassandra as he did. “If you cannot maintain the connection on your own...”

“Your assistance will be unnecessary this time,” Aurelia stated, once it was clear he didn’t intend to continue. “I can do it.”

Varric wasn’t even sure where to start with that. Solas had clearly been implying one of them would need to hold her down to get the Rift closed. Varric wasn’t really comfortable with the elf’s assistance the first time, but he also really doubted her ability to finish the job if she went crazy again. When he snuck a peak at the Seeker, she looked troubled as well, and more than once her gaze fell to her own gauntlets. If Aurelia did need to be restrained, Cassandra would be the most capable of doing so. If she needed to be forced, Cassandra would undoubtedly do that too. 

Aurelia, in whatever was left of her head, was sure it wouldn’t be necessary. Of the four of them, she was the first to start walking again, marked hand sparking and fizzing more frequently the closer she got to the camp.

This was all such shit. He should have left days ago, let the Chantry deal with this mess and hightailed it back to Kirkwall. At least there he knew what kind of trouble he’d have to deal with. Excepting the occasional backstabbing terrorist or tyrannical Knight-Commander, Kirkwall was a den of predictable sins. Smugglers, back alley gangs, the regular bands of slavers he had little issue killing. That was all familiar to him, routine even. He could spend his days attempting to navigate the mess that was Hightown’s tightly wound hierarchy and his nights in the Hanged Man, drinking with Daisy and Aveline and whichever of his other surviving friends might sometimes turn up on a high tide. 

The panicked shouting of scouts broke him from his reverie. With a sigh, he adjusted his grip on Bianca and ran a little faster towards trouble. 

Immediately, he recognized a major issue in their battle strategy - there was no cover here for Aurelia to take advantage of. Before the Seeker had been able to push her behind remnants of walls or thick foliage, but here they were boxed in. A pair of shades pressed in on him, forcing him to fall back, and it chilled his blood to see them scuttle past the Tranquil girl like she didn’t exist.

Which wasn’t as bad as the way his heart started racing when she raised her hand to the Rift and the monsters suddenly turned back to her. 

As soon as the link formed between her and the Rift, she doubled over, bracing her wrist with her other hand to keep it up. Her body shuddered, and he thought it was under the pressure of the action until he heard the crying.

He sent a bolt through the torso of one of the demons headed her way and it melted into shadow. Solas sent a wave of ice at the second, but it arrived a moment too late. Claws raked across her side, and two things happened at once. 

One: her mark disconnected from the Rift.

Another: Aurelia clutched at her injury, whimpered, and hissed, “Maker’s breath! ” in a voice that if Varric didn’t know better he would have described as heartbroken.

The first was a disappointment, especially when a fresh wash of green light made it clear the fight wasn’t over. The second was ridiculous, because Tranquils didn’t swear (even if that had barely counted as blasphemy, compared to Varric’s usual vocabulary), and they definitely didn’t sound so lively when they did. 

Solas blasted the shade that had attacked her away. He made to - do something, check her wound maybe, check her mark maybe, Varric wasn’t sure. He never got to do it, because the girl elbowed him away.

“No, I can do it!” she cried, and Solas flinched at the same time Varric did at the unfamiliarity of her voice. Hoarse, loud, afraid and determined in equal measure, she sounded like a real person. There was no trace of Tranquility about her tone now. With her head raised he could see her face clearly, blotchy red and tearstained, screwed up against the obvious pain. Her left hand was linked to the rift again while her right was held tight against her bloody coat over her side. “I can do it, I promise,” she insisted, raw and aware , then shrieked through gritted teeth. 

The second Rift closed and she staggered sideways, one more sob wracking her frame before her breathing abruptly hitched and found a steadier pace. When she straightened up her face was expressionless, tears still dripping down her cheeks to fall into the snow below her. One hand went to her left side, across from her injury, and then to her mouth with a vial of potion. Once she’d finished its contents, she asked, “Is anyone else injured?” in a voice that was once again devoid of life. 

This time, no one questioned her. What was happening didn’t make any sense - at least, not to Varric - but there was no denying what was right in front of them. Her madness at the first Rift had been less upsetting than the brief lucidity at the second. To see her fully conscious and determined to help, just for a moment, it felt like cheating. Maybe she’d have been that way all the time, if she’d been allowed. 

Aurelia had been the only one hurt, and one potion seemed to have been enough to fix her up. The scouts opened the doors for them, and they finally found the Nightingale. Just as Varric had suspected, she’d made it through just fine her own way, apparently without so much as a scratch.

Far less welcome was the sight of the man beside her, some self-righteous ass in a Chantry robe. This was one situation in which Varric didn’t mind agreeing with the Seeker; ‘glorified bureaucrat’ was plenty accurate, and a lot kinder than he thought this guy deserved. 

The man was dead set on making a fool of himself. Ordering the Hands of the Divine around, declaring the entire operation hopeless, and trying to take a Tranquil to court only served to prove how badly he wanted somebody else to believe he was in charge. Even with all the doom and gloom, Varric couldn’t help but laugh when Aurelia stared placidly at the man through his whole rant before simply turning away and informing Cassandra that they should move on quickly. It was an uncomfortable sort of chuckle, what with her impassioned pleas at the Rift still ringing in his ears, but it counted for something.

They were going to need all the silver linings they could get, charging directly through the valley. As they proceeded, he turned to the mountains, wondering after the lost scouts. Then he righted himself and marched on with the others. 

Chapter Text

Three days into hell, armor littered in blood and scorch marks, hands shaking, Cullen Rutherford still could not bring himself to regret agreeing to join the Inquisition. He’d done many worse things in his life than fight demons. If this was what killed him, at least he’d have actually been trying to do some good this time. 

Morbid thoughts, but he’d been out here on the front since before the dust settled on the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and every wave of demons only wore them down further. Going on seventy-two hours with no end in sight, he felt he was allowed to be a little macabre. Withdrawals didn’t help. The symptoms weren’t as bad as when he was first coming off lyrium - he’d been half convinced he would die on the ship over from Kirkwall, shaking so badly he couldn’t stand and seeing things that couldn’t have been real - but the constant threat from the Rifts almost had a silver lining, if he looked at it that way. It was much harder to dwell on his cravings with such a formidable distraction.

Morale was low, though, and only getting lower. With each new surge, they were battered harder, with less time to recover. With each new surge, they lost more of their men. 

When a scout rushed in with a message that Seeker Pentaghast was on her way with a solution, Cullen could have kissed him. Preparing the soldiers to charge wasn’t as hard as he feared. While they weren’t all as well-trained as he might have hoped, a common cause was worth a lot. A chance at ending the threat was worth even more. Enough to keep men brave in the face of demonic invasion, if not enough to save all of them. 

Cassandra came through with a small party. An oddly tall elf on her left, wielding a staff with no self-consciousness, deftly casting a barrier over the little group as they advanced. This was likely the apostate he’d heard about in reports, the one Leliana didn’t like the feel of but wanted to keep around when he offered his apparently extensive Fade expertise. On the Seeker’s right side was - oh, Maker, he’d heard Tethras had gotten caught up in this somehow but he hadn’t expected to actually see the dwarf charging the Breach. He and Cullen hadn’t ever been close, so to speak, but he’d seen the dwarf tagging along with the Champion often enough, and they’d both been there in the end when Meredith had fully lost it. Even without that, Varric Tethras was the type of man all of Kirkwall half knew. Cullen had never imagined him to be the type to run headlong into danger, though, at least not without Hawke in front of him. That overwrought crossbow of his was already firing, and the sound was oddly familiar in Cullen’s ears. The Seeker herself was a relief to see. She moved differently on this field than the occasions Cullen had seen her fight before. Her shield, usually a weapon unto itself, just as deadly as her blade, was held as a purely defensive wall. Everything about her posture screamed ‘protective’, and the glimpse of a brown cloak from behind her betrayed the fact that she was guarding a fourth party member. 

That was all he saw before a terror erupted from the ground to his left, and Cullen became too busy to gawk at the newcomers. The vague impressions he garnered from the battle were normal: clashing steel, shrieking demons, the same sickly green light over everything.

Then, a new light, the same shade but brighter, more lively, and a high, mad giggling. 

His fingers nearly went slack on his sword, the shaking picking up worse than before. His skin crawled. Who was this? Who or what could, in the midst of all this, be induced to laugh?

He’d known Templars and other soldiers who’d lost their minds before, he’d been one for a while, but usually that kind of hysteria didn’t set in on the damned field. More than that, it was a girl’s voice. There weren’t a lot of women fighting on the front, and he was pretty sure none of them sounded like that. 

When he was finally safe enough to spare a moment to investigate, he was greeted with the strangest sight he’d seen since the Breach itself had opened. There was Cassandra, easily holding back a shade with her shield, and behind her was a girl with her hand raised to the sky, an arc of light joining it to the Rift. She was young, no older than twenty he would have guessed, and hardly armored at all. And she was laughing hysterically. 

Open, unabashed laughter, a clear, piercing sound that echoed through the carnage, so strong he knew her chest must have been aching through the breathlessness. As he watched, the Seeker finished off the shade and turned to support the girl. Turning her head, her dark eyes wide and her mouth still stretched around an over-large grin, the girl managed to gasp out “Cassandra!” before losing herself to her mirth again. 

She was near to cackling now, sounding as unhinged as any abomination he’d ever faced, but she looked entirely normal aside from her marked hand. There was no blue-white light cracking up through her skin, no distortion of her features, none of the visuals of melted flesh or merged limbs that occurred in the worst cases of possession. Aside from that singular mark on her hand, she was unarmed as well. depending on the Seeker to defend her, and yet she’d seemed honestly surprised when she’d called the woman’s name, as if only just recognizing her. 

Her hand disconnected from the Rift with a pulse. Her laughter ceased. The tear in the Veil shuddered, and the apostate elf only had a moment to shout about more demons coming through before they were upon them. Again, the girl used her hand to... cast against it? Maker, what was wrong with this girl? She must be a mage of some kind, he couldn’t be seeing anything else, but what sort of magic did that?

“Trevelyan?” Seeker Pentaghast shouted over the din. “What is this?”

“Cassandra,” the girl gasped again, fighting for steady breath. Gritting her teeth, she seemed to force the laughter down. She had to look up to speak to the woman, she was so much shorter than the warrior. “Seeker, you’re the Seeker,” she said, as if needing to remind herself, and then, insistent, still smiling, “I can do it, I can, I’ll fix it-”

The last demon fell, a crossbow bolt tearing through its spine, and the connection between girl and Rift broke once more. A second pulse, strong enough to ruffle his hair, passed over them. He watched the members of Seeker Pentaghast’s party all soften their posture in relief just before the Rift gave in to the onslaught and closed. 

It was gone. Really, truly sealed, not just dormant as it had been for some blessed periods throughout their watch. The space where it had hung suspended in the air was innocuous, seamlessly blended into the surrounding air. Cullen had the feeling that even after days of watching it, once he turned away now, he would never again be able to point out precisely where it had been. 

He did turn away after a moment, if only to stare more intently at the person who had saved them. 

There were mages in the Inquisition. Not many, but some were survivors of the Conclave, sticking around in the aftermath to figure out what had happened or avenge their peers who had died in the blast. A few others had been brought in by Leliana's people, sympathetic to the cause but accustomed to subtlety. The elf apostate had volunteered just because he’d seen the Breach as a threat, and was probably not the only person who had done so. There may have been other mages like him. None of that seemed to explain this girl, who did impossible things, who carried no staff or spellbook, and who now stood unmoving in the middle of a battlefield as the Seeker checked her over for injuries. 

He’d had little news of the suspect, this far from the main camp. Somehow he doubted this was the same person. Cullen knew all too well that appearances could be deceiving, especially with mages, but it wasn’t just her youth. She was... passive. She did nothing to protest Cassandra’s manhandling of her, simply remained still until it was over. Neither was she restrained at all, which surely a suspect of the murder of hundreds of people and Divine Justinia herself would be. Even so, he was at a loss for what made this girl the miracle they needed. 

“Lady Cassandra,” he called in greeting, kicking aside rubble as he made his way over to them. “I see you’ve found a way to close the Rifts.”

“I have done nothing, Commander. This is the survivor, Trevelyan.” Cassandra took a deep breath before continuing. “It is her doing.”

“Is it?” Cullen’s gaze shifted to the girl, who had so far only been gazing into the distance past the field of battle. “I hope they’re right about you. We’ve lost a lot of people getting you here.”

She turned, and he froze. He needed nothing more than the sight of her big, dull eyes to see the truth. Cullen had lived as a Templar for years; he’d spent more than enough time around Tranquils to recognize their mannerisms. Her voice was steady and disquieting as she replied, “I will attempt to close the Breach.”

He couldn’t help but look for signs. Her hair was cut to hide the brand, assuming it was in the typical place on her forehead, but when she turned back to Cassandra it shifted enough for him to glimpse part of the scarring. It was old, not red and raised like a recent mark but years old. On such a young face...

He couldn’t see her arms, swamped as she was in an ill-fitting mercenary’s coat, but her hands and the rest of her face were mostly clear. None of the shiny skin one got from repeated burnings, nor the pale, branching lines that misjudged lightning left behind. She still had all her fingers. When young mages were beyond control they usually defaulted to basic destructive spells, elemental power or explosive force. If she had been made Tranquil for lashing out or lacking restraint, there would have been some physical backlash, a sign of her power. The only marks on her, aside from Andraste’s sunburst on her face, were a thin scar on her left cheek from a long healed cut and the glowing green slash in the palm of her left hand that allowed her to forge a connection to the Rifts.

It made no sense. She was empty-handed, without any sort of magical focus. The whole point of Tranquils was that they could no longer cast. And yet she’d fought against the Rift with enough power to seal it completely. The world was not just torn apart; it had turned completely upside down. 

It didn’t make sense. She had performed magic. She had laughed. And she was Tranquil, undoubtedly, in this moment. It wasn’t something one could fake, especially not to a Seeker and a Templar, both of whom had played a part in the administration of the Rite more than once. By the reactions of the Seeker and her other companions - discomfort and confusion, but not surprise - she had been just as lifeless before connecting to the Rift as she was now. The Rite was so widely feared because it was an extreme. A last resort, a complete sundering. There was no going back from that, and yet this Tranquil had been a young woman again for all of a minute. 

Once, just once, he would appreciate it if the end of the world didn’t include some new magical development that scared him out of his mind. First the demons in Kinloch, then the living statues in Kirkwall, now the Veil spilling into the entire damned sky above the Frostbacks, it always came back to the same thing. 

“I suppose that’s all we can ask,” he finally said. It took him far too long to speak. Cassandra shot him a sympathetic look, likely just as wrong-footed as he was. The Tranquil gave no further reply. There was no such thing as offense, in their minds. 

He ignored the Tranquil right back, refocusing on Cassandra. “The way to the temple should be clear. Leliana will try to meet you there.”

“Then we’d best move quickly,” the Seeker said. “Give us time, Commander.”

Cullen wasn’t sure how much time they had left to give, but he’d do what he could. As the four of them continued on into the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, he returned to his soldiers. There were more injuries from the latest bout, and those unharmed or close enough to it already had first aid underway. Cullen jumped back down to join in, sliding an arm around an injured man who could not stand alone. 

“Maker watch over you,” he said, too late for any of them to hear him. “For all our sakes.”

And if He were feeling particularly merciful, perhaps the Maker could explain why all the laws of nature had gone out the window with the death of the Divine. 

Chapter Text

If there had been any need for further proof that this world was a mistake, the current host for the remains of his power would have been more than sufficient. There were many things Solas regretted about his choices, consequences of his mistakes that weighed heavily on him. Chief among them was the legacy left to the People, either trapped, downtrodden in human cities or roaming, homeless, in little bands that depended on scraps of mistold story for their history. So many were powerless in the wake of the Veil. For mages to be a minority, a subset of the People rather than a fact so ubiquitous it hadn’t needed a word, it appalled him. 

The evidence before him had shaken him to his core. He’d been confused at first by the brand on the girl’s face. He initially assumed that she had been a slave of some kind, unable to imagine another reason for such a thing to have been burned into her skin. That feeling had quickly been overwhelmed by his concern at her complete lack of presence in the Fade. It was not the dim light of those without magic, but an absolute void. The rest of them, the humans and those elves who lived among them, were still connected to the Fade through their dreams. Even the Children of the Stone had a presence of some kind, an indication of life. The thing that hosted the Anchor had seemed to him more a corpse than a girl. 

Pretending knowledge of such a practice had been impossible, but thankfully the Seeker had taken his disgust as a normal reaction. Tranquility, she called it, as though it were a simple rest. Solas wondered then if he shouldn’t just leave. The Anchor would likely kill its host soon enough. It wasn’t quite putting her out of her misery, as she apparently was not capable of even that, but it would have been mercy. He could seek out Corypheus on his own, retrieve the Orb, without the threat of such a ritual hanging over him. Seeker Pentaghast has spoken of it too calmly not to be familiar with its use. 

He had stayed though, and seen the human wake for whatever waking was worth to her. Her presence was... off-putting to say the least. She moved and spoke like an automaton. 

It was only when she used her marked hand that any semblance of life was clear, and that was infinitely more interesting. On their way to the ruins of the humans’ temple, every reaction he observed in his companions merged surprise with horror. He gathered that Tranquility was not something one could come back from. Not under normal circumstances, at least. 

At the first Rift, he’d thought anything that had returned to her had been driven mad by deprivation. Solas would not have blamed any mage for such a reaction, but he had to maintain her connection to the Rift, and it was made difficult by her panicked thrashing. Her return to blankness after the connection was broken was disappointing, but not the point of the experiment. They had proven that the Anchor could mend the Veil. 

Her dead insistence that she needed no help from him at the second Rift surprised him. The increasing clarity she displayed while sealing it surprised him far more. With each use of the mark she seemed to gain more of herself back. First came pain and terror, the most basic of feelings, as animalistic as her screaming had been. Then grief and determination in equal measure, anguished cries never interrupting her as she cast against the Rift. To call her hysteria at the last Rift joy was perhaps going too far, but laughter was new, and she had appeared to be genuinely relieved to recognize Cassandra, and almost lucid as she spoke. He wondered what would come at the Breach. 

The spymaster caught up with them as they came to the edge of the crater. Her archers were set up in a ring around it, prepared to assist them in facing whatever lay at the bottom. Emphasizing the importance of mending the original Rift, Solas could not help but test the human girl again. “This will be stronger than the previous Rifts. It may kill you.”

Varric glared at him, but the marked girl only said “I would prefer to live, but it must be closed.”

The Seeker’s eyes, so often steel-hard, softened as she stared. She passed a long moment in that way, on the verge of speaking but unable to force herself past the edge. He did not have time to fully determine what had overtaken the woman before she turned away, be it gratitude or shame.  

What had been a statement of fact for the girl who had no sense of self seemed to have a profound impact on those around her. Cassandra was not alone in the way she looked to her, like a martyr, already bound to live on in stories and sculptures. If the girl did survive this, Solas could only imagine what would be in store for her. 

They began their descent, picking out a path through the rubble. The scene, so strongly lit by the verdant light of the Breach above, was intermittently colored red by the tainted lyrium that sprouted from the ground. Varric was audibly unnerved, espousing its evil nature. The dwarf went so far as to take the human girl’s elbow and lead her further from the crystals when he didn’t like her proximity. 

“I know it is dangerous,” she said, but allowed herself to be moved. “Before my Circle fell, the enchanters received reports of the contamination in Kirkwall.”

“Yeah, well, I saw it in person,” Varric muttered, directing her to a less dangerous area. “You don’t want to test it.”

Solas gave it an equally wide berth, uncomfortable with the discordant hum that rang from the stone. The sound was soon overpowered by the voice of Corypheus. Even while only present in memory, it filled the space, booming and echoing off the walls of the cavern. As they drew closer to the Rift, it reacted with a sound like thunder, and the magister’s voice was accompanied by a vision of the final moments before the explosion. Cassandra was affected more deeply than anyone to witness the Divine’s death.

The old woman had been sacrificed by a shadowed figure Solas knew to be Corypheus, the process only interrupted at the last second by the human girl, asking “What’s going on here?” with all the urgency of a sleepwalker. The blighted magister bid his minions to slay the thing, and then the vision failed. Something must have happened with the Orb there. Some coincidence or accident that disrupted Corypheus’s ritual and bound the Anchor to this girl, something Solas might be able to fix if only he knew what had actually occurred. 

“I do not remember this,” was all the girl said in response to the Seeker’s heated questioning. Her voice and mannerisms were as flat in person as they had appeared to be in the projection. Solas had wondered, as they descended, whether being closer to the original tear in the Veil might allow her some feeling without a physical connection, but she gave no reaction other than obeying when he led her into place to reopen and properly seal the largest Rift. 

He warned Cassandra that their interference would draw more attention in a place where the Veil was already so thin, and the girl raised her head to meet his eyes while they waited for the rest to ready themselves. It was strange, the sharpness they managed despite her loss. Her face was soft in its youth and soft in expression, but her eyes were focused despite their lack of depth, intent showing through even where feeling wasn’t present.

“Is everyone ready?” she asked after a moment. She did not raise her voice, but in the quiet of the temple she did not need to. 

“Yes,” he confirmed. The mark crackled intensely, and her hand jerked for a moment until it calmed. It would be pointless, he reminded himself, to ask if she were ready. She wasn’t real. Hardly even human at this point, a puppet of flesh and bone pulled along on strings of habit or order. One who lifted her arm again and was untroubled by the likelihood of that action bringing her death. 

The connection she opened was stronger than before. It reached farther from her hand, reached deeper into the Fade, and inspired cries of shock from the scouts who had not yet seen her channel its power. The loose stones under their feet rattled with the shockwaves that emanated from the Rift, clacking against one another as they were pushed away from the girl. A wave of inexplicable heat washed over him, blistering across his face like a desert wind, and another presence quickly made itself known. 

That a pride demon instantly tore its way through the open Veil was not so much a surprise as the appropriate culmination to an already terrible set of circumstances. Solas planted himself between it and the girl, calling out periodically for her to cast against the Rift, focusing on maintaining a barrier spell and shooting off blasts of frost when he had the chance. His limitations vexed him. It was such basic spellwork, nothing in the realm of what he would have been capable of in the past, and yet it distracted him thoroughly enough that he only noticed the approach of hostile shades when they were close enough to attack. 

The low, heavy thrum of the mark connecting to the Fade filled his ears, and a second, stronger burst of heat burned across his back. 

Flames burst into life around and past him. Brief, but blazing hot, it left the air behind it dry enough to scrape his throat on the inhale, and scorched the shades badly enough that they recoiled with shrieks. One was blasted fully into ash, dissipating before his eyes. It must have caught Varric’s attention as well, as a bolt of steel through the side finished the other one off. Solas caught sight of him for a moment, but turned back as soon as he recognized the fear on the dwarf’s face, aimed behind him. 

The girl was standing tall, still glowing with the faint vestiges of the barrier he’d cast over them both. Her left hand was held aloft to the Rift, her other arm falling lax at her side. Her previous uses of the Anchor had left her bent, bowed, but now her spine was straight and her posture loose under the power pouring from her. She shone from the apex of her marked hand stretched up to the Rift right down to her feet, where fires were constantly roaring to life and sputtering out in chaotic patterns. 

They acted with a life of their own: waves of them flaring out in rough, uneven arcs, almost as if to shield her; sparks and coals falling through the sky above her like shrapnel, catching in anything they touched, even her own hair and clothes; gouts of flame erupting from the ground, cracking the earth and melting down the stone, as if the open Rift had unleashed a forgotten volcano instead of a single human girl. 

Actual spells had a shape to them, a purpose that directed the energy of the Fade into a mage’s desired form. This was wilder, the product of thoughtless feeling. It flared higher with each scream she gave out, growing stronger and stronger until it caught on even the sparse remains of the temple left in the ruins, growing past the source and gaining a life of its own. At the height of her broken control they shone almost bright enough to rival the Rift. 

His own barrier was long gone, the back of his coat left in charred tatters. When he took a step back he began to feel the burns that littered his back and limbs, not deadly but more than deep enough to pain him. 

The pride demon turned to the sudden light, and as Cassandra sank her sword into its back, another wave of fire poured out from the shuddering girl, hot enough to burn through the demon and send the Seeker retreating away from the blistering heat. 

The Rift finally sealed the moment after the demon fell dead. When it did, most of the flames in the area extinguished themselves when there was no longer magic to fuel them. Some remained, flickering weakly on scraps of wood and other debris when the world quaked at the Rift’s closure, a testament to what this latest connection had returned to her. 

The mage who had summoned the flames fell, unconscious, into the pile of ash she’d created. Then she was a mage no longer, once again sundered from the Fade. The Breach remained above, suspended in the sky like a scar, but it was not the open wound it had been when the day began. 

The effort hadn’t killed her. As still as she was on the ground, Solas could still sense the Anchor in her, actually calmer than it had been before.

Cassandra was the first to rush to her side. He was next behind her, but forced to slow by a sharp pain across the bottom of his feet. A cursory inspection revealed black shards glittering amongst the rubble. Volcanic glass. The pieces were scattered, easy to avoid once he knew to look, but the fact that some of that fire had burned hot enough to melt stone...

There was little any of them could do for the girl there. The Seeker lifted her easily, her expression conveying the message she did not bother to speak; she would carry the girl back to safety, take responsibility for her as she had done since the girl awoke. 

He stayed close the whole way down the mountain to observe, but broke away from when the crowds of weary soldiers and civilians pressed forward at their return. There was cheering mixed in with the tears, and a thousand questions of what and who and how. Cassandra told them the truth as she knew it, and had to shout over the ensuing uproar to call for the healer. 

Before a full day had passed, the people of Haven had begun to call her the Herald of Andraste. 

It would be a long while before they called her anything else.