The chapel of Fort Karst was an unheated stone crypt hollowed out of the dark rock bedrock beneath the eastern curtain wall.
Six hundred years ago, monks of the Silent Synod had chiseled its vaulted ceiling, carving reliefs of hooded penitents weeping into empty chalices. Now, those ancient stone saints looked down upon an encampment of the dying. The nave was crowded with eighty straw pallets, the air thick with the choking reek of scorched hair, gangrenous pus, vinegar washes. The sharp, skin-burning stench of potion-made sulfur gas.
At the center of the safe hall, where an altar of black marble had once held sacred relics, sat Brother Ren.
The Disgraced Saint was stripped to his waist. His raw, unwhitened burlap habit was tied around his hips with a frayed hemp cord, his bare feet wrapped in dirty linen strips that were stiff with old blood. His torso, arms, and neck were a terrifying mosaic of suffering. A crisscrossing network of jagged, purple-black keloid scars, sunken tissue from absorbed lung-rots, and pale burn scars from divine fires that had long since cooled.
Between his callused, dirt-grained knees sat the Cracked Lead Purification Basin.
A heavy, battered bowl two feet wide, cast from dull grey church lead and etched with worn liturgical verses, the basin was filled with four inches of freezing well water.
