Once he became a caterpillar in its cocoon, hoping to someday break out and fly, the acolytes would use the iron-bound lengths of wood—still attached to the leather shackles on his arms and legs—to move him to his destined location. No one knew where that might be. Literally no one. Even the Great Master in the Golden Room of Grief did not know where the Orphan secretly named Minho would be sent. But he would be sent all the same, and when the acolytes found the spot, they would leave him there to wander for forty days and forty nights. To return as a Bearer of Grief, himself.

Also, no one knew how exactly one was supposed to survive such a nefarious task. Some didn’t.

Minho honestly didn’t give a Flare’s barnacle, anymore. He just wanted this madness of a ceremony to be over with. He had a dark secret hidden within his soul and mind and psyche that no necromancer of the most devious dark art could ever compel Minho to reveal. Like a seed that takes a hundred years to sprout, needing little water, little sun, little care, but eventually grows into its purpose. This would be the Orphan, nameless, named Minho.

When his seed sprouted, it would grow to the ends of the earth, digging its roots to the deepest parts of bedrock, and raising its limbs sky-high to create a canopy of endless green, covering the four corners of the world. This was all a metaphor, of course. The real intention was simple and as plain as the sun being eclipsed by an enlarged moon.

The Orphan, Minho by name, had decided that destroying the Godhead—the very reason for the Remnant Nation’s existence—was a terrible idea. Evolution was progress. It shouldn’t be stopped. By definition, it couldn’t be stopped.

No, his ultimate desire and purpose was not to destroy the Godhead.

It was to join them.

Minho didn’t resist or complain as the priests and priestesses began draping the coarse cloth of the vine around his body and all its parts, cinching and pulling and tying along the way, pulling no punches—as Griever Glane would say—or showing the slightest regard for his discomfort.

The Orphan looked into the future like the ancient seers of old.

The farther he reached, the more unbearable the pain. But it would all be worth it. If nothing else, he couldn’t wait to stop thinking in these ridiculous, sanctimonious metaphors. Thinking of Kit, the life he’d extended, brought him peace.

The acolytes completed their task. Rough, thorny threads now encased his entire body, woven into a tight tapestry that would both protect him from the worst of nature’s weapons while also keeping him humble. The cocoon of cloth needled and bit and scratched and bothered. It sucked, one might say.