One

His lungs still burned and the bitter taste of lyrium wouldn't wash out of his mouth no matter how much he drank.

Cain's muscles still felt odd, he couldn't stop coughing and his head pounded. He had only come near the red crystals as he drove his greatsword through the stone-like corrupted flesh that had begun to form on the bodies of the former Templars.

They were once his brothers. But all he saw as they descended upon Haven was an army of grotesque monsters twisted by the red lyrium. Had he not abandoned the order after Kirkwall, he might have been one of them.

He dreaded the next time he would need to take a dose of lyrium. The regular stuff. The blue stuff.

At least the aches of battle and the after-effects of the red lyrium had distracted him from the cold and wind as the column of refugees trudged through knee-deep drifts of snow. Many of the men and women of the Inquisition had been able to escape Haven, although it felt like they had been wandering aimlessly through the Frostbacks for hours. It was the middle of the night, but nobody dared to stop moving forward, wherever forward might lead them.

There had been no sign of the Herald since the battle.

The soldiers had already begun to murmur. But Cain watched the more concerned looks of Trevelyan's inner circle, all of whom showed grave concern. Everyone else had fled and the Herald was left to stand against the monster alone.

They had all seen the corrupted dragon flying high over the peaks back into the west shortly after emerging from the secret tunnels under the chantry. The entire earth had shaken violently as snow and stones tumbled down the side of the mountain and buried Haven.

Trevelyan had obviously survived long enough to at least fire the last trebuchet. But Cain doubted that he would have been able to outlast the wall of snow and ice flowing down upon the town. If he had luckily made it into shelter, he was now buried under hundreds of feet of snow. As good as dead.

He was now just one more lost prophet to the world, an idol the people will no doubt worship for hundreds of years until the deeds and original purpose were buried under the legend. The legend would twist to serve what political cause was needed at the time and the original deeds and purpose of the man would be relegated to history books that scholars will one day regard as unverifiable myth in the face of a more popular retelling.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of rifts still peppered the land, but the Breach had been closed. Perhaps the mages or the remaining faithful of the Templars could find some way to close the smaller ones, in time.

The rifts had felt strange to Cain the first time he approached one, nothing like he had ever experienced before. He had been to places where the Veil was weak, he had fought demons and felt the pulse of arcane power as a mage was transformed into an abomination. The energy of the rifts was similar, but altogether foreign. The anti-magic skills Cain had learned across years of training and ingestion of lyrium seemed to have no effect on the rifts. In places where the Veil was weak, a surge of energy could help drive back whatever might be waiting on the other side and temporarily strengthen the barrier.

But a tear was something beyond his capabilities to mend. Only the Herald had been able to do that, and only because of the glowing mark upon his hand.

The wind had picked up and the path ahead was near whiteout conditions. But they were approaching a rocky cropping and it looked as if the column before him was slowing. Maybe they were planning to set up camp, tend to the wounded as best they could and get some fires going to try to prevent the majority of people from freezing to death. It was getting so cold, Cain wouldn't have minded one of the rebel mages bathing him in a cone of fire for a few seconds just to warm up. Ice had formed in the goatee around his mouth and lances of frost streaked through his onyx hair.

Commander Cullen was stomping his way through the snow to the back of the column, giving directions on where to send up and issuing orders to soldiers. As he got back to Cain, he stopped.

"Cain," Cullen said, shaking his hand. "I'm glad you made it out alive."

"Same," he said. He didn't want to think or speak much more about the red horrors that had rained down on Haven. He assumed Cullen didn't either.

His assumption was obviously right as the commander seamlessly transitioned into his orders. "They're setting up camp further ahead, but I need some men to fan out and search for the Herald. I don't know what happened back there, but if he's still alive, we need to find him."

"If the stories I've heard about him surviving a leap forward in time to the end of the world and back are true, I wouldn't bet against him," Cain said.

"Nor I." Cullen's face had bent into one of concern. Usually the general was more restrained than that, hiding his feelings from others much better than that. But it was cold and late and the Inquisition might be on the verge of collapse if they didn't make it out of the mountains. "Small parties. We're fanning out to cover the most ground back toward Haven, make a straight line out as far as you can go and then turn around and come straight back if you don't find anything. Two blasts on a horn if you find him."

"I'll see what I can find, commander," Cain said.

Cain turned around and pointed himself slightly to the southeast back toward Haven and began walking. The people he passed looked oddly at him - he was going the wrong way, after all - so he kept his head down to try to fight off the wind as best he could.

He could barely feel his feet under him anymore, if not for the good, thick fur of the Ferelden-made boots. He pulled his cloak around him tighter and re-tied the belt at his waist.

The standard-issue breastplate of the Templars and the thick padding underneath undoubted would have been warmer. The veterans always joked to the raw recruits that the flaming sword of Andraste emblazoned on the front would keep them warm on those long nights standing guard outside in winter. But when he cast aside his oaths, he had returned the armor too.

He hated the Frostbacks. Redcliffe wasn't exactly a mountain town, but close enough to the range and the south that bitterly cold winters often swept over Lake Calenhad. Cain could remember slowly watching as the edges of the lake began to ice over during the worst winters, locking the ships into harbor for the rest of the season.

But the winter always reminded him of hunger. There had been far too many winters where food was scarce growing up and the cold and wind brought out vivid memories of his rumbling stomach.

Cain passed a soldier with a bloodied arm that was leaking through his wrappings and Cain could smell that hint of red lyrium again. The bitter, chalky taste on his tongue flared again and he shuddered as an odd tingle washed through him. Most of the people were unharmed, but in the rear of the column he spotted several that wouldn't survive until morning.

Some of the stragglers were carrying or pulling people that were already dead, others had fallen in the snow and were unceremoniously left there. A pitiful and sad way for a life to end, fallen in the mountains with no one around. But there was little Cain or any of the others could do. There was a good chance they'd all freeze, if not tonight, in a day or two.

"Are you going to look for him?"

Cain lifted his head to see a young man who had stopped in the snow to address him. He had a few cuts and scrapes on his face and the left side of leather armor was torn apart by slashes that he was lucky to have survived.

He carried a sword, one obviously given to him out of the forge at Haven and a wooden shield too that had far less nicks and chunks out of it than his armor. He wasn't a professional soldier, that showed. But he was clearly Fereldan by his look and voice, somewhere from the north by his accent, maybe Highever.

"Aye. Orders from the commander." Cain waved him over. "There's fires and food up ahead, but if you'd rather trudge back a few miles in the snow, I'd be happy for the company."

The young man didn't hesitate. "I saw him, you know. The Herald of Andraste standing alone against that darkspawn and the archdemon. I don't know how he could stand there like there. I probably would have pissed my armor."

Charming, Cain thought. Now that he spoke more, maybe he was from Denerim. Maybe one of the poor quarters of the city as he got a closer look at the youngster. He was too young to be fighting, Cain thought. Either came out of a blind belief in the Inquisition or an opportunity to get a hot meal now and again.

"Even a seasoned soldier would have trouble standing steady in that fight," Cain said. "Much less someone your age. I was a little bit older than you when I started fighting and could barely force myself to lift my shield."

"You fought in the Blight then?" He might be young, but he wasn't totally oblivious. From his tone it sounded like he hadn't seen much of the darkspawn during the Fifth Blight though, so Denerim was probably wrong. Not Highever, certainly, but maybe one of the poorer villages in the northern Bannorn.

"I grew up in Redcliffe, signed on with the Irregulars. Worked a few protection jobs, bodyguarding, boring stuff that kept me far away from trouble. Our company tangled with a few groups of darkspawn in the south. After that I was lucky to get signed on with a Kirkwaller noble who was heading back the Marches. Go out of Ferelden before I tasted much of the Blight."

The rest of his family had gotten the worse end of the deal. Father and all three of his sisters, killed. Or worse.

"I'm Dominic, by the way," the youngster said.

"Cain Wygard."

"You're a Templar?" As the next question poured out in sequence, Cain was beginning to regret asking the young man along.

"That's a complicated answer, nowadays. I trained as a Templar, swore my oaths to the Order and I still take the lyrium. But I don't even know what the Order is now. Some Templars still protect the Chantrys and the people, some roam the countryside like bandits and then there are those … things."

He could taste the bitterness on his tongue again, although the cold was distracting him from the headache he had developed. The pounded had subsidized, but there was a lingering dizziness and nausea that was beginning to settle in its place.

Far in the back of his consciousness, a pulsing, almost like faint music. Discordant and barely there, but still, he could hear it on the edges of his thoughts.

"Well it's good you're with the Inquisition," Dominic said.

"I wouldn't be if it weren't for Commander Cullen."

"You two friends?"

Cain chuckled. "I don't know that the commander has many friends. Maybe I'm closer than most. We served together in Kirkwall when I joined the Order."

"Wait, you were in Kirkwall?" Dominic's eyes lit up excitedly.

"I know, I can't seem to keep away from the trouble. Not half as frightening as darkspawn, but certainly not a fun period in my life either."

He could still remember the way the entire city shook as the magic tore up out of the Chantry and blew into the sky. Pieces of stone fell like flaming meteorites across the entire city, smashing through building and killing the unlucky in the street who couldn't get out of the way.

He had been sitting at the edge of the docks, watching the ships come in and out of the port. The lapping of the water and the snapping of canvas always reminding him of his youth in Redcliffe. The burning bits of the cathedral pierced the entire quarter of the city.

Before he knew it, the Knight Commander had ordered the entire Circle annulled. The entire city erupted into chaos - mages and Templars killing each other in the streets, demons possessing mages and killing indiscriminately.

And then everything that happened in the courtyard of the Gallows. Knight Commander Meredith trying to seize the Champion. Statues coming to life and tearing apart the courtyard. The red lyrium petrifying her.

"I try not to think about it too much. Commander Cullen asked that we all stay on to try to retain some sort of order in the city. We did for a while, but then the Lord Seeker declared the Templars no longer held any allegiance to the Chantry. Cullen said he wouldn't hold us to our vows, but hoped we would stay.

"I had had enough of the Templars after that ordeal. Harrowings. Blood mages. Red lyrium. I decided to come back to Ferelden. Barely even made it home to Redcliffe before all this," he made an sweeping motion in front of him with a hand, not indicating anything directly, "started happening. What a mess."

Dominic nodded and pulled his legs up through a particularly deep drift of snow. He was a head shorter than Cain and having a harder time keeping up. "But the Herald of Andraste. I mean, sent out of the Fade by the Bride of the Maker herself! I had to come join the Inquisition after hearing that!"

Cain snorted quietly to himself. "If it is true." he thought.

But this was a bright-eyed youngster. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. He was lucky to survive Haven. Maybe if he was lucky he'd survive the night too. But if the Herald was dead as he expected, that faith would run dry pretty quickly.

Dominic stumbled and caught himself in the snow with one hand. Cain extended a hand down and helped pull him back to his feet as the young man shivered.

He'd find out the truth soon enough.

He wouldn't need Cain to talk down to him.