Moonlight Rites

What the Ward does when the moon is full. (Creative interpretation.)

Canon status: creative interpretation.

The rite

On the night of the full moon, the Ward gathers in the ruined courtyard behind the Citadel — the one place the city's lights don't reach. Braziers of violet flame are set in a ring around the great stone roundel. The Black Warden stands at the roundel's center and reads the names of the fallen. No speeches. The moon does the rest.

What it isn't

It isn't worship — the Ward serves no god, and Nyra would say so plainly. It isn't magic, either, whatever the violet flames suggest to visitors. It is accounting: the Ward telling the night, once a month, that it remembers the cost. The oath says black is the color of its cost; the rite is the night the Ward wears it openly.

The Warden's part

Nyra reads every name herself, including the three of the Hollow Bell. Wardens say her voice doesn't change through the whole list. Sera Venn says that's because she's saving it for the walls.

Source notes

• Rites: creative interpretation. See the Sigil, Chronicles.