In the present, Jean-François questioned Gabriel about his journey from Lorson to San Michon. Gabriel described weeks of freezing travel along the Hollyroad with Frère Greyhand and Greyhand’s falcon, Archer, while grappling with guilt over Ilsa and confusion about his growing strength and strange healing. Greyhand was severe, ascetic, and largely silent, showing tenderness only to his bird and practicing self-flagellation. Gabriel detailed the Silversaints’ metallic silver tattoo “aegis,” explaining that faith and silver markings protect them better than armor against monsters. At Jean-François’s request, Gabriel bared his heavily tattooed, scarred torso, displaying extensive holy iconography.

Returning to the memory, Gabriel said the third rider was Aaron de Coste, an older, aristocratic-seeming initiate who treated Gabriel with disdain. When they camped in the Nordlund wilds, Greyhand habitually hung a captured, bagged vampire—called a wretched—from a tree while he and Aaron kept watch, sometimes smoking a red powder that bloodshot their eyes. One night, Aaron cut his finger; the blood scent roused the captive, which thrashed and begged. Greyhand unbagged it and brutally beat it with his silvered sword’s pommel until it whimpered. When Gabriel cried out for pity, Greyhand dragged him close to the creature, letting it reach for his bleeding lip, and struck Gabriel to extinguish his pity, declaring that vampires feel only hunger.

Shaken, Gabriel asked what the monsters were. Greyhand calmed and began to explain. He taught that victims of vampires do not always rise; turning is unpredictable and can occur heartbeats to weeks after death, locking the body in its death-state. Before Daysdeath, late-risen mindless vampires would perish at dawn, but the sun now no longer destroys them, so the risen wander and multiply. Greyhand revealed the worsening war: in western Talhost, thousands of wretched roam, and four months prior, a highblood lord, Fabién Voss, led an army that took Vellene, slew the emperor’s cousin, and now advances, calling himself the Forever King.

Gabriel, fearing his own thirst after biting Ilsa, asked how he fit into this. Greyhand pressed about Gabriel’s true father. Aaron bluntly stated that Gabriel’s father was a vampire. Greyhand added that Gabriel is a paleblood—halfbreed—like them, the change awakening near manhood. Palebloods inherit some vampiric gifts such as strength and speed, and the bloodlust that can drive them mad, yet they can seek redemption by serving the Church.

Greyhand defined the Ordo Argent as a divinely sanctioned hunter brotherhood—an imperial “razor” working alongside the emperor’s armies. Their task is to slay high-value vampire leaders—the “shepherds”—so their flocks scatter. He rejected the label “assassins,” naming them hunters with a holy mandate: “So long as they burn, we shall be flame … so long as they sin, we shall be saints,” he and Aaron intoned together, affirming, “And we are silver.”

Gabriel, horrified by his heritage yet inspired by Greyhand and Aaron’s example, embraced the vow in his heart. Remembering Amélie’s death and his sin against Ilsa, he resolved to join fully, become the fiercest and most faithful of the Silversaints, and send every vampire to hell in vengeance and in hope of redeeming his soul—unaware of the ordeals awaiting him.