A broken heart paved the way with pieces to a shrine he'd never truly cared to visit. Arah's kindness had lifted the weary soul chained within his mortal body, but it had done little to fully erase the horrors of what Kaj was feeling. Experiencing. The Veins held only bad memories, the most recent an echo of screaming words and pain, pain of the highest, scalding degree. He carried the truth with him in the short cut of his mane, the stubborn limp of his leg. A thousand battles lost and won, a thousand more to be found with the rising of the sun.

Home was a thousand miles away, a ball and chain as effective as Kahlua had once thought of love, of foals. All in the name of the game. She had cared little, in the end. He had been a means to an end, perhaps. Whatever her motive, her guilt or her innocence, it was always Kaj who had to pay the price. The toll mounted higher with every passing fortnight, until he was scraping his bones and sucking out his own marrow to pay for the sins he'd never committed.

Kaj had never really been a believer. Faith had little meaning in his life, for love had always been his driving force. Never religion, never faith. What could have ever been stronger than love? He had foolishly believed it would always remain there, that he would never be lacking or found wanting for love. In the end, he had been left with nothing but the hollow ache in his chest and the rattle of his persistent breaths in his lungs. Suicide was a thought without borders, leeching off the weak and the strong, the soldiers and the philosophers. Kaj was no exception to this rule, and it antagonized him. Whispered lies and serpentine promises into his ears, even when he shut himself against them and tried to move on.

Desperation moved a man to scale mountains, scour the depths of the ocean, if only for a purpose. Desperation moved him to the Veins, idly kicking the broken pieces of his heart that had lead him there, wondering if it was worth it to pick up the pieces. Perhaps to be soulless, heartless, was a kinder fate than what Kaj had been awarded.

Two others were present as he arrived, contrasts on a blue shock setting. Freshly fallen snow and the swathe of night at high darkness. Golden stars and bloodied shores. And between them, he their medium. Pale sunlight and earthen hues, summer skies and lily petals. Their words graced his ears but each was left behind as he moved towards where Ophelia - for he knew her, as he knew all rumors and gossipers, infamy and martyrs - had lain her humble gift. There was nothing he could give, nothing he had brought to signify his quiet plea.

Moving past them like a wraith with naught but the sound of his hooves on rock, he knelt at the far end of the Sun God's shrine. The yin to his herd's yang. The lord he embodied, the one he'd always subconsciously lent more favor. Before their eyes, uncaring of their judgments, the king bowed his mighty head and attempted to not weep.

"Lord, give me strength," was the beginning of his warbled plea. A desperate, broken man at a shattered shrine. The irony was profoundly striking. "I do not know what I have done...but I ask you light my way, that I may guide my people home to safety. That I may be the soldier they need. I beg of you, give me strength," he choked, voice quiet but uncaring if it carried.

He pressed his bare crown to the soil, tears behind his lids but restrained before they fell. Let them mock the fallen king, in all his disheveled glory. He could care less what they thought of him. He was just a man, with an immortal load upon his broken shoulders. Turning, he cast his gaze to Ophelia, the stud unknown and a ghost to his eyes. "Why do you have such faith?" he croaked. He needed to know, needed to see. "I have nothing, Lady Ophelia. Show me how I can have faith."