Leaning at the end of the wooden counter, Siegfried listened attentively to the tavern keeper's explanations. His gaze slid over the cluttered tables and he raised his voice to cover the ambient hubbub.

  "Taarg!"

  "Yes, knight?"

  "Hunger is beginning to make itself felt. Can we sit wherever we please, or do you have assigned seats?"

  "As long as your coins fall into my pocket, you can sit wherever you want," he replied nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders.

  The knight then turned toward the Noohrikane, a friendly smile softening his tired features. He pulled out a worn leather purse, making it tinkle slightly in his hand before handing it to her.

  "Here, Mei. Can you reserve us a room for the night, please? And order us something to eat, something simple but filling. Oh, and go see the coachman. Ask him if he wants to join us or if he needs anything."

  The specter nodded discreetly and moved away toward the door, her hood still pressed against her face, a furtive shadow among the busy silhouettes. However, as she crossed the threshold, the paladin perceived an acerbic murmur at a nearby table. Hunters were talking loud and clear, their faces tanned and scarified by the winds.

  "Look at that, guys! A Noohrikane, no doubt about it."

  "Hey! But you're right!" added another. "Even under her hood, she can't hide it. That hair so black it looks like incarnate darkness... And that walk. We spot their clan from leagues away, those cursed ones."

  "Abominations, you mean."

  "They say they sow ruin and awaken shadows wherever their steps lead them," launched a third, older than the other two, his chin pointed toward Mei as she slipped away.

  Still leaning on the counter, Siegfried remained stone-faced, his face impassive as a statue carved from rock. But his fingers clenched on the wood, knuckles whitening under contained tension.

  A few steps away, near the hunting board, Juuh'ma and R?chard also caught the acid words. Young Desrosiers gripped his bow, a cold gleam crossed his eyes, while the N'zonki slowly turned his head, his black pupils scrutinizing the hunters with an intensity that seemed to stop time.

  The Green-Gaze headed to their table. He fixed his gaze on that of the leader, a man with crossed scars like a desert map, and spoke in a low but sharp voice.

  "Listen well to my words, for they will be told to you only once. If any of you has any problem with the Noohrikane, know that he also has one with me."

  Barely had his words died when an oppressive shadow fell upon the hunters to engulf their table in sudden darkness, as if a cloud had swallowed the zenith. Emerging behind his brother, Juuh'ma revealed his titanic build as the origin of this penumbra, his black eyes, sharp as daggers, pierced each seated man. Bow in hand, R?chard flanked them, fingers ready to draw the string. From her beam, Plume glided silently to come perch on the colossus's shoulder, her claws dug into his thick skin, a winged sentinel perceiving the ambient hostility.

  "As long as my friend is in this tavern, I don't want to hear a single word about the Noohrikane. No rumor, no insult. Nothing. Have I made myself clear?" added Siegfried in an icy tone with a wild gleam in his gaze that made the hunters lower theirs, a raw authority in each syllable. "Once we're gone, think what you want, it will no longer concern me."

  Petrified by the words and Juuh'ma's suffocating shadow, the hunters nodded silently, their gazes fleeing like cornered beasts. The tension subsided, Siegfried pivoted on his heels and went to sit at a table with the members of his squadron.

  At that moment, the specter returned with a muffled gait and approached her chief.

  "The coachman told me he doesn't need anything, but he thanks you for the attention."

  "Thank you, Mei," he replied while pulling out a chair so she could sit down.

  Shortly after, Taarg and a server with massive shoulders emerged from the smoky kitchens. In their hands, four rough wooden trays loaded with dried meat with acrid fumes, accompanied by loaves of stale bread and overflowing mugs of foamy beer—a pitcher of clear water for the youngest. The squadron began their meal in hungry silence, but soon, a persistent murmur rose from neighboring tables, piercing the smoky atmosphere of the tavern.

  Not far from them, a circle of merchants and travelers with faces weathered by the roads leaned toward the center of their table, their voices muted. The squadron suspended its gestures, each member straining their ear toward these whispers that cut through the ambient hubbub like a blade through flesh.

  "Did you hear what happened at the Veiled Bastion?" whispered a man with a bushy red beard, trembling with worry. "People disappearing, as if swallowed by the lands. Not a single cry, not a trace."

  His companion, a young man with eyes ringed by the exhaustion of long roads, raised a jaded look.

  "Always and again these same legends of disappearances..." he breathed with a weariness that seemed to chill the atmosphere around them.

  At their table, the Stone Skin squinted his obsidian eyes and met Siegfried's sharp gaze. Mei instinctively tightened her grip on her pewter mug, leaning imperceptibly to not lose a single word. R?chard, his chewing slowed, stared intensely at the travelers' table, captivated by each syllable of their exchange. The air itself seemed to charge with palpable tension, heavy with ominous omens.

  The bearded man stared at his young companion for a long time, then exhaled a sigh charged with all the fatigue in the world.

  "Legends, you say?" he asked in a voice that carried the weight of years of bitter experience. "It shows that you've been treading these paths for little time, friend."

  He swept the table with his gaze, encompassing his companions with a weary gesture.

  "We who sit here have all lost loved ones to this curse. So keep your doubts to yourself, will you? Since the ancestors of our ancestors have walked these lands, lives disappear throughout Istalith—men, women, children. Age, race, nothing matters. One heartbeat, they're still breathing. The next, absolute void has swallowed them. Even entire hamlets vanish, leaving only the wind to testify to their existence."

  A woman with skin parchmented by harsh weather nodded gravely, her pupils shining with contained pain.

  "Robb speaks true..." her voice was nothing more than a broken breath. "In Rustole, barely two weeks ago, three of my cousins disappeared. They were still laughing before the Rest Knell. Upon waking..."

  She swallowed painfully.

  "Nothing. Not even the imprint of their steps on the threshold. Only their greybucks still wandered, bleating their distress into the void."

  "Forgive me... T?na, Robb... I didn't know..." apologized the young traveler, lowering his head, the weight of shame bowing his shoulders. His face changed in the sincere remorse of his imprudence.

  Taarg, who was discreetly observing the squadron from the counter, noticed their attention captivated by the exchange. With a muffled step, he approached their table, a full mug in hand and his grimy cloth carelessly thrown over his shoulder. Leaning toward them, he murmured in a grave voice tinged with an enigmatic smile.

  "Seeing your faces, this must be the first time you hear these stories. Am I wrong?"

  No verbal response came. Only a nod spoke for them.

  "These legends are as ancient as the ground on which we walk, knights," he resumed before his eyes seemed to lose themselves in a distant past.

  "When I was but an apprentice in the ranks of the Golden Lances, drowned in too-vast armor and cradled by too-grand dreams, already the veterans whispered these stories during encampments. An ancestral curse, they murmured, rooted so deeply in the bones of the world that it's an integral part of it. Unexplained disappearances that strike at the four horizons of the kingdom. It endures, immutable, unshakeable."

  "Nobody knows what it could be?" questioned the young archer with astonishment.

  "Nobody. The capital investigated, sent its best elements but nothing. Just the void. They even abandoned the idea of searching. However, some think that Gae?a herself is the cause. Dying for so long, she would feed on human blood to survive... Thousands of lives per year, that's the price for our world to subsist..." Taarg replied with a voice where lies had no place.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  When the tavern keeper moved away to serve another customer, Siegfried, who was listening attentively and reflecting, finally spoke.

  "These disappearance stories, I don't think they're linked closely or remotely with Shadow Fort," he said, tapping his fingers on the guard of his sword leaning against the table. "Given the accounts we just heard, it seems that everything that isn't flesh doesn't evaporate. But let's still keep this lead in a corner of our minds, we never know..."

  The rest of the squadron nodded at their chief's words when a massive clock hanging on the wall struck the seventh chime. Its grave tinkling resonated in the tavern, marking a welcome pause in the grueling day. They rose, abandoning the muffled murmurs of the table behind them. Once the gold coins were deposited on the counter, Siegfried and his warriors thanked Taarg with a friendly wave of the hand and they left the tavern.

  R?chard and Plume in the lead, Squadron VIII crossed the courtyard toward the inn.

  The interior, modest but neat, exhaled a smell of warm wax and fresh straw, tinged with a hint of dust that even daily sweepings couldn't chase away. The light stone walls, polished by years of maintenance, captured the soft glow of candles fixed in simple sconces, revealing discreet cracks carefully filled. The floor, made of worn but clean slabs, creaked under footsteps, scattered with fine trails of sand brought by travelers. In the center of the room, a massive dark wood counter, polished by use, stood under a metal sign where engraved letters—"Inn of the Sun"—gleamed faintly. To the left, a narrow staircase with steps polished by boots led to the upper floor, where several rooms aligned for passing guests. Robust stools bordered the counter, and a handful of low tables, surrounded by worn benches, invited rest.

  The innkeeper, a woman with graying hair pulled into a high bun, stopped writing and looked up from a yellowed register.

  "Welcome, knights," she called out in a shrill voice, her hands placed on the wood. "Your rooms are ready and waiting for you, second floor, third door on the right."

  She indicated the staircase with a simple nod of her chin.

  "Clean beds, water in the pitchers. And if you need to wash or anything else, you just have to push the door opposite your room."

  She returned to her register, the scratching of her pen resuming like a metronome.

  The squadron thanked her soberly, climbed the stairs, and entered a narrow corridor with bare walls, lit by a solitary candle whose flame flickered in a draft. Their room, a functional space with raw stone walls, contained four narrow beds with rough wooden frames, each furnished with a firm straw mattress and a threadbare but clean blanket. A low table, scratched but stable, bore a water pitcher and cracked goblets. A window with reinforced shutters let filter a single ray of copper light from the courtyard, where the shadows of Golden Lance sentinels glided under the stretched canvas.

  Juuh'ma collapsed first on a bed, the frame protesting with a crack under his weight, while R?chard placed his bow against the wall, Plume fluttering to perch on the table, her claws clicking softly. Siegfried leaned against the wall near the window and began removing his equipment to change his bandages. Mei, after depositing her bag, approached him, a leather purse clutched in her hands.

  "Sieg," she called to him, breaking the silence with her soft but firm voice. "Let me do it."

  He turned his head, his gaze meeting hers, and nodded discreetly.

  "Alright, go ahead," he said while sitting on the edge of his bed.

  The specter knelt at his side, unrolling the bandages with expert delicacy, revealing still-vivid but clean cuts.

  "Tomorrow morning, we should go to the shop to see if they have bandages and balm," she said while spreading an ointment with bitter herb scents, her precise fingers avoiding sensitive flesh. "The King gave us a good stock, but we can't know what awaits us. Better to be ready."

  "You're right. We'll stop by before our departure," the knight agreed, his eyes following the Noohrikane's hand movements.

  "I'm going there right now, my brother. Fatigue hasn't yet settled on my shoulders," the colossus expressed, rising from his bed before casting a glance toward R?chard. "Do you want to accompany me, my young friend?"

  As the two warriors left the room, Mei examined her chief's wounds, her forehead furrowed with attention.

  "It's healing well," she murmured with a hint of relief in her voice. "No infection, and the wounds are closing cleanly. Continue the ointment, and it'll be fine."

  She retied the bandages, tightening just enough, then carefully put away the purse.

  Siegfried sketched a smile at her in thanks.

  "We have just under three chimes ahead of us to rest. I'm going to take advantage of it. Don't feel obligated to watch over me, Mei, I'm doing very well. Go join them if you want."

  After greeting her chief and without the sound of her steps being heard on the floor, the Noohrikane also left the room. The knight lay down alone in the silence, the murmur of wind against the shutters accompanying his thoughts in the shadow.

  Still under the immutable brilliance of the zenith that calcined without respite the crust of an exsanguinated world, the second chime tore through the silence of the Sun's Refuge. A horn, deep and cavernous, vibrated through the stone, like a pulse extracted from the earth's entrails. In their room, the squadron tore itself from sleep. The harsh light, filtering through the iron-clad shutters, struck the worn mattresses and the sand-flecked floor. Siegfried stood up, his bandages tight against his flesh, a resolute gleam in his pupils.

  "Get up," he ordered before heading toward R?chard who was emerging from his bed to place a hand on his shoulder. "Time is passing, and Shadow Fort awaits. Go find the coachman, please, and warn him that we'll be leaving shortly."

  The young archer, still drowsy, nodded while putting away in his bag a bestiary he had bought the day before.

  "Count on me," he called out before rushing down the inn's staircase, his boots hammering the steps polished by generations of travelers.

  The squadron left the room, crossing the Refuge's central courtyard, where the vast canvas, stretched between the stone buildings, filtered the zenith's furnace. This artificial shadow, rare and precious in a world without night, draped the square with relative coolness, soothing the burning bite of the air. The Golden Lance sentinels, armor shimmering under the diffuse light, patrolled silently, their lances casting sharp shadows on the lifeless earth.

  At the center of the Refuge, a monolith engraved with worn arrows marked the crossroads. Eastward, the road led to the Veiled Bastion, to the southeast, to the Lake of Infinity. Without hesitation, they took the northeast route leading to Shadow Fort, abandoning the canvas's protective shadow to find again the pitiless bite of the embers.

  The carriage awaited them, R?chard already installed inside. The squadron rushed in eagerly, seeking refuge in the stifling darkness of the cabin. The coachman clicked his tongue and the zu'huns stirred, resuming their obstinate march toward the northeast.

  The journey stretched like an endless torment. More than eighty kilometers of desolation to endure, each jolt an agony, each creaking of the wheels a reminder of the interminable distance that still separated them from their destination. The heat transformed the cabin into an oven, the stale air burned lungs with each breath. The equines, exhausted, progressively slowed their pace, their flanks streaming with sweat, their breaths increasingly labored. The stops became frequent—a few gulps of tepid water, a respite in the carriage's derisory shade, before departing again into this merciless furnace.

  The chimes ticked by in monotonous ordeal. Limbs numb, backs broken by incessant jolts, the squadron sank into painful torpor, lulled by the dull hammering of hooves on hardened earth and the nagging creaking of overheated axles. Even conversations ceased, replaced by the collective panting of men on the edge of exhaustion.

  It was in this state of stupor that emerged, like a saving mirage, a troubled silhouette in the heat mists. A cart, pulled by two druskals and protected by a high-wind gradually took shape, its contours first uncertain then increasingly sharp. Hunters with rough appearances, draped in long white veils, rode the monsters pulling their trophy: the colossal carcass of a phalengor. The titanic insect, vast as three carriages, dragged its hooked legs in the dust, its ebony carapace split with gaping crevasses testifying to a fierce combat. Its mandibles, long as scythes, scraped the ground in a metallic screeching that made the zu'huns' ears prick up.

  The squadron's beasts grew agitated, snorting and stamping nervously, but the coachman brought them to order with an authoritative cry. One of the hunters, whose only distinguishable feature was his gaze under his turban wrapped around his face, shouted to the other.

  "You think we'll have enough with this one?!"

  "Depends on who we pawn off the ichor to. If we manage to sell it to the alchemists, I think it'll do the trick. They're paying better than the others right now!" his hunting companion replied from the other druskal.

  "I hope you're right."

  "Of course I'm right. Why are you saying that?"

  "Because I'm sick of hunting this damned giant insect," breathed the first. "I can't take its carapace anymore. You?"

  In the cabin, R?chard stood up to stick his head out the window.

  "A phalengor!" he exclaimed, mouth agape, with a voice vibrating with childlike wonder that momentarily pierced his fatigue.

  He pulled out his bestiary from his bag, his fingers running through the yellowed pages until falling on the monster's page.

  "It sets ambushes under the earth, makes the ground tremble to attract its prey. Its carapace is solid as rock. No weapon can pierce it. And its venom... it dissolves steel in the blink of an eye!"

  He looked up, seeking the hunters' gaze, but they, absorbed in their labor, ignored him.

  The two convoys crossed in a cloud of dust before each continuing their route, leaving behind them the crushing silence of the desert.

  Juuh'ma, a rare smile splitting his face despite exhaustion, said.

  "Your curiosity and fascination for things unknown to you will always surprise me."

  With a sharp sound, the young archer closed his book.

  "Don't you find it fantastic?" he questioned, astonished. "The hunting board? The monsters? The making of new weapons?"

  "Yes. But not as much as you, my young friend."

  Seeing the joy on his archer's face when he spoke of monsters, Siegfried decided to enter the conversation.

  "Have you already read your book entirely?"

  "Yes, Sieg."

  "Among all these monsters, there must be one that fascinates you more than the others, right?"

  Without any hesitation, R?chard turned the pages to land on his favorite and showed it to his chief.

  "The C?ndrav?rn! It seems there's one that has wings of flames, can you imagine? Wings of flames!"

  Her head resting against the cabin's burning window, Mei wanted to tease her young friend but before she could, she distinguished in the distance a fissure that seemed to cut the world in two. The specter informed the rest of the group and rose painfully from her seat to knock on the coachman's window.

  "Sir, is it the roofs of Shadow Fort that we glimpse?"

  "Yes, young lady," he called out while spitting out his dry herb he'd been chewing for far too long. "The black city finally stands before us."