Halbrecht's voice carried.

  It did not matter that the camp sprawled beyond the broken road, or that the castle gates loomed above us like a broken jaw, or that fungal growth had swallowed the courtyard stones in yered shelves of pallid growth. His voice threaded through it all—rich, sonorous, sharpened by conviction.

  The new camp had been established just outside the castle's outer gate, where the ground rose into a shallow crescent of cracked fgstone. Once, it must have been a receiving court. Now it was a bowl of damp rot and pale bloom. Fungus spread across everything: yered fans like stacked parchment, veined bulbs that pulsed faintly under runelight, mats of fibrous growth that recoiled when stepped on. The air smelled faintly sweet, like fruit left too long in a sealed room.

  Above it all stood Marrud-Vael—the fortress from which the dead City had taken its name.

  The castle rose in fused tiers of bck stone, its outer walls thick and sloped, built to outst centuries. Buttresses climbed like frozen waterfalls toward narrow arrow slits. The gatehouse alone could have swallowed a vilge chapel. Whatever banners once hung from its heights had long since rotted away, leaving iron brackets jutting like broken teeth.

  The fungus had climbed the lower walls, pale ribs creeping upward, as if the mountain itself were attempting to recim the fortress.

  Halbrecht stood before the assembled faithful on a raised crate draped in white cloth.

  "Fear is a liar," he called, voice ringing against stone. "It whispers that you are alone. It tells you that suffering is meaningless."

  Lanternlight flickered across uplifted faces. Padins stood shoulder to shoulder with borers and priests. Their breath rose in the chill morning air.

  "But you are not alone," Halbrecht continued. "You stand in the light of the Goddess. You stand in the lineage of those who conquered darkness before you."

  A murmur answered him, fragmented at first, then not.

  One sound. Resonant. Unified.

  Behind him, the castle loomed like a listening thing.

  "I ask not that you be unafraid," he said, softer now. "Only that you walk forward together."

  "Amen," the crowd roared.

  The word rolled outward in a single tone, vibrating in my ribs.

  I grimaced.

  Halbrecht was good at this. He understood cadence, pause, resonance. He built tension and released it like a musician.

  That was not the problem.

  If he had preached endurance, compassion, the sanctity of the individual soul, I might have stayed.

  Instead, he preached unity as surrender. Purpose as obedience. Devotion as subsumption into something rger and faceless.

  And the crowd answered him as one body.

  It made my skin crawl.

  I slipped sideways through the edge of the gathering and pushed aside the fp of a nearby tent.

  Inside, the air was warmer.

  Candles burned low in a ring of iron holders, their smoke carrying the faint scent of myrrh. The murmur here was softer, human, uneven.

  Lumiere knelt at the center.

  Her mantle pooled around her like still water. Her hands were csped with those beside her—a ring of padins, priests, and camp staff kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Heads bowed. Eyes closed.

  I spotted Francine among the group, shoulders trembling faintly as she breathed. Ard knelt to her right, posture rigid even in prayer.

  "...grant us crity," Lumiere murmured, voice low enough that the words felt shared rather than projected. "Grant us mercy when strength fails. And grant us the grace to return what remains of us to Your light."

  Their joined hands tightened, a reverent silence holding between them.

  The brush of my boots broke it.

  Lumiere opened one eye and found me immediately.

  She did not speak. She only inclined her head in acknowledgment before closing her eyes again.

  Then I felt the presence of someone beside me.

  Rocher.

  He raised a finger to his mouth, eyes flicking to the kneeling circle.

  I leaned slightly toward him.

  "Sorry," I whispered. "Nerves."

  He studied me from the corner of his eye, then exhaled softly.

  Today was the day.

  From here on, there would be no more incremental advances. No careful probing. No retreat.

  We would take the castle or be buried beneath it.

  "Don't worry," he murmured. "Same goes for all of us."

  His fingers brushed my back, brief and grounding.

  "And you're not the most nervous one here."

  He tipped his chin toward the far corner.

  Phymera sat curled against the tent wall, trembling.

  Even from a distance, she looked wrong.

  Her limbs were drawn inward, posture compact, as if she were attempting to occupy less space than her body required. The candlelight caught in the pnes of her face and the resembnce felt uncanny in a way it never had inside the Forge.

  There, she had seemed comfortable in her borrowed skin.

  Here, she looked like a mispced reflection.

  She still wore my form.

  Rocher frowned. "Any idea why she's still you?"

  "Only a guess," I said. "Of everyone here, you most resemble the First Men. She may have anchored to that unconsciously."

  He balked.

  "In the game, she'd always default to whichever heroine had the highest affinity at the moment."

  Rocher shifted uncomfortably. "That's... disturbing."

  He watched her for another moment.

  "...though it is kind of working," he admitted. "I know it's not you, but when I see your form like that, I can't help but be concerned."

  He moved toward her, and I followed.

  "Hey, Phymera," he asked gently, crouching at eye level. "How are you holding up?"

  Phymera grunted.

  The sound was small and dissatisfied.

  Rocher rested his forearms on his knees. "Would you not be more comfortable in a combat-appropriate form? We're about to head into battle after all."

  Her eyes flicked toward him.

  "No," she said. "This much should be sufficient."

  Her voice carried the faint metallic undertone it always did, as if something deeper resonated beneath it.

  "My role here is not combat. As such, only this small portion of me is required. My primary body remains within the Forge, so that my continuity is maintained even if this fragment is destroyed."

  Rocher blinked. "...So you're something like a scout."

  "A mere fragment," she insisted, drawing tighter.

  I nodded. Her part would come ter.

  I was still deciding how much of that to expin when the prayer circle shifted.

  Hands released. Cloth rustled. Knees straightened.

  "Thank you, Your Holiness." Francine held onto Lumiere's hands, flush with awe.

  Others echoed their gratitude in softer tones, before leaving one by one.

  After the group had finally dispersed, Lumiere approached us.

  "If it eases your nerves," she said, "you two are welcome to join the evening service."

  I let out a short breath. "If we manage to survive the day, I'll take you up on that."

  She nodded. A faint smile touched her mouth.

  The air inside the castle was colder.

  Seraphine descended a narrow spiral stair just ahead of me, one hand trailing the stone wall, the other gripping tightly onto Pulseweaver. A dozen padins moved around us in disciplined silence, armor whispering against itself. A handful of priests followed, their nterns hooded to narrow beams that slid along the stone like cautious fingers.

  Tomás was near the front, shoulders nearly brushing the inner wall as he navigated the tight turn. The stair had been built for rger bodies. Even with his size, he looked diminished by it.

  We had divided into three groups.

  The rgest—Halbrecht's—would hold the ground floor.

  Rocher, Evelyn, and Lumiere took a smaller group upwards toward the roof.

  Seraphine and I had been assigned the lower levels.

  The descent tightened around us.

  No one spoke. It was not discipline alone; it was the shared understanding that sound traveled differently in pces like this. That whatever y below would hear us long before we saw it.

  Breath slowed. Footfalls softened. Even the priests seemed reluctant to let their robes whisper.

  Seraphine was the one who broke the taut silence.

  "Why am I the one who gets stuck with basement duty?"

  A padin ahead of her coughed, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the stone.

  "I haven't had a proper night's rest since arriving here," she compined, not quietly. "Hard ground. Damp air. And not a single soft mattress in sight. I was led to believe this title came with privileges."

  Several of the padins exchanged nervous gnces.

  I stepped closer and set my fingers at the base of her neck, kneading the knot of tension there.

  "Come now, Seraphine," I murmured. "You've survived far worse."

  She made an involuntary sound of relief.

  A ripple of quiet chuckles moved through the line.

  The tension eased, just barely.

  At the base of the stair, we emerged into a long corridor.

  A priest lifted his hand. Holy Light bloomed above his palm, washing the passage in pale radiance.

  The light revealed motes suspended in the air, unmoving, as if the corridor had not been disturbed in years.

  Doors lined both sides—heavy, iron-banded, identical, set at measured intervals. The stone floor sloped almost imperceptibly toward a central drain channel cut along the length of the hall.

  The air was stale and dry, thick with dust and a faint chalky scent.

  We could not see the end of it.

  Seraphine gnced toward one of the priests. He flinched at her attention and began jotting in a small ledger, hand moving quickly despite the dim light.

  The castle was a maze. Someone had to record the path we took, or else we'd vanish into it.

  I squinted, studying the corridor.

  Narrow. Limited maneuvering space. Poor visibility.

  I didn't like it.

  "Look alive," I said quietly. "We clear these doors two at a time, alternating. Watch our rear. We don't want anything in here catching us by surprise."

  I moved toward on the first door, and pushed.

  It didn't give. I frowned.

  Tomás stepped forward. "Here. Allow me, Miss Cire."

  I stepped back to give him the space. "Just be careful with your ribs."

  He nodded, then set his shoulder against the wood and heaved. The hinges groaned, the sound thick and reluctant, before yielding.

  Inside: stone floor, a chamberpot, a scatter of desiccated straw colpsed into itself.

  Dust y undisturbed across the threshold until Tomás's boot broke it.

  There was nothing else there.

  "That's strange," I said.

  We moved to the next door.

  Empty.

  Another.

  Empty again.

  The corridor felt longer each time we returned to it. Even the soft clink of armor began to sound wrong, as if the corridor resented it.

  Then—a sharp shout. A murmur rose ahead.

  I pushed past the others.

  Just like before, the room beyond was bare stone.

  Except for the pile.

  Bones rose in a mound taller than I was. Yellowed ribs and femurs, vertebrae stacked like crude masonry. Dust y thick between them, yered and undisturbed.

  At the top rested a skull.

  It was the size of my torso.

  A First Man.

  I gnced at the walls. No chains. No restraints. No markings.

  Only the remains at the center, ravaged by time.

  I exhaled slowly. "There's probably no point going further."

  The others angled their heads toward me.

  "This was a prison," I said. "It's unlikely to open on the other end."

  Seraphine opened her mouth—

  A sound interrupted her.

  Something struck stone down the hall. A hollow ctter, then stillness.

  We turned as one. Holy Light swung toward the corridor, shadows recoiling ahead of it.

  We squinted.

  For a moment there was only darkness—and the sound of our own breathing.

  Then something shifted, beyond the reach of the light.

  The padin nearest me tightened his grip on his sword.

  Seraphine did not hesitate. Pulseweaver rose in one smooth motion.

  "Contact."

  Light gathered along the length of her staff, threads of violet-white energy weaving between the prongs with a dry, electric hiss.

  The corridor fshed.

  The bolt struck the darkness with a concussive crack, the impact snapping off stone and racing back down the hall in hard echoes. Dust shook loose from the ceiling. The light burned an afterimage into my vision.

  For a heartbeat there was silence.

  Then a scream.

  Raw. Old. Vioted by the light.

  The padins surged forward as one.

  "Shields!" one barked.

  Seraphine was already drawing power again, eyes narrowed, expression irritated rather than afraid—as if the dark had committed the offense of existing without permission.

  The corridor no longer felt empty.

  Something was moving toward us.