"I will hide nothing. My light will reveal all that his moon concealed. But not every truth will need to be shouted. Truth will be like my sun: to look at it directly will blind."

  — Words of Solar?s, XXXII

  Revealed to Thérion the Veiled, Year 1 of the Day without End

  CHAPTER XII

  After two days of grueling journey that had tested them to their bones, the mining city finally rose around the fifth chime at the turn of a fractured plain, a nightmarish vision in an already asphyxiated world. Its colossal ramparts, erected in blocks of blackish stone, formed a menacing diamond whose each angle seemed to challenge travelers to approach. The surface of the walls, soiled by decades of coal dust, bore the sinister stigmata of Shadow Fort's justice: charred bodies, hung from its ramparts like macabre scarecrows, swayed limply in the burning breeze. Their faces, bearing the stigmata of atrocious suffering, were mummified by the eternal heat, a mute warning to anyone who would consider defying the authority of the place.

  The castle, squat and hostile, rose at the back of the city like a guard watching over its prisoners. Its four walls, devoid of the slightest ornament, raised their edges blunted by centuries of abrasive wind. Short towers, topped with cracked battlements from which hung other remains, bore torn banners whose tatters snapped like shrouds in the tainted air.

  From their position, the squadron could not see the city's arteries, but the anarchic arrangement of rooftops—some sagging, others collapsed, forming a labyrinth of broken tiles and twisted chimneys—betrayed the existence of tortuous alleys below. These gray stone roofs, pressed against each other like rotten teeth, exhaled a meager smoke that rose painfully toward that pitiless sky. No light filtered from the dwellings, no sign of life pierced this geometry of desolation.

  The city, the kingdom's new mining pivot for two decades now, seemed rather to be dying than living. An oppressive silence, almost tangible, enveloped the place, broken only by the lugubrious croaking of flesh-eaters circling above the hanged, and the dull moan of wind in the dilapidated structures. The mine, invisible behind a low ridge, nevertheless weighed on the atmosphere with all its morbid weight, its poisoned breath draping Shadow Fort in a veil of ash and death.

  This city offered no comfort to the exhausted traveler, no promise of hospitality. It was a menacing sentinel, pitiless guardian of a treasure buried in the bowels of a disintegrating world, and it seemed to defy anyone who would dare cross its gates.

  Siegfried gripped his sword's guard, his eyes squinted under the blinding light, his limbs still sore from the journey.

  "Here we are," he proclaimed, knowing that the moment the city had appeared to them, their mission had just begun.

  A few moments later, the carriage stopped with a screech on the fractured earth, just before the southeast entrance. The zu'huns refused to go further, as if refusing to enter the city. The air, saturated with anthracite dust, scraped the throat even more than inside the desolate lands, each breath carrying a bitterness of soot and burned metal.

  Siegfried descended first, his boots clacked on the cracked ground, followed by the other members of the Vaan Hart squadron, Plume nervously fluttering on her master's shoulder. The city stretched before them, encircled by a wall of raw stone, its polished surfaces streaked with dancing ashes, which framed a colossal forged iron gate. Its geometric patterns—hammers and pickaxes—faded beneath a crust of black dust, as if the city sought to forget its reason for being. The wind, rare and burning, made the winch chains shiver in a metallic moan that seemed to bear Shadow Fort's mourning.

  "I leave you here, knight," the coachman called out to Siegfried. "My beasts refuse to go further, this place seems to frighten them."

  He pointed to a squat building, barely discernible behind a curtain of swirling dust, its stone walls seeming to melt into the horizon.

  "I'll wait for you at the stables, over there, further south."

  The Green-Gaze inclined his head, a flash of respect crossing his irises.

  "We'll come back for our belongings later. Gratitude, good man."

  The coachman clicked his tongue, a sound sharp as a whip, and the equines stirred, dragging the carriage in a cloud that clung to the warriors like a curse.

  The squadron approached the barricades, where two soldiers in blackened leather armor, steel-tipped halberds in hand, stood guard. Their faces, hollowed by dust and fatigue, bore a cold mistrust. Their gazes slid one by one over the Solar Guard members.

  Siegfried stepped forward, his posture straight, his voice clear despite the suffocating heat.

  "Sentinels. We are mandated by Captain Ardahm," he announced while approaching the two guards. "Please open this gate. Steward Graven awaits us for urgent business."

  The sentinels exchanged a furtive glance, their weapons lowering barely, as if reluctantly. One of them, a one-eyed colossus with intertwined scars, shouted an order to a soldier crouched in the shadow of a grimy guardhouse.

  "Open!"

  A winch moaned, its chains clanking in a lugubrious echo, and the heavy iron gates opened toward them with a metallic screech, revealing the city like a gaping purulent wound under the implacable sun.

  Beyond the threshold, Shadow Fort unveiled its putrid entrails.

  The main street, paved with disjointed stones soiled by decades of soot, snaked between leprous facades with rotten shutters. Slight whitish vapors escaped from cracks in the ground, exhaling fumes that stung the throat and sometimes blurred vision. Blackish channels flowed along the walls, carrying wastewater whose pestilential odor assaulted the nostrils. Rats darted between the rubble, the only living beings seeming to prosper in this rot while on the sagging rooftops, crows as dark as soot croaked, their piercing cries resonating between the walls like lamentations. This place inspired nothing good, each stone oozing curse and decadence.

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  Although they were still in Solheim territory, as soon as they entered the city, they felt that their presence here was not welcome. With a simple gesture from their chief, the squadron put its senses on alert. As they advanced and no matter where they placed their steps, hostile eyes spied on them from barricaded windows, venomous murmurs rose in their passage like so many whispered curses. Hooded silhouettes disappeared into adjacent alleys as soon as they spotted them, and doors slammed sharply at their approach.

  But it was on Siegfried that the place's animosity crystallized most. His immaculate white veil, brilliant symbol of purity and chivalry, clashed violently with the universe of soot and corruption surrounding them. Like a beacon in the darkness, it attracted all hateful gazes, all tensions. Children with blackened faces pointed at him whispering incomprehensible words, women spat ostentatiously in his passage, and men clenched their fists with palpable rage. The polished steel of his cuirass reflected the harsh sunlight like a challenge thrown at this city that had made darkness its own. The deeper they plunged into the city, the more palpable this hostility became, oppressive, and the less safe they felt.

  "But what is this cursed place?" murmured the young archer who broke the oppressive silence, taking his bow in hand with an instinctive gesture.

  After coughing briefly because of vapors rising from the ground, he resumed with forced humor.

  "The captain had warned us. But there, I can say I felt less oppressed among the flames of Foam Port... At least there, we knew where the danger came from."

  Behind him, Juuh'ma, whose chains clinked sinisterly with each step, closed the march.

  "We are obviously not welcome here, my comrades," he said in his grave voice. "However, what I feel goes well beyond simple hostility or resentment due to the taxes that asphyxiate them. This place is gnawed by a much deeper evil, more ancient. An evil I prefer not to name."

  While casting glances over his shoulder, with a slow and deliberate gesture, he unrolled his chains.

  "Let's keep our senses sharp."

  "If you refuse to say it, I'll say it in your place," the Noohrikane retorted under her leather mask, her dark gaze scrutinizing every shadowy corner as she advanced before R?chard, daggers already in hand.

  "We are surrounded by Nihibel worshipers."

  With her index and middle finger, she pointed to several marks engraved on the surrounding walls.

  "Look."

  "Crescent moons," the young archer behind her was astonished, anger beginning to appear on his face.

  "And these aren't the first I've glimpsed since our entry," Mei added, following her chief with a silent step. "These heretical symbols are everywhere, Sieg."

  "I'd like to tell you otherwise," said the paladin from the head of the formation, hand on the guard of his half-drawn longsword. "But that would be lying. This city is gangrened by the cult of Night. No doubt possible."

  Thus, in the greatest vigilance, they advanced through the city until at a grimy crossroads, they came upon a sign of rotten wood.

  "This way," Siegfried indicated with his free hand before continuing. "The castle isn't far anymore but let's not lower our guard. Even once within its walls. Understood?"

  "Yes, Sieg," Mei, R?chard, and Juuh'ma responded in chorus.

  The squadron followed its chief on a paved path converging toward the extreme northeast, where the squat castle dominated the city like a predator watching its prey. They passed a deserted square, centered on a dried-up well whose frayed ropes hung like specters, its cracked edge eaten by dust and years. Miners with hollow faces lingered there, their tense silences replacing all murmurs, their fleeting gazes betraying a deep fear.

  The fortress finally stood before them, a mass of dark stone even more menacing up close. Its four walls, blackened by decades of coal dust, were dotted with suspicious stains that dangerously resembled splashes of dried blood. Rusted chains hung from the battlements, vestiges of ancient torments while hundreds of human skulls were embedded in the masonry at regular intervals, their hollow eye sockets seeming to follow each movement of visitors in eternal surveillance. The smell of death and putrefaction emanating from it was so strong it seemed almost visible, forming a sickening miasma around the edifice.

  Its doors, in wood studded with iron and adorned with rusted nails arranged in ritual patterns, opened onto a dark vestibule where air stagnated, heavy with an odor mixing extinguished wax, rusted metal, and something more organic, more repugnant. No standard floated from the masts, as if the city openly refused to represent Solheim. Four guards in heavy clanking armor, faces hidden under helms adorned with lunar symbols, framed the entrance with their menacing silhouettes.

  Siegfried, despite the oppression weighing on his shoulders, proudly straightened his stature and spoke in a firm voice that resonated in the tainted air.

  "On direct order of Captain Ardahm, we demand to see Steward Graven. Lead us to him without delay, please."

  A guard, closed face under a tarnished helm, signaled to a younger soldier, a boy with rapid step, whose too-large armor seemed to swallow him.

  "Follow me, knights," he stammered, his voice trembling under the weight of the paladin's authority.

  The interior of the edifice exhaled a cold austerity that froze the blood. The ground floor served only as a functional passageway between the city and the path leading to the earth's bowels: a vast bare hall with naked stone walls, without the slightest ornament, where the incessant flows of grimy miners and surly foremen crossed. Small polished mirrors, fixed to the corners of walls and pillars, reflected the harsh sunlight in blinding beams that carved the space into zones of shadow and brutal clarity. These dancing reflections created a disorienting atmosphere, where silhouettes fragmented into trembling luminous shards.

  An immense reinforced double-leaf door dominated the north wall, marking the entrance toward the mine. Its massive iron, polished by thousands of moist and nervous hands, bore the stigmata of constant use: scratches, dents, brownish rust stains that oozed like dried blood. A metal bar, thick as a man's arm, locked it, and additional chains hung from its oversized hinges, testifying to the necessity of containing something disturbing that one might awaken if one dug too deeply.

  The upper corridors perpetuated this oppressive nakedness, their dark stone walls devoid of any decoration. The small mirrors proliferated there as well, creating a labyrinth of reflections that seemed to monitor each movement of visitors. A strange odor permeated the atmosphere—an artificial and sickening perfume, mixture of sweet resins and rancid oils, which vainly attempted to mask darker fumes: smells of sulfur, molten metal, and something more repugnant, which seemed to rise from the depths.

  Empty armors, aligned along the corridors like forgotten sentinels, seemed to follow the squadron with their hollow helmets, their rusted joints gleaming faintly in the reflected light games. Their metal plates, tarnished and dented, bore the marks of ancient combats, and their bases were circled with chains, as if even these metal vestiges needed to be shackled.

  A stone staircase, with steps worn by centuries of passage, their edges rounded like pebbles polished by the sea, led them to the fourth and last floor, where the administrative quarters were located. The soldier guided the squadron through a narrow corridor, bordered by closed doors whose rusted hinges creaked under the slightest draft. They stopped before a black wood door, reinforced with tarnished nails, its grain marked by ancient notches that resembled claw marks. The guard knocked two sharp blows, his hand trembling slightly under the weight of the oppressive atmosphere.