Chương 57: 24-2.Erosion, Dungeon, and Carrion

The rest of the day was tedious in a way that bordered on cruelty. Not the comfortable kind of tedium—not the kind that means nothing is wrong. The other kind. The kind where you know something is moving beneath the surface, and you still have to stand on the bank and pretend you're just enjoying the sun. Everyone went through the motions. The castle bells rang on schedule. Servants ran their routes. The kitchen kept producing smoke. Soldiers kept walking their patrols.

Even the snow falling against the window ledges had the audacity to do so quietly and on time. After rejoining the company, Alvira carried on as though nothing had happened. Coordinating personnel, reviewing supplies, arranging watch rotations, confirming tomorrow's readiness. Her voice was cold and precise as a well-honed blade—wherever it passed, things fell into line. From the outside, she looked more like a reliable second-in-command than ever. The kind you'd want to hand everything to and simply walk away.

But I could tell there was something extra wound into that calm. Like a bowstring drawn past its comfortable range—not yet broken, but vibrating at a frequency too fine for most people to catch. Erina wasn't faring much better. She pushed through the day on willpower alone, continuing to treat the injured. White bandages, the smell of medicinal herbs, pale pink threads of blood spreading through basins of warm water—and her own face, so drained it was nearly translucent.

What had happened in the spire last night sat in my head like a splinter I couldn't reach. I wasn't touching it. That didn't make it go away. The worst part was that she still had to act like everything was fine. That, specifically, made me furious in a way I couldn't do anything useful with. Though I wasn't exactly in a position to say so. I was the one who'd said what I'd said last night.

If I walked up to her now with a face full of I'm also struggling with this, I'd be the kind of person who stabs someone and then asks solicitously whether it hurts. Several times throughout the day, I caught sight of Conrad and his old steward moving through the corridor on the far side of the hall. They always stopped in exactly the right place. Right by the window. Right where the light fell at an angle. Right where a man's gaze could rest on Erina without anyone being able to hear what he was saying.

The steward kept his head slightly bowed, like a man delivering a report. Conrad watched with those half-lidded eyes, wearing that particular smile noble families seemed to practice in front of mirrors—calibrated to sit precisely between warmth and theater. Looking at that face, what came to mind wasn't the silver candelabras or gilded cups from last night's banquet. It was the cutlery. The knives and forks under those immaculate white napkins, still faintly stained with meat.

And the words I'd swallowed back down in that corridor—the ones I wasn't supposed to have heard. Daughter of Valenne III. Fifty thousand heavy cavalry. Those words, paired with the way Conrad looked at Erina, put something cold and unpleasant in the pit of my stomach. After lunch, I sat in our temporary quarters and cleaned my longsword. It was the kind of task that required nothing from your brain, which made it ideal for thinking. The cloth moved along the blade inch by inch, pulling up a cold, clean reflection.

The steadier your hands, the clearer your head became. Too quiet. Not just the room. The whole castle was too quiet. As though something on the other side of every wall, every door, every staircase landing was waiting patiently for us to run out of patience first. Then rapid footsteps outside the door. I looked up just as Jessi nearly crashed through the doorframe. I stared at her. It took something considerable to genuinely rattle Jessi.

Under normal circumstances, she had the energy of someone who could steal two loaves of bread on the way to her own execution and still find it funny. But the woman standing in my doorway now had a face the color of something dredged out of a snowbank. Her lips had lost their color. Her chest was heaving. Even that particular brand of infuriating, knife-sharp liveliness she usually carried seemed to have been physically removed. I set the cloth across my knee and kept my voice level.

"What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Cedric..." Not young master. Not little young master. My stomach dropped. That meant this was worse than her face suggested.

"You said this morning... that something was wrong with this place." Her voice came out uneven.

"Right?" I set the longsword slowly on the table beside me and looked at her.

"Yes. What happened?" Jessi opened her mouth. Her throat seemed to catch on something. She drew a breath—like she was trying to get it all out at once—and when the words finally came, her voice was shaking in a way I'd never heard from her before.

"I just... saw something."

"Saw what?" Her fingers were trembling. No—her whole body was trembling. Not the sharp, reactive flinch of surprise. Something slower and deeper, like someone whose mind was still trapped in whatever image it couldn't escape.

"That man. Conrad." Her voice cracked on the name.

"He ate one of the maids." Silence. Something struck the inside of my chest, hard—but my mind, in the same instant, went completely, almost unnaturally clear. The kind of clarity that sharpens everything down to edges. My own breathing sounded measured, precise, almost cold. I looked at her steadily.

"Jessi." My voice came out quieter than before.

"Do you know what the penalty is for defaming a noble?" The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. She looked up at me sharply, and for a second there was something in her eyes that was close to breaking.

"Cedric!" Too loud. The footsteps in the corridor outside paused. Something shifted in the room next door. I stood up.

"Quiet." She went rigid at the word. I walked to my sword, slid it back into its scabbard, buckled the belt, and lowered my voice to almost nothing.

"Come with me. And don't raise your voice again."

"But I really saw it—I'm not making this up, it wasn't just a bite, it wasn't—""I know." I cut her off.

"Which is exactly why you need to stop talking." I didn't give her time to argue. I moved, and she followed. In the corridor, Jessi's face was still the color of old ash. I walked at an even pace—not fast enough to draw attention, not slow enough to mean nothing was wrong. Inside, I was running through every possibility. She'd been mistaken? No. Jessi would pull pranks. Jessi would pick pockets. Jessi would needle me until I considered early retirement from human interaction.

But she would not lie about something like this. And more to the point—what I'd seen on her face wasn't shock. It was fear. Real fear. The kind that doesn't require a second question. I knocked on Alvira's door. Two beats of silence from inside before footsteps crossed the floor. The door opened. She looked at me first. Then at Jessi, standing behind me with a face like parchment. Her brow drew together, fractionally. Then she said:"Come in." We stepped inside. She shut the door behind us.

The soft click of the latch settling into place carried a strange finality—like it had closed out the light and the sound of the corridor along with everything else. Alvira turned, crossed her arms, and leaned against the table. Looking at us.

"You had better have a reasonable explanation for interrupting me."

"Conrad has committed a crime," I said. Her expression didn't change.

"Jessi saw him kill and consume a maidservant." This time, Alvira went quiet. Not disbelief. Not shock. The other kind of silence—the kind that falls when you've just received the worst possible answer, and for one moment, even your breathing stops to acknowledge it. Her gaze moved to Jessi.

"You saw this yourself." Jessi's lips moved. She swallowed once, like the image had surfaced again behind her eyes and she was fighting to keep it down.

"I was just trying to find a shortcut..." Her voice had gone dry and hollow.

"There's a corner down the east passage—the door wasn't latched properly. I heard someone crying first. I thought it was a servant getting scolded..." She stopped. Her throat moved.

"The maid was pinned to the floor. She was still alive. Still moving." A pause.

"Conrad wasn't... biting her." Alvira's eyes darkened.

"What do you mean?" Jessi hugged her arms tight around herself, like she was still cold.

"That's not how a person eats," she whispered.

"His mouth opened too wide. Wrong wide. The maid was still struggling, but her voice kept getting smaller and smaller... I didn't stay to watch. I just ran." The silence in the room had weight to it. Even the wind outside the window seemed to have dropped its voice by several registers. I didn't look at Alvira. I kept my eyes fixed on the strip of shadow the winter light had stretched across the table's edge, and spoke slowly:"Do you trust the word of a thief?" Alvira didn't answer immediately.

I answered for both of us.

"I don't trust her words." I raised my eyes to meet hers.

"I trust Jessi." For once, Jessi didn't reach for a joke. She just kept her head down, fingers still trembling. Alvira watched her for a long time. Long enough that even I started to feel those few breaths stretching unnaturally thin. Finally, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was nothing left but something cold and distilled, sharp as winter air.

"We can't touch this. Not now." Jessi's head snapped up.

"What?" Even I frowned.

"Why?" Alvira didn't answer right away. She turned to the table, picked up a dispatch she'd set down moments before, and pressed her knuckles flat against the paper. Not a tremor in sight.

"The commander just sent orders," she said.

"Tomorrow at first light, the vanguard and scouts break camp ahead of the main force. Destination: the royal capital." I was quiet for a moment.

"And?"

"And overturning the table right now gains us nothing." Alvira lifted her gaze to mine. Her voice was as cold as a blade laid flat against bare skin.

"This is Conrad's territory. We have no evidence, no witnesses who'll survive the accusation, and no guarantee we can extract the entire company intact. And beyond that—" She paused.

"Erina is here." That was enough. No need to spell out the rest. I understood perfectly. The moment this blew open, it would stop being as simple as "Conrad might be some man-eating monster." Erina's identity, the fact that he'd already noticed something off about us last night, the royal capital's succession crisis—which hadn't even reached full boil and was already belching black smoke—would all come spilling out together. And we were standing inside Castle Wassach. Standing on his plate. I let out a slow breath.

Rationally, I knew Alvira was right. Brutally, mercilessly right. Which was exactly what made it feel so filthy. So this was how it worked sometimes. The correct answer wasn't to draw your sword. It was to slide it back into the scabbard and pretend you'd never seen a thing. That kind of rightness gets under your nails and stays there. Jessi had followed the logic too. She stared at Alvira with wide eyes, fear and fresh outrage warring in her expression.

"So... we just let it go?"

"We are not letting it go," Alvira said.

"We are not moving on it now." Her tone wasn't sharp. It didn't need to be. It landed heavier than any reprimand.

"We leave at dawn. Until then, you don't go near that wing again, you don't move around alone, and you don't tell anyone what you saw today. Especially not Erina." I looked at Alvira and realized her expression, in that moment, was colder than the snow outside. Not because she didn't care. Quite the opposite. Because she knew exactly how serious this was, she was forcing herself to bury it.

To compress a living human life, a monster that had already started feeding, and whatever malice lay coiled beneath this entire castle into one simple, merciless sentence: We can't move now. I understood. Understanding didn't mean I could swallow it. I turned toward the window. The daylight still held. Castle Wassach's walls and towers stood clear and proud in the pale light. Servants crossed the courtyard below. Somewhere in the distance, a voice was shouting orders to ready the carriages.

The whole fortress maintained its facade of respectability, stability, perfect order—like any well-managed estate in the Northern Reaches. But now I knew. Beneath that layer of order, something was eating people. And we still had to sleep here tonight. I closed my eyes briefly and pushed that rising nausea back down where it belonged.

"... Fine," I said quietly.

"If that's how it is, we stop here. For now." Jessi looked at me, her eyes full of lingering terror and fresh indignation. I met her gaze and kept my voice as steady as I could.

"This isn't over, Jessi," I said.

"We're just putting it on our tab." She blinked. I twisted my mouth into what might have passed for a smile under very forgiving lighting.

"Don't worry. I don't have many virtues. But I do hold grudges exceptionally well." Alvira shot me a sidelong glance.

"You still have room for jokes right now?"

"What's the alternative?" I looked back at her.

"March out there and shout at Conrad—'Excuse me, did your lunch today happen to include anything decent folk shouldn't witness?'" She went still for a moment—and surprisingly, didn't immediately cut me down for it. In the end, she just let out a breath so quiet it was almost a sigh.

"... That does sound exactly like something you'd be foolish enough to attempt."

"Happy to live down to expectations." I turned to Jessi.

"Go tell the others. We move at dawn. Pack tonight." I stopped, fixing my eyes on hers.

"And stop running off on your own." Jessi bit her lip. Nodded. Her face was still too pale, her steps unsteady as she crossed to the door. I watched her open it—for a heartbeat, a thin blade of cold corridor light cut across the floor, then the door shut again, sealing it out. Just me and Alvira left. Silence pressed in for a while. She spoke first.

"You want to be angry at me right now, don't you."

"No," I said. Her eyebrow twitched up. I kept my gaze on the washed-out daylight outside and added slowly:"I just find it deeply unpleasant that you're right." Alvira said nothing. I didn't look back at her either. It was a long moment before I finally heard her voice again, low behind me.

"Cedric."

"Yeah?"

"Don't sleep too soundly tonight." I was quiet for two seconds, then let out a short breath that might have been a laugh.

"What a remarkably elven bedtime blessing."

"You may treat it as a warning."

"I already was." I pushed the door open. The corridor was brighter than the room, but somehow the light falling across the stone floor still carried that same inexplicable chill. Voices in the distance. Footsteps. Someone hurrying past with a basin of steaming water. On the surface, everything maintained the proper rhythms of a noble household. But now, watching those servants move back and forth, all I could see were people walking through the throat of something enormous. No one knowing whose turn was next.

And the worst part— That thing probably knew we'd started to notice.