Chương 58: 24-3.Erosion, Dungeon, and Carrion

There really wasn't much to pack by evening. People who live on the road don't do luggage the way nobles do. No mountains of trunks, no matched sets of clothing for every occasion, and certainly no devoted attendant to fold my socks into neat, color-coded piles. To be precise, everything I owned boiled down to one pack, one sword, and several essential items filed under things I'd rather not die without. Long before the sky had fully darkened, I'd already tossed my worldly possessions onto the supply cart.

Which left my hands free. Naturally, they were immediately conscripted into helping Alvira. All afternoon she'd moved like an overworked machine that refused to admit it needed rest. Personnel shortages here, missing rope there, insufficient medicine for the injured, tomorrow's vanguard formation needing revision—all while keeping a hawk's eye on the camp's more adventurous idiots to ensure they didn't wander into places they absolutely should not wander.

Every order she gave came out in the same voice: thin as a blade, cold, and utterly unwilling to entertain incompetence or creative interpretation. I trailed her until evening like a particularly obedient shadow, my brain gradually developing calluses from hearing the phrase "handle that side too." To be fair, it helped. Keeping busy meant fewer opportunities for my mind to drift toward places I didn't want it wandering. Like tears on a spire. Erina's face, so pale it looked like a strong breeze might shatter it.

Conrad's eyes, smiling too warmly while radiating absolutely no actual warmth. But no matter how long you drag it out, night still falls. By the time I finally escaped and pushed into the kitchen, the sky outside had long since gone dark. Firelight wobbled against the window paper, and the whole space was thick with the layered smell of stewed meat, charcoal, and damp wood. Matthews, Lucas, and Jessi were already there. On the table sat a large platter of stewed meat and a pot of thick soup.

On a normal night, Jessi would have executed a thoroughly inequitable redistribution of meat-based assets before I'd even stepped through the door. Lucas, for all his nerves, had never been known to let his stomach go on a sympathy strike. And Matthews lived by that old soldier's creed: eat when there's food—even if the roads were going to ice over tomorrow, he wouldn't pick a fight with a pot of meat tonight. Now, no one was touching it. The three of them just sat there in silence. Steam still rose from the pot.

The smell that should have been appetizing now did nothing but make my gut feel heavier. It wasn't dinner on that table. It was evidence of something that should never have made it to a plate. Apparently, this morning's revelation had hit harder than I'd given it credit for. I didn't say anything. I grabbed a piece of bread and sat down, tearing off a bite. I didn't go anywhere near the meat stew.

Truth be told, I had developed a principled aversion to showing enthusiasm for anything involving flesh inside Castle Wassach's walls. Jessi glanced up at me, opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, then shut it again. That was new. If Conrad had managed to shut Jessi up this thoroughly, his lunchtime exhibition had clearly provided her with a few lessons she'd carry to her grave.

I worked through the rock-hard bread, reflecting that this place really did take after its master—respectable on the surface, dedicated in practice to grinding down both your teeth and your patience. Halfway through, the kitchen door opened. I looked up. Alvira stood in the doorway, the night's cold still clinging to her shoulders. She didn't look at me—not even her usual glance of disdain at finding me still eating. She came straight to the table and stopped. Her face wasn't twisted with panic.

It was worse than that. Hard to describe the expression. Not fear. Not chaos. Something that had moved past the point where either was still an option—had skipped straight to delivering a sentence that simply had to be said.

"Something's happened." Her tone was as flat as announcing the start of a funeral. The bread in my hand suddenly became impossible to swallow. For a moment, even the crackle from the hearth seemed to shrink back. Alvira lifted her eyes. Her gaze passed across each of our faces and settled on mine.

"Erina is missing." In that instant, I genuinely couldn't tell whether I'd set the bread down first or reached for my sword first. By the time I caught up with myself, my hand was already on the hilt at the table's edge. The color drained from Lucas's face so fast it was almost impressive. Jessi's head snapped up, the fear in her eyes flaring back to full strength like oil thrown on embers. Matthews was on his feet in the next heartbeat, his chair shrieking a short protest across the stone floor.

"You've checked everywhere?" I asked. When I heard my own voice, I was surprised by how level it sounded. Or maybe we'd simply moved past the luxury of panicking. Alvira nodded once, her words coming brisk and clipped.

"Infirmary. Stables. Inner courtyard. Side towers. Main corridors. Pigeon loft. I went through all of them. She's not there."

"Her guards?"

"Both claim she was present at dusk. After that, they—" A pause loaded with its own particular brand of contempt.

"—lost sight of her." I almost laughed. Not because it was funny. Because the excuse was so absurd it hooked straight into fury instead. A princess disappears on enemy ground because her guards "lost sight of her for a moment"? You couldn't sell that story to a half-drunk beggar. But if Alvira wasn't taking this moment to tear them apart, it meant she'd already exhausted her quota of productive cursing.

"Where haven't you searched?" I stood and buckled my sword belt. Alvira caught on something at that question. Her gaze drifted sideways, toward the part of the kitchen where the firelight didn't reach, before she answered slowly:"I even went through the pigeon loft." She stopped. In that brief pause, the temperature in the kitchen dropped several more degrees.

"Everywhere except... the dungeon." Perfect. I knew today wasn't going to let me off that easily. Once we actually started moving, no one wasted breath on pointless questions. That, at least, was something. In a place like Castle Wassach, we hadn't yet sunk so low as to respond to someone may have been dragged to the dungeon with a full round of "Are you sure?" and "How could this happen?" Matthews had his weapon in hand first.

Lucas's fingers shook as he reached for his bow, but he slung it across his shoulder without complaint. Jessi was still pale—but it wasn't the pale of cowardice. More like someone who'd violently suppressed her gag reflex and was keeping it down through pure will. She slid her daggers back into her boots without a word, quick and sure enough to make it easy to forget she'd been trembling from head to toe in my doorway at noon. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I took one last look at the pot of cooling soup on the table. The grease on its surface shimmered faintly in the firelight, like a thin, nauseating skin. Excellent. I doubted anyone would be missing dinner tonight. Alvira said nothing more. She simply turned and walked away. We followed, and the moment we stepped through the narrow corridor outside the kitchen, the night's chill slammed into us like a physical blow.

We'd barely made it any distance down the darkened hall toward the dungeon when a voice cut through the silence behind us.

"Stop." It wasn't loud, but it carried the kind of weight that bypasses conscious thought and goes straight to your legs—the voice of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question.

"Where exactly are you all going at this hour?" My foot froze mid-step. My heart dropped first, then immediately wanted to sigh in exasperation. Of course tonight wasn't going to let me make it to bed with my dignity intact. I turned around. Torchlight flickered against the stone walls, stretching our shadows into long, distorted shapes. Valdorin von Eberswalde stood not far behind us, wrapped in a dark coat, fine snow still clinging to his shoulders from the night wind outside.

He'd clearly come in a hurry—his breathing hadn't quite settled—but those sharp eyes were already locked onto us. More precisely, locked onto Alvira. Which was entirely reasonable. Middle of the night, the second-in-command leading a small group toward the castle's lower levels, with me and Jessi—two individuals who practically radiated "cannot be trusted to sit still"—mixed into the formation. I'd be suspicious too.

Hell, I'd assume this group was on its way to do something that would never survive being written into an official report. And that was precisely the problem. I couldn't exactly give him the honest answer: Terribly sorry, but we currently suspect your family's dungeon is housing something it shouldn't, possibly connected to your dear uncle, so we're just popping down to assess exactly how thoroughly this castle has rotted from the inside out. That wouldn't be an explanation.

That would be lighting a fuse in a powder magazine. I was still trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that didn't sound like active treason when Alvira moved. No warning. No consultation. Not even a helpful "I'm about to do something incredibly impolite, please be ready to catch him" glance in my direction. Her slight figure swept past me like a cold flash of light skimming the floor. The short staff in her hand traced a vicious arc, its tip flaring with a brief pulse of ghostly green.

"Fermiel Du—stars extinguished, all things cease." The incantation was barely more than a whisper. But in that instant, the air in the corridor seemed to press downward, as though an invisible hand had reached down and compressed everything by several degrees. Valdorin clearly hadn't expected to be targeted. He didn't even reach for his sword. A flash of genuine shock crossed his face—and in the next heartbeat, those sharp, cutting eyes simply lost their focus. Not a dramatic collapse.

More like someone had reached in and quietly stepped his consciousness half a pace out of his body. He didn't crumple so much as empty out, his presence evacuating from the inside. I lunged forward just as his knees gave, catching him under the arms. He was heavier than he looked. I had to step back and brace myself to keep us both upright. Valdorin sagged against my shoulder, still breathing, just submerged under some enforced, shallow drowsiness. His eyelashes fluttered once, then went still.

"... Next time," I muttered through gritted teeth, adjusting my grip, "a little advance notice would be appreciated." I paused.

"Or at minimum, a hint." Alvira lowered her staff, breathing slightly harder than usual. That spell hadn't come without cost—her face had lost some color—but her expression remained as immovably hard as ever.

"What was the alternative?" She looked at me without warmth.

"Stand here and patiently walk him through why we're investigating his family's dungeon in the middle of the night?" I had nothing. Because she was right. Again. The most infuriating thing about Alvira wasn't that she acted without asking. It was that when she acted without asking, she was usually terrifyingly efficient about it. Still supporting Valdorin's weight, I quickly scanned the corridor.

This stretch was off the main route—just a few torches set into wall brackets, their light falling at angles that left a convenient patch of half-shadow past the corner. I dragged him over and propped him against a decorative cabinet, then pulled his hood forward to obscure his face. Objectively speaking, this sequence of events was going to cost me at least two pages of positive character references in any future military assessment. Magical assault on a superior officer.

Aiding and abetting in concealing the evidence. Wonderful. I was becoming increasingly confident that "law-abiding" and I were simply not related by blood. Jessi had watched the entire performance without moving. Her eyes went wide first, then her expression twisted into something complicated—like she was desperately wrestling an inappropriate thought back into its box. Being Jessi, this effort lasted approximately two seconds.

"I've just realized something," she whispered, her tone carrying a suspicious note of genuine sincerity.

"Young master, you and Miss Alvira really are a perfect match." I shot her a look. She blinked once and had the audacity to continue.

"Your coordination is terrifyingly exceptional."

"Say one more word and you're walking point when we get down there." Jessi's mouth snapped shut.

"Hey—""Don't hey me." I stood up and nudged Valdorin's scabbard to a less conspicuous angle.

"You've already spent today's courage allowance on sights you had no business seeing. What's left, use wisely." Lucas was watching us, his face the color of unbleached linen.

"H-how long until he wakes up?" he whispered. Alvira stowed her staff.

"Not long. A few minutes at most." That was marginally reassuring. At least we weren't leaving Valdorin slumped in an alcove until morning. If we were, I'd have to start seriously calculating whether my odds of entering the royal capital alive were still worth betting on. Matthews had said nothing through any of this. He glanced once at Valdorin—confirming the man was still breathing—then said quietly:"Move. Any longer and it's pointless." Right. Move. We were drowning in complications tonight.

What we were short on was time. Alvira didn't look back. She simply turned and walked. I took one last look at the figure propped in the shadows, offered the unfortunate Northern noble a silent apology, and followed. The further we went, the quieter it became. Not empty—the castle wasn't empty. But it was as though Wassach had deliberately drawn its voice inward, folding it somewhere behind the stone.

During the day, you could hear servants running, guards changing shifts, the clatter of kitchenware, even occasional bursts of argument or laughter seeping from unseen rooms. Now the long corridor held only our footsteps and the faint, intermittent spitting of torches burning through damp wood. Firelight moved across the walls, stretching everyone's shadow long and skeletal behind them. I walked behind Alvira and could see the set of her shoulders—pulled taut, held rigid. Not fear.

Something like vigilance that had been carried for months and tonight had finally been pressed to its edge. Jessi was unnaturally quiet too. Under normal circumstances, she was the sort of person who would critique the quality of the rope on her way to the gallows. But since noon, since whatever she'd witnessed through that unlatched door, something essential had been surgically removed from her—some core lightness, leaving behind only a brittle tension she refused to let show as fear.

Lucas didn't even bear mentioning. He spent the entire walk consciously managing his breathing, as if inhaling too loudly might summon something out of the dark. I wanted to say something. Something like: If we make it back from this, I am personally swearing off overnight stays in noble households for the rest of my natural life. But the words reached my throat and died there. Even I knew this wasn't the time to use cheap jokes as liquid courage. We reached the side passage leading to the lower levels.

Narrower than the main corridors, and noticeably colder. The wall sconces here were sparse—light that looked like it had been soaked in dampness until it could barely manage illumination, just a sickly, grudging glow. At the far end stood a heavy iron door. The guard posted beside it had the complexion of someone recently exhumed. I'd seen this setup during the day. Seeing it again at night only reinforced my assessment: If this place doesn't have ghosts, the ghosts should file workplace complaints.

Alvira didn't waste syllables. She walked straight up to him.

"Open the door." The guard looked at her, then at us. His Adam's apple bobbed visibly.

"V-Vice Commander, at this hour, down there—""I said, open it." She hadn't raised her voice. That somehow made it worse. He fumbled for his keys with shaking hands, missing the keyhole twice. I watched for about three seconds before my patience ran out. I reached over and moved him aside with a firm hand.

"Excuse me." Key in. One turn. The heavy bolt disengaged with a dull, grinding clack. The iron door swung inward. A smell immediately surged up to meet us. Not just the damp rot of a neglected cellar. Not the ordinary cold decay of underground stone. This was something layered—old lime, rust, stagnant water, and beneath it all, faint but unmistakable, a sweetness that had no business being sweet. Blood. Old blood. And something else that made your stomach understand before your mind caught up.

Beyond the door, stone steps descended into darkness. The torchlight reached the first few steps clearly enough. After that, the black wasn't merely an absence of light—it was a presence, thick and adhesive, as though the space below had decided long ago that it had no intention of returning anything to the surface. I pressed my hand to my sword hilt.

"Move." Alvira stepped down first. I followed directly behind her. Matthews took my left flank. Jessi and Lucas came after, treading carefully. The steps were slick with moisture; each footfall produced a faint scrape of boot leather against wet stone. With every step down, the sounds of the world above—the last fragile evidence that this was still a functioning castle—retreated further into nothing. Until there was only our breathing. And, from somewhere below, the patient sound of dripping water. Drip. Drip.

Rhythmic. Deliberate. Like something in the deeper dark, quietly keeping count. I couldn't say how many steps there were. Perhaps only a few dozen. Perhaps more than it felt. But time, once it gets soaked in that kind of darkness, becomes unreliable—stretching and thickening in ways that have nothing to do with clocks. Halfway down, something caught my eye at the edge of a step. White. The torchlight found its shape slowly. A torn strip of bandage. Its edges were stained with half-dried, dark red.

It looked like something ripped away in a hurry, then left to soak in the underground damp. I stopped, crouched, and picked it up. The cloth was cold—not recently-dropped cold, but the cold of something that had been lying in this dark for a while. Alvira looked back. Her expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes went very still. I had seen this bandage. Not this specific strip—the type. White linen, this width, this weave. It had been in Erina's hands this afternoon. Perfect.

Now there was nothing left to pretend about. I closed my fingers around the cloth, said nothing, and kept walking. The stairs ended at a low, narrow corridor. Iron bars and heavy wooden doors alternated along both sides. Torches set too far apart—pools of light with stretches of absolute dark between them, illuminating the cell doors in segments like a row of ribs stripped bare and left exposed.

The smell of blood was stronger here, thickened with something else—a sweet-rot undertone that clung to the inside of your nose and made every breath feel like punishment. Then we heard it. Soft. Slow. Something ahead of us in the dark, being dragged across stone. Not quickly. Not with purpose. Just moved, inch by inch, like something pulling itself forward through the black with whatever strength it had left. I stopped. My fingers tightened around the hilt without a sound.