Chương 20: Chapter 17 - The Silent Castle

The Black Ape and Orc warriors moved as one long column through the forest. A portion remained behind to guard the door and their escape route, while the rest—warriors and elders alike—pressed on toward the ancient castle. After several hours of walking, the fortress finally rose in front of them—a gate strangled in moss and cobwebs, its iron scarred with claw marks no one wanted to guess the age of, standing half open as if it had been waiting for company. The land around it told its own story.

Roofs had caved in on themselves. Doors hung from single hinges, swinging with no wind to move them. Furniture sat rotted where it had last been used, as though whoever lived here had simply stopped one day and never come back. The column wound through streets that had once been thriving. A market square sat empty, its stalls long since collapsed and their wares reduced to dust. A child's toy, a wooden horse with faded paint, was half-buried in the dirt. Saro noticed it. He did not stop.

The silence pressed in on all sides. No birds called. No insects buzzed. Even the wind seemed to avoid the area, as if the air remembered something that the earth had forgotten. Several warriors muttered prayers under their breath. Others gripped their weapons more tightly. The deeper they went, the heavier the air became, pressing against their lungs like an unfamiliar weight.

"Was this place hit by some war?" A young orc warrior's voice cracked the silence, too loud for how quiet everything else had gone.

"Everything looks like it's been dying for a hundred years." No one answered him.

"Check every corner. Report anything suspicious." Saro's voice carried over the ranks, calm and certain enough that nobody thought to ask who'd put him in charge of the whole column. Two tribes, one castle, one purpose—somewhere along the march, that had settled the matter for everyone. They swept the grounds room by room, weapons ready, voices low. Guest quarters. Servants' halls. Storage rooms. Nothing. All of it was stripped bare, empty in a way that felt deliberate rather than natural. They kept moving.

The closer they came to the castle's heart, the heavier the air pressed down, an unease that hadn't touched them out in the open forest. It wasn't simply fear. Fear had a direction. This feeling didn't. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, settling beneath their skin and lingering there. Saro's instincts warned him to stop. To turn back. Leave this place to whoever had claimed it. He didn't. His tribe sent him here to lead, not flee.

But each step forward felt like a step deeper into something that was still alive, waiting, and hungry. He shook the thought off. It was only a castle. Stone, shadow, and old memories. He nearly believed it.

"Move in. Stay sharp—empty out here doesn't mean empty in there." Saro's shout echoed off stone that hadn't heard a voice in longer than anyone could guess. Every room turned up nothing, until a young orc came sprinting back, breathless.

"Sir, we found a treasury. Spiritual fruits, herbs, spiritual coins—more than we can carry." Saro was already moving before the warrior finished the sentence, calling the elders in behind him. The room they stepped into stole the breath out of every one of them. Torches flickered to life as they entered, as if the room had been expecting them. The flames created dancing shadows on shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling.

Herb jars on the shelves glowed with their own inner light: reds, blues, greens, and one pulsed with the deep, consuming black of a starless sky. Spiritual fruits sat in wicker baskets, their skins smooth and unblemished, as if picked this morning rather than centuries ago. The air hummed with concentrated essence, so dense that breathing felt like you were underwater. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Spiritual coins piled up on the floor. Small ones.

Medium ones. Larger ones, the size of a warrior's head. They sparkled in the torchlight, each one a small reservoir of power waiting to be used. Saro's eyes caught on one thing among all of it: a black herb, pulsing faintly with an attribute he recognized in his bones, because it was his own. Darkness. He said nothing. Whatever the split of the spoils came to, he'd have his chance at it. Patience had gotten him further than greed ever had. The rest of the elders simply stood there a moment, letting it sink in.

Whatever this expedition cost them, it hadn't been for nothing. A few warriors lingered behind them, peeking in through the doorway. Their eyes widened as they took in the jars of herbs and glowing fruit.

"This would've taken a lifetime to gather outside," one of them murmured. No one corrected him. It had taken a lifetime. Just not theirs. They gathered what they could carry and pressed on. No one suggested leaving. The discovery had changed the mood of the expedition. Whatever fear had followed them through the castle, the treasury had given them something stronger to hold onto: proof that the danger ahead might be worth the risk. And so they went deeper....

Dendron watched all of it unfold from a world away, and one question kept snagging at him more than the fruit or the herbs ever could. He could feel the answer somewhere at the edge of his awareness—the same way he'd felt his own ascension coming, the same way he'd felt the door open before anyone told him it had. His soul seemed to know things his mind hadn't caught up to yet. But that wasn't the same as knowing. An instinct wasn't an explanation. What do the coins actually do? He didn't dare ask Torou.

Asking too many questions about something as ordinary as currency would break the mystique of "Unknown," and he couldn't afford that. Then an image of someone appeared in his mind—a brown wolf carrying a bag. He reached for the wolf's mind, and Luan was startled by the voice, arriving out of nowhere.

"Luan, do you know anything about spiritual coins? I've counted three sizes. Is that all there is?"

"Ah... yeah. Spiritual coins are the only currency in this world, and you've got it right, there's only the three sizes."

"Do they have proper names, or does everyone just point and say 'the big one'?"

"Ha, of course they've got names." Luan counted them off on his claws as he went.

"Smallest is a bick. Middle size is a pent. Biggest one's a sen. Five bicks to a pent, five pents to a sen—twenty-five bicks all together, if you ever want to do it the hard way."

"Is that all they're good for? The spiritual essence of the largest ones feel denser than even the fruit."

"They can be absorbed, and much faster than pulling essence straight from the atmosphere, but that's really it. That's exactly why they became currency. They're one of the least valuable things you can cultivate with, so nobody minds spending them."

"You said 'only.' Do the human settlements use the same thing?"

"They do. People tried pushing a new currency once, some yellow coins, they called it gold, but it never caught on. Most folks couldn't see the sense in it. A coin is a coin unless it's worth something on its own." Luan paused, considering.

"Spiritual coins, at least, are worth something even if you never spend them."

"So that's how it works. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity." Luan relaxed.

"No problem, sir. It's my job to help you. My dream is to become someone useful." Dendron paused.

"Do you have a dream more specific than that?" Luan was quiet for a long moment.

"Well... yes. I wanted to become a merchant." His voice dropped, almost embarrassed.

"I wanted to travel everywhere. See the beauty of different places. The mountains in the far north, the forests in the south, the cities of the humans." His voice softened as he spoke, as if he could see everything in his mind.

"I heard stories from travelers who passed through our territory. They spoke of mountains that touched the sky, where the snow never melted and the stars in the sky looked close enough to grab. Forests where the trees sang at night, and the leaves glowed with their own light. Of human cities with towers that scraped the clouds and markets that never slept." He trailed off, his tail drooping.

"I've never seen any of it. I've never even left the territory." He laughed, but it was hollow.

"Stupid, right? How could someone like me ever do that?" The words remained in the air between them. Luan's ears had flattened against his skull, a gesture Dendron had come to recognize as shame. Dendron realized he had already been told that. Someone laughed at him. Someone had laughed at that dream before. The thought sparked something within him. Something felt uncomfortably like recognition. Dendron didn't laugh.

"It's not stupid." Luan blinked.

"If you're not ambitious, how can you achieve greatness? And if you can't achieve it alone..." Dendron paused, feeling the weight of his own words.

"I'll help you." Luan's breath caught.

"Become my proxy. Together, we'll build a business empire." The words came easier than Dendron expected.

"Those who stand in our way will be nothing more than stepping stones." He wasn't sure where the confidence came from. He'd never been ambitious in his old life. He nearly laughed at the irony. The tree was offering advice that no man could. Perhaps that is the point, a quiet voice whispered. Maybe you'll get a second chance to be the person you never were. But this wasn't about him. This was about Luan. About giving someone else the chance he'd never taken.

"Thank you... sir." Luan's voice had gone soft, unsteady in a way it hadn't been a moment before. No one had ever told him a dream that size was allowed. Something in him settled a little deeper around the tree that had said it. His voice cracked. His tail wagged once, then twice. Dendron allowed the silence to settle between them. He could feel Luan's gratitude through the soul-link—a warmth that wasn't quite his own but was welcome nonetheless.

"I'll keep my promise," he thought.

"I'm not sure how yet. But I will." Then he returned his attention to the castle. And what he saw made his sap run cold.