The Countdown

  Victor then arrived at a tent set up in one of the temporary encampments within the lands of Hingleish.

  Several men were already gathered inside; all of them were Reydem members.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” Victor said. “Sorry for arriving this late—we ran into a few complications.”

  He paused briefly before continuing.

  “On the way here, we spotted Dumstrein soldiers patrolling the lands of Hingleish. The way they move makes it clear they’ve already been informed of our presence in this region. From now on, any movement within Hingleish must be done with extreme caution.”

  A few of the men looked up at once, understanding the weight of the warning.

  “Remember that Eliotas is one of the Magno Sovereigns, and one of the main figures behind the attempts to wipe out Reydem. If Dumstrein is already patrolling these lands, we cannot afford mistakes.”

  Victor finished speaking.

  No one responded right away.

  The sound of the wind striking the tent’s canvas became uncomfortably clear.

  “Anyway,” he added at last. “What’s the current situation?”

  One of the men spoke up.

  “We’ve delivered the messages to Reydem’s different bases in Sidastra, Keimpspter, Rufenus, and Glamdeth.”

  “Our informants managed to distribute all internal communications, and they’re already gathering information from our collaborators.”

  “Understood,” Victor replied.

  Then he turned to another of those present.

  “What about the mobilization of the Houses on the southern side?”

  “We’ve detected troop movement to the southeast, heading toward Hamerheilt, based on the intelligence we’ve gathered,” the man answered.

  “For now, it seems to be only a relocation of forces. Apparently, House Susaku is holding a military commemoration. There are no signs of a direct attack against our strongholds.”

  Victor rested his hand on the map.

  “Zeldrin is currently in Keimpspter,” he said. “We need to warn them about these movements so they stay on alert.”

  Even though the hidden camp is several kilometers away, it’s important to secure the area and be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

  He lifted his gaze.

  “Our numbers aren’t in our favor for a direct conflict against Susaku’s troops. Even if Zeldrin has no intention of engaging for obvious reasons, we need to give him every piece of information we can—so he’s ready for any contingency… even an evacuation.”

  He paused briefly.

  “The last thing we need right now is to show up on House Susaku’s radar.”

  Silence returned to the tent.

  “After all,” he continued, “it still seems they don’t consider us a priority threat. But that doesn’t change the fact that Susaku is, possibly, the most powerful House in the entire kingdom.”

  His tone grew heavier.

  “Fusuro isn’t Susaku’s feudal lord yet. However, his father is in delicate health.”

  “When that changes, Fusuro will take control of Hamerheilt—the region under House Susaku’s dominion.”

  No one spoke.

  “We all know who Fusuro is,” Victor concluded.

  “And what he represents as a threat.”

  Victor turned to one of those present.

  “What about Rousth’s informant?” (Amarantha)

  The man shook his head.

  “So far we haven’t received anything from our collaborators stationed in the outskirts or the lower sector of Rousth.”

  “I understand,” Victor replied, without changing his tone.

  He stepped forward and pointed to several spots on the map. (Rousth’s mid-sector.)

  “We need collaborators in these areas.”

  One of the men looked up from the map.

  “Why those exact points?”

  Victor kept his hand pressed against the surface.

  “Because we need more contact points—so the informant can report if she runs into any kind of difficulty.”

  He lifted his gaze slightly.

  “Whether from the outskirts, the lower sector, or the mid-sector of Rousth.”

  He paused briefly before continuing.

  “We know the flow of information will be limited, and we can’t trust just anyone. That’s why we’ll do it indirectly. We need collaborators who don’t necessarily realize they’re working for Reydem.”

  “Common people?” another man asked.

  “Exactly,” Victor nodded. “They won’t receive sensitive information. Everything is planned. They’ll only send ordinary correspondence. Common letters.”

  He lowered his voice.

  “The rest doesn’t concern them.”

  Victor removed his hand from the map.

  “Good. That’s all.”

  Without another word, the men began filing out of the tent.

  Victor returned to his own tent and lay back on the improvised cot.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the fatigue settle into his body.

  Then the memory returned.

  He was standing in front of her.

  “It’s likely that at times you won’t be able to reach Rousth’s outskirts or lower sectors,” Victor had been telling Amarantha. “Leaving the palace is a challenge on its own. Going that far will only be possible on rare occasions.”

  He pulled out a document and handed it to her.

  “That’s why we’ll use letters.”

  Amarantha took it carefully.

  “Letters?” she asked.

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  “Read it,” Victor said. “And tell me if you can decipher the message.”

  She scanned the text. At first glance, it was nothing more than a love letter—written in an intimate, everyday tone. After a few seconds, she looked up.

  “I understand.”

  “Then you understand the idea,” Victor nodded. “We’ll use romantic letters with messages hidden in subtext to report minimal information.”

  He paused and pointed to the next page of the document.

  “Here you’ll find a list of names and key words. They’ll allow us to refer to kingdoms, people, divisions, and specific locations. You must memorize it before you write to us.”

  “So I have until a certain hour in the afternoon?” she asked.

  “Affirmative,” Victor replied. “That way you’ll have multiple channels to report through. If you can’t reach the outskirts or the lower sector of Rousth, these alternatives will still be available.”

  He lowered his voice a little.

  “Some will be closer to the palace. That means you’ll have to go with your face uncovered. Entering a courier shop with a hood would draw attention, so make sure—whenever possible—that only the worker inside sees your face.”

  He looked at her seriously.

  “And remember: you must report within a maximum window of thirty days.”

  “I understand,” she replied.

  The memory faded.

  Victor opened his eyes in the tent’s dimness.

  Eight days left, he thought.

  Report in the Darkness

  Far from the kingdom, far from the towns and taverns, there was a place hidden among the mountains.

  It was an ancient stone structure, something like an abandoned castle. From the outside it looked like just another ruin… but inside, it felt different.

  The atmosphere was cold and heavy. The air smelled of dampness and old rock.

  The inner corridors and chambers felt more like a catacomb than a fortress.

  A man stood there.

  He wore a black tunic. Beneath it, he had a simple dark armor plate that protected only his chest. He also wore black cloth underneath, as if his entire outfit had been designed to blend into the darkness.

  There wasn’t a single light detail in his clothing. Everything was black.

  In front of him, the wall was covered in enormous symbols carved into the stone.

  They were hieroglyphs—ancient figures, difficult for anyone to understand… but he studied them as if he knew exactly what they meant.

  His eyes traced several of them until he stopped on one in particular.

  It was a simple drawing, lacking fine detail, yet still unsettling.

  A creature shaped like a human face… without a face.

  At its center there was only a keyhole.

  Two thick horns rose from its skull, like those of an ox, as if they were part of the bone itself.

  Below the face, a torso could be made out, and at the center—right where a mouth should have been—there was a dark, round hole, like the hollow of a dead tree trunk. A void that didn’t look drawn… but branded.

  And around it, an absurd number of arms—more than twenty—each one holding an hourglass.

  The man stared at the symbol in silence, unmoving.

  As if he recognized it.

  Then, behind him, a footstep sounded.

  Someone had entered.

  It was another man. Hooded as well.

  He moved carefully, like his body had been trained not to make noise.

  It was Turhem—an informant from the shadows.

  “I found the place,” he said.

  The man in black didn’t turn.

  Turhem continued, speaking low:

  “I checked the site carefully, without anyone noticing my presence. No one from Reydem survived. The entire Gold Division operation died during the incursion into the dungeons.”

  Turhem paused before adding the next part.

  “But here’s what’s strange: the temporary settlement they had nearby was destroyed too. They left nothing behind. They were annihilated.”

  The man facing the symbols moved only slightly.

  His gaze had already shifted to another carving.

  A different one—blurrier, but just as disturbing.

  It looked like a horse… but deformed.

  Its front legs were far too long, almost twice the length of the hind ones.

  Instead of a head, it had a twisted trunk with horns that looked like branches.

  And tentacles spilled from its back.

  The man finally spoke.

  “The seal they were trying to break belonged to Estorur.”

  Turhem fell silent.

  “And it wasn’t just any seal,” the man continued. “It must have been an important one… important enough for a Freyo to be invoked and manifest as its guardian.”

  Only then did he turn.

  Turhem could see his face.

  A blue glow shone from his eyes—soft, yet unnatural.

  That light made it impossible to clearly see their true color.

  The man stepped closer, slowly.

  “Every time you destroy a seal that binds Estorur to Earth, he feels it. He manifests. And for a moment… you end up on his radar.”

  Turhem kept speaking in the same steady tone, without variation.

  “By destroying the seal, they woke Estorur. And his Afecios took advantage of the opening to cross into this plane. Then they wiped out the nearby base… and anyone who happened to be in the surrounding area.”

  He paused briefly.

  “To be devoured by an Afecio of Estorur is one of the worst fates a soul can suffer. Dying in the worst way is mercy compared to that. But dying at the hands of an Afecio… is an eternal sentence.”

  The man walked past him, toward the far end of the chamber.

  “Reydem thinks it knows what it’s doing,” he said calmly. “For centuries they’ve tried to sever—or eliminate—the bindings of external entities to this Earth. But they still have much to learn. In the meantime… they’ll keep playing with fire in their hands.”

  Turhem inhaled once, as if it were habit rather than reaction.

  “What do you want to do now… Nefectos?”

  Nefectos didn’t answer right away.

  “Continue with the other missions I gave you. When you have more news, you come to me and tell me.”

  Then he added, in the same cold tone:

  “This massacre… and the loss of that subdivision… helped us identify a connection to Estorur. Later, we can use it to our advantage.”

  Turhem didn’t say anything.

  He simply withdrew in silence, vanishing into the shadows of the place.

  Nefectos kept walking in the opposite direction.

  Until he stopped in front of a pool of water.

  A small pool, perfectly still.

  And yet… strange.

  The water was glowing.

  Between Gardens and Shadows

  Time passed during her stay in the palace. When night fell, in the solitude of her room, Amarantha wrote down everything she could. With precise strokes, she drew a detailed map from every observation she had gathered: the palace’s entry and exit points, escape routes from the Sovereigns’ Garden, and the exact routines of guards and staff.

  She had identified sparsely used rooms and dissected the building’s structure, using subtle taps to distinguish which walls were solid and which concealed hollow spaces.

  Her reconnaissance was exhaustive. She recorded names, schedules, and movement patterns, organizing the information into a meticulous log. To protect her findings, she located sections of the floorboards beneath different beds. With silent practice, she lifted the planks, hid the documents, and sealed them back into place without leaving a trace. She knew she couldn’t allow the information to remain in one location forever; rotating hiding spots was part of the plan.

  Her main objective was clear: to infiltrate beyond the elite’s boundaries.

  She needed a way to run errands in the metropolis without being detected.

  After analyzing the perimeter of the complex, she identified the constant flow of supply carriages as her best opportunity.

  In the reports Victor had given her before the infiltration, there were different types of carriages listed that left the palace during the day, afternoon, and night. Many headed toward Lower Rousth, others toward the Mid District, and some moved exclusively within the gardens. Amarantha began identifying them one by one: where they departed from, when they left, what kind of cargo they carried, and at which points it would be viable to hide.

  Thanks to Victor’s prior intelligence, she also knew which locations those carriages reached and what routes they followed once outside the compound.

  In parallel with her drawings, the night often found her lurking in the shadows, watching the vehicles that entered and exited the complex. She noticed that although guards inspected the loads, they did so superficially, without any real control. That negligence confirmed her hypothesis: by hiding among materials and supplies, she could pass through the garden gates without much difficulty.

  While her mind processed schedules and frequencies—realizing that the pre-dawn carriages were the busiest, and therefore the most useful—her body continued performing the role of the perfect cloth maid. She moved with rehearsed normality, using her knowledge of the palace to discreetly avoid corridors where she might be abused or forced into tasks beyond her mission.

  Dehumanization, however, was inevitable.

  On one occasion, while serving dinner to a group of Sovereigns, one of them slapped her on the backside. Amarantha didn’t react. She kept working as if she were an inert object, while in her mind she adjusted the way she would encode the palace entry-and-exit plan.

  She already had everything.

  She had identified the weaknesses of the Rousth Palace. Entering and leaving the gardens was no longer an impossible challenge, but a tactical alternative she would execute when the moment was right.

  A memory surfaced then, dragging her back to one of her last meetings with Victor before the infiltration.

  “For now, to be able to leave the Sovereigns’ Garden, you’ll have to use the supply carriages,” he had instructed, handing her a detailed report. “We’ve studied the transport flow and detected constant movement, even during the night. Here is the list of the different vehicles—study it so that once you’re inside, you can identify which one best fits each situation.”

  In the present, Amarantha had already validated every one of those words through her own observation, but the memory continued.

  “We’re gathering critical information through our collaborators,” Victor had added. “As soon as you manage to get out of the gardens, go to Brooklyn Street, in the southern sector of the metropolis, Mid Rousth district. Look for the cherry merchant. When you reach him, you’ll need to speak the keyword.”

  Victor had whispered the phrase, inaudible to anyone but her.

  “When you say it, he’ll know you’re a Reydem collaborator. If our contacts have done their job in time, he’ll give you vital information about tunnels and internal ducts that connect the gardens—and even the palace itself—to the outside. That will give you multiple routes of movement, and an escape path for when the time comes to leave.”

  The memory dissolved.

  Amarantha lay in bed after her bath, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, her eyes dull and lifeless. In her mind, the gears of the plan were already aligned: all that remained was to leave the Sovereigns’ Garden without being detected… and return that same night before dawn.

  Days and nights followed one another in a double routine. On the surface, she carried out her duties with mechanical efficiency. In parallel, she gathered clues, watched carriage departures, and memorized secondary routes.

  As the silence of the room wrapped around her, she reflected on the nature of that supposed fortress. To her, Rousth was nothing more than a physical barrier designed to separate the powerful from the rest of the world—a wall dividing opulence from misery. Its security systems lacked any real tactical sophistication: they were an aesthetic fa?ade, not a military structure built to withstand a conscious threat.

  The Sovereigns relied on their status as if it were an absolute shield. Blind arrogance. Negligence Amarantha was willing to exploit.

  Finally, she closed her eyes and surrendered to sleep.

  Before losing consciousness, she whispered to herself:

  “I only have three days left.”