The door closed with a cold, definitive click. Nyx remained seated motionless at the table, her gaze fixed strictly on the rough maps of the Bastion spread out before her. Outside her room, tension buzzed through the air, but inside here reigned the absolute silence of the Shadow. Her emotions were locked away under key. There was no time for tears, only for structure. With a cold, mechanical precision, she began redrawing the defense lines. Silarias was no longer there to serve as an indestructible wall. From now on, the Bastion had to become an impenetrable fortress built on iron discipline.
Outside her room, the reality of the Mental Fracture was palpable everywhere. The blow of Silarias’ disappearance had carved deep furrows into the morale of the group, and the way everyone handled that unbearable vacuum drove the Bastion to the brink of insanity.
In the central hall echoed the dull, rhythmic clatter of steel against steel, mixed with the heavy panting of exhausted bodies. Jane stood there, her hair tied back tightly, her eyes wild and focused. She allowed herself not a single second of rest. With brute, mechanical strikes, she hammered away at the wooden training dummies until the wood splintered and her knuckles split open. Around her, the remaining soldiers and survivors were silently slaving away. Nobody spoke. The cold orders Nyx had left behind earlier hung over the training floor like an invisible whip. People forced their muscles to the absolute limit, purely to drown out the fear and the realization of their vulnerability.
Further along in the dark, lower dining hall of the Bastion, the atmosphere was synchronously collapsing, but in a completely different way.
On a heavy oak table stood at least a dozen empty jugs of a heavy, burning liquor. Aurelius sat hunched forward with slumped shoulders, his once proud posture completely collapsed. Beside him sat Apollo, his eyes bloodshot and dull from the alcohol. The two men were drowning their grief and pure helplessness with brute surrender. Every gulp was an attempt to burn the image of the collapsing hall and the fluid transformation of Silarias out of their retinas.
"He was... he was unbeatable, Apollo," Aurelius slurred, while pouring his cup full again with a trembling hand, spilling half of it across the table. "That Nobody... he just swallowed that void sword. And now? Now we sit here rotting in the dust."
Apollo took a deep swig straight from the jug, the liquor burning in his throat, but it did nothing to dispel the cold in his chest. "We were too late. Always too late."
At the end of the table sat Nicola. Normally the most reserved of the group, but the pitch black atmosphere in the Bastion had demolished his barriers as well. With a grim, cold gaze, he grabbed a remaining cup and downed it in one swig. He had joined in the heavy drinking completely, simply because sober reality was too painful to bear. The three men sought refuge in numbness, while the rest of the fortress above their heads slowly turned into a cold military machine.
In the adjacent courtyard, Lyn and Cilla desperately tried to keep up appearances. Sitting between them were Miki and Ren, the youngest of the group, who intuitively felt the heavy tension but were not yet allowed to understand the brute truth.
Lyn handled a few wooden blocks and tried to distract Miki with a forced, far too cheerful voice. "Look, Miki, if we put these on top, we build a bigger tower than the walls outside!"
Miki looked at the blocks with big, questioning eyes, her voice soft. "Where is Silarias? Is he coming to help us later?"
Cilla swallowed the lump in her throat with difficulty and quickly bent over Ren to tie his messy laces, purely so he would not see the fear in her eyes. "Silarias has to... he is away for a bit for an important task, Ren. He needs all his strength right now. We need to take good care of the Bastion here, okay? Are you coming to the kitchens to see if there is anything left to eat?"
Meanwhile, Lyn and Cilla exchanged a quick, telling look over the children’s heads. Their jaws were set tight. They were feverishly figuring out what their next step should be, how on earth they were supposed to act now that the absolute core of their defense had fallen away and Nyx seemed to be turning into an unreachable, cold tyrant.
Suddenly, the heavy, muffled atmosphere of the Bastion was roughly shattered.
The massive, iron outer gate trembled under a series of loud, rhythmic strikes. Instantly, the trained guards snapped to attention, their spears aimed at the entrance. Jane abruptly stopped her training, sweat dripping from her forehead as she placed her hand on the hilt of her sword. Lyn and Cilla also held their breath, instinctively pulling Miki and Ren closer to them.
The gate creaked open a crack, and the shadowy, recognizable form of Ghoula slipped inside hurriedly. Her breathing was wheezing and wild, her clothes covered in the dust of the surface. She looked into the hall with a nervous, burning gaze, knowing that the atmosphere inside was at a boiling point.
"Jane! Where is the princess?!" Ghoula shouted immediately as she pulled the gate shut behind her. "Listen closely, everyone! I come straight from the outer lines. There is massive commotion going on. Large search parties are combing through the surface. They have sealed off the entire area around the ruins and are searching for Silarias with all their might!"
Jane took a step forward, her voice raspy. "Have they found him? Is he alive?!"
Ghoula shook her head quickly, her eyes wild. "No, not yet! The void swallowed him, but the enemy knows he could not have just evaporated. They are turning over every stone. I have set my spies everywhere. As soon as those search parties know something, as soon as even the smallest trail surfaces above ground, I will let you know immediately. But you must hold the line! If they discover we are sitting here, they will come with everything they have!"
Ghoula’s words hung like a ticking time bomb in the hall. Inside her room, Nyx heard the commotion, but her hand did not tremble as she put the pen to the parchment. The hunt was on, and the Shadow would be ready to snap the trap shut.
Ghoula’s words penetrated through the cracks of the heavy wooden door, and inside the room, Nyx’s pen abruptly stopped scratching. The parchment remained cold under her fingers. Slowly she stood up, her movements mechanical, as if she were a doll whose strings were pulled tight.
She began to pace. Five steps to the wall, turn, five steps back. Her breathing was shallow and short, and the cold mask of the Architect began to crack dangerously at the edges.
"They are searching for him," she whispered to the empty walls, her voice trembling with restrained, toxic panic. She stopped by the window and clenched her fists so hard that her nails bit into her palms. "They are turning over every stone... This cannot go on any longer. If they find him before he recovers... if those hunters reach him first... This absolutely cannot go on any longer!"
The door creaked open softly. Jane stepped inside noiselessly, her own knuckles still raw and bloody from the training dummies. She saw the trembling shoulders of the princess and took a step closer, her hard warrior voice softer than usual.
"Nyx," Jane spoke warmly, placing a hand on the distant shoulder of the girl to stop her pacing. "Look at yourself. You have been pacing for hours. Maybe... maybe it is just time to eat something and sleep. We cannot do anything more right now than wait. Destroying yourself solves nothing."
Upon hearing those words, something snapped deep within. The cold armor of the Shadow held no ground against the genuine concern of her friend. Large, hot tears burst forth and streamed down Nyx’s cheeks. She gasped for air, her face twisted in pure, raw pain.
"I can’t," she brought out, her voice choked. She wanted to scream that the whole world was on the verge of collapse, that the five year countdown was already ticking, that she missed Silarias to the very depths of her soul. She wanted to say that she deserved no rest as long as he lay suffering down there.
But the sentence was never finished.
Two small, warm hands suddenly wrapped around her left hand. Nyx looked down through her teary lashes and saw Miki standing there. The little girl looked up with big, understanding eyes. On her other side, Cilla stepped forward softly. Cilla held her other hand tightly and nodded to Nyx calmly and encouragingly. A look of pure, silent solidarity. We carry this together.
The warmth of the touch cut through the icy panic in her chest. Nyx cooled down instantly. The wild look in her eyes gave way to a deep, resigned emptiness. She took a deep breath, swallowed her burning grief with brute willpower, and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. Her voice was cold again, but steady.
"Alright," she said softly. "Let’s eat."
Together they walked out of the room toward the central table in the dining hall. Nyx took her place first at the head of the table, her back straight as an arrow.
Not long after, the heavy, sloppy shuffling of feet sounded on the stone floor. Aurelius, Apollo, and Nicola came stumbling into the room. Their faces were deathly pale and marked by alcohol, their eyes dull and bloodshot. Each of them still held a heavy earthen jug pressed tightly against his chest, as if it were their only lifeline in this damned world. They said nothing. Without looking at Nyx or the others, they slid half drunk onto the wooden benches and let their heads hang heavily.
There they sat together at the long table. The absolute core of their defense was gone, and the void Silarias left behind weighed tons. It was dead silent. The only sound in the immense space was the scraping of wooden spoons against bowls and the heavy, rhythmic breathing of the men. Everyone stared at their food, too tired and too broken to break the silence.
"Look," Ren suddenly broke the icy cold silence with a bright, innocent little voice. He held up a strangely shaped potato lying on his plate. "This one looks just like the fat nose of that training dummy in the hall. The one Jane smashed to pieces today."
Miki giggled softly beside him and pointed a finger at Aurelius’ bowl. "And Aurelius looks like he ate that dummy. You shouldn’t look so gloomy, big knight, or you’ll turn sour!"
It was a moment of pure, naive innocence in the middle of an emotional warzone. Despite the deep, cutting pain in their chests and the cold atmosphere ruling the room, the tension melted for a fraction of a second.
Aurelius forced a weak, genuine smile onto his tired face and patted Ren softly on the head. "I’ll try not to turn sour, little man," he muttered raspily.
Jane looked at Miki with a soft, warm gaze and slid an extra piece of bread her way. Even Nicola lowered his cup for a moment and nodded to the children briefly but kindly. Everyone reacted with unconditional sweetness toward the two little ones, as if they instinctively understood that this childlike innocence was the very last thing keeping them human in the dark shadow of the Bastion.