The torch's scent still lingered in his gloves.
Ryuji moved through the upper corridors of the Inner Bastion with measured steps, his cloak brushing against the stone like a whisper. The fortress had not changed in its bones, same arches, same banners faded by time, but the air felt thinner, stretched. As though the walls themselves strained to contain what they once swore to protect.
Even the silence had grown dishonest.
He passed under stained-glass windows depicting the Nine Oaths, each a scene of triumph, blades raised, banners unfurled, kings crowned in light. But the glass was dulled now, dust caught in every seam. One panel bore a spider-work of cracks, the sun behind it casting fractured light across the floor.
Ryuji stopped there.
The figure in the glass, Second Oath, Keeper of the Seal, had been his favorite as a boy. Not for her glory, but her gaze. Stern. Certain. A sentinel of the unbreakable.
Now her eyes seemed uncertain, fragmented by shadow.
He moved on.
Down past the scriptorium hall, empty at this hour, and into the Lesser Archives, where records too mundane or politically inconvenient were shelved under lock and shadow. No guards. No eyes. Only the faint scent of ink and dust and binding glue.
He did not need to read tonight. Not yet.
He was learning more by watching who no longer came here.
Scribe Thalen, who once transcribed war judgments like a machine, had not been seen in three days. Archivist Rowel, ever punctual with his morning sweep, now arrived two hours late, his hands trembling. And Elder Mareth, the only Oath-bound who still used her true name in council, had begun pausing before she spoke, like weighing her words against invisible weights.
Each change was small. But Ryuji noticed.
He watched how soldiers saluted slower when passing him. How the attendants who once offered respectful bows now nodded with eyes averted. How the flame in the central brazier no longer burned steady, it flickered, as though uneasy in its hearth.
Trust was thinning. Not broken, not yet.
But something was fraying.
He turned a corner into a smaller chamber, once the old meditation hall. The cushions had long since rotted, but the carved ceiling remained, stars etched into the wood above. Ryuji used to come here as a boy, hoping the silence would give him clarity. Now, the silence offered only weight.
A whisper of cloth behind him. He turned.
A figure stepped out from between two pillars, hands unarmed, posture familiar.
"Sylian", Ryuji said quietly.
The man gave a half-smile. "You still remember the old paths."
"I remember what mattered."
Sylian had once been a records-keeper, but more than that, a mentor of sorts. Not an elder, not sworn, but one of the few who'd spoken freely when Ryuji had questions others wouldn't answer.
"You've been walking the halls alone", Sylian said, voice low. "The walls notice, even if people pretend not to."
"I walk because they don't."
A pause.
"There are things best left untouched", Sylian murmured. "The past has sharp edges. And eyes."
"I'm not looking for relics", Ryuji said. "I'm looking for what was buried alive."
Sylian looked at him then, really looked. Something passed across his face, regret, maybe. Or fear.
"There were choices made", he said finally. "During the Breachfall. You weren't meant to know them."
"And yet I do", Ryuji answered. "Pieces, at least. Enough to see the shape of something deeper."
Sylian stepped closer, lowering his voice. "If you dig further, you won't find justice. Only rot. Old rot. And the ones still here? They've learned to live around the stench."
"I haven't", Ryuji said.
A long silence stretched between them.
Finally, Sylian whispered, "Then don't ask the elders. Not yet. They'll close ranks. Talk to the armory steward. Velen. Quiet man. Keeps more than blades locked away."
He turned to go.
"Why are you helping me?" Ryuji asked.
Sylian didn't stop. "Because once, you asked me what made a man loyal. And I didn't know."
He vanished into the shadows of the old hall, leaving Ryuji with only his echo.
Ryuji stood alone for a time, listening to the slow pulse of wind through the high stone. Somewhere outside, the city stirred, a bell in the lower quarter, a horse's faint breath. The fortress remained still.
But not silent.
He looked up again at the carved stars above him. They had not changed. But perhaps what lay beneath them had.
The time for watching was ending.
If Velen held pieces of what had been hidden, then that was where the next step would lead.
And this time, Ryuji would not walk with silence in his wake.