She opened her eyes slowly. Gave her vision time to adjust to the sunlight slipping through the gaps in the curtain and stretched, pulling a long, inelegant yawn from herself. When she turned her head, she found only the empty space beside the bed. First came anger. That bastard left in the middle of his watch. Then concern, faster and far less rational. They kidnapped my knight.
Santvic leapt out of bed, shoved her boots on in a hurry, and went straight to the door. She turned the handle — nothing. Pushed with her shoulder, with her whole body, and achieved nothing but aching arms. They locked me in. The conclusion came instantly, dramatic and absolute, as if it were the only possible answer. I'm dead.
She thought again. Took a deep breath. Returned, with measured steps, to the table. The key lay there, visible, almost mocking. She picked it up, went back to the door, and turned the lock.
Success.
Another victory for Santvic's day. Another mystery solved. The end of an enigma. She sighed, relieved, and let out a short laugh — meant exclusively for herself — before finally opening the door, only to think of something else.
I'm in danger, she repeated to herself.
She walked through the corridors, down the stairs to the hall, and then she saw him: her knight seated at a table in the corner, bathed in the morning sun, wearing a calm smile. Far too calm for someone who owed serious explanations. Without his armor, he wore the same stupid black sweater as always and held a cup of what was, in all likelihood, coffee. When he noticed her, he raised a hand in greeting. Irritated, Santvic marched over.
"Are you an idiot, leaving me alone in the room?"
"You sleep too much, boss. I was hungry."
The argument's opening was cut short by a young woman in a black dress with a white apron and a cap holding her hair back. She set a plate down in front of Vanhallow: a generous slice of cake, decorated with pink details. Santvic shot the girl a look of pure disgust as the knight picked up his fork. The girl withdrew without acknowledging her at all.
"Well, we have a problem," Santvic continued, sitting down. "Did you lock the room with your magical key?"
Hallow stayed silent for a few moments. He didn't want to admit that he had unlocked the door in the middle of the night, gone out to drink — just a few — come back, and forgotten to lock it again. No respectable knight would do something like that.
"Yes, that very one," he replied, smiling.
"I'm being serious, fool!" She frowned, a rare sign of irritation. Her voice sharpened. "You were outside the room, but the door was locked. I had to unlock it to leave. The key was inside, and I'm certain I didn't lock it."
"Hold on," Hallow tried to piece the logic together. "You were inside the room, with the key."
"Yes. And then I tried to leave, and it was locked. But I didn't lock the door. And you were outside, so you didn't lock it either."
"Yeah… I didn't lock it," he agreed, folding his hands on the table, suddenly unsure. "I didn't lock it?"
"You didn't lock it, because you were outside, fool," she explained patiently. "How would you leave the key inside? Climb out the window? Why? You're foolish, but you're not insane."
"Well, then you locked it," he shot back.
"I did not lock it," she insisted.
Hallow sighed. The obvious answer was that Santvic was a sleepwalker. After all, the only other possibility was that someone had entered the room to steal from her — and he was certain that wasn't the case. And, as he had decided the night before, the best way to deal with that woman was to listen more and question less.
"They might've tried to find something valuable in the room and left through the window. Check your things. We'll stay alert and get out of here as fast as possible, after we deliver those letters."
"Wonderful. Thank you."
Nothing had been stolen. The mystery remained unresolved. To Santvic, it was like an itch in a blind spot on her back—out of reach. It would bother her until she solved it somehow. They dressed, packed their things, paid for the stay, and said their goodbyes.
Chestnut hadn't caused any trouble. The inn boy even praised Mouse's behavior. "The calmest horse I've ever seen," he said. Daric pointed at Santvic, accusingly: "He's calm because he's starving." The two kept arguing until they left Tertiary. No guards waited for them at the gates this time.
They rode on, following the trinity of rivers of Catharsis. One region in particular—known as the Crags—nearly made Hallow fall off Chestnut; the entire rocky, jagged stretch seemed to irritate the animal. It didn't help that, somehow, the whole area was damp.
"How strange," Santvic commented. "I don't remember this phenomenon."
"I'm going to remember it for a while," he replied, already irritated at that hour of the morning.
The journey lasted a little over four hours. They didn't face the scorching sun: the sky closed in with thick clouds, giving the day a gray, marsh-like cast. As they approached the walls of Tertiary, the sky wept a light drizzle—insufficient to truly bother them, yet present enough to mark skin and ground alike.
Santvic and Hallow felt the weight of the blight. Whether it was the rain, the melancholy sky, the bitterness of the situation, or their growing thirst, something was deeply wrong with that region. A grim omen of death that unsettled even the horses. In Doural, the power of the mind and the collective thought of the people shape the environment they inhabit. If the aura of that place was so deteriorated, there could be only one answer: the blight pulsed there, and the peasants' lives were nearing their end. Daric cast a quick glance at Santvic's expression—so serious and focused, lost in her own thoughts. Has she found something? he wondered. She must have.
The walls of Tertiary, made of muddy-looking stone bricks, poorly fitted and aged, encircled the entire region. The dirt road curved around the village, flanked by an extensive forest of dead trees. Both understood the problem immediately: infertility. The land bore a sandy hue, with very little grass compared to the rest of Catharsis. It was a cancer.
Santvic was overtaken by a bitter memory.
"It looks like Prima-Village."
"Mhm. You think it was the same blight?"
"It doesn't make sense for it to have spread here and not to Secunda. Unless they're doing something different. I have no idea."
"If you don't know…"
No guards awaited them at the gate. A young man, however—wearing nothing but a light-colored coverall, white fabrics, and gardening gloves—startled when he saw them pass beneath the stone arches that marked the village entrance, and ran off without looking back. The horses moved forward in silence, solemn, as if crossing a wake. Santvic, however, felt something else: a growing tension gnawing at her. An animal instinct trying to warn her that something was moving through the village at the same pace as they were—and not with good intentions.
"I have a very bad feeling about this," she murmured. Hallow did not reply.
The roads seemed permanently mired in mud, indifferent to the rain. Perhaps it was their very nature to resist passage, to impede anyone who tried to cross them. The houses appeared spaced apart, wary of one another, each accompanied by a vast, multipurpose plot: improvised tents, worktables, small plantations, artificial channels that carried water. One of the lots was overtaken by stone statues, devoted to entities Santvic could not recognize from a distance.
The buildings were old, untouched by the modernities of Secunda, lagging centuries behind the Capital and Satus. Wood and stone, shaped by generations of trial and error. Chimneys—always present, regardless of the house's size—betrayed a culture rooted in fire and vigilance. Metallic fences, aggressive and spiked, twisted by time, evoked Mel-Purpura. It was a Gothic village: tortured and weary. This was not its first blight, its first drought, its first famine. They tried to believe it would not be the last.
They did not know exactly where they were going. The village folded in on itself like a labyrinth, larger on the inside than it appeared from without. Few residents allowed themselves to be seen, and when they did, they hurried past, casting at the pair glances heavy with fear and reverence. It made sense: Santvic and Hallow clashed violently with the surroundings.
The women wore simple fabrics, white or bluish, falling to their calves and covering their arms. Worn garments, patched countless times with threads of similar tones—an honest effort to preserve some dignity. All concealed their faces beneath bonnets, uniform in their discretion. The men, in turn, dressed almost always in brown: suspenders holding up soiled trousers, wide boots scarred by use, and the ever-present beret. A few, more daring, wore dark overcoats. They moved with haste and mysterious purpose, pushing carts, carrying buckets, baskets of fruits and vegetables, sealed sacks—sometimes children, sometimes animals. Mouse became distracted by a bluish-hued pig, until Santvic promptly corrected him.
Soon, the whispers began. Glances through windows. Murmurs that grew in volume and courage until they became words.
"Is it you?" asked a group of four women, their arms entwined as if they were a single entity, approaching the horses with caution.
Santvic cast them an indifferent look. They immediately recoiled.
"I work for the Null State," she replied at last. The women's eyes widened, their mouths falling open.
They moved on. In the distance, bells began to echo, dragging their sound across the horizon. The village's anxiety swelled, as though obeying a command the pair did not understand. The streets emptied quickly; everyone seemed to converge on a single point, certain of their destination.
"Do you think it's a summons?" Hallow asked.
"A gathering, perhaps," Santvic replied.
Keeping pace with the peasants, the horses advanced toward the center of the village. Along the way, they caught sight of a chapel adorned with golden details—the most carefully maintained structure in the entire region. The sparse weeds of dead soil, a constant presence around the surrounding houses, had been trimmed there. Aligned bricks, pristine stained glass. The staircase seemed painted gray, such was the smoothness of the stone.
The great tower that housed the bell, however, was not the source of the ringing; the only movement there came from two men, dressed entirely in white—long tunics falling to their feet—kneeling facing the chapel, surrendered to the ground in silent prayer. Hallow cast Santvic a brief glance, and the anxious question slipped from him.
"So they're Miraculas? Devout Miraculas?"
"Yes." Santvic sighed. "At least, they appear to be. Not that they follow any established magisterium… this village bears Purpurian traits."
"Do you think we'll have trouble, mistress?"
Santvic did not answer.
They arrived at what seemed to be the heart of the village. A wide square of stone flooring, painted in black-and-white figures. At ground level, no design could be clearly discerned, but it was evident that it depicted some divine entity. Large clay jars held small fruit trees; well-kept stone benches circled the space; and at the center rose a grand fountain, finely carved, surrendered to time. Above it, a great bell swayed. Its melody faded slowly with each toll—and when they arrived, the bell seemed to obey their presence, falling completely silent.
The murmur around them died out. One by one, all eyes turned to the pair as they dismounted, guiding their horses by the reins toward the center of the square. Santvic avoided the gazes; Hallow, by contrast, seemed incapable of escaping them.
Mud-caked boots, soaked fabrics, wrinkled hands. Hungry faces. Curious children, elders bent by pain. In the man who wept in revolt, in the child who hid the fear, in the voices forbidden to rise, he heard the clatter of the mind's shackles. In every face marked by weakness and wear—from the Chimney-sweepers silent, sorrowful cry, from the poor soldier who endures to the last—every pain ran like blood through the palaces of Tertiary. Every man with weary arms, every woman crying under the scourge. Every bruised eye, every thin bone. All screamed for aid, for sacred knights who would bring them an end or a beginning, for ordered prayer, for saviors.
Santvic advanced with diligence, oblivious to her surroundings. Hallow's heart tightened. How sensitive—how fragile—was this woman, to believe she could place herself before those people, that she could save them, rather than drag the entirety of hell into the village? Hatred swelled in his chest, fermenting into a cry on the verge of breaking free. He swallowed it by force, drowning it so no one would ever hear.
"Make way! The Capital is in the village!" The cry burst from the crowd. "The Capital is in the village!"
Near the bell of the summons stood a man of heavy presence. He was round-bodied and dressed in noble fabrics, though worn—similar to Santvic's—befitting one who must sustain appearances despite the surrounding misery: a greatcoat over a white, buttoned shirt that covered his thick neck. Only a few white strands of hair remained, sparse enough to leave a hollow above his brow, exposed not only by baldness but by the deep wrinkles that gathered there. His face was a map of scars; his lips, purplish and tired; his eyes, drooping yet alert. There was something honestly inviting in them.
The mass watched the pair in expectant silence, awaiting the almost liturgical moment of consecration. There they were, many thought: the knights of Tertiary, ready to be crowned as saviors.
"Welcome. You work for the Null State, I presume?" He spread a broad smile, revealing missing teeth and the few remaining, yellowed and already condemned. Santvic remained upright and impassive, not returning the gesture.
"I am Arcane Curator Barbela Santvic Babalon. I received a summons from Tertiary concerning a plague." She made a brief gesture with her hand. "At my side, Daric Vanhallow, my knight."
The man hesitated for a moment, as if that were not the answer he had expected. Santvic did not seem surprised; Hallow did—his eyebrow lifted slightly. He hadn't been waiting for them?
"A summons." The smile returned, more restrained. "What a blessing, then."
He extended his hand first to Santvic. The grip was firm, steady, almost comforting.
"William Percival Bellamare. But please, call me Percival."
Then he turned to Daric.
"I see you've already met our residents. These are difficult times. We do not receive many visitors… forgive their curiosity."
The peasants still watched like an audience, forming a dense ring around the square. Santvic felt herself, against her will, the absolute center of that world. Something there troubled her deeply—a dissonance that would not dissipate, a sense of error clinging to her body. She had never experienced anything like it. Beside her, Hallow tightened his grip around the blade, the gesture nearly imperceptible. He felt the same: something was not right.
"We must discuss certain matters in private, my lord," Santvic said firmly. "Grant us a moment of your time."
"Naturally." Percival smiled, stepping aside. "Please, follow me."