Date: May 20, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
Sunday morning brought not only the ringing of temple bells to Ligra but also a rare, almost forgotten feeling of peace. Sarim Agrim, whose calculated nature bordered on mercy, had granted the recruits a day of "spiritual cleansing." After weeks spent under the icy torrents of the Silver Fang and the blows of Koh's iron staff, this seemed like an almost unreal gift.
Dur stood by the window of their room, dressed in a simple linen shirt and worn but clean trousers—clothes he had worn before his life turned into an endless cycle of pain and concentration. His body felt strangely light, as if the lead rods he used to "root" himself in the granite had been removed. His inner Energy—his small, now steadily flowing stream—required no conscious control; it was simply there, warming him from within with a quiet, barely perceptible pulse.
"Stop looking for enemies in every shadow, Dur," Maël approached from behind, tying the laces on a light leather vest as he walked. "Today, we are not shadows or hunters. We are just two young men with Sarim's silver jingling in our pockets and a whole day in the city ahead of us."
Dur turned. Maël looked different. Without his training armor, with a clean face and neatly combed hair, he once again resembled the aristocrat he was by birth. But his gaze... his gaze had changed forever. The youthful carelessness was gone from the depths of his pupils; a cold readiness, which Koh had hammered into them every day, now lived there.
"The city has changed, Maël," Dur said quietly. "You said so yourself. I can feel it even from here."
And he wasn't lying. Descending the hill into the residential quarters, they felt it in their skin. Ligra still breathed, traded, and laughed, but nervousness had crept into its rhythm. Queues formed at the forges—not of peasants wanting to mend plows, but of militiamen waiting for spears to be sharpened. Prices for dried meat and leather at the markets had skyrocketed, and merchants arriving from the east with spices looked exhausted and frightened. The city was quieting before a great storm, like a forest before the first lightning strike.
"That's exactly why we need to see this," Maël led him confidently through the crowd. "Today at the Square of Light, they're performing 'The Resurrected Spirit.' The grandest spectacle in years. 'The Founding of the Empire.' The whole city will be there."
The performance was held in a huge pavilion of heavy blue fabric, spread in the very heart of the city. Lanterns hung above the entrance, inside which captured spirit-fireflies beat, creating a soft, ghostly glow. The air around the pavilion was thick with the smell of sweet roasted almonds, expensive incense, and the sweat of hundreds of people.
They entered, and Dur tensed involuntarily. Inside reigned a semi-darkness. Long rows of benches sloped down towards a giant screen—a stretched canvas of white silk, pre-treated with Sylvan alchemical compounds to hold light.
"Sit down," Maël whispered, pointing to seats in the middle. "And don't be alarmed. What you're about to see isn't pure magic; it's the art of shadow manipulation."
The hall gradually filled. Everyone was there: from rich merchants in silks to port workers in coarse robes. People settled in, sharing news and munching on sweets, but as soon as a low hum from a huge gong sounded behind the curtain, an absolute, ringing silence fell.
The lights in the hall went out. Dur felt his senses sharpen to their limit. He detected a barely perceptible movement of energy behind the screen—the "light-bringers" were at work, specially trained masters whose Spirits could manipulate particles of light and darkness.
Suddenly, the screen came alive. The first images appeared on the white silk. They weren't static pictures—shadows moved, flowed into one another, creating the illusion of a living world. Dur held his breath. He saw the boundless forests that had stood here thousands of years ago. He saw the first great chieftains, whose figures seemed colossal, woven from pure radiance.
The narrator's voice, amplified by copper horns hidden behind the screen, vibrated in the very air, penetrating under the ribs. It told of how the first Agrim had tamed the will of the mountains, how the dwarves had shared the secrets of steel, and how the legions of Order had first driven back the darkness from the east.
For Dur, who had grown up in the forest and the orphanage, this was a shocking revelation. He saw battles on the screen where Spirits took the forms of giant beasts and mythical creatures. Here, a Ligran hero with the Spirit of a Golden Griffin clashed in the sky with an Alvostian legionary whose shadow resembled a many-eyed hydra. The flash of swords, bursts of energy, crumbling mountains—it all looked so real that people in the hall cried out involuntarily.
"Look closely, Dur," Maël's cold whisper came right by his ear. "See how they depict Alvost? As faceless evil coming from nowhere. But the truth is, five hundred years ago, those lands belonged to us, and we to them. These 'faces of the past' are just a beautiful frame for the picture the Agrims are painting."
Dur didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the screen, where at that moment the construction of Ligra was being depicted. Thousands of tiny human-shadows hauled stones, erecting the walls he now knew like the back of his hand. There was a certain primal power in it. He felt his Energy within his chest begin to pulse faster, responding to the rhythm of the performance.
It wasn't just a show. It was a reminder of what they were sweating for on the training ground. But at the same time, Dur felt the falseness Maël spoke of. There was no smell of blood in these shadows. There was no pain from Koh's staff strikes. The heroes on the screen died beautifully, dissolving into sparks of light, but Dur knew—a man dies dirty, in dust and groans.
The performance continued, drawing the audience deeper into history, but Dur caught himself turning more and more often towards the exit. There, in the strip of light from under the curtain, he saw the real Ligra—with its fears, its queues for bread, and the smell of burning. The line between the fairy tale on the screen and the reality outside was thinning with each passing minute, and Dur felt: soon the moment would come when the shadows would step off the screen and onto the streets of this city. Then he and Maël would have to fight not beautiful images, but a real, merciless force that doesn't know how to disappear after the lights go out.
The climax of the performance came suddenly. The screen flashed dazzling white, and the hall gasped—the spirit-light-bearers behind the screen had united their efforts, creating the effect of a grandiose explosion. On the canvas unfolded the battle for the Great Bridge over the River Liran. The image was so clear you could make out individual drops of water flying up from the blows of giant ghostly hammers. The ancient hero, his face hidden by a lion-headed helmet, stood alone against an entire legion of "shadows." His movements were slow, majestic, filled with that very "ideal energy" Koh spoke of only in theory.
Dur felt the crowd around him breathing in unison. Hundreds of people leaned forward, their faces, lit by the flashes from the screen, frozen in rapturous trance. But Dur himself felt a strange burning in his palms. His inner "Stream," usually calm, began to pulse in time with the percussive strikes of the gongs. It seemed to him that he saw not just a picture, but the very structure of the manipulation—he noticed the barely perceptible trembling at the edges of the shadows, felt the smell of ozone emanating from the overstrained spirit-artists.
"Look at his feet," Maël whispered almost inaudibly, without turning. "See? He's not rooting himself. He's dancing. In reality, the first blow from a heavy shield would have swept him away. But people like to believe that heroism is easy."
The narrator's voice reached thunderous heights, proclaiming the victory of Order over Chaos. On the screen appeared an image of Ligra in the rays of the setting sun—peaceful, majestic, invincible. The final gong strike made the walls of the pavilion shudder, and the light in the hall slowly began to dawn.
People were in no hurry to leave. They sat, stunned by what they had seen, hope mixed with superstitious awe on their faces. Dur and Maël were the first to rise, trying to slip unnoticed towards the exit before the crowd moved.
When they stepped outside, the evening air of Ligra seemed incredibly fresh and real to Dur. The smell of fried fish from port stalls, the cries of hawkers, the creak of carts—it was all coarse, imperfect, but alive.
"After something like that, you either want to get drunk or go to the training ground," Maël grumbled, squinting from the light of the street lanterns. "My uncle Sarim knows what he's doing. Tomorrow, half these guys will go sign up for the militia, believing they are those very shadows from the screen."
They moved along the Street of Seven Lanterns—a narrow artery of the city where even on Sundays life didn't cease. Craftsmen lived here, and from open windows came the tapping of small hammers and the smell of hot metal. Dur suddenly stopped at a small shop, over which hung a string of dried figs.
"Let's buy some," he said, pointing to a tray of honeyed nuts. "Just because."
Maël raised an eyebrow in surprise but silently counted out a few copper alum. The seller, an old man with a face like a baked apple, nodded gratefully, wrapping the treat in a scrap of parchment. The nuts were sweet, sticky, and smelled of smoke—simple, honest food with no magic in it.
They walked on, chewing the nuts and watching the people passing by. At the main gate of the garrison, Dur noticed a group of soldiers—they weren't patrolling, but loading bundles of fodder and barrels of salt meat onto heavy carts. Their movements were quick, their faces focused. There was no orchestra or light show there. Only the heavy labor of preparing for a march.
"See?" Dur gestured with his chin towards the gate. "That's the real founding of the empire. Sweat, the creak of wheels, and the fear they hide behind their cursing."
Maël nodded, his gaze becoming serious. "That's the problem, Dur. Fairy tales on screen help them forget their fear. But when the legions of Alvost come, the fairy tales will end. Only those who know how to stand under the waterfall will remain."
They began their ascent back to the Agrim estate. The road wound up the slope, and with each turn, Ligra revealed more of itself to them. From the height, the city seemed like a scattering of precious stones thrown on the bank of a dark river. But Dur now saw not only the beauty. He noticed the dark spots of warehouses packed with weapons, saw the empty docks where merchant ships used to crowd.
At the entrance to the estate, they were met by Master Koh. He stood at the gate, arms crossed, his massive figure in the twilight seeming part of the stone wall.
"Did you watch it?" his voice was dry, devoid of emotion.
"Yes, Master," Dur answered, straightening up.
"And what did you see?" Koh came closer, his eyes glinting in the torchlight.
"We saw what we are not," Maël said honestly. "And what those who haven't seen your staff believe in."
Koh snorted unexpectedly—a sound that served him as a laugh. "Good answer. The shadows on the screen don't feel pain. They don't know what exhaustion is. But tomorrow at five in the morning, you'll learn it again. Go to sleep. From this moment on, your day off is over indefinitely."
Passing by the master through the gate, Dur felt a strange confidence. The sweet taste of honeyed nuts still lingered on his tongue, reminding him of normal life, but his muscles were already habitually tensed in anticipation of tomorrow's pain. He no longer feared that pain. It was more honest than any performance of "The Resurrected Spirit."
That night, Dur dreamed again. But this time, he wasn't falling into an abyss. He stood at the edge of the screen, seeing both the audience in the hall and the dancing shadows. And in his hand was not a wooden sword, but a real blade, from which emanated the steady, calm radiance of his own energy. He knew: soon he would have to step out of the shadows and become that very shield the people in the hall could only dream of. But he also knew that his victory would not be accompanied by applause. It would be quiet, bloody, and real. Like Ligra itself.