Date: June 17, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The "Gray Scars" plateau lived up to its name. An endless plain, cut by deep crevices, it seemed like the body of an ancient creature that had once been brutally scourged. The closer Divilla's detachment got to the Eastern Frontier, the more noticeably nature itself changed. The air here didn't just stagnate—it vibrated. The density of energy in the atmosphere became so high that normal breathing caused a tingling in the lungs.
Dur rode in the saddle, trying to keep a steady rhythm. After the fight with the Spinebreakers, he felt a strange tension in his muscles—his body seemed to demand new loads to justify the boar meat it had absorbed. His presence had become "heavy"; even the horse under him sometimes snorted in fright, feeling the unnatural density emanating from its rider.
Suddenly, the sky above the horizon turned a strange opal color. The wind, which had been dry and hot, died down. A dead silence fell, in which a thin, crystalline ringing was distinctly heard.
"The Glass Wind!" Divilla's voice cracked like a whip. "Everyone strengthen your structure! Masks on your faces! Quickly!"
Dur barely had time to pull on his leather mask and activate his inner defense. He didn't hide behind a rock outcropping. A month of training in Ligra had taught him to face the threat head-on. Beside him, in an equally resolute pose, Maël stood frozen. The Agrim heir didn't seek protection from his friend—on the contrary, his energy flared up in a bright, shimmering haze. His Spirit was already beginning to change the structure of his skin, preparing for the collision. Maël was stronger, his magic was finer, and he stood his ground with the pride of a true warrior of his family.
The first gust struck not with air, but with millions of microscopic crystals. It was the very wrath of nature, crystallized in flight under the pressure of spatial distortions.
The sight was both beautiful and terrifying. Dur saw a solitary, withered tree standing ten paces from them become instantly enveloped in a sparkling cloud. In less than five seconds, the trunk began to literally melt. The bark turned to dust, the branches crumbled into sparkling grit, and then the massive root itself was ground into nothing, as if it had never been. The stones around them became covered in a network of deep furrows, turning into fine sand before their eyes.
The Glass Wind didn't just blow—it ground reality into dust.
Dur felt invisible razors dig into his hands and face. He directed all his power to the surface of his skin, creating a kind of "energy armor." His flesh became so dense that the crystals, capable of eroding stone, only left shallow but numerous cuts on him.
The pain was unbearable, but Dur didn't close his eyes. He looked at Divilla. She stood in the very center of the storm, absolutely motionless. Around her, space distorted: the crystals of the Glass Wind, not reaching her skin by mere millimeters, would suddenly vanish and reappear on the other side. Her Castling worked in automatic mode, swapping points in space with such speed that the anomaly simply couldn't "touch" her. This was the level of an Adept—absolute mastery over the elements.
Divilla, despite her outward indifference, was carefully watching her charges. Her gaze slid over Maël—he was coping brilliantly, his Spirit effectively adapting the surface of his body to the micro-impacts.
Then she shifted her gaze to Dur. And what she saw made her frown for a moment.
Dur wasn't using a Spirit—he didn't have one. He was taking the full force of the anomaly on his body. His clothes had long since been torn to shreds, his skin covered with hundreds of bloody streaks. But Divilla noticed something unusual. The cuts on Dur's shoulders and chest were slowly closing up right under the hail of flying crystals. The blood barely had time to appear before the edges of the wound would come together, leaving only a thin line that disappeared a few seconds later.
"His regeneration..." Divilla thought. "That's impossible for his level of power. His Vessel isn't just dense, it's incredibly active."
She realized that Dur wasn't just a hardworking guy. There was some kind of anomalous glitch in his physiology that made his cells divide and recover with frightening efficiency. Perhaps it was the very absence of a Spirit that forced all the accumulated energy to work exclusively on his biology.
The Glass Wind raged for another half hour, turning the surrounding cliffs into smooth, rounded boulders, and all life within a mile into dust. When the ringing finally subsided, an unnatural, dusty silence descended on the plateau.
Maël sank heavily to one knee, his strength almost exhausted, his face pale. He had endured, but the price was high.
Dur stood upright. His body still pulsed with a heavy rhythm. His skin was clean—only slight redness reminded him that a minute ago, he had been nearly erased from reality. He felt ravenously hungry, his stamina was at zero, spent on the monstrous regeneration, but he stood.
"To horse," Divilla commanded curtly, not giving them time to process what had happened. "We're almost there."
They moved on. After two hours of travel, the horizon suddenly split open. Dur saw something that made his heart stop.
Ahead, wedged between two colossal mountain peaks, stood the "Iron Gullet." It wasn't just a fortress—it was a wall several hundred meters high, built of dark, almost black stone, shot through with veins of steel. Around the citadel, the air seemed viscous and dark. Dur felt his weight suddenly increase. Valtorn's gravitational pressure was felt even here, several miles from the walls.
On the horizon, opposite the fortress, were endless rows of lights. The legions of Alvost. Thousands of campfires merging into a single sea of fire. Strange creatures, resembling flying rays—Alvost's gravity platforms—circled in the sky above the enemy camp.
"The Iron Gullet," Divilla said, and for the first time, tension was heard in her voice. "The Agrim Family's stronghold in this direction."
Dur looked at the giant wall and felt something inside him respond to the external pressure. This was a place where his "density" would be tested to the breaking point. The chapter of his life called "Ligra" had definitively ended. The war had begun.
They rode under the arches of the giant gates, which closed behind them with a clang like the slamming of a coffin lid. Inside the citadel, it smelled of soot, iron, and fear. Dur dismounted and looked at his hands. They were strong. They were ready.