Date: June 17, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The Iron Gullet greeted them not with the clang of swords, but with a viscous, suffocating silence. As soon as the giant gate leaves, bound in black metal, slammed shut, Dur felt an invisible hand press him to the ground. It wasn't a sharp blow—rather a feeling as if the air had turned into thick honey, and every movement now required a conscious effort.
"Valtorn's gravitational echo," Divilla dismounted easily from her horse, her movements remaining unnaturally fluid. "It permeates every stone here. Your 1st-level Energy must circulate continuously, otherwise by evening your joints will simply refuse to move."
Dur took a deep breath, forcing his Energy to flow through his channels. He felt heavy, clumsy. Despite weeks of training, here, under the direct pressure of the enemy's will, his power seemed but a thin thread trying to hold up a collapsing cave roof.
The citadel's inner courtyard lived its own strange, slowed-down life. But instead of the stern, shouting officers Dur had expected to see, they were met by a man sitting on a luxurious silk pouf right in the middle of the dusty parade ground.
It was a man of indeterminate age with a mop of unkempt chestnut hair. He wore an expensive but wrinkled Agrim Family doublet, and in his hands he held an embroidered gold pillow, into which he periodically buried his face.
"Oh, Divilla..." the man lazily opened one eye. His pupil was strangely dilated, as if he were still in a drowse. "Did you bring new 'noises'? These two are so loud they're disturbing my third dream about lavender fields."
"Commander Somn," Divilla bowed her head in a slight, almost respectful bow. "This is Maël Agrim and Dur. They are here for practical experience."
"Practical experience..." Somn yawned so wide his jaw cracked. His Spirit of "Deep Sleep" enveloped him in an almost visible haze of tranquility. It seemed Valtorn's gravity simply didn't dare disturb this man. "Little Maël and his shadow."
He turned the pillow to the cool side and closed his eyes again.
"Go to the barracks. And try not to stomp with your heavy thoughts. The Iron Gullet is a place for eternal sleep, and Valtorn will soon sing us a lullaby."
They were quartered in cells on the lower level. Walls of black stone, saturated with steel, barely held back the external pressure. Dur sat on the hard bunk, feeling his muscles ache. His energy worked overtime, maintaining biological functions under the burden of gravity.
Dur's regeneration worked in the background. He felt the micro-tears in his ligaments, caused by the unfamiliar weight, healing faster than in an ordinary person. His body had a strange, almost beastly ability to recover "on the go." It wasn't a divine gift—rather a consequence of his energy, lacking a Spirit, being entirely directed towards the survival of the flesh. Dur's reactions remained sharp even under pressure, his body intuitively finding the most economical resting postures, reminiscent of a lurking predator.
Suddenly, the citadel shuddered. It wasn't the roar of an explosion, to which a soldier's ears are accustomed. A sound like the groan of tearing silk was heard, followed by a heavy, visceral crunch.
"Collapse! South warehouse!" someone shouted in the corridor.
Dur and Maël ran out into the courtyard. The scene was frightening. A projectile in the usual sense hadn't hit the warehouse building. A point of extreme gravity had simply formed there. Wooden beams, stone blocks, and bales of grain hadn't been scattered—they were sucked inward, compressed into a dense, ugly lump of matter. The space around the warehouse trembled for a few more seconds before the residual energy of Alvost dissipated.
"Help clear the perimeter!" one of the sergeants shouted. "Need to pull out those who were near the entrance!"
Dur rushed to the rubble. He tried to lift a piece of beam, but immediately realized his mistake. The wood, saturated by the gravitational strike, weighed five times its normal weight. His back muscles strained like strings, but the beam barely moved.
He was weak. Against the backdrop of the war raging around him, his efforts seemed like child's play. Dur saw veterans easily tossing aside stones he couldn't even budge. Maël, using his Spirit, helped stabilize the unstable structures, acting far more effectively.
Dur managed only to clear small debris and help pull out one wounded man, pinned by a light fragment by the standards of this fortress. When he finished, his hands trembled, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
Commander Somn, who still hadn't risen from his pouf, lifted his head.
"What a fuss..." he muttered, looking at the destruction. "Valtorn sent us a gift, and you're unwrapping it so noisily."
Dur wiped the sweat from his face. He felt a burning pain in his lower back, but knew that by morning his strange regeneration would erase this sensation. He looked at his palms—rough, calloused, trembling from overexertion.
"We're too small for this place," Maël said quietly, looking at the warehouse compressed into a ball.
"For now," Dur replied. His voice was quiet, but it held that instinctive confidence Somn had mentioned. "We just haven't learned to sleep under such pressure yet."
He understood: his path had only just begun. And if the Iron Gullet was Valtorn's lullaby, then he had to become one who would not just wake up, but could stand tall when the sky began to fall to the earth.