The mountain was a blade of obsidian driven into the heart of the Weald. There was no path, only a brutal, near-vertical ascent up jagged, glass-like rock that bit at their hands and threatened to shred their boots. The air grew so thin and cold it burned their lungs, each breath a dagger of ice. The ever-present ash was gone, replaced by a clinging, black frost that seemed to leech the warmth directly from their bones. The higher they climbed, the more the world below vanished, swallowed by a sea of churning, grey mist until they stood alone on an island in a dead sky.
The Bastion was not built upon the summit; it was the summit. The black stone of the mountain had been twisted and pulled by some terrible will into spikes and buttresses, forming a fortress that was less architecture and more a frozen explosion of malice. There were no banners, no guards visible on the walls, no lights in the arrow-slits. It was a maw, a silent promise of oblivion. The only sound was the keening of the wind through its thorny spires, a sound that felt like the scraping of a bone needle across Kael's soul.
They found a crevice, a deep fracture in the mountain's face that offered some shelter from the biting wind and a view of the Bastion's main gate—a towering arch of interlocked, razor-sharp stone shards, like the jaws of a colossal beast.
"No sentries," Lyra observed, her voice a whisper against the wind's moan. She had her bow in hand, an arrow nocked. "No patrols. Nothing."
"He does not need them," Kael replied, his hand resting on his sword. The weapon was humming, a constant, low-frequency vibration that resonated in his teeth. The entire mountain was saturated with Corvus's power. The air itself was his watchman. "The blight is his army. The despair is his wall."
"Arrogance," Lyra muttered, but there was no conviction in it. They had both felt the Mind-Leech, crossed the Bridge of Sighs. Arrogance implied a flaw. This felt like a terrible, earned certainty.
Elian's map was useless here. The scholar's neat lines and symbols could not capture the visceral, shifting wrongness of this place. They were navigating by the pull in Kael's spirit, the magnetic draw of the corruption's heart.
"There," Lyra pointed with her arrow. Not at the main gate, but at a lower section of the wall where a massive, petrified root from some long-dead titan of a tree had been ensnared and partially absorbed by the growing stone. It formed a natural, if treacherous, ramp leading up to a gap in the fortifications where two twisting spires failed to fully merge. "That's our way in."
The climb up the root was a nightmare of crumbling, brittle wood and patches of black ice. They moved one at a time, Kael going first, testing each handhold, the silver light of his shield ready to flare and anchor him if he fell. The wind tore at them, trying to pluck them from the mountainside and dash them into the mist below.
They were halfway up when the mountain itself reacted.
The black frost on the root in front of Kael coalesced, swelling into a humanoid form of solid ice and shadow. Its eyes were points of emerald fire, and its limbs ended in crystalline claws that screeched against the petrified wood as it moved. A Rime Wraith.
It lunged, silent and deadly. Kael had no room to draw his sword. He met the charge with his shield, the silver light flaring with a sound like a thunderclap. The Wraith's claws shattered against the divine energy, but the force of the blow nearly knocked Kael from the root. He grunted, digging in his heels, his boots skidding on the ice.
An arrow whistled past his ear, striking the Wraith in the center of its glowing chest. Lyra's shot. The arrow did no physical damage, but the cold-forged iron of its head flared with a pale blue light. The Wraith shrieked, a sound like breaking glass, its form destabilizing for a crucial second.
It was all the opening Kael needed. He let go of the root with one hand, and a blade of pure, concentrated silver light extended from his fist. He drove it into the Wraith's core. The creature dissolved into a cloud of freezing mist that was instantly torn away by the wind.
"Go!" Lyra shouted from below.
He scrambled the rest of the way up, hauling himself through the gap in the spires and into the relative shelter of the Bastion's outer wall. He turned and helped pull Lyra up after him. They stood on a narrow, exposed walkway, the wind howling around them. They were inside.
The interior of the Bastion was a landscape of inverted geometry. Hallways slanted at nauseating angles. Staircases spiraled in on themselves, leading nowhere. Doors were set into ceilings, and archways opened into sheer drops. The laws of physics seemed to be a suggestion here, overruled by the will of the dweller. The air was thick and still, heavy with the scent of old blood, dust, and the overpowering, cloying sweetness of decayed magic. The green, phosphorescent lichen grew in thick, pulsating veins along the walls, providing the only illumination, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to have a life of their own.
The silence was the most terrifying thing. After the wind's scream, the utter quiet within the fortress was a pressure on the eardrums. It was a listening silence.
They moved like phantoms, Lyra in the lead, her scout's instincts navigating the impossible architecture. Kael followed, his senses stretched to their limit. The humming of his sword was a constant guide, growing stronger as they delved deeper. He could feel Corvus now, not as a presence, but as a focal point of the corruption, a still, dark star around which this nightmare constellation revolved.
They passed through a vast, circular chamber whose floor was a mosaic of a screaming face, the tiles made from polished bone. They crept along a hallway where the walls seemed to breathe, a slow, rhythmic expansion and contraction that made Kael's skin crawl. They saw no one. No guards, no servants. The Bastion was a tomb, and they were the only living things disturbing its dust.
Then, they heard it. A sound that was utterly, heart-wrenchingly out of place.
A child, crying.
The sound was faint, echoing down a side passage from a room whose door was ajar. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated fear.
Lyra froze, her hand tightening on her bow. Her eyes met Kael's, wide with confusion and a sudden, desperate hope. "A prisoner?" she mouthed.
Kael's every instinct screamed a warning. This was a trap. A lure. But the sound was so real, so human. The Scale within him tilted. A life in danger. A debt of protection to be paid.
He shook his head, a sharp, negative gesture. It's not real.
But Lyra was already moving, drawn by the sound, her scout's pragmatism overwhelmed by a deeper, more human impulse. She pushed the door open.
The room was a perfect replica of a child's nursery from a time before the blight. A small bed with a colorful quilt. A wooden horse on the floor. A window showing a sunny, blue sky—a lie woven from magic. In the center of the room, a little girl with golden curls sat weeping, her back to them.
"Hey," Lyra said, her voice soft, stepping into the room. "It's alright. We're here to help."
The girl stopped crying. She turned her head, and the side of her face revealed was smooth, unmarked. Then she turned fully.
Where her face should have been was a swirling, featureless vortex of the same grey mist as the Weeping Ward. The illusion of the room shattered, the colors bleeding away to reveal a bare, black stone cell. From the vortex, a dozen thin, whip-like tendrils of mist shot out, wrapping around Lyra's arms, her legs, her throat, pulling her off her feet with terrifying force.
A Sorrow-Puppet. A snare made of stolen grief.
Lyra gagged, her bow clattering to the floor as she clawed at the psychic bonds tightening around her neck. Her eyes bulged, fixed on Kael in a silent scream.
Kael was already moving. His sword cleared its scabbard, but the tendrils were not fully physical. His blade passed through them, disrupting them for a moment, but they re-formed instantly. They were feeding on her life force, on her air, on her hope.
He could feel the malevolent intelligence behind the trap, watching, savoring their struggle.
Changing tactics, he slammed the palm of his free hand against Lyra's chest, pouring silver light directly into her. It was not an attack, but a purification. The light flowed through her, a radiant current that sought out the foreign, corrosive energy of the tendrils.
Where the silver light met the grey mist, it did not clash; it unmade. The tendrils binding her sizzled and vanished like cobwebs in a flame. Lyra collapsed to the stone floor, gasping for air, the featureless face of the Puppet dissolving with a final, silent shriek of frustration.
Kael hauled her to her feet. She was shaking, her composure shattered, rubbing at the raw, red marks on her neck.
"I… I knew," she choked out, her voice ragged. "I knew it was a trap. But the sound… I couldn't…"
"The blight preys on what makes us human," Kael said, his voice low and grim. "Compassion is a weakness it knows how to exploit." He looked down the dark, twisting corridor ahead. "Your compassion is not a flaw, Lyra. But it is a weapon he will use again. Be ready."
She nodded, retrieving her bow, her hands still trembling but her jaw set in a line of grim determination. The last vestiges of innocence had been stripped from her in that cell. She was now a creature of this war, fully and completely.
They moved on, leaving the echoing memory of the child's cry behind. The heart of the Bastion awaited, and the Pale Crow was waiting, his feathers preened with their pain, his beak sharpened by their despair. The final ascent into the crown of thorns had begun.