The palace served as a snare. Legate Valerius's icy rage simmered outside its marble boundaries a herald of impending justice. The Queen's safeguard was a shroud of authority already, under pressure. Alexander realized his presence was a smoldering fuse. He had to leave.
He awaited the watch, when the palace dozed into its uneasy rest. The pair of guards stationed outside his door were skilled, vigilant. They expected him to attempt swaying the Queen to get into the war chambers—not to escape stealthily. He possessed nothing to take and nothing to abandon except problems.
He employed the straightforward technique: the window. His chamber in the tower looked out over a sloping roof of the palace kitchens and from that point a sequence of ledges and gargoyles descended to a dimly lit service courtyard. He proceeded with the silence acquired in the Hölloch, a kind of darkness. His body, despite being tired, from politics and recollections recalled the requirements of the ascent. The river stone, concealed was the burden he carried.
He descended into the courtyard touching down gently on the ground amid piles of firewood. The aroma of ashes and moist rock filled his nostrils. He was unconscious.
However Silberbrücke was a city enduring a type of blockade. The Radiant Host maintained patrols, their white and gold uniforms glaring in the torchlit avenues, like signals of watchfulness. He was unable to exit through the main gate.
He navigated the city's depths— lanes coated with grime passages where the former river had been rerouted the gaps between structures where magnificent exteriors had fallen away to expose the coarse rock underneath. He was a specter, within the city's workings moving not toward a gate but toward the river that bestowed the city its name and vitality.
The Silberfluss was a forceful stream, supplied by meltwater from glaciers. It flowed beneath the bridge and through the city within a fortified channel before surging out through a water-gate, secured by a heavy iron portcullis to block enemy entry by water.. Beneath the water's surface, where the stone was slippery with algae there existed an opening—a gap kept for the current not broad enough for a vessel but possibly large enough, for a resolute desperate individual.
He removed his grey and white garments dropping them in a pile. Wearing his linen undershorts with the river stone's pouch fastened firmly around his neck he entered the dark freezing water.
The chill hit like a strike forcing the breath from his chest. The water gripped him instantly a grasp pulling him toward the portcullis. He resisted not against it. Alongside it positioning his body kicking to keep above the waves as the water thundered around him. The soaring canal walls sped past torch flames casting swirling designs, on the turbulent water.
The portcullis towered, a lattice of iron fangs. The roaring sound focused here a deafening surge, as the city's sewage and part of the river burst forth into the darkness. He drew a desperate breath slipped under the water and surrendered to the flow.
He was thrust forcefully against the steel rods. He clung to them the metal slick and chilly. He hauled himself hand over hand downward toward the opening, at the base. The force was overwhelming attempting to tear him off and crash him into the bars. His chest ached with each breath. His fingers tingling with numbness reached the rim. He slipped through the rock of the canal bed scraping his spine the metallic edges scraping his torso.
He was then released, thrown out into the river, outside the city boundaries. He emerged from the water coughing and wheezing the flow carrying him downstream into the surrounding darkness.
After a mile he emerged onto a gravel bar his body trembling uncontrollably from cold and fatigue. Silberbrücke's lights glimmered away a distant unfriendly array upstream. He had broken free from the cage. He was back, in the wilderness now.
He dozed restlessly nestled in the shelter of a rock his warmth gradually coming back. At light trembling in his wet garments (fetched from a concealed location upstream where he had stored a spare set) he started moving. Not heading for safety—there wasn't any—. Heading toward the source of tension. The accounts had located the "silence" in the Oberalp. That was where the conflict, in its most terrifying guise was unfolding. That was the place he needed to be.
The trek reflected an echo of his previous voyages. He steered clear of highways spotting increased patrols—Scarlet and Radiant Host occasionally apart, occasionally, in uneasy combined groups. A heavy sense of fear hung over the valleys. Farmers could be seen leading their livestock to sheltered grazing grounds ahead of time. Along the way he noticed a roadside shrine where the sunburst emblem had been shattered and replaced with a drawn weeping eye smeared in what appeared to be blood.
By the day while ascending the slopes toward the Oberalp area the surroundings started to transform. The birdcalls thinned, eventually stopping altogether. The breeze persisted,. It bore no aroma of pine or soil just a parched powdery void. The grasss green shifted to a subdued grey-toned shade as though viewed under a layer of ash.
He reached the top of a ridge. Gazed down into the Oberalp valley.
It was wrong.
The hues were faded. The sky above appeared blue. The illumination cast upon the valley bottom was dull tired. Oberalp village—a group of stone rooftops—rested in the middle neither smoking nor destroyed, but completely motionless. No motion. No noise. The atmosphere, above it appeared to droop.
This was not an attack. It was an affliction.
He made his way down into the valley his steps growing increasingly burdensome. The quiet here lacked the eager hush of the Weisshorn. It was a quiet. A drained one. As though every sound, every ounce of life had been softly drawn away leaving a fragile husk.
He arrived at the house. The entrance stood ajar. Within a family gathered around a table bowls of chilled soup in front of them. They were alive. Their chests moved up and down gradually slowly.. Their eyes were open, empty staring into emptiness. Their expressions were loose lacking feeling lacking thought, lacking identity. They resembled life-sized mannequins, their inner flame snuffed out.
The Blade's reality had been a procedure. The Ring's quietude was a vow. This… this was the outcome of the Severance. The Abyss's response, to the Angel's mounting power. They weren't slaying. They were erasing will transforming individuals into hollow shells. A preventative strike, not aimed at armies but at the ability to form an army. Against hope itself.
A silhouette shifted at the edge of the chamber.
Alexander spun around. It wasn't a ghost. It appeared smaller a figure humanoid, in form made from threads of living shadow and swirling particles. It lacked a face carried no weapon. It merely… watched. A janitor. A caretaker of the void.
It didn't attempt to strike him. It cocked its head seeming confused by his existence by the fact that he remained purposeful that his gaze still carried a glimmer. He was a rarity, in the scene.
He stepped outside the house. On the street he noticed more of the dust-forms floating aimlessly attending to the dreadful quiet, like gardeners caring for a grey garden. Their assaults if they occurred wouldn't be to kill. They would be to immobilize. To turn him into the villagers. A bleak methodical purge, as Dorothy had mentioned.
This represented the war the Queen was being summoned to enter. Not a fight, for honor. A destruction of hope.
A dust-figure floated in his direction stretching out a feathery filament. A surge of indifference swept through him. Why struggle? Why experience? Why worry? The rock pressing on his chest seemed meaningless a burden. It would be incredibly simple, to just… settle down. To allow the dull calm to envelop him.
He grasped the stone tightly. He concentrated on its firmness, its nature. It originated from a river from motion from sound. He recalled the girl's hold on his armor. Of Walter's letdown. Of the echo, in the weeping gallery. Of the farmer's broth.
"No " he snarled, the word breaking the stillness.
He spun around. Fled. Not out of fear. With purposeful rebellious intent. He burst through the haunting silence his steps, his breathing, his racing heart—all were sacrileges in this place. The dust-figures trailed behind him not chasing,. In a bewildered mournful accompaniment, like servants trailing a lunatic through a library.
He sprinted away from the village ascending the hill towards the edge of the forest. The gray presence faded as he put space between them. The surroundings started to recover their hue, their noise—the scrape of his boots, against stone, his breathing. He continued without pause until he stood high on the mountainside gazing down at the valley.
He was panting, not due, to effort. Because of terror. This was the "purge" the Host dreaded. This was the "equilibrium" the Abyss provided. Two faces of the coin of destruction.
He possessed no troops. No artifact. Just a. A spectator.
Yet as his eyes rested on the valley, a sharp definite resolve took shape inside him. He was powerless to halt the war. However he could reveal its nature. Not to monarchs and commanders in stone chambers but, to the common folk. To the farmers the herders, the men and women whose determination was the arena of conflict.
He faced away, from Oberalp. The way ahead was unobstructed. He intended to be a counter-rumor. A living tale. He planned to move from one village to another not to carry a message or rally a fight but to share a plain dreadful account. He would testify to the quiet and the threat of the chisel. He would inform people about what was contested: not their spirits but their entitlement to possess them.
He was finished being a fluctuating element in another person's formula. He aimed to be a query they couldn't eliminate. One persistent defiant loud truth, in the approaching silence.
The cave of the world was exhaling its final, desperate breaths. And he would be there, in the draft, a man with a stone, refusing to be stilled.