The Solis Valley — Lir and the Outcasts]Even after the carriage had long vanished from sight, a graveyard silence clung to the streets of Solis Valley. The only lingering sound was the faint, ghostly rattle of the wheels, echoing in the air like a fading nightmare. No one dared to lift their head; the air remained thick with the sharp, alien scent of the nobility's musk—a fragrance so overpowering it felt as though it would sear the lungs of any commoner who dared to breathe it in. This opulent aroma clashed violently with the village's own breath: the smell of sodden earth, decaying leaves, and the stagnant rot of despair, creating a suffocating shroud over the hovels.Lir's gaze remained fixed on the ground, where the white silk lay in the thick, viscous grip of the mire, shimmering like the shattered wing of a fallen swan. Around him, his companions—young men whose spirits had been forged in the mud and tempered by a lifetime of silent submission—remained as motionless as stone statues. Their knees were buried in the filth, their threadbare clothes indistinguishable from the color of the dirt. Dax, the leader of their ragged band, broke the silence with a whisper that sounded like shivering gravel:
"Ignore it, Lir... That relic doesn't belong in our world. It is fire. If you touch it, it will turn you to ash."Lir did not answer. His boots churned the mud with a heavy, deliberate rhythm as he approached the fallen silk. Every step felt like a gamble with a hangman's noose. This was no mere scrap of cloth; it was a fragment of the castle's secrets, a forbidden fruit of a brutal caste system that demanded absolute separation. Yet deep within him, in a corner of his soul that years of hunger and humiliation had failed to wither, flickered a spark of defiant curiosity.He leaned down slowly. His hands were trembling, his fingertips frozen not by the cold, but by the paralyzing grip of terror and adrenaline. As he pried the silk from the mud's sticky clutches, the ethereal softness of the fabric felt like a blade of ice slicing into his calloused, weather-beaten fingers. Such exquisite delicacy was a sensation that had no right to exist in Lir's world.Hurriedly, he tucked the cloth beneath his frayed, moth-eaten tunic, pressing it directly against his skin. As the silk touched his chest, he felt more than just a chill; he felt a sudden, crushing weight—as if the pride and the sorrow of the castle had transferred itself onto his heart. If a single overseer, with eyes as cold and sharp as the castle walls, had caught even a glimpse of this act, Lir's hands would have been severed without mercy, cast into the very mud he stood upon.Standing tall, Lir turned his eyes toward the arrogant, needle-like spires of the castle that pierced the low-hanging clouds. The fortress's shadow stretched across the valley like a dark hand, blocking out even the faintest hope of sunlight. Somewhere up there lived a lord who had discarded a piece of his soul into the dirt. Lir, standing in his world of filth, felt the secrets of that towering, terrible palace beating against his own ribs.