When the bells first rang across the Priyell Basin that evening, Jerome saw the legendary Monastery.
A towering spire of pure white marble pierced the treetops and rocks like a silver needle buried in flesh, rising above the cloud-shrouded mountain peak. It was impossible to ignore.
[White Tower]
Built in ancient times as a semi-fortified structure, the building's original name had been lost. Its new occupants had renovated it within six months, sparing no expense to erect a tower of unknown purpose and name their Knight Order's headquarters after it.
The Grand Professor, a physician by training, seemed to have an even deeper fixation on white than Church officials did. He favored spotless white clothes, decor, and lighting, to an almost wasteful degree. Even people as far away as Dunling had heard of it.
That was perhaps the most modest of all his preferences.
Drawn by profit, merchant caravans willingly became the Knight Order's tendrils, siphoning wealth from across Norse and the nations on the other side of the strait. Along with a steady stream of snoopers, they passed through the building's doors—and were never heard from again.
In return, the Knight Order offered its collaborators the most precious thing in the Present World: forgiveness promised by Heavenly Father. This bottled miracle was said to protect anyone from disease once it entered the bloodstream. One injection, three at most, could bring down a high fever and make abscesses disappear.
And according to rumors, the Grand Professor himself could perform miracles in the truest sense of the word, extracting diseased tissue from deep within the body without leaving a wound on the surface.
The value of such grace was difficult to measure in worldly wealth. There were always people willing to offer sums large enough to make the Father's representative relent,