Arrival at the Fief

After crossing the last line of hills, the convoy's heavy wooden wheels finally rolled into Blackpine Fief.

There was no towering black-iron fortress as Shien and the others had imagined. All that met their eyes was an open-air graveyard picked clean.

The cold wind carried the thick Blood Moon Blood Mist through the ruined walls, shrieking bitterly.

The Giant Bluestone Wall, once the first line of defense, now looked like a brittle biscuit crushed over and over. Most of it had collapsed.

Claw marks half a meter deep scarred the few boulders still standing—marks High-Rank Werewolves had carved into the stone during last year's Blood Moon Season.

Click. A soldier at the front suddenly froze.

He slowly lifted his leather boot. Beneath it lay not a broken twig, but a blackened human rib.

Across the dark-purple earth, the former garrison's remains nearly formed a road of bones. Rusted Chainmail and shattered skulls lay half-buried in the mud, their empty eye sockets staring at the gray sky.

Those who had clung to the hope that the old walls might still be defended felt that hope dragged into an icy abyss.

"My lord..." Fabien, the Church Knight, rode closer. "The outer defenses are gone. All of them. They'll have to be rebuilt."

But Shien sat straight in the saddle, not a ripple in his ice-blue eyes.

He barely glanced at the dreadful claw marks. He simply tugged the reins and turned his horse.

"Bring every craftsman to the center of the fief. As long as the Sacred Flame Altar is still there, we can manage the rest."

On this wasteland ruled by the Blood Moon, neither stone walls nor boundary markers had ever defined the limits of human territory.

That measure was the Permanent Sacred Flame Platform standing at the center of every fief.

It was no mere giant brazier for lighting the dark. It was a strategic node of the laws themselves.

The Most Holy Church had spent the lives of countless slaves and craftsmen to cast this vast structure of black iron and Holy Silver upon the frozen earth.

Beneath the Ritual Altar lay an enormous array of transmission gears and a dense network of alchemical copper conduits, built to draw out as much of the Sacred Flame's power as possible.

When the gears below engaged and high-purity Alchemical Sacred Grease ignited, the prayer-inscribed Holy Silver framework atop the Ritual Altar became a massive amplifier.

The platinum Sacred Flame that erupted was more than light. It formed a barrier that truly existed.

Thick Blood Moon Blood Mist evaporated in sheets beneath its glow.

If low-rank Ghouls or Shadow Creatures stepped into its direct light, their flesh rotted swiftly, as though doused in boiling acid.

Even High-Rank Werewolves and members of the Blood Clan suffered clear suppression within the Sacred Flame's domain.

For centuries, the Most Holy Origin Furnace in the Holy Capital had been the beating heart of human civilization.

And the Sacred Flame Altars across the wilderness were like red-hot steel nails, driven deep into the shadows of the Long Night.

Together, they barely held up the pitifully thin defensive line of the Eternal Night Wall.

Where the Sacred Flame shone, human civilization could dwell. Once it went out, a so-called sanctuary castle was nothing but an open-air slaughterhouse.

With the craftsmen in tow, Shien's group crunched over bone fragments and rubble through a suffocating silence, struggling onward to the square where the lord's manor had stood.

The huge, tower-like Ritual Altar came into view, to everyone's delight.

Perhaps because so much Holy Silver had been set and cast into it—a material dark Demonic Beasts loathed—the Sacred Flame Altar's outer framework remained intact, even though the lord's manor had been leveled.

"Praise the Most Holy..." Several blacksmiths let out long breaths.

As long as the core framework had not shattered, there was still a chance to relight the furnace.

They hurried up the Ritual Altar with their heavy toolboxes.

After clearing bones and debris from around the ignition trough, two burly blacksmiths seized the thick starting lever and heaved it downward.

"Prepare to activate the base's transmission array!" the master craftsman shouted.

The expected roar of gears never came.

Clack... screee—grind!

A piercing scrape of metal rang out. The lever jammed halfway.

No matter how hard the two men strained, faces flushed red, the transmission shaft inside the Ritual Altar would not budge.

"What's wrong? Push it down!" the master craftsman cried, frantic.

"We can't... it's stuck! The Main Gear is completely seized!" one of the men gasped.

The blacksmiths fell into chaos. Some raised hammers to smash the rivets; others tried to pry open the bearings with crowbars. These craftsmen from the secular kingdoms had never learned what to do in a situation like this.

If they could not repair the Sacred Flame Altar, everyone here would be bones on the ground when the Blood Moon rose.

Just as the master craftsman raised his hammer to strike the lever, a trembling voice came from the shadows of the ruins.

"Don't... don't hit it. The Power-Transmission Shaft will snap."

Shien turned his head slightly. Victor huddled in a shadowed corner, his remaining left hand clutching his clothes. His lone eye kept darting away in fear.

Years of torment had taught him that speaking out of turn usually meant whips and branding irons. But if the Power-Transmission Shaft broke, none of them would survive.

A craftsman beside him flew into a rage. "What does a crippled convict know about machinery? My lord, this mad old man is spouting nonsense—"

"Quiet," Shien said.

The master craftsman shut his mouth at once, not daring another word.

Shien dismounted and walked up to Victor. "Tell me what you know. What caused this?"

The utter lack of emotion in his voice let Victor's taut nerves ease a little.

The old man swallowed. "It's... Bloodrust. The Blood Moon Mist corrodes metal and dried out the alchemical lubricant in the gears. Now the meshing surfaces are covered in hardened, oxidized bloodstains.

"Another half inch of pressure just now... and the main bearing would have cracked. The whole base would have been ruined."

Shien nodded. "How do we fix it? How long will it take?"

Victor lowered his head, his gaunt fingers moving rapidly against his clothes as he calculated. "We have to open the base casing... scrape off the Bloodrust bit by bit with engraving knives, then refill it with high-strength, corrosion-resistant lubricant."

His voice sank lower. "Three days... at the fastest."

Shien fell silent for a moment. Everyone in the square watched him.

Wind poured through gaps in the ruined walls, carrying the distinctive bloody smell of the Blood Moon Blood Mist.

Shien raised his eyes. "Good."

"From now on, you're in charge of repairing this Sacred Flame Altar." Shien pointed at Victor. "Every craftsman, blacksmith, material, and tool here is at your disposal."

Several blacksmiths' expressions changed. They instinctively wanted to protest, but the moment Shien's gaze swept over them, every word lodged in their throats.

Shien went on. "You have two days to repair the Sacred Flame Altar. Otherwise... every person here will die."

The square fell deathly silent.

Victor's throat bobbed. The one-armed old man almost refused on instinct.

Repairing a Sacred Flame transmission array corroded by months of Bloodrust in two days was nearly impossible.

But Victor looked up into Shien's eyes. His mouth opened, yet he could not bring himself to object.

In the end, he merely lowered his head and nodded faintly. "I'll try..."

"Two days," Shien repeated softly.

He looked toward the horizon, where dark-red clouds spread slowly like ruptured blood vessels.

The Blood Moon was about to rise.