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. Before them lay only an open-air graveyard picked clean.

The cold wind carried thick Blood Moon Blood Mist through the ruins, howling shrilly.

The Giant Bluestone Wall, once the outermost line of defense, looked like a cracker crushed again and again. Most of it had collapsed.

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

Crack. A soldier at the front froze.

He slowly lifted his leather boot. He had stepped on a blackened human rib, not a dry branch.

Across the dark purple earth, the remains of the former garrison formed a road of bones. Rusted Chainmail and shattered skulls lay half-buried in the mud, their empty eye sockets fixed on the dim sky.

Everyone who had clung to the hope of defending the old walls felt that hope dragged into an icy abyss.

"My lord..." Church Knight Fabien rode closer. "The outer defenses are gone. All of them. We'll have to rebuild from scratch."

But Shien sat straight in his saddle, his ice-blue eyes utterly calm.

He barely glanced at the terrible claw marks. With a light tug on the reins, he turned his horse around.

"Bring every craftsman. We're going straight to the center of the fief. As long as the Sacred Flame Altar is still there, we can manage."

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

That distinction belonged to the Permanent Sacred Flame Platform standing at the center of every fief.

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

The Most Holy Church had spent the lives of countless slaves and craftsmen casting its massive structure from Black Iron and Holy Silver upon the Frozen Tundra.

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

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

The White-Gold Sacred Flame that erupted from it was no longer just light. It was a tangible barrier.

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

If Low-Tier Ghouls or Shadow Creatures entered its direct light, their flesh rotted as though doused with boiling acid.

Even High-Rank Werewolves and members of the Blood Clan were noticeably weakened 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.

The Sacred Flame Altars scattered across the wasteland were red-hot steel nails driven deep into the shadows of the Long Night.

Only together did they barely sustain the pitifully thin defensive line of the Eternal Night Wall.

Where the Sacred Flame shone, human civilization could endure. Once it went out, a so-called sanctuary castle became nothing more than an open-air slaughterhouse.

Shien led the craftsmen through the suffocating silence, their wheels grinding over bone fragments and rubble as they struggled toward the square where the lord's manor had stood.

The towering Ritual Altar came into view, to everyone's delight.

Perhaps because so much Holy Silver had been set into and cast throughout it, and dark monsters loathed the metal, the Sacred Flame Altar's outer frame remained intact even though the lord's manor had been razed.

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

As long as the core frame was intact, they still had a chance to relight the fire.

They hurried up the Ritual Altar with their heavy toolboxes.

After clearing bones and debris from the ignition trough, two burly blacksmiths seized the thick starter lever and heaved it down.

"Get ready to activate the base transmission array!" the master craftsman shouted.

The expected roar of gears never came.

Clack... screeeech!

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

However hard the two men strained, faces red, the Power-Transmission Shaft inside the Ritual Altar would not budge.

"What's wrong? Push!" the master craftsman yelled, frantic.

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

The blacksmiths fell into a panic. Some raised hammers to smash the rivets; others tried to pry open the bearing with crowbars. These craftsmen from the secular Kingdom had never been taught 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 was huddled in a shadowed corner, his remaining left hand clutching the hem of 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 them flew into a rage. "What would a crippled Convict know about machinery? My lord, this old madman is talking nonsense—"

"Quiet," Shien said.

The master craftsman shut his mouth at once and dared not say another word.

Shien dismounted and walked up to Victor. "What do you know? Tell me what's wrong."

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

The old man swallowed. "It's... Bloodrust. The Blood Moon Blood Mist corrodes metal and has dried out the alchemical lubricant in the gears. The contact surfaces are covered in hardened patches of oxidized Bloodrust.

"If they'd pushed it another half inch... the main bearing would have cracked, and the whole base would have been ruined."

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

Victor kept his head down, his bony fingers moving rapidly against the hem of his clothes as he calculated. "We have to open the base housing... scrape away the Bloodrust bit by bit with an engraving knife, then refill it with heavy-duty corrosion-resistant lubricant."

The old man's voice grew quieter. "Three days... at the very least."

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

Wind swept through the gaps in the ruined wall, carrying the Blood Moon Blood Mist's distinctive stench of blood.

Shien raised his eyes. "Good."

"From now on, you're in charge of repairing this Sacred Flame Altar." Shien pointed at Victor. "Every craftsman, every blacksmith, all the materials and tools here are yours to direct."

Several blacksmiths stiffened and instinctively moved to object. But when Shien's gaze swept over them, every protest stuck in their throats.

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

The square fell deathly silent.

Victor swallowed. The one-armed old man almost refused on instinct.

Repairing a Sacred Flame transmission array that had been corroding for months in just two days was nearly impossible.

But when Victor looked up into Shien's eyes, he opened his mouth and found he could not voice a single objection.

At last, he lowered his head and gave a small nod. "I'll try..."

"Two days," Shien repeated softly.

He looked toward the horizon. Dark red clouds spread slowly across it like ruptured blood vessels.

The Blood Moon was about to rise.