A Letter to Bishop Castian

In the heart of the Graymist Defense Zone, inside a hastily erected command tent.

Bishop Castian stood before a vast tactical sand table, holding a black flag that marked a garrison outpost. For a long time, he could not bring himself to plant it.

The Graymist Defense Zone stretched hundreds of miles across the sand table, divided into sixteen sectors.

In years past, it should have bristled with platinum flags signifying the Sacred Flame's protection. Now, glaring black flags covered nearly half of it.

Three black flags stood in the middle of the line. Three Permanent Sacred Flame Platforms had gone out, and the newly appointed lords guarding them, along with their attendants, had all ended up in the mouths of the Dark Races.

Deep in the wilderness at the defense line's outermost edge, two sectors did not even have flags yet.

Those two expeditionary forces had never reached their fiefs. The Long Night had swallowed them on the road.

Of sixteen fiefs, nearly a third had been lost before the battle had even truly begun.

Castian dropped a platinum flag into the iron basin beside him, then leafed through the mountain of parchment battle reports on the desk. His brow furrowed again and again.

The vast Werewolf Tribe entrenched beyond Graymist lay hidden in the shadows outside the defense line, patiently waiting for its prey to weaken.

In its place came packs of Ghouls and low-tier Magic Beasts.

Once driven by nothing but hunger, these rotting monsters now moved like a dispersed army. They deliberately avoided the strongest nodes of Sacred Flame and prowled the wilderness between fiefs.

Outer sentry posts were wiped out. Courier cavalry vanished one after another. The already fragile supply lines were severed, section by precise section.

Wave after wave of low-tier rotting flesh was sent in to drain the defenders' strength, while night raids frayed their nerves without end. It was a hunt whose circle tightened slowly, a noose slipping inch by inch around the Graymist Defense Zone's neck.

Only six months remained before the Blood Moon Season erupted in full.

Those six months hung over everyone's heads like the blade of an executioner's guillotine.

It was descending slowly, and no one could stop it.

Castian turned. Through a gap in the tent flap, his gaze fell on the thousand Holy City Army knights outside.

They were the last card he had to play.

A thousand elites wielding pure white Battle Aura could have crushed a rebellious duchy in the inland kingdoms.

But scatter those thousand men across the Graymist Defense Zone, and it would be like throwing a handful of salt into the sea. They would not even raise a splash.

The command tent's heavy canvas flap was thrust aside. His adjutant, Malcolm, strode in and presented two leather cylinders sealed with wax and clay, holding them out with both hands.

Expressionless, Castian broke the first seal and pulled out the tightly rolled parchment.

The first letter came from the Long Night Governor's Office: "The Fourth Defense Zone's Holy Silver allotment is reduced by twenty percent. Make up the shortfall yourselves..."

A muscle twitched at the corner of Castian's eye. He tossed the parchment onto the desk and tore open the second letter, a confidential dispatch from the Holy City's Council of Deliberation.

"The request for reinforcements to Graymist has been rejected by the Council of Deliberation's senior members."

Just those two sentences. No explanation, as though they were giving routine notice of some trivial matter.

Castian's brow knitted tight. The dark stirrings on the wasteland were frightening enough, but the undercurrents within the Church were more suffocating still.

Supplies along the entire Tear Knight Defense Line had long been stretched to the breaking point. Even several inland kingdoms were complaining about the weight of the Sacred Flame Tax.

That had given certain people the perfect opening.

To the great figures seated in their high-backed chairs in the Holy City, the Graymist Defense Zone's survival had long since become a bargaining chip.

Several factions within the Church had their eyes on the Tear Knight Governor's position. They were waiting for a defeat bloody enough to seize upon.

Then they could use it to attack their political rivals and complete a new transfer of power.

Cutting a portion of the Holy Silver allotment and rejecting a few knightly orders' reinforcements took nothing more than a casual show of hands around the Council of Deliberation's table.

As for Castian and those newly enfeoffed young Long Night Lords, they were merely pieces to be discarded whenever convenient.

Castian showed no anger. After so many years at the Eternal Night Wall, he knew complaints were pointless. Besides, he had expected this. He had chosen to stay.

Just then, several more sets of footsteps sounded outside the tent, bringing a string of fresh battle reports.

The Shattered Stone Fief's defense line had collapsed completely. Viscount Thomas, its newly appointed lord, had disappeared when the Rat Tide surged in and had most likely become Demonic Beast dung.

The camps of several other noble scions had suffered heavy casualties as well, their defenses torn to shreds.

Castian stared coldly at the pleas for aid piled on his desk, his face so dark it seemed ready to drip.

"A pack of noble refuse that does nothing but waste food." The bishop's voice was thick with disgust and exhaustion.

He returned to the tactical Sand Table and swept his staff over three outposts on the defense line's outermost edge.

"Malcolm."

"At your command."

"Tell the commanders at these three outposts to abandon their fortresses tonight. Smash the heavy weapons they cannot take, and withdraw everyone to the fiefs along the Second Defense Line."

Malcolm's head snapped up. Beneath his helmet, his eyes widened.

"My lord Bishop! Those three outer outposts still hold nearly two thousand soldiers and Convicts! They don't have enough horses. Once they leave the Sacred Flame's protection, Ghouls will tear them apart during the retreat through the wilderness!"

"They won't survive if they stay there either." Castian did not look at him. His gaze remained on the inner portion of the Sand Table.

"While the Werewolf main force is still watching, feed the men at those three outposts to the low-tier Demonic Beasts. Buy the inner line a little time. Deliver the order."

Malcolm's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. At last, he lowered his head.

"As you command."

"Then summon the quartermasters from the secular kingdoms." Castian brought his staff down hard on the stone floor.

"If the full allotment of grain, fodder, and Refined Steel isn't in our stores within fifteen days, I don't care who stands behind them. Tie them straight to the Burning Stake."

He turned his head. Nothing remained in his eyes but a stubborn, icy resolve.

If the Holy City would give them no way to live, he would have to drag them through these six months with human lives. Whatever happened, he could not let the Graymist Defense Zone fall. The consequences would be unthinkable.

As several scribes copied the military orders, sweat pouring down their faces, another courier lifted the tent flap.

"My lord Bishop, an urgent letter from Blackpine Fief."

Castian's pen paused. He looked at the letter cylinder stamped with the Greywood Lineage's crest, and his brow slowly furrowed.

That silver-haired boy had stirred a rare flicker of hope in him.

Calm, ruthless, and skilled at using the rules, he was like a sword not yet polished but already sharp.

Could even he... have failed to survive these night raids?

With a trace of disappointment so faint it was almost imperceptible, Castian broke the seal.

The instant he drew out the letter, a small packet of lead paper slid onto the desk.

The packet came open, exposing a pinch of dark red crystal powder to the candlelight.

Even from the finest dust, Castian instantly sensed that violent, nauseating dark energy—fragments of Third Tier Original Sin Blood.

The bishop's breath stopped for an instant. He swiftly unfolded the parchment.

There was no plea for aid in the letter, only a plain list of battlefield results.

Tens of thousands of Bloodthirsty Rot Rats slain. A Tier Three Mutant Giant Rat and a Ghoul Elite killed in battle. Original Sin Crystal Powder seized as proof.

Just over a hundred dead. The defense line had held. The Permanent Sacred Flame Platform had been relit. Several dozen routed soldiers from Shattered Stone Fief had also been taken into the Deathwatch Battalion.

Castian stared at those lines as if he could see the silver-haired boy standing amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood, demanding his due with the tip of a sword drenched in black blood.

His gaze shifted to the tactical sand table. Surrounded by black flags, Blackpine Fief's platinum flag stood out starkly.

Castian's cold face twitched slightly. Then the corners of his thin mouth slowly rose.

"Among a herd of pigs that know nothing but how to tremble..." The bishop gave a low laugh, rubbing the dark red powder between his fingertips. "A man-eating young lion has finally emerged."

Castian might have been only a pawn in the Church's pyramid of power, but in the Graymist Defense Zone, he held absolute power over life and death.

He could not conjure a knightly order from thin air, but the allocation of resources across the entire war zone rested in his hands.

Castian dragged over a blank order parchment and dipped his quill deep in ink.

An outrageously lopsided resource transfer order swiftly took shape.

"Divert thirty percent of the Kingdom of Austeria's elite supplies when they reach the buffer zone! Load all the high-purity Holy Silver ore and Refined Steel ingots onto wagons and send them to Blackpine Fief!"

Those premium materials would fill precisely the need hinted at by the boy's ambitions in alchemy.

"And go to the Fourth Punishment Battalion for men! Pick out every Church craftsman stripped of his status and every retired heavy crossbowman. Send them all to Blackpine Fief.

"Finally, take two wagons of high-purity Sacred Flame Grease from my personal allotment and send them along under escort."

Castian seized his seal and slammed it into the wax. "Go. Feed all this fresh meat to that young lion."