The fishing village was called Delsin. It lay on the fringes of the Derylini peninsula, where the smell of salt and tar mingled with the smoke from the hearths. The houses were low, of dark stone, with thatched roofs. The streets were dirt.
Trussum walked along one of them, in the guise of a red‑haired, grey‑eyed boy. Night was falling. Shadows lengthened, oil lamps were lit one by one.
An open window. Inside, a family was having supper. The woman served soup, the children – three of them, between five and ten – argued over a piece of bread. The man, back from fishing, washed his hands in a basin. The warmth of the fire, the smell of herbs, the muffled laugh of one of the little ones.
Trussum stopped. Watched.
'So fragile', he thought. 'So easy to destroy.'
The old man with the pipe, sitting on a bench against the tavern wall, spoke loudly to no one in particular:
"The Contraranures are on the roads. Shadows that speak. Those who seek them find death."
Trussum did not reply. He walked away.
He entered a dark alley between two fish warehouses. The ground was wet, the air smelled of guts. He closed his eyes.
His skin shivered. His bones cracked softly – a damp, quick sound, like breaking twigs. When he opened his eyes, he had a different face: a middle‑aged fisherman, grey hair, unkempt beard, dull brown eyes. His clothes tore and turned into work rags.
The red‑haired boy had disappeared. No one would recognise him now.
Trussum left the alley, hands in his pockets. The night was dark.
'Ierály knows I am here', he thought. 'But now she will have to find me again.'
The game had become more interesting.
---
Miles to the north, the three knights of Ban were coming down the mountain road.
Torvin rode in front, his face tired, his grey beard glistening with moisture. Kael, the youngest, rode behind, complaining about the cold.
"In a Ban winter, you would be dead before breakfast," Torvin said without turning around.
"But we are not in Ban," Kael grumbled.
"Then you are lucky."
Hedrik, the silent one, said nothing. He simply quickened his pace, his eyes on the forest of blue pines that lined the road.
At dusk they saw a lonely tavern at the bottom of the valley: "The Traveller's Rest". Torvin decided to stay the night.
"There is no hurry. The horses need rest. So do we."
The tavern was small, with a lit fireplace and a long table where other travellers ate and drank. Two merchants, sitting in a corner, spoke in low voices.
"They say there is a red‑haired boy asking about hermitages and deserted woods. He wants to know where the Contraranures hide."
"He is looking for death."
"Or for power."
Torvin registered the information but made no comment. He just drank the watered wine and stared into the fire.
'A red‑haired boy', he thought. 'The same one they mentioned in Decatry?'
He kept the question to himself.
---
In the academy, the servants' quarters were small but clean.
Arth lay on the bed, his eyes open in the dark. His right hand rested on his chest, feeling his ribs count the days.
He thought of Zirinos. The boy with gold‑and‑blood hair who had shared the cell beside him months ago. He remembered the words: *"If you get out of here, destroy those who destroyed you."*
'Deur Derylini.'
The name was a rusty blade.
The door creaked. Livia Aryster entered with a candle in one hand and a rolled‑up parchment in the other. She wore simple clothes, a dark tunic, but her face kept its usual coldness.
"Can't you sleep?" she asked.
"I never sleep."
She sat on the only chair and unrolled the map. The Derylini peninsula and the surrounding area, the trade routes, the villages, the forests.
"You know these lands. The secret paths. The routes the smugglers used. The abandoned mines."
"I know them."
"Then draw. Show me where no one could pass without being seen."
Arth took the charcoal she handed him. His hands hesitated for a second. Then they began to move.
Lines. Hunting trails that hunters no longer used. Ore tunnels opened centuries ago, now blocked by vegetation. Passages in the cliffs, accessible only at low tide.
Memory was a knife. But now it served a purpose.
"You are useful, Arth," Livia said, watching the strokes. "More than you think."
He did not answer. He just kept drawing.
For the first time in fifteen years, he felt a breath of dignity. But also the weight of collaborating with a foreign princess.
*Where will this lead me?*, he thought.
---
Trussum left the village behind.
He walked through a forest of blue pines, the needles glowing with mana at their tips. The moon was hidden. His shadow stretched on the ground – but it moved faster than he did, independent, like a creature following him.
The smell of corruption hung in the air. Faint, but latent.
'The Contraranures are close.'
A figure among the trees. A man in a black hood, a bone mask. It was not Ierály. Only a messenger.
He knelt.
"Great Liar. The leader will come to you. Soon."
"How soon?" asked Trussum, his voice sweet, almost fatherly.
"Days. Perhaps a week."
Trussum smiled.
"Then I will wait."
The messenger stepped back, stood up, and vanished into the shadows as if he had never existed.
Trussum leaned against a pine trunk. The Trásserius flowers in his cloth bag glowed faintly.
'Days, perhaps a week.'
Until then, the lie would remain the only truth.