CHAPTER 1. THE LEGACY OF THE GRAY LION (Part 1)
Late autumn this year felt as if nature herself had decided to declare mourning. The sky, draped in a solid leaden shroud, seemed to have sunk lower, crushing the earth with its weight. The rain hadn’t stopped for two weeks—a fine, icy drizzle hanging in the air like a dense suspension, washing the last colors from the world, leaving only shades of gray, brown, and black.
The plain, stretching in all directions to the very horizon, resembled the giant, sodden hide of a sick beast. Withered grass lay flat under the wind, turning into a slippery mash. There were no mountains to shelter from the wind, no hills to please the eye—only an endless, dreary wasteland cut by ravines.
To the east, where the earth should have met the sky, the world ended. The horizon was erased by a thick, whitish veil that looked like sour milk. It didn't move, didn't thin in the wind, but stood as a sinister wall. It was the breath of the Rotting Swamps. Locals tried not to look in that direction without need. People didn't speak aloud of what lay behind that haze, but everyone knew: the border was shifting. Every year, the white mist crept closer, devouring arable land, turning solid ground into a sucking quagmire where sheep disappeared first, followed by careless shepherds. The swamps were silent, but it was the silence of a predator before a jump.
Thirty kilometers west of the swamp border, about a day's journey for a walker, the landscape changed. The plain reared up in a lonely, rocky hill—the only elevation for many leagues around. And further still, fifty kilometers north, beyond a wall of dense, almost impassable forest, flowed the river Vuta. It carried its black, cold waters from west to east, serving as a natural border between the savagery of the plain and civilization. There, on the other bank, chimneys smoked and coins jingled in the city of Nordcross—a stronghold of trade and crafts. But from here, from the wind-blown wasteland, the city seemed an unattainable dream, separated by dozens of versts of windbreak and washed-out roads that no cart would risk traveling at this time of year.
Atop that solitary hill stood the Castle. The ancestral nest of the Barons Prust.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Once, in the era of the first kings, it was an impregnable stronghold, the Guardian of the Eastern Reach. Walls built of hewn gray granite soared upward, challenging winds and enemies. Now, the castle looked like a decrepit old man dressed in the rags of former luxury. Time and dampness proved more ruthless than siege engines.
The light gray granite had darkened, covered in a network of deep cracks resembling wrinkles. Poison-green moss and lichen spread like leprosy across the masonry, capturing stone after stone, creeping up to the very arrow slits. The battlements of the Eastern Tower had collapsed long ago, and now it grinned at the sky with a gap-toothed, broken edge, resembling a rotten tooth. The red tiles, once the pride of architects, had flown off, exposing rafters blackened by moisture that stuck out like the ribs of a skeleton.
The castle was girdled by a wide moat. Conceived as a deadly barrier for infantry, years had turned it into a cesspit. The water here had stagnated, bloomed, and was covered with a thick carpet of brown duckweed and trash. A heavy, sickly-sweet smell of rot and methane rose from the moat, tickling the throat. The drawbridge, once bound in iron, was lowered forever. Its lifting chains had turned into red dust and crumbled into the water, and the decking had rotted so much that through the holes in the planks, one could see the black, oily sludge below. One had to walk across it with caution, stepping only on the beams.
The inner courtyard of the castle met visitors with silence. Oppressive, dead silence. The huge parade ground paved with cobblestones, where two centuries ago the Duke's personal guard formed up before a campaign, now resembled an abandoned cemetery. The paving stones heaved, pushed out by the roots of weeds breaking through from everywhere.
To the left stretched the long, squat building of the stables. Its scale spoke of past grandeur: it could house fifty warhorses. Now, the heavy gates hung on a single hinge, creaking with every gust of wind. An echo walked inside, chasing last year's straw and dry leaves through empty stalls. The roof had sagged, unable to withstand the weight of past winters' snow, and rain poured unhindered through the breaches, turning the earthen floor into a dirty mess.
Opposite, against the eastern wall, outbuildings huddled together—the smithy and the armory. The smithy's chimney was cold and black; fire hadn't danced in the forge for a long time, and the anvil was surely covered in a thick layer of rust. The windows of the armory and the former barracks were boarded up crisscross, as if plague or evil spirits were locked inside.
This entire architectural ensemble, conceived as an autonomous fortress capable of living and fighting for years, was now a monument to decline. Life flickered only in the central keep—the massive tower in the castle's heart. But even this life was weak, flickering. A thin, orphaned wisp of smoke rose from the huge chimney into the gray sky, immediately beaten down to the ground by the rain.
Through the cloudy, unwashed glass of a high lancet window on the second floor, a dim, trembling light broke through. Someone still lived in this stone crypt, trying to warm it with their breath.
