The forested hills gradually gave way to cultivated land—vast, orderly fields worked by teams of oxen and farmers who looked up, shielding their eyes as the unusual pair passed. The air itself began to change, carrying the distant, metallic tang of industry and the dense, living scent of an immense population.
Then, they crested a final ridge, and the capital, Valeria, lay sprawled before them in the river valley below.
It was a city to make Whitepeak look like a village. A soaring, multi-tiered metropolis of white stone and glinting glass, enclosed by walls that looked like they could hold back the sea. At its heart, atop the highest tier, was the Royal Keep, a cluster of slender towers piercing the sky. Smoke rose from countless chimneys, and the distant murmur of half a million lives was a constant hum on the wind.
Iris stopped, placing her hands on her hips. "Home sweet home! Well, one of them. Isn't it shiny?"
Kaito looked at it. It was a monument to human order, scale, and ambition. It was also a target. A sprawling, complex organism that his unseen enemy was trying to sicken from within. The purple pins on the King's map would cluster at its edges, probing for weakness.
They descended into the outskirts, a zone of bustling markets, warehouses, and inns that catered to the endless flow of goods and people. The stares here were more intense, less curious than in Whitepeak. They saw Iris's confident, foreign beauty and Kaito's stark staff and guild badge, marking them as someone's business, but not their own.
Iris navigated the chaotic streets with the ease of long practice, leading him away from the main gates and towards a smaller, heavily fortified postern gate manned by guards in the distinctive livery of the Royal Household. They snapped to attention as she approached, their eyes wide with recognition and something else—awe, and a hint of healthy fear.
"Lady Irianna," one said, bowing deeply.
"Hi, Marcus! Is the grumpy old man in his tower?" Iris asked, breezing past them without breaking stride.
"Yes, my lady. He is expecting you." The guard's eyes flicked to Kaito, assessing, cataloging, before he stepped aside.
The gate led not into the public city, but into the inner sanctum—the Citadel. The noise of the metropolis fell away, replaced by the quiet of immense power. The paths were wide and clean, lined with military barracks, armories, and buildings that hummed with magical energy. Soldiers and mages moved with purpose, and the air crackled with disciplined potency.
This was not just a city. It was the command center of a kingdom at total war.
Iris led him to the base of the central keep, a massive structure of seamless grey stone. Instead of entering through the grand doors, she took him down a side passage and into a lift—a platform enchanted to rise smoothly up the interior of a tower. They ascended in silence, the view through narrow windows showing the city shrinking below, a geometric tapestry of lives.
The lift stopped. The doors opened onto a circular chamber that was not a throne room, but a nexus. It was the map room Iris had described, but her description had failed to capture its scale and gravity.
The entire curved wall was a single, massive, enchanted map of the continent. It glowed softly, displaying terrain in minute detail. And upon it were the pins. Clusters of red swarmed the northern and eastern borders—the Monster King's armies. Brilliant gold pins were embedded in the red, holding the line—the Six Heroes. And scattered behind the lines, in the heartlands, were the purple pins. They formed a loose, creeping trail that began in the Deadly Frost Continent and snaked south, passing directly through every location Kaito had cleansed.
He was looking at the visual proof of his own journey, and of the enemy's shadow campaign.
In the center of the room, standing with his back to them as he studied the map, was King Theron. He looked smaller up close, his shoulders bowed not by weakness, but by the weight of every pin on the wall. He turned as they entered.
His eyes, the weary, intelligent eyes from Iris's description, swept over Kaito. There was no grandeur, no theatricality. Just the profound exhaustion of a commander who has seen every kind of threat, and now beholds a new one.
"Warden," the King said, his voice a dry rasp. He gestured to the wall of maps, to the trail of purple. "You have been busy. And so, it seems, has our ghost."