Author's note: Hey! Thank you for reading! This chapter wasn't betaed, so feel free to point out any mistakes that I can correct. The previous few chapters will probably also be edited during the weekend, and I'll add an author's note if I do end up retconning anything.
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The hill swallowed the last sound of Bernahl's departure before Jon even realized it had faded. The morning mist clung to the grass in long silver strands, and the shack behind them already felt like something from another life, warmth in a land that seldom offered any.
Melina stepped lightly beside him, her silhouette a thin flame against the pale sky.
They began the climb.
The path wound upward in a narrowing ribbon, the wind knifing along the cliffside with a strange pitch, less a howl, more a long, distant moan. Stormveil loomed higher now, the shape of it swallowing half the horizon. Its walls rose in jagged tiers, jutting like ribs from a carcass left to rot under the sun. Every time Jon looked up, he felt the castle watching him back.
Not soldiers.
Not wolves this time, either.
Something older.
The earth itself changed as they ascended. Stone outcroppings jutted at crooked angles, pitted and split by old fire. The bones of siege engines rusted into the dirt--broken wheels, shattered beams, the ruined corpse of a great counterweight fused to the cliff by ages of wind. What roots grew here twisted around skeletons of men and beasts, binding them like offerings half-swallowed by the land.
Jon slowed when his foot caught on the remains of a trebuchet arm. It had been charred. Melted, almost. As if fire hotter than any forge had licked it clean.
"The castle remembers war," Melina murmured. "Far more than peace."
Jon didn't answer. The air had shifted. Uneasy.
Someone was ahead of them, half-concealed behind a jagged spur of stone. A man sat slouched at its base, back against the rock, his cloak drawn tight around shoulders too thin for the armor he wore. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but Jon saw at once the details: the black-and-gold surcoat stitched with curling sigils, the scholar's gloves stained with ink and dried blood, the slim sword resting across his knees, too fine for a place littered with rust and old bones.
Simply out of place, like a court musician left on a battlefield.
He lifted his head when they approached.
His face was pallid, thoughtful rather than worn, with a gentleness at the corners of his eyes that seemed stubbornly alive despite the gloom around them.
"Ah," he murmured, voice soft as dust drifting off a tome. "I feared the wind was teasing me, but no… travelers indeed." A small, courteous nod. "A good morning to you."
Jon eased his hand from Longclaw's hilt without fully releasing it. Melina stepped forward, stopping just short of the man's shadow.
"Rogier," she said quietly.
His brows lifted. "Melina. A rare sight beyond the old halls. And here I thought I had slipped from the memory of those whose sanity remains intact." He smiled. "A pleasure."
Melina's tone stayed even. "You wander far from your former vows."
"As do many," Rogier replied, adjusting his hat with mild amusement. "Though not all admit it."
His eyes moved to Jon. He studied him openly, but without any hint of threat, like a historian examining a curious artifact. "You handle yourself like a soldier," Rogier observed, "but not one shaped by these lands."
Jon raised a brow.
"Your stance. The way you favor your left side, even at rest. And your blade…" Rogier continued, as if explaining a question. His gaze dropped to Longclaw, gleaming pale in the sun. "Forged far from here. An old faith in steel, that. Old and stubborn."
Jon rested a hand on the wolf-head pommel. "It's served me long enough."
"Oh, I don't doubt it," Rogier murmured. "One rarely finds a weapon carrying so much memory and yet so quiet about it."
He shifted his cloak, and Jon finally saw the stiffness in his movement, the subtle wince he tried to hide, the tear in his tunic at the ribs. He was favoring it. A wound taken recently, though Jon could not say exactly how or when.
Rogier waved off Jon's concern with polite embarrassment. "Stormveil's welcome leaves much to be desired."
Melina regarded him with an expression Jon could not read. "You linger here, then."
"For now," Rogier said, glancing toward the path above. "And to spare others the same greeting."
Jon frowned. "You mean soldiers."
Rogier gave a quiet, rueful hum. "No. I mean the device they serve."
He pushed himself upright with a soft grunt, leaning on his slender sword like a walking stick. Up close, he looked less weary than simply wounded, alert eyes in a battered frame.
"Just ahead," Rogier said, "in the mouth of the tunnel, there's an old engine. A monstrous thing, wheeled, iron-bound. Built for bringing down dragons in ages past."He lifted a hand, mimicking the arc of a great bolt. "It fires once, and once is often enough."
He grimaced, leaning harder on his sword.
"They wrap the bolt-heads in burning powder. Primitive, volatile… but quite capable of turning a man to ash against the wall."
Jon's eyes narrowed. "Like wildfire?"
"Similar in purpose," Rogier allowed, "though lacking the elegance, or horror, of whatever alchemy your homeland has mastered." His voice grew quieter. "The soldiers serving it are bound by fear. They fire at anything that moves. Anything with breath."
Jon looked up toward the narrow mouth of stone where the tunnel waited. "How many?"
"A small crew," Rogier said. "Enough to make the approach painful if you misjudge the climb. But the engine is the true danger. Once loosed, it needs long minutes to be ready again. Long minutes you'll not wish to give it."
Melina stepped closer to Jon. "You survived."
Rogier's smile was thin and self-deprecating. "By mischance more than skill. And I've no intention of wagering on such fortune twice."
His eyes returned to Jon, sharper now, not unkind, but assessing.
"This place bristles with hunters," Rogier said. "Men who carve the likes of us apart for grafting. Stormveil does not tolerate the uninvited. If you step any further, you walk into its jaw."
Jon lifted Longclaw slightly. "I've faced worse."
Rogier's expression softened, though some sadness touched his eyes. "Perhaps. But the master of this castle has faced more."
His gaze rose toward Stormveil's towering ribs. "Godrick's halls swallow warriors as spring earth swallows rainwater."
Melina stood beside Jon, her presence steady. "His path is set."
Rogier looked between them and dipped his head in respect. A wry smile touched his lips. "Ah, forgive me. I've been rude. Rogier's the name. A sorcerer, or scholar, depending on who you ask. I'm searching for a particular something within the castle… when I'm not running from its inhabitants."
"Jon," he said simply with a nod.
Rogier continued. "Tell me--if you don't mind, Jon--what draws you here? This place is no stroll for the idle. Not with the hunters prowling about, and the grafting…"
Melina shifted but did not speak.
He hesitated for a moment, eyeing Jon with a curious mix of sympathy and interest. "You can see it then," he concluded quietly. "The guidance of grace. I can tell."
Rogier's smile turned wistful. "I'm Tarnished as well, though grace has not favored me with its light for… a long while. Still, I remember how it felt, the first time I arrived in these lands. A strange thing--hope, even in a place like this."
He looked toward the looming fortress, then back to Jon.
"Come. The path grows unkind from here, and it's better to face the unkind with company."
The wind changed again, colder, sharper, carrying a faint metallic scent from higher up the slope. Rogier pushed off the stone, steadying himself before falling into step beside them.
They followed him toward the tunnel, Stormveil rising above them like the ribs of an ancient, starving titan waiting for its next meal.
The climb from the broken cliffside felt steeper with every step. Stormveil loomed above them now, no longer a distant shape, but a citadel of stone ribs and thorned battlements, its towers spearing into the sickly gold of the sky. The wind sharpened as they approached, carrying the reek of old ash and something older still, memory, rotting and restless.
Rogier walked with care, leaning lightly on his fine sword. His breathing was steady, but Jon heard the stiffness beneath it, the ache of wounds not yet healed. Despite that, Rogier's eyes were alive, bright with the strange, scholarly curiosity he carried like a second cloak.
"The air grows hostile the nearer we come," Rogier murmured. "Stormveil remembers every siege. Every death." He glanced at the ruins ahead. "And it remembers us."
They reached a broken rise where shattered siege engines lay half-sunk in moss, wheels cracked, beams splintered. Spears jutted from the earth like grave markers. The terrain funneled toward a narrow stone ramp leading to the tunnel mouth--and at that mouth stood the heavy ballista.
A monstrous thing.
Its wooden chassis had been reinforced with grafted iron plates. Thick ropes strained against its limbs. A bolt as long as a small tree sat ready, its head wrapped in pitch-soaked cloth. Five soldiers surrounded it, three armored spearmen and two lighter-footed men feeding the ballista's rope crank. Their faces were hidden behind visors hammered into cruel, angular shapes.
Rogier exhaled. "They've repositioned it… clever."
Jon studied their positions. He needed no explanation. One would hold the crank. One would loose the bolt. Three would meet them in the run.
"I can take the right," Jon said.
"You'll have to," Melina murmured. Her voice was quiet, but her presence steadied him. "The path is too narrow for retreat."
Jon broke into a sprint before doubt found him. Gravel scattered under his boots. Shouts erupted from the soldiers.
"Loose!" one bellowed.
The ballista snapped with a thunderous crack. Jon flung himself aside as the bolt tore past, the shockwave stealing the breath from his lungs. It sheared through the rock behind him in an explosion of rubble.
Rogier whispered something under his breath, and a glimmer of blue light danced along his sword. He followed close behind Jon, moving with surprising grace for an injured man.
The spearmen charged to plug the gap.
Jon met the first with Longclaw. The new battle art sang within the blade, a quiet, steady pulse--guiding his stance. He caught the spear's thrust on the flat of his sword, slid inside the guard, and struck the man across the helm. The soldier collapsed with a ringing grunt.
Rogier slipped past Jon's shoulder, his enchanted blade slicing through the haft of the second spear. "Marvelous work, Jon! Your instinct borders on artistry."
"Less talking," Jon gritted, turning aside another thrust. "More staying alive."
The third soldier lunged for Melina--only to falter as the shadows around her deepened, bending away from her like a curtain of dusk. His attack slowed, confused, and Jon cut him down before he could understand what he'd seen.
The ballista crew scrambled to reload.
Jon didn't let them.
He surged up the final slope, boots striking stone, and drove Longclaw's pommel into the jaw of the man cranking the rope. The second tried to draw a dagger; Jon slammed him against the ballista frame, knocking him senseless.
The machine groaned and tilted. With one final shove, Jon toppled it. The heavy weapon crashed onto its side, splintering against the stones.
Silence fell, broken only by the wind.
Rogier approached the fallen ballista with a scholar's frown. "Crude craftsmanship… but deadly all the same. Stormveil spares no art that serves its hunger."
Melina gestured toward the dark tunnel yawning ahead. "This is the Castleward tunnel. Once we enter, you will be more dangerous than the journey here."
Jon tightened his grip on Longclaw and said with a heavy nod. "We go."
They stepped inside.
The tunnel enveloped them at once, cold stone swallowing the light. The air smelled of oil and old blood. Their footsteps echoed in narrow corridors littered with broken shields, split arrows, and rusted helms. Jon felt the hallway with the instincts of a man who had lived too long on battlefields: where men would hide in the dark, where shields could lock, where stones had been scorched by burning pitch.
Rogier watched him with a wondering smile. "You read war as though it were written on the walls. Another man would stumble blindly."
Jon didn't answer. His skin prickled.
Something pressed on him from deeper within the castle.
Not a sound.
Not a shape.
A presence--waiting.
Melina sensed it too. Her head lifted, her golden eye narrowing. "There is an old presence here. A warding. A watcher."
The tunnel began to climb, the incline steepening until they emerged into a blinding wash of storm-lit daylight.
The sight struck Jon with sudden, brutal clarity.
The area outside Stormveil looked like a battlefield abandoned by the gods themselves. Broken stone slabs sprawled in uneven patterns, as if the land had been struck by a giant's hammer. Spears jutted at every angle, many bearing the husks of fallen knights left to sway in the wind. Smoke drifted from guttering fires, carried off in ragged coils. Above it all, Stormveil's towers rose like the ribs of some dead titan, vanishing into churning clouds of sickly gold and green.
Jon took a single step forward--
--and the world dropped a shadow on him.
A thundering impact shook the clearing as something massive slammed down from the ramparts above. Stone cracked outward like a spider web, dust billowing like a breath of war. Jon shielded his eyes as the smoke cleared…
…and a creature stood there.
Tall.
Gaunt.
Wrapped in ragged, fur-lined robes that fluttered in the unnatural wind.
A staff of twisted iron rested in its hand, too big and too heavy for any mortal man, yet held with effortless disdain. Its presence bent the air around it, as if the world itself braced against the weight of its will.
It lifted its horned head.
Gold sunken eyes fixed on Jon.
"Foul Tarnished…" the creature rasped, its voice a deep baritone. "In search of the Elden Ring… emboldened by the flame of ambition…"
Jon moved before he realized it--placing himself between the creature and Melina, Longclaw raised. Fear surged cold and sharp through him, the kind remembered from the moment before death. Rogier inhaled sharply and drew his rapier. Crystal blue swords flew overhead.
The thing before them was no mere foe.
The creature lifted its staff high. With a roar like mountains splitting, he drove it down.
Stone cracked.
The earth trembled.
Wind howled. Stormveil loomed above them.
And Jon knew, without really knowing how, that he had stepped into the path of something very dangerous.
"Someone must extinguish thy flame. Let it be Margit the Fell."