Another Eridian morning arrived, not with a sunrise, but with a slow, grudging retreat of the darkness from the corners of the guest room. He sat up, the rough blanket pooling around his waist, already mulling over the tangle of half-clues and worried faces from the previous day. A faint commotion in the corridor, a murmur of voices, drew him from his thoughts. Eryndra and Warrex were already up. Their conversation was a low rumble as Zehrina joined them with a stack of notes in her hand. Lutrian was a few steps behind them, looking alert.
"Morning," Roy mumbled, stepping into the hallway. The air was cool and still carried a faint, unidentifiable Eridian scent he was starting to dislike. "Anyone see Val yet?"
"Not yet, Captain," Warrex replied, flexing his bandaged fingers. "He left a note with one of the servants. Said he's already in the estate's library, rummaging through old records he thinks we might want to see."
Eryndra closed her small notebook with a snap. "He's asked us to join him as soon as we're ready. Might as well head over and see what dust-covered secrets he's managed to unearth."
Roy gave a sharp dip of his chin, glancing towards Lutrian, who was politely declining a bowl of the same thin porridge from yesterday offered by another servant. "You good to come with us, Lutrian?"
Lutrian managed a smile and shook his head. "I'm fine, Captain. Frankly, anything is better than sitting around waiting for something else to go wrong. If Val has dug up any farmland ledgers or census logs, it could help us see the pattern more clearly." He, like Roy and Eryndra, abstained from the local food, relying on nutrient packs or rations from the Nightshatter. Only Warrex, with his tough stomach and general indifference to food, partook in the Eridian breakfast, eating it with gusto.
Zehrina carried a small pack of scanning gear from the Nightshatter, along with a few sterile sample tubes in case they found anything worth collecting. "Takara's still monitoring the ship's perimeter, running diagnostics on the long-range sensors and pulling out her hair with how boarded she is," she reminded Roy. "So for this library expedition, it appears it's just the five of us."
Roy's face tightened for a moment. He felt a familiar pang of guilt mixed with annoyance at Takara's likely frustration at being left behind again. He quickly forced a smile. "Right. We'll fill her in via radio if we find anything concrete. Let's go see what Val's library has to offer."
They departed the guest house. Their footsteps echoed slightly in the quiet morning air as they stepped out into Eridian's streets. A few villagers already shuffled about under the pale sun, lugging water barrels or tending to limp, unhealthy-looking crops with a lack of enthusiasm. Roy tried a friendly greeting to a couple who passed by, their faces etched with worry. They managed only listless nods in reply, their eyes quickly skittering away. Each averted glance was a reminder of the cyclical, heavy sense of despair that weighed on this unfortunate town.
Val met them at a side entrance to the estate. He was dressed today in a simple, practical dark tunic rather than the formal vest from yesterday. He beckoned them inside with a polite, preoccupied smile that didn't quite reach his troubled eyes. "Good morning. My apologies if I kept you waiting. I've been rummaging through these old ledgers since before dawn. I figured I'd let you see them directly. Perhaps something will stand out to your fresh eyes, something we who are too close to the problem have missed."
He led them along a short, dimly lit corridor. The air was thick with the scent of dust and decaying parchment. They entered a cozy, well-appointed library. Shelves carved from dark wood lined the walls from floor to ceiling, groaning under the weight of countless leather-bound tomes, brittle scrolls, and stacks of records. A single tall, arched window at the far end of the room let in a shaft of pale sunlight that caught dust motes in the air.
Val gestured towards a large wooden table in the center of the room. A stack of ancient books and loose parchment already waited there. "Our official archivist doesn't come by very often these days. Most of these are estate finance logs, farmland output reports, and population counts from decades or even centuries ago. I've skimmed through the most relevant ones, but it's all so scattered and disorganized."
Zehrina stepped forward. Her keen eyes were immediately drawn to a particularly thick, leather-bound ledger. She gently began to leaf through its fragile, yellowed pages, which were covered in columns of archaic script detailing dates and crop yields. "Hmm, interesting. It charts the agricultural seasons with surprising detail, but there's a significant gap here. A whole section of pages seems to be missing or perhaps deliberately removed."
Val's expression tightened as he leaned over her shoulder to peer at the ledger. "It does look that way, doesn't it? Perhaps it was lost to time." A veil of unease passed over his face. "We don't always keep the most perfect track of such things, I'm afraid. Record-keeping has never been Eridian's strong suit, especially during the leaner years."
Lutrian, meanwhile, had flipped open another ancient record. This one detailed local births, deaths, and departures over a ten-year period from some decades past. Many entries, disturbingly, ended with the word 'disappeared,' or simply trailed off into blank space. Roy eyed the grim entries over Lutrian's shoulder, a cold knot of apprehension forming in his stomach.
"People just vanishing," Roy said, his voice low. "That matches what Olan told us yesterday. No explanation."
"Indeed." Lutrian carefully set the book down. "But it doesn't say how or why. Just gone. As if they were erased."
Warrex was scanning a separate, equally ancient volume that seemed to detail irrigation patterns and local river flow data. His lips moved silently as he whispered calculations to himself. Every so often, he would tap a finger against a particular page or diagram with a low grunt, but no one seemed to be finding any direct answers about the town's decline. Val hovered nearby, his expression a mixture of anxious anticipation and dwindling hope.
"You can see the yield charts clearly enough in these other ledgers," Val said, his voice tinged with exasperation. He pointed to a column of starkly fluctuating numbers. "The harvest spikes one month, sometimes for an entire season, then drops catastrophically the very next. Even the livestock counts and birth rates follow the same erratic, terrifying pattern. But there's no official reason recorded anywhere. One archivist from many years back actually jotted down a single word in the margins, 'curse.' Everyone else, it seems, simply accepted it as Eridian's fate."
Zehrina acknowledged this slowly, her gaze still fixed on the disturbing gaps in the ledger she held. "We can definitely see the pattern, Val. It's the cause of that pattern that remains elusive."
Val let out a long, slow breath, the sound heavy with accumulated weariness. "I'm sorry. My father, he never found a solution either. Not that he personally spends much time poring over these dusty old logs, you understand." His cheeks colored with a flash of self-consciousness, as though he felt he had spoken ill of his father or revealed too much.
Roy noticed Val's discomfort and steered the conversation in a less personal direction. "Don't worry about it, Val. This confirms how erratic and long-standing the problem has been. That's valuable information. Let's see if we can try to match up certain periods of severe decay with any known events. Did anything unusual happen in or around Eridian each time the crop yields plummeted or the sickness returned?"
They spent the next couple of hours hunched over the ancient records, cross-referencing dates, names, and figures. They scrawled their own notes on pads of paper Roy had brought from the Nightshatter. Occasionally, Val, his nervousness now replaced by a focused intensity, would dash to another shelf to retrieve additional data. He brought back old maps, fragmented journals, and even detailed weather logs kept by some long-dead resident. Roy felt a growing admiration for Val's dedication. He genuinely wanted Eridian to be free of this blight.
Eventually, they had pieced together a rough, incomplete timeline. The decays came in short, intense bursts every few months with no discernible pattern, leaving confusion and tragedy in their wake. There was no obvious seasonal link or external factor. No invasions, no plagues from outside, no celestial alignments. Roy chewed his lip, his mind racing. He thought about how a subtle poison or a magical disease might operate so sporadically.
Warrex finally closed a large ledger with a thud, resting his bandaged hand on the dusty table. "Well, we can see the grim numbers now. That confirms the severity of the situation and how long it's been going on. But we're still stuck for the actual cause."
Val ran a frustrated hand through his disheveled hair. "At least you know I wasn't exaggerating. And perhaps with your fresh eyes, your different perspectives, you'll see something that all of us who have lived with this our entire lives have missed."
Zehrina set a neat stack of her transcribed notes aside. "We'll keep all of this in mind, Val. For now, perhaps we should talk to more locals who have lived through multiple cycles of this decay. The elders, or families who have resided in Eridian for generations. Their accounts might hold clues these dry records lack."
Val brightened at the suggestion, a spark of renewed hope lighting his eyes. "Yes, that's a good idea. There's one old orchard caretaker in the southwestern fields. She's been around longer than nearly anyone else. I should warn you, though, she's not renowned for being friendly. Would you like me to take you to her?"
"Yeah, might as well," Roy agreed. "We need to see everything and talk to everyone if we're going to crack this."
They tidied the records, returning the tomes and scrolls to their shelves, and then left the quiet library. Val escorted them outside, through the estate's neglected courtyard, and out into a parched lane lined with rows of brittle shrubs. The sun beat down, and the dry air made Roy wonder how the farmlands here ever managed to thrive at all, even during their brief periods of abundance.
After a short, hot walk, they arrived at a sprawling, neglected orchard. Rows of fruit trees stretched before them, a bizarre mosaic of life and death. Some trees were laden with plump, healthy fruit, their leaves a vibrant green. Others, often standing right beside them, were bare, their branches twisted and blackened, with shriveled, diseased leaves. An elderly woman, her face as gnarled as the tree trunks, stood under one such dying tree. A wide-brimmed straw hat shielded her from the sun. She was pruning dead branches with rusty shears. She froze when she noticed them, slowly wiping her brow and giving Val a curt, unsmiling dip of her chin.
"Sorry to bother you, Ma'am Elara," Val said, his tone respectful. "These are the outsiders I mentioned. They're hoping to help us understand and perhaps finally end these cycles of decay."
The old woman eyed them warily, her gaze sharp. "Hmph. Been here so many times before. People come, full of big ideas and promises. They poke around, ask questions, then leave in frustration, just like all the others." She snipped another dead branch with a sharp, angry crack, letting it fall to the parched earth. "You sure you're not just going to give up and run off too?"
Roy stepped forward, his expression determined. "We're stubborn. And we have a very good reason to want to fix this." He shot Val a quick grin. "Besides the reward, we generally dislike seeing innocent people suffer."
She let out a short, harsh laugh. "Well, then, look around you, stubborn boy. Tell me what you see. Suffering is all this land knows anymore."
Roy scanned the blighted orchard again. Some trees were bursting with fruit while others feet away were dead or dying. It looked unnatural, as if two different worlds had been merged together. Eryndra ran her fingers over the bark of a flourishing pear tree, then stepped to a dying apple tree nearby, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"It's like two separate realities are coexisting here, side by side, yet never touching," Eryndra mused aloud, her voice hushed with a mixture of awe and foreboding.
The old caretaker snorted. "I've seen it shift from one to the other in a single week. Last season, we hauled dozens of baskets of perfect pears from those very trees over there." She jabbed a gnarled finger at the now-dead zone of the orchard. "Then something changed. The air felt different. The light felt wrong. Now, that entire side's worthless. Dead as stone."
Zehrina was fiddling with a scanning device she'd brought, pressing it against the bark of both a healthy and a diseased tree. The device whirred softly. "No immediate toxins detected in the soil or the bark," she reported, her voice puzzled. "No unusual radiation, no discernible blight. This is very strange."
Val's shoulders slumped. "This orchard used to be the pride of Eridian. Famous for its sweet fruit. Now it's just another sad symbol of our endless ups and downs." He turned to the old caretaker, his voice gentle. "Thank you for your time, Ma'am Elara. We just needed to see it for ourselves."
She grumbled something unintelligible, but then gave a weary, almost reluctant sign of assent. "Do what you must. I'd sooner see a stable, healthy orchard again than spend the rest of my days burying dead branches."
With that, she turned her back, returning to her methodical pruning. The crew left quietly, their footsteps muffled by the fallen fruit. Roy couldn't help but notice that half of the fallen fruit was fresh and ripe, while others lying beside it were dissolving into moldering mush.
They followed a dusty path back toward the main part of town. Roy's mind whirled with possibilities. A localized magical blight, a strange mana flux, some kind of seasonal curse. None of it made logical sense, especially given how random the shifts were. He glanced at Val, who was gazing into the distance, his brow furrowed with a worry that seemed too heavy for his young shoulders.
"All these conflicting records, all these dying orchards and sick livestock," Roy said, his voice low and thoughtful, "it must be incredibly tough on you, Val. Watching your home wither away and not knowing why."
Val offered a small, tired gesture, a profound sorrow tinging his usually bright hazel eyes. "Yes, it is. But I try to keep hope alive. My father always says that Eridian can endure anything. That we are a resilient people. We just haven't found the right solution yet." He didn't elaborate on what role his father played in searching for a solution, and Roy, sensing his discomfort, didn't pry. Instead, he offered a pat on Val's shoulder, a silent gesture of support.
They arrived back in the heart of Eridian by late afternoon. Villagers were finishing their daily chores. Some, noticing Val, offered him quiet, respectful nods. Clearly, Val commanded a measure of goodwill from his people. Roy asked him about their next steps, but Val, looking suddenly pale and drawn, insisted on returning to the estate, claiming a headache. He left Roy and the others to continue their inquiries.
As they parted ways at the estate gate, Val offered them a faint smile. "If you find anything, or if you require my assistance, you know where to find me."
Roy affirmed the plan. "Thanks, Val. Get some rest."
The sun began its slow descent, painting the sky with streaks of orange and red. Warrex let out a massive yawn. Eryndra and Zehrina, their faces etched with a similar exhaustion, looked equally drained by the day's fruitless investigations. They headed back towards their guest building, each lost in their own troubling thoughts. Another long, frustrating day had passed with no culprit identified. Just a mess of incomplete records, half-living fields, and an undercurrent of hopelessness that clung to the very stones of the village.
Roy caught a glimpse of the Archduke's main estate, its roofline tinted gold by the setting sun. He quickly shook off the thought. There was no logical reason to bother the Archduke himself, not yet. They would keep investigating, keep gathering data, and keep asking questions. Then they would reevaluate their next steps. Hopefully, without any further heartbreak.