As Lir stared at the silver key resting in his palm, his heart seemed to stop altogether. This was no ordinary sliver of metal; it was the sole aperture into the secrets buried behind the Citadel's impenetrable walls. In the flickering candlelight, the etched lines of the map upon the key pulsated like living veins, beckoning him. As Lir's calloused fingers traced the glacial surface of the silver, a grim, irreversible resolve began to take root within him.
"I must go there," he whispered, his voice sounding foreign even to his own ears.
Lir held the silk handkerchief up to the pallid moonlight filtering through the small aperture. The bloodstain woven into its fibers no longer looked like simple grime; it felt like a shoreless scream for help. The silver key between his fingers radiated a freezing tremor, as if it were attempting to congeal the very blood in Lir's veins.
"Have you lost your mind, Lir?!" Dax blocked his path, bracing his broad shoulders against the door. His face was ashen with panic, his eyes bulging with terror. "To the Citadel? How do you expect to set foot there? Haven't you heard the tales? Its walls are built upon human bone! Every inch is watched by ten spying eyes!"
Dax seized Lir by the collar, pulling him close, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. "Don't you understand? This key won't open a door for you; it will prepare your place on the gallows! Even the birds hold their breath before the iron gates of that fortress. You—a wretched peasant, clad in mud and rough words—how will you enter? Your very existence there is a capital crime! The first sentry who spots you will put you down like a dog!"
Lir slowly pried Dax's hands away. His gaze was filled with a strange, haunting serenity—the peace of a man who has already accepted his death.
"I will not enter through the gates, Dax," Lir said, his voice as sharp and cold as a blade. He held the key up to the light, where the microscopic map shimmered with a dark, arcane allure. "This key isn't for ordinary locks. It is for the hidden passages beneath the Citadel's foundation—paths forgotten for centuries, abandoned to the rats and the dead. I will enter through the 'Bloody Well.' There are no sentries there, for no one has the stomach to tread in such a place."
Dax recoiled at the name. The "Bloody Well" was the most harrowing legend of the valley's folklore.
Lir cinched his rusted, old knife tighter against his belt. He tucked the silk and the key directly against his chest, right over his heart. At that moment, he no longer felt like Lir; he felt like a fragment of destiny itself. He threw the door open and plunged into the midnight gloom.
A thick fog swallowed the valley, devouring his every footstep. The air was heavy with dampness and the metallic tang of an approaching catastrophe. Lir did not yet know that within the Citadel, the young Lord—surrounded by gold and velvet—was also preparing for his first, and perhaps last, battle. Viktor, sensing the bitter scent of hidden treason in the cold corridors, tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. Two souls from different worlds began to move toward one another in the darkness, drawn by a single, blood-stained secret.
When Lir reached the slimy, rotting stones of the "Bloody Well," he froze. His breath hitched in his throat. From the tallest spire of the Citadel—that proud, arrogant peak—a strange black smoke began to coil upward. It spiraled through the air like a serpent, veiling the stars with its filthy shroud. The air grew thick with the acrid, throat-burning scent of scorched blood and ancient sorcery.
The cruel game inside the Citadel had begun. Lir looked into the yawning, dark mouth of the well and prepared to cast himself into the abyss.