At first light, the outline of the abandoned castle emerged faintly through the morning mist.
Rhoen stood by a second-floor window in the main keep, watching the people in the courtyard begin their day.
The soldiers had already completed the night’s shift rotation.
The Battanian Fian Champions were maintaining their equipment, the cavalrymen were feeding their horses, and the refugees huddled together in one corner of the courtyard.
Some cradled bowls of hot soup in their hands, while others were still asleep.
Erwin came up the staircase carrying a wooden clipboard with a wrinkled sheet of paper pinned beneath it.
He paused at the doorway for a moment, as though choosing his words carefully, before stepping inside.
“Your Highness.”
Rhoen turned to look at the thin scholar.
Erwin had changed into a different set of clothes—stripped from some corpse, judging by the look of them.
They were a size too large, but at least they had replaced that tattered robe.
“Just call me Rhoen.”
Erwin adjusted his glasses.
One of the shattered lenses had been removed, leaving him with a monocle-like appearance that made him look more like a down-on-his-luck copyist than a scholar.
“Rhoen, I owe you my life.”
His tone was calm, without any dramatic display of gratitude.
“I don’t have anything of value on me to repay you.
My notes and manuscripts were all taken by those bandits.
Even if we recover them, they wouldn’t be of any use to you.”
Rhoen remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
“But I can help you manage the camp, take inventory of supplies, register personnel, and keep the accounts.”
Erwin paused briefly.
“Until you find a proper quartermaster, I can fill that position.
I won’t ask for any extra pay.
Just provide me with meals.”
Rhoen studied him for two seconds.
“Deal.”
Erwin seemed to relax.
He opened the clipboard, revealing a sheet packed with densely written notes.
“Then I’ll report our current supplies.”
He cleared his throat.
“I’ve just finished taking inventory of the granary, armory, and stables.
We have enough food to feed everyone for twelve days.”
“If we include all the refugees, that’ll drop to seven days.
We have plenty of weapons, but their quality is terrible.
Most are crude, homemade pieces, and fewer than a third are actually usable.
There are fourteen horses in total—six warhorses, and the rest are pack horses.”
Rhoen listened and nodded.
His system interface already displayed all of this information, but he didn’t interrupt Erwin.
He understood that Erwin needed to prove his worth.
“There’s something else.”
Erwin looked up, a trace of hesitation in his eyes.
“While organizing the supplies, I found something…
rather unusual.”
“What is it?”
Erwin pulled a torn piece of cloth from inside his coat.
A fragment of a heraldic emblem had been embroidered onto it.
Rhoen took it and examined it.
Golden thread had been stitched onto a deep blue fabric with fine, meticulous craftsmanship.
“You tore this from one of the soldiers’ cloaks?” Rhoen asked.
Erwin nodded.
“While I was helping move supplies, one of the soldiers—the tall one with brown hair—got his cloak caught on a nail sticking out of a crate.
This piece tore off.
I was going to return it to him, but then I noticed the emblem.”
He pointed at the golden lion.
“I’m familiar with practically every northern coat of arms—the White Eagle of Redania, the Lily of Temeria, the Black Eagle of Aedirn, the longships of Skellige…”
“But this one…
I’ve never seen before.”
Rhoen didn’t answer.
Erwin continued, as though the floodgates had opened.
“Your equipment is unusual as well.
Your soldiers all wear standardized armor—cold-forged lamellar of exceptional craftsmanship.
It’s unlike any of the major patterns I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen Nilfgaard’s black plate armor, Redania’s studded leather, and Kaedwen’s scale armor.”
“Yours resembles Skellige lamellar at first glance, but the details are completely different.”
“Skellige armor overlaps its plates horizontally.
Yours is arranged vertically.
And the quality of this metal…”
He frowned.
“I’m not certain, but it doesn’t look like any ore commonly found on the Continent.”
He stopped and looked at Rhoen, seemingly waiting for an explanation.
Rhoen handed the cloth back to him.
“Did you ask them?”
Erwin blinked.
“Ask who?”
“The soldiers.”
“I…”
Erwin hesitated.
“I didn’t dare.
They…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but Rhoen understood what he meant.
Erwin was still somewhat intimidated by the soldiers.
Twenty-two silent, blood-soaked walking tanks in full armor weren’t exactly the sort of people an unarmed scholar would casually strike up a conversation with.
“Let them tell you.”
“They’ll tell me?”
“They will.
If I say they will, they will.”
Erwin opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but ultimately thought better of it.
He put the torn cloth away, nodded, and headed downstairs.
As the morning mist gradually dispersed, Rhoen climbed the stone steps to the castle walls.
The camp had been well chosen.
The abandoned fortress stood atop a low hill with an unobstructed view of the surrounding countryside.
In the distance stretched open fields and scorched farmland.
A narrow river flowed to the east, its surface veiled in a thin layer of mist.
To the south, a dirt road wound off into the distance—a layout typical of a feudal manor.
Karl stood atop the wall, leaning against a crenelation while wiping down a shortsword.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned around and immediately snapped to attention.
“Your Highness.”
Rhoen walked over and rested his hands on the battlements as he looked out across the landscape.
“Karl, how long have you been following me?”
Karl thought for a moment.
“Since Pravend…
Counting my time in the army, it’ll be almost three years now.”
“Three years…”
Rhoen repeated the words softly.
“What were you doing three years ago?”
“Stationed on the Empire’s frontier, fighting the Khuzaits,” Karl replied in the same matter-of-fact tone one might use to talk about today’s lunch.
“Back then I was just an ordinary cavalryman.
Later I was selected for the Central Legion and transferred to Your Highness’s command.”
Rhoen nodded.
He already knew that.
The memories implanted by the system had told him as much.
But he needed to hear Karl say it himself—to confirm how those memories existed in the soldiers’ own minds.
“Your Highness…”
Karl hesitated before setting down his shortsword and turning to face Rhoen directly.
“Yes?”
“Where…
exactly are we?”
There was something in his voice that had clearly been bottled up for a long time.
A deep, lingering confusion.
Rhoen didn’t answer immediately.
Karl continued, almost as if he were talking to himself.
“When we set sail from the Port of Pravend, it was summer.
The fleet’s banners snapped in the wind.”
“When the storm hit, I was on deck.
I saw the ship beside ours swallowed by the waves.
Then our ship listed.
I was thrown overboard and slammed into the railing…”
“And then…
then I woke up here.”
He raised his head and looked toward the distant fields.
“This isn’t the Nord coast.
Nord’s shoreline doesn’t look like this.
Nord has snow-capped mountains, pine forests, and fjords.”
“But here…
there’s nothing like that.”
“Just burned forests, swamps, and muddy marshes.”
“Your Highness…
where are we?”
Rhoen remained silent for a moment.
“I’ll have Erwin explain it to all of you.
Gather everyone this afternoon.”
Karl looked at him but asked no further questions.
“Understood!”
…
That afternoon, in the main hall of the camp’s keep, the soldiers stood in three orderly ranks.
Erwin held a wooden pointer.
Beside him stood a wooden board with a crudely drawn map hanging from it.
He had sketched it with charcoal.
The lines were crooked, but the general outline was accurate enough: the Pontar River, Vizima, Oxenfurt, Novigrad, Velen, and the Yaruga River.
“This is where we are now.”
He tapped a small area in the lower-right corner of the map with the pointer.
“Velen—the former northwestern province of the Kingdom of Temeria.”
The soldiers listened quietly without saying a word.
Erwin continued his explanation, covering the history of the North, Nilfgaard’s invasion, the war, and the current military stalemate.
From time to time, he paused to study the soldiers’ expressions, making sure none of them looked confused.
Once he had finished explaining the basics, he lowered the pointer and adjusted his glasses.
“Now, I have a question for all of you.”
He looked toward Karl, who stood in the front row.
“Please tell me—where do you come from?”
Karl glanced sideways at the comrades standing beside him before looking back.
“Calradia.”
“Calradia…”
Erwin repeated the name, searching his memory for any reference to it, but clearly finding none.
“Is that the name of a kingdom…
or a continent?”
“A continent,” Karl answered.
“The continent of Calradia.
We are Imperials, subjects of the Calradic Empire.
The entire continent of Calradia is ruled by the Empire.”