Morning sunlight struck Windrest Keep and turned its walls the color of old gold.
The fortress was built from massive pale-brown stone. A heavy outer wall ringed it like a clenched fist, bristling with battlements and firing slits.
Armored soldiers stood watch behind the crenellations.
At the main gate, a bronze door stood three men tall, with an iron portcullis above it. The portcullis was raised, the bronze shut tight.
Under Lannis’s guidance, Rhine and Red Falcon entered through a narrow side door.
Inside the walls lay a broad front courtyard. They crossed it, passed gilded bridges and arched halls, then climbed steps flanked by guards.
At last they entered Windrest Keep’s council hall – the Storm’s Eye.
Rhine saw Governor Panglos Fell again.
He sat in a high-backed chair carved with dragon reliefs, eyes half-lidded as if dozing.
Below him, nobles and house retainers in rich clothing lined both sides of the hall.
When Rhine and Red Falcon stepped into the Storm’s Eye, an attendant murmured the report to the governor.
Panglos didn’t move.
Silence held the room like a hand around a throat.
Only after a long stretch did Panglos lift his eyelids and look toward the center.
“Ha. Red Falcon,” Panglos said, as though nothing existed besides him. “Long time.”
He didn’t acknowledge Rhine at all.
Red Falcon’s smile was polite and razor-thin.
“Governor, you honor me,” he said, inclining his head. “Though I seem to recall we fought a demon together only days ago.”
“A pity that demon didn’t die by our hands. A true regret.”
Two sentences. One soft jab. Panglos’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Panglos threw his arm wide and laughed like a generous hero.
“Hah!”
He turned his gaze to Rhine at last.
The laugh remained, but his stare sharpened, measuring.
“So this is the hero who saved Windrest City – Mr. Rhine.”
“Impressive. Young and capable.”
The governor paused. The smile shifted into something with edges.
“But I have always wondered one thing.”
“As a Hunter, and as a cleric of the Goddess of Wisdom and Life… which god do you truly serve?”
Rhine understood immediately.
A second slap. A public test. The governor was questioning his faith – implying it was impure, opportunistic.
Rhine smiled lightly.
“I serve the Seven Gods,” he said.
Panglos lifted a brow and said nothing.
From the left side of the hall, a middle-aged man in a black formal suit stepped forward.
He bowed to the governor, then turned to Rhine with exaggerated confusion.
“You serve the Seven Gods?” he repeated. “I’ve never heard such a claim.”
“Hunters serve the Huntress Goddess. Dawncallers serve the Goddess of Wisdom and Life.”
“I’ve never heard of a supernatural who worships all seven at once.”
He looked around, inviting agreement.
The nobles obliged immediately.
“Exactly.” “Well said.” “Lord Moros speaks the truth.”
The man smiled wider, then pressed on.
“The Seven Gods each teach a different path, each with its own discipline. If you worship all seven, then tell us, Mr. Rhine – which path is yours?”
His palms opened in a theatrical shrug.
Rhine recognized him.
Wilson Moros – the governor’s chief advisor, the true owner behind Dawson Shipping.
A man who wasn’t supernatural, but who had been clever enough to push Jory Fell into a ‘technological’ solution against the Mistship… a plan that ended with a hundred Windrest Keep soldiers dead.
Rhine lifted his chin slightly, letting his eyes sweep the room.
It wasn’t just Moros watching him.
Every noble in the Storm’s Eye watched him.
Including Panglos Fell.
Unlike Red Falcon’s faintly worried frown, the others looked amused. They were waiting for him to stumble.
Rhine didn’t hurry.
He smiled as if he were answering a friendly question in a warm room.
“Your Excellency is correct,” Rhine said.
“There are seven true gods. Each guides their followers and keeps the world from falling apart.”
“Their methods differ – but their purpose does not.”
“If the Seven Gods can labor for mortals in different ways, all toward the same peace… then how dare we mortals play favorites?”
“How dare we be selfish, worshiping only the one who answers us, and neglecting the rest?”
Rhine’s voice was calm. His posture natural.
He wasn’t only speaking to Moros. He was speaking to the whole hall.
Silence fell.
Smiles vanished as if wiped away.
Some nobles glanced at Moros. Others stole looks toward the governor.
Moros opened his mouth – then closed it, caught between irritation and the unpleasant realization that Rhine had placed him in a corner.
For a single second, the hall was still.
Red Falcon felt a spark of relief – and something else, too. Rhine’s answer sounded like a counterattack… but also like belief. It was hard to tell which.
Before he could step in to smooth things over, applause echoed from the high seat.
“Good,” Panglos said, clapping. “Well said.”
He laughed again, hearty and public. But behind the smile, his eyes narrowed.
Panglos didn’t like this young man.
Not because of the words. Not even because Rhine walked close to Red Falcon and the Circle of Earth.
Those were politics. Politics could be negotiated.
What Panglos hated was Rhine’s composure.
A commoner standing in the Storm’s Eye, under the pressure of nobles, in a hall that intimidated even aristocrats – and he spoke like he belonged.
In Panglos’s view, there were only two reasons for that.
Either Rhine was born royal.
Or Rhine’s ambition was so large he didn’t fear Windrest Keep at all.
Panglos had investigated him. Every trail said he wasn’t of royal blood.
Which left only the second possibility.
And Panglos Fell did not tolerate ambitious commoners.
Rhine, for his part, had thought about how he should behave here.
Feudal nobles wanted the same thing from commoners: fear, obedience, bowed heads.
Rhine considered pretending.
He dismissed it.
He could trade favors. He could lie. He could strike from shadows when needed.
But he would not grovel. Not for a fortress. Not for a chair. Not for any man.
Better a beggar than a slave.
“Truly impressive,” Panglos said, genial again. “Better than we were at your age.”
With that tone set, the nobles hurried to agree. Even Moros shifted smoothly into praise, pretending he hadn’t just tried to cut Rhine down.
The Storm’s Eye looked almost friendly.
Panglos lifted a hand casually toward Lannis.
“Bring it in,” he said.
Lannis bowed and left with crisp steps.
Minutes later he returned.
Two soldiers followed, carrying a stretcher.
A corpse lay on it – bloated, rotten, reeking.
The nobles recoiled, hands covering noses. Whispering spread like insects.
The stretcher was set in the center of the hall, near Rhine and Red Falcon.
Red Falcon frowned, uncertain.
Rhine only needed one glance.
He knew that face.
Panglos had found the Abyss-aligned Hunter Rhine had killed in the underwater cave on Moonlight Island.
Even the snapped fishbone dagger was still buried in the corpse’s chest.
So this was the governor’s next move.
Panglos smiled down at Rhine as if asking about the weather.
“Mr. Rhine,” he said. “Do you know this man?”
Rhine looked at the corpse.
He had told this lie so many times that it had become muscle memory.
He repeated it now – how he had survived a shipwreck, stumbled onto Moonlight Island searching for fresh water, fallen into a pond, sunk into an underwater cave, and discovered the body by accident.
Panglos listened, then glanced at Lannis.
Lannis gave a small nod.
Rhine’s story checked out.
A flash of disappointment crossed Panglos’s face – so fast it might have been imagined.
Moros stepped forward again.
He crouched beside the corpse, inspected it, and stood to face Rhine with a smooth, poisonous smile.
“So, Mr. Rhine,” he said, emphasizing each word, “by your account… you found this dead Hunter and stole his Relic – Flint.”
He hit the word ‘stole’ hard, like a brand pressed to skin.
Rhine heard the intention clearly.
If Moros couldn’t prove murder, he’d at least paint Rhine as a thief.
Rhine stepped forward, expression sharpening into solemn steel.
“When I found him,” Rhine said, “I had not yet become supernatural. I was a mere mortal.”
“But even mortals in this world know signs.”
“His skin was ash-gray. His eyes bulged. He reeked of long-term filth.”
“He was an Abyss Servant – a demon’s dog.”
“If he had been alive, I would have fought him anyway.”
“Because those who slaughter their own kind to climb are the enemy of every Order-aligned soul.”
The speech landed like a hammer on a table.
Moros opened his mouth to counter –
“But -”
Rhine cut him off cleanly, voice rising just enough to seize the room.
“At first, I thought he was a pitiable dead man. I meant to find a way to bury him.”
“Then I saw what he truly was.”
“He was already dead, so I could not punish him. And I would never bury one who served demons.”
“As I turned to leave, something happened.”
Rhine’s gaze moved across the hall, letting every noble feel watched.
“In that moment, I felt my shipwreck fatigue and pain vanish.”
“I realized I had awakened.”
“And I heard wind.”
“That wind guided me to Flint, hidden beneath his robe.”
On the high seat, Panglos repeated the last word softly.
“Wind?”