The street vendor in Ostia handed them two skewers of "Salt-Crusted Kraken." It was the same stall they had passed seven years ago, back when they were terrified nine-year-olds trailing in Sir Kaelen's massive shadow. Back then, the smell of the unknown spices and the briny, rubbery meat had been intimidating. Now, it just smelled like lunch.
Asterion took a bite. It was chewy, salty, and surprisingly spicy.
"It's tough," he noted, chewing methodically.
"It's soul healing," Elian countered, closing his eyes to savor the spice. "Kaelen would have hated it. Too much flavor."
They left Ostia an hour later, the grey, churning ocean at their backs. The road to the Aegis Sanctum was a long, winding ribbon of paved stone that cut through the heart of the Aethelgard Empire. It was safer than the wilds of Rhaga, but old habits died hard. They rode in silence, their eyes scanning the tree lines, their stillness making them hard to detect.
Three days into the journey, just as dusk began to bleed the color from the sky, they spotted a fire.
It was a large encampment, set up in a clearing off the main road. Asterion pulled his reins, signaling Elian to stop. There were about fifteen people gathered around the roaring blaze.
Asterion's analytical mind, aided by his Perfect Memory, began cataloging the gear immediately. He saw the heavy, soot-grey plate of the Hephaestus order, identical to their own. Next to them sat a woman in the flowing, sea-green scale mail of a Poseidon Knight-Captain. There was even a man in simple white robes, clearly a priest belonging to a specialized healer task force, wearing a scarred breastplate underneath.
They were not a unit. They were a gathering of different faiths, different nations, united by the fire.
Despite being veterans, they looked remarkably lively. Most appeared to be in their physical prime—around thirty years old—with unlined faces and strong, energetic movements. In this world, people did not truly begin to show their age until after they passed one hundred and eighty years. Only the eyes of the oldest among them betrayed the century of violence they had witnessed.
"Veterans," Elian whispered. "Look at the armor. Those aren't ceremonial scratches."
They approached slowly. As they drew closer, the wind carried the sound of their conversation. It wasn't the boisterous storytelling of the Rhagian courtyards; it was the grim tone of soldiers discussing the shifting threats of the world.
"…the Skinwalkers are becoming a plague," the Poseidon knight was saying, poking the fire. "They used to be rare, but now? You walk into a village, and you can't tell the baker from the monster. They mimic the voice, the mannerisms, even the gait perfectly. You don't know until you see the black blood."
"They are annoying," a gruff Hephaestus knight grunted. "But at least they are weak. You poke them with steel, they die. These new things… they are different."
"The symptoms are too subtle," the healer priest replied, staring into the flames. "By the time you realize the host is gone, the colony is already established."
The Hephaestus knight looked up. He saw the glint of the firelight on their soot-grey armor and squinted. He looked at their faces—young, pale, but with eyes that held the thousand-yard stare of the Grieving Coast.
"Grey plate," the knight grunted. "And eyes like dead embers. You must be the young children the younger generation won't shut up about. The ones from Kaelen's unit."
The tension in the camp evaporated, replaced by a curious respect. The knight waved a hand. "Come. Sit. The fire is warm."
Asterion and Elian dismounted and joined the circle. The veterans, realizing who they were, offered them wine and dried meat. But the conversation quickly returned to the darkness.
"You were speaking of the new threat," Asterion said, his voice calm. "Not Skinwalkers."
"No," the healer priest said, his face grave. "Parasites. Worms."
He leaned forward. "They are a biological horror. They don't just mimic; they invade. They create a hive mind, but do not mistake them for the Ascended. Compared to the true terror of an Ascended hive mind, these worms are nothing but a flick of the finger. Yet, for the common man, they are death."
"How do they work?" Asterion asked.
"They stalk their prey first," the priest explained. "They watch from the shadows, assessing the human. They look for vitality, for strength. They decide if you are a 'good host.' If chosen, they strike when you sleep."
"They enter through the ear or nose, burrowing directly into the brain," the Poseidon knight added. "Week one is deception. The worm anchors itself and begins to forcefully manipulate the body's energy. It mimics a Holy Knight's faith flow. The host suddenly becomes stronger. Their skin gets denser. But they gain a ravenous hunger—specifically for human flesh. They become volatile, prone to violent rages at the slightest provocation."
"Week two," the healer continued. "Replacement. The worm hatches. It eats the brain tissue, replacing it with its own biomass. It keeps the memories, the personality quirks. But the soul is gone. The host starts losing time. They become anti-social."
"And week three?" Elian asked.
"The Feast," the healer whispered. "They establish a connection with their kind. They gorge themselves on human flesh until they have the energy to break the cocoon. They burst out of the human skin, fully formed horrors."
"And how do they multiply?" Asterion asked.
"It's quiet," the knight said with a shudder. "They don't shoot them or lay eggs in a nest. They wait until a victim is asleep. Then, they reach into their own throats, pull out a writhing larva, and gently place it next to the sleeping victim's face. The larva does the rest."
The fire crackled.
"We found a nest near the border," the Hephaestus knight said grimly. "The Church didn't take chances. They sent an Arch Priest. One of the evolved forms... it was only six months old, but it had concentrated so much stolen Faith it fought two Great Knights to a standstill. The Arch Priest vaporized it, then established a blockade. A 200-kilometer quarantine zone. Scorched earth."
Asterion sat in silence, processing this.
Why? The question burned in his mind. Why did Kaelen never mention this? Or the Skinwalkers? Or the intricacies of the empires?
For a moment, frustration bubbled up—the feeling that he had been sent out into the world blind. But then, his perfect memory replayed the last seven years on the Grieving Coast. He saw Kaelen's exhaustion. He saw the constant, grinding pressure of the Tainted Waves.
He realized the truth. Kaelen hadn't withheld the information out of malice or negligence. He simply hadn't had the time. On the Coast, survival was the only metric. Getting their power up to par—making them strong enough to survive a single night on the wall—was more important than a lecture on rare parasites they might never see.
"Once you hit your limit," Kaelen had told them, "you just need experience."
This was the experience. Kaelen had built the foundation; the world was building the house.