It was interesting to realize that, with the transport of the kingdom to the foot of the wall, not only did everything I owned come along — but everyone.
Even Livina and Morgana, who had stayed at the top of the wall while I descended with Eris, simply appeared in my kingdom as if by magic. When I asked, the two reported the same thing: a light filled their vision, and the next instant they were already there. It was a technology far beyond what the Oasis usually offered. In fact, it even seemed too technological — the kind of thing I believed the Oasis itself would never allow. But, whatever it was, at least it guaranteed me one thing: I would have nothing to worry about beyond using the protection time to study.
And studying was all I had left.
Five days. That was all the time the dome would give me before that dead world collapsed onto my back. Five days to transform a handful of burned pages and a suspicious silence into something resembling a chance to survive.
✦ ✦ ✦
"I'm going to die here.
Mom always said that life is like a watermelon: the tastier the juice, the more seeds. Maybe I should have understood, before, what that really meant."
The Oasis reminded me, at every step, of a simple truth.
That even the most prepared and brave is nothing before hatred, pain, and blood. Death always lurks — waiting only for the slightest mistake to punish with all the force it possesses. And after reading nearly everything that diary had to offer (which wasn't much, but was enough), one thing became clear: the former owner knew, from the first day, that that place would be his tomb.
And, even so, he fought. That was what bothered me most in the first pages — not the desperation, but the certainty. Kraguar didn't write like someone who expects to be saved. He wrote like someone who already knows the ending, and even so insists on turning the page one more time.
"What's written in that thing, my Lord?"
Despite it being easy to understand what that man meant, it was hard to extract useful information from the diary.
A good part of it was destroyed — and what remained was more personal than relevant. Which made sense. After all, why would anyone write, in a diary, anything that wasn't about what they felt and how they dealt with their own end approaching?
"The information isn't very relevant, Liv. But there's something here that might be able to help us."
Even though most of it was useless for my purposes, not everything was a waste of time.
There was subliminal information — things said between the lines, that said much more than the words themselves. Mainly about the confrontations that Lord Kraguar faced in the short period he was in command of that wall's defense. He never deigned to mention his own surname — in fact, I only knew the first name because, on one of the last burned pages, the only legible thing was his name, written countless times. As though repeating his own name were the only way he had found to relieve the tension. To remember he was still someone. To prove, page after page, that he hadn't yet been erased completely.
✦ ✦ ✦
"The attack begins the moment the sun disappears on the horizon, and lasts until the instant it rises above the wall."
"But then we have to hold out an entire night of battle?"
"Actually, much more than that. Because of the wall's height, I believe at least another three or four hours are needed until the sun manages to rise above it. That is — we're talking about an attack that would begin between five and six in the afternoon, and would stretch until nearly noon."
My supposition came from a passage of Kraguar's that I had found especially disturbing.
"The night here is infinite. Even after fighting, and fighting, and fighting again, the light never comes. Cursed darkness."
My theory was that not even Kraguar had foreseen how long he would need to stay awake.
We were talking about eighteen hours of uninterrupted vigil, with only six hours for rest and replenishment. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt the situation was infinitely more complicated than I had imagined at first. It wasn't just a matter of winning the attacks. It was a matter of not crumbling — in body and mind — under the weight of a night that refused to end.
Eighteen hours. I repeated the number in my head, and it only got worse. An ordinary man breaks long before that. And, when the mind begins to give way, the body soon follows — it was exactly what Kraguar described in the last pages: not a defeat in arms, but a defeat in the sleep he couldn't have.
"There's another interesting thing. I think I discovered how he lost so quickly. And, mainly, why they content themselves with staying on this side."
Morgana and Livina had frowning expressions.
Because, the more they thought about it, the more they understood the real size of the challenge. Even the two of them — warriors who had seen it all — realized that wall, for those on our side of it, was much more a tragedy than a blessing. While we walked, I decided to lay out my theory.
"I believe the creatures are afraid of what exists on the other side of the wall."
"Afraid of whom, my Lord?"
Morgana asked, furrowing her brow.
I paused an instant, organizing the reasoning before explaining.
"Not whom. What. Think with me: the creatures on this side live in an almost eternal night — daylight, here, lasts four, maybe six hours, before the sun disappears again. But, on the other side of the wall, it's different. There, the night passes, and the clouded sun truly rises."
I pointed to the top of the colossal structure that stretched as far as the horizon reached.
"Despite us being in a kind of ravine, it's clear this wall stretches across the entire length of the valley. It separates two worlds. And my theory is that the sun — the light, even if clouded — is the only thing that keeps the creatures trapped on this side. That, combined with the fact that there's always constant and easy food right here. Like us."
"So you believe there wouldn't even need to be someone to protect the wall?"
"Yes and no."
That was the part that really bothered me — and that, at the same time, made complete sense.
"I believe whoever built this wall understood one thing: for the creatures on this side to never feel tempted to cross to the other — to the world where the sun rises, where there's real life — there would always need to exist a sacrifice here. An easy prey. Guaranteed food, renewed from time to time, to keep them occupied, satisfied, and with no reason to seek what lies beyond the wall. But not only that. At the same time, someone was needed who was capable of containing the plague, of preventing it from multiplying without limit. And what could be better for both things than a desperate person willing to do anything to survive? We aren't the wall's defenders."
I paused, letting the truth settle.
"We're the bait that keeps them from wanting to climb."
The silence that followed was answer enough.
The two had understood. And there was something cruel in that comprehension — the realization that we weren't guardians of anything, weren't heroes defending a gate. We were cattle. Placed there on purpose, with the sole end of being devoured slowly enough to keep the beasts distracted. The honor of "protecting the wall" was just the pretty lie they dressed the slaughterhouse in.
"We've arrived."
✦ ✦ ✦
After walking, we finally reached the point I wanted to get to.
Before me, my castle — much humbler than the one that occupied that place before, but at least whole. Inside, it was still hollow. I hadn't built anything that the previous one had raised: there was no time, there was no money, and, deep down, there was no will. Comfort continued being a luxury I couldn't afford.
"Livina, read this page out loud, please."
Livina took the diary from my hand while I crouched and pressed my head to the ground.
"The few hours of sleep are going to end up killing me before those hideous creatures tear my body apart. The army of five thousand men I managed to raise, with my father's help, was reduced to less than half in a single day. Even in dreams, I can hear the moan of those things trying to reach me, to tear me apart. I'm going to end up going insane in this place. I hope the first day is the worst — because, if it isn't, I feel I'll never see my mother's smile again. Nor my father's."
Livina stopped reading.
I finally stopped moving, my head still glued against the cold ground. She looked at me — and Morgana too — with an expression of pure confusion.
"What I just read… is it supposed to mean something?"
I stood up with a start.
"Actually, it means everything. Come here."
I pointed to the ground, near where the throne should be — if I had one.
"Okay… what do I need to do?"
I didn't answer. I just made the sign for silence and bent down again, pressing my ear to the ground.
Livina repeated my movement. Morgana followed her.
The sepulchral silence of that plain was so deep that, with time, I could hear my own heart beating. It was necessary to empty the mind, ignore the wind, ignore my own breathing. But it wasn't the heart I wanted the girls to hear. It was something beneath it. Something more distant.
Something much more terrible.
There, deep down, below the rock and the earth, there was a sound. Constant. Muffled. A collective scratching, a murmur of countless movement — like a thousand things moving at the same time, somewhere just below our feet. It wasn't the wind. The wind comes and goes. That didn't stop. It was constant as a breath, patient as something that has all the time in the world.
"This is…"
"Yes."
I spoke quietly, while standing up and asking the girls to follow me to the wall.
✦ ✦ ✦
When we got there, the nervousness was already stamped on Livina's face, horrified.
Because there, leaning against the base of the wall, the comprehension of what she had heard finally fit into her mind — without my needing to say anything. The sound was too obvious. Undeniable. It didn't come from the desert in front of us. It didn't come from the dark horizon where Eris had said the enemies emerged "out of nowhere."
It came from below.
And it was on her face that I saw everything fit together. The "artificially widened" streets in the destroyed kingdom. The bodies that were never left behind. The fall of a strong kingdom in just two days, without anyone having understood how, exactly, it had happened. They didn't attack through the single entrance to the north. They didn't need to. They didn't come only from the front.
They came from inside the earth.
"They're beneath us."
Livina's words hung suspended in the air of that eternal night — said as though she wanted to lift from her own shoulders the weight of a terrible truth.
She had understood, just like me, why that kingdom — however strong it seemed, however tall its towers were — hadn't managed to survive. He had built the defenses upward and to the sides. He had watched the horizon, the gate, the sky. And, the whole time, death watched him from below — digging, multiplying, waiting for the sun to disappear.
Every wall, every tower, every soldier posted on high — all of it had been built against an enemy that never had the intention of knocking on the front door. It was like locking all the windows of a house while the ground, beneath your feet, was already being dug.
The Tyrin weren't a horde that attacked only the wall.
They were ants. And we were on top of the anthill.
✦ ✦ ✦
"What should we do with this information, my Lord?"
It was a hard question to answer.
Preventing an attack coming from below was practically impossible, precisely because of the unpredictability. Honestly, I had not the slightest idea how to defend two fronts at the same time — contain the advance on the surface while worrying about what dug beneath my feet. It was like trying to dam a river's water with my hands: however fast I was, there would always be a gap through which death would seep.
But there was something bothering me even more.
Whoever had been there before the last protector had survived much longer. And a detail as crucial as a subterranean attack was the kind of thing Eris should have mentioned immediately. It wasn't a detail one forgets. It was the kind of information that defines whether you live or die — and she hadn't said a single word about it.
Which could only mean one thing: that was new.
And, if it was new, it opened a whole door of worse questions. Why now? What had changed? Why, after so many protectors falling on the surface, did the creatures suddenly decide to dig? Something, somewhere, had altered — and I had not the slightest idea what. I only knew that changes, in that place, were never for the better.
"I believe this kind of attack is something recent. And I don't think it's by chance. The question that remains is… how far are they already extending the roots?"
What was happening was much more worrying than it appeared.
A tunnel meant they could emerge anywhere — including getting past the great wall at my back. I believed, with some conviction, that a structure like that should have foundations many meters deep. But that guaranteed nothing. Not when one thought about how long those creatures might have been down there, digging, in silence, long before I arrived. And if they managed to pass beneath the wall — if that exact subterranean attack was, in the end, the way they would finally reach the other side — then the problem stopped being only mine. It became everyone's.
"Do you think we should inform Eris of this?"
"Yes. But we're going to have to wait for her to come back to talk about it. Besides…"
I paused.
"Even if they're screwed, that only means we are too. We need a solid strategy. And fast."
I looked at the dark sky, at the pale dome that still protected us, silently counting the days I had left.
Five. Maybe fewer, if that sound down there decided not to wait for the invitation. But I hadn't crossed the hell of being a rookie, nor the certain death of a Purge, hadn't left my sister behind once more, to die like cattle in a slaughterhouse disguised as a wall. If the game was to survive where everyone failed, then I would play differently from all of them.
From now on, I wouldn't look only at the horizon.
I would look down.