Chapter 171: Enemy Bastion
The sound of construction echoed more insistently as the midday sun hammered against the corrugated sheets. Since the County of Pilaf had claimed the area, work on the base had begun—but it dragged on, lacking labor.
A dangerous delay. Because the longer the base took to build, the more exposed it was to potential attacks from the County of Martissant. So, despite the crushing heat, workers kept raising walls and laying foundations at a frantic pace. The base had to be up and running at all costs. The threat didn’t come only from Martissant.
The central territory, the one everyone coveted, was larger than the two counties combined. But it wasn’t empty. It teemed with creatures, beasts that had sculpted the land in their image over time. Building here meant erecting an outpost—a bulwark not just against human foes but against the environment itself.
Among the figures pounding concrete, hoisting beams, and following orders without question, there was a boy.
Not very tall, not very talkative. Copper-brown skin baked by the sun, features masked by stubborn dust, hair in long locked braids tied back—clearing his face of attention. His clothes were dirty, stained with cement, sweat, and engine oil. His body was partially wrapped in thick bandages—from his torso to his neck, as if a fire had scarred him deeply.
That’s what he claimed, at least.
A poor kid. His village burned in a border skirmish. An uncle dead, a mother gone, and a few coins in his pocket as inheritance. He said he came to help build the base to earn some money. Enough to reach the city of Pilaf, start anew—a life free of ash and ruin.
A lie, of course.
Every word of that story had been carved to sound authentic. Sad enough to avoid scrutiny, ordinary enough to raise no suspicion. A flawless cover. And the bandages? Nothing to do with burns.
They concealed his stigmatum.
A mark etched into his flesh, wrapped in silence and memory, a vestige of who he really was—and why he was here. Infiltration. Observation. A slow, methodical approach to this base under construction, a strategic keystone in the heart of the conflict.