The morning mist over the barrack quarters of Carravin hangs low, heavy, and cold, clinging to the damp flagstones like a wet shroud. Onaga Kei blinks his wide, dark eyes against the chill air, pulling his thick wool mantle tight around his narrow shoulders. His pale, delicate face, framed by soft, dark hair that falls gently over his ears, twitches with immediate, restless concern. He steps briskly through the archway of the officers' courtyard, holding a thick leather bound ledger and three brass-capped ink quills clutched tightly against his chest.
He stops dead in his tracks.
The door to Captain Aldo Patriot's quarters swings loosely on its iron hinges, banging with a soft, hollow thwack against the stone frame. Onaga takes two quick, hurried steps forward, his boots clicking softly on the stone. He peers into the small room. The narrow straw cot is empty, its wool blankets neatly folded at the foot. The wooden desk sits bare—no maps, no half-written supply orders, no lingering trace of their captain.
"Captain Aldo?" Onaga's voice is soft, smooth, and laced with immediate, fluttering panic. He steps entirely inside, his small hands running over the smooth wood of the empty table as if expecting an invisible note to materialize under his fingers.
Where is he? He never leaves without reviewing the morning rolls. He never leaves without checking the medical rations.
Behind him, a heavy, sluggish shadow blocks the grey morning light pouring through the doorway.
Hano Kichiro leans his moderately tall, lean frame against the wooden doorframe, his pale skin glowing almost ghostly in the dim fog. He stands nearly as tall as Aldo himself, his narrow shoulders slouching in a posture of complete, careless indifference. His dark, sharp eyes are heavy with sleep, and he idly picks at a sliver of dried meat stuck between his teeth, his jaw moving in a slow, rhythmic chew. He looks down at Onaga with an unblinking, chillingly vacant expression.
"He's not here, femboy," Hano says flatly, his voice a low, raspy drawl that lacks even a flicker of interest. "Stop sniffing around his mattress like a lost hound."
Onaga turns sharply, his dark brows knitting together in a tight, anxious V. "Don't call me that, Hano! And how can you be so calm? The captain has been gone since before dawn! We have company reports to file! We have the medical inventory from the 204th and 205th to consolidate! What if something happened? What if the ducal guards—"
"The ducal guards are probably still asleep or nursing a hangover," Hano interrupts, taking a slow step into the room, his long arm reaching out to snatch a dry biscuit from a wooden bowl on the shelf. He bites into it with a loud, crisp snap. "Relax. The man isn't dead."
Onaga ignores him, spinning on his heel and marching straight out of the quarters into the damp morning air of the main courtyard. Hano sighs, a quiet, irritated puff of air escaping his nostrils, and strolls casually behind, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his dark leather trousers.
In the outer yard, two local Carravin city guards are leaning against a stack of timber crates, chewing on dried apples and watching the fog rise off the cobblestones. Onaga rushes up to them, his posture stiff, his eyes wide and pleading.
"Excuse me! Good soldiers!" Onaga says quickly, his hands clutching his ledger like a shield. "Have you seen Captain Aldo? Tall man, dark hair, stoic expression, wearing the gray officer's coat? He was accompanied by Captain Comtois—the large, loud one?"
The older guard blinks, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He spits onto the damp stone. "Aye. Saw 'em both at the south gate near three hours ago. Hired a pair of bay palfreys from the guild stables. Heading down the southern arterial road."
Onaga's breath catches in his throat. "The southern road? Where were they going? Did they say?"
The younger guard laughs softly, shaking his head. "Didn't have to say much. Big fellow—Comtois—was shouting about hot springs, sweet wine, and massage parlors all the way past the toll gate. They're heading for Flora, lad. Taking a few days off the leash, if you ask me."
Onaga stands frozen, his mouth slightly open, his pale skin flushing with a mixture of shock and utter disbelief. "Flora? The... the pleasure city? The spa district?" He turns slowly to look at Hano, who has ambled up behind him, still chewing lazily on his stolen biscuit.
Hano's thin lips curl into a lazy, lopsided smirk. "See? What did I tell you? They went for relaxation."
"No! Absolutely not!" Onaga snaps, his voice rising an octave as he stomps his small boot against the flagstones. "Captain Aldo doesn't 'relax'! He is the most disciplined, serious man in the entire Professional Central Army! He works twenty hours a day! He spends his free time reading treatises on crop yields and iron smelting! He wouldn't just abandon his post to go soak in a hot tub and drink wine!"
Hano rolls his eyes, a long, exaggerated motion that makes his dark pupils slide all the way to the top of his eyelids. "He's a human being, Onaga. Not an iron nail. Even an iron nail bends if you hit it with a hammer enough times. He just spent two weeks quelling a violent rebellion, training a bunch of street bums into a militia, and dealing with that Coin Duke. His brain is probably fried."
"He has a duty!" Onaga insists, taking a aggressive step toward Hano, his small chest puffing out beneath his linen shirt. "We are slave-soldiers! We have the revolutionary organization to think about! We have the recruits—Gertrude, Lourdes, the ones who went ahead to Central Heilop! How can he be resting in a paradise city while our brothers and sisters are preparing for the grand uprising?"
Hano stares down at Onaga, his expression completely blank, his dark eyes chillingly cold. He doesn't move an inch as Onaga fumes before him.
"You think too much, Onaga", Hano says smoothly, his tone entirely devoid of heat or malice, which only makes his words cut deeper. "You think because you carry that book and wrap bandages around bleeding arms, you're the engine of this whole thing. Aldo is the captain. If he wants to sit in a warm bath and have a pretty girl pour fruit juice into his mouth for three days, he earned it."
"He didn't go there to lounge!" Onaga huffs, clutching his ledger so hard his knuckles turn porcelain white. "There must be an operational reason! A contact to meet! A secret supply line to inspect! I know him, Hano! He wouldn't—"
"We stay in Thromium until August first," Hano cuts in sharply, his voice dropping into a flat, unyielding register that instantly silences Onaga's high-pitched protesting. Hano raises a pale, slender finger between them. "Today is July seventeenth. That is fourteen whole days, Onaga. Fourteen days where no central command officers are breathing down our necks. Fourteen days where the Duke thinks we're just obedient little dogs resting on his porch."
Onaga bites his lower lip, his dark eyes flashing with stubborn defiance. "Even so... even if we have time... I am his head recorder. I am his chief medical officer. It is my responsibility to be at his side. I am going to find him. I will ride to Flora, present him with these organizational reports, and we will continue discussing the parameters of the revolution!"
Hano lets out a short, bark-like scoff, turning his head away to spit a tiny bit of biscuit crust onto the ground. He turns back, looking at Onaga with a mixture of mild pity and utter boredom.
"You really don't get it, do you?" Hano says, his voice dropping into a quiet, chilling whisper that seems to freeze the damp mist around them. "If you march up to him in Flora while he's staring at the fountains, and you start squawking about revolution... do you know what he's going to tell you?"
Onaga holds his breath, his posture rigid. "What?"
Hano leans down slightly, his pale, sharp face mere inches from Onaga's delicate features. "He's going to tell you that the revolution isn't going to start with us. It's going to start with the Professional Central Army burning itself to ash from the inside out. We're just the matchmakers, little doctor. Not the fire."
Hano straightens up abruptly, sweeping his dark cloak around his shoulders with a quick, fluid motion. He doesn't wait for Onaga to reply. He turns his back on his fellow officer, taking three long, casual strides toward the eastern archway that leads toward the city's outer gates.
"Where are you going?!" Onaga shouts after him, taking a frantic step forward. "Hano! You can't just wander off by yourself! We're supposed to stay together!"
Hano doesn't stop walking. He raises one pale, slender hand over his shoulder, waving a dismissive, two-finger gesture into the cold morning air.
"Find me in Blumenau, femboy," Hano calls back, his voice echoing lightly off the wet stone walls, carrying a strange, dangerous glint of dark amusement. "I hear they have good wheat, big mills, and very quiet roads."
Onaga stands alone in the damp courtyard, his chest heaving, his cheeks burning red with frustration. He stares at Hano's retreating back until the tall, dark figure disappears into the swirling white fog beyond the gate.
Insufferable... utterly insufferable!
Onaga thinks, his teeth grinding together so hard his jaw aches.
He thinks he knows everything just because he's cold and cynical! He doesn't understand Captain Aldo's vision! None of them do!
Onaga snaps his ledger shut with a loud, aggressive clack. He spins around, his dark hair flying around his face, and marches straight toward the guild stables. He will hire a horse. He will ride to Flora. And he will find his captain, no matter how many luxury gardens or straight avenues he has to cross.
Meanwhile, Hano Kichiro steps through the massive, looming archway of Carravin's eastern gate, his dark boots clicking a steady, unhurried rhythm against the heavy stone pavement.
The city does not simply end at the wall. Carravin is an urban monster, spilling its guts outward into the surrounding valley in a dense, choking web of industry and labor.
Hano walks through the sprawling suburbs first. The air grows thick, heavy, and suffocating, clinging to his skin like a greasy film. The cold drizzle does nothing to wash away the overwhelming stink that rolls off the landscape—a sharp, pungent mixture of acrid coal smoke, freshly baked coarse bread, rotting wet timber, sweat-stained horses, and the bitter, metallic tang of hot iron.
To his left, massive brick kilns belch thick, black plumes of smoke into the grey sky, their intense heat radiating across the narrow dirt lanes, making the damp air shimmer. To his right, sprawling timber warehouses store thousands of barrels of salt pork, grain, and tallow, their dark interiors echoing with the shouts of sweating laborers stacking wooden crates. The heavy, rhythmic thrum of undershot mill wheels vibrates through the ground beneath his feet as he passes along the banks of a muddy canal choked with heavy river barges.
Densely packed workers' cottages—hastily built from cheap timber and red brick—lean precariously against one another. Washlines strung between dirty windows droop under the weight of wet, gray garments. Children with soot-stained faces run through the muddy gutters, while women in coarse aprons haul heavy wooden buckets of river water up steep stone steps.
Hano moves through the chaos like a ghost. He doesn't dodge the rushing crowds; he simply glides through the gaps with a practiced, effortless economy of movement. His dark eyes scan the environment with a cold, detached precision, taking in every detail without registering a single trace of emotion.
He approaches the outer customs gates, where a long line of heavy freight wagons sits stalled in the mud. Tax officials in high-collared blue coats march up and down the line, clutching long wooden measuring rods and ink pots, shouting at nervous drivers, demanding transit permits, and inspecting wooden barrels. Above the toll booths, colorful guild banners—representing the ironmasters of Reginaldshire, the weavers of Percivalis, and the millers of Crispinan—damply flutter in the light breeze.
The traffic is utterly overwhelming. Hundreds of heavy four-wheeled wagons, their wooden spokes caked in drying mud, creak and groan under the weight of mountain ore, grain sacks, and stone blocks. River barges, tied to heavy iron bollards along the stone docks, bump against one another with dull, hollow thuds as dockworkers haul thick hemp ropes to secure their loads.
Hano steps past a tax officer who is violently arguing with an iron merchant over a mislabeled crate. The officer shouts, his face red and sweating despite the cold rain, while the merchant waves a handful of copper coins in his face. Hano doesn't even turn his head. He steps off the paved stone apron and onto the wide, packed-dirt highway stretching east into the misty horizon.
He walks for another hour.
Gradually, the suffocating urban sprawl begins to thin out. The rows of soot-stained brick cottages give way to wider timber barns. The deafening, metallic roar of the city—the clanging iron, the screaming street vendors, the thunder of wooden wheels on cobblestones—slowly recedes, dropping into a distant, low hum that eventually dissolves into the vast silence of the open landscape.
The countryside of Thromium opens up before him.
It is not a wild, untamed wilderness of dark forests and jagged rocks. It is an engineered paradise of absolute productivity. Everything Hano's dark eyes rest upon feels owned, calculated, and ruthlessly cultivated. There are no abandoned plots of land, no untamed thickets of thorn bushes, no wild marshes left to fester.
Vast, undulating wheat fields stretch as far as the eye can see, their golden-green stalks swaying in gentle, uniform waves under the cool breeze. Intricate networks of straight, stone-lined irrigation canals cut cleanly across the landscape, their pale water sparkling under the breaking clouds. Towering wooden windmills, their massive sails turning with a slow, rhythmic creak... swish... creak... swish, sit perched atop gentle grassy knolls, driving hidden stones that grind grain day and night.
Sprawling apple and pear orchards line the road, their branches heavy with ripening fruit, trimmed with obsessive precision. Endless rows of grapevines, trained along low wooden trellises, sweep across the sunlit hillsides like giant green fingers clawing at the earth. Every three or four kilometers, a clean, prosperous village sits nestled among the fields—their whitewashed timber houses topped with bright red clay tiles, connected by sturdy stone bridges that span the wide drainage canals.
The road remains bustling, alive with economic energy. Unlike the desolate, dangerous dirt tracks that wind through the rest of the war-torn continent—where travelers ride in silent terror of bandit ambushes and rogue military patrols—this highway is a throbbing artery of commerce.
Hano walks along the wide, gravel shoulder, his long legs maintaining an easy, relentless stride. He constantly overtakes slow-moving grain wagons piled high with golden sacks; dye merchants leading trains of pack mules laden with barrels of liquid indigo and madder root; small groups of quiet pilgrims in grey robes carrying carved wooden walking staves; young flower sellers with woven baskets overflowing with fresh blooms; drovers guiding small herds of fat, sleek livestock toward distant city markets; and swift, mounted government couriers in crimson surcoats who gallop past in a flurry of flying mud and ringing horseshoes.
By midday, the scenery shifts once more.
The heavy, industrial feeling that lingered on the horizon gradually vanishes entirely. The fields grow even larger, stretching toward distant, blue-tinted mountain ridges. The roadside villages become visibly cleaner, their central plazas paved with smooth river stones, their buildings freshly painted in soft whites, creams, and pastel yellows.
The air itself changes. The sharp, acrid stench of coal smoke, wet horse manure, and stagnant river water that hangs over Carravin is completely swept away. The wind, blowing softly across the open plain, carries a rich, sweet blend of fresh hay, fragrant wildflowers, and cool, damp earth.
Then, Hano notices the flowers.
They are not merely wild blossoms growing haphazardly in the ditch. They are everywhere, integrated into the very design of the landscape.
As he approaches the outer boundaries of Blumenau, the transition is gradual, almost hypnotic. First, he passes sprawling, commercial flower farms—vast, rectangular carpet plots of intense red, deep purple, bright yellow, and pale white blossoms, tended by rows of workers crouched low with copper shears. Next come dense, fragrant fruit orchards, their understories planted with thick beds of lavender and mint to deter pests.
Then come the pigment workshops—unusually clean, timber-frame complexes built beside swift-flowing streams, where flower petals and mineral oxides are ground into rich, vibrant dyes that stain the small drainage runoff in brilliant, swirling ribbons of magenta, cobalt, and gold.
Beyond the workshops lay colossal, endless ocean-like expanses of ripe wheat, swaying softly under a sky that is finally beginning to clear, letting warm, golden shafts of sunlight break through the retreating grey clouds.
The skyline of Blumenau comes into view, rising proudly above the sea of grain.
It looks nothing like the dark, menacing silhouette of Carravin. There are no soaring, sharp-spired stone cathedrals built to terrify the faithful. There are no heavy, black-iron watchtowers or jagged stone ramparts protruding into the clouds. Instead, the highest points of the skyline belong to massive, wooden grain elevators—looming, four-story structures built from pale timber—alongside giant, whitewashed mill towers and dozens of towering windmills whose massive wooden sails catch the mountain air like the wings of giant, stationary birds.
Hano stops at the crest of a gentle hill, looking down at the city.