CHAPTER 422: THE RESCUE OF THE SILVERSTONES

The secret passage.The same narrow corridor where he had once hidden from knights intent on punishment, or where he had stolen hours of solitude when he did not want to train with them but rather train in silence.

The Silverstone patriarch had foreseen this. He was a man of wisdom, tempered by hard choices and a lifetime of war. He understood that the keep—though the strongest, most secure structure in the castle—was also a gilded cage. To those who sought safety within its stone embrace, it could just as easily become a prison. And so he devised a secret passage, a lifeline known only to the heirs of Silverstone.

Sigfred had never brought Asael here, though he had spoken of it once, in passing. The knowledge itself carried weight. To share it was to gamble with the future of his bloodline.

Now, with Asael, Galahad, and Gideon at his back, Sigfred’s heart wavered. The passage was both salvation and betrayal, a secret he could not take lightly, a secret he wasn’t supposed to share with outsiders.

"Don’t worry," Asael murmured, steady as a winter river. "The Norse are trustworthy—you know that by now. And besides, our families are bound by marriage." His voice carried quiet conviction, enough to slice through Sigfred’s hesitation.

Sigfred gave a single, heavy nod. He turned, moving swiftly.

"You stay here," Asael instructed the Eagle Team. His tone brooked no argument. "Keep watch. And Berlin—send the signal. Bring the rest of the men here. We can’t wait until tomorrow. We need to attack now."

Berlin vanished into the dark, scaling the nearest tower like a shadow.

Sigfred pressed close to the stone walls, guiding his companions north-west of the keep. That section of the castle lay abandoned, left to rot in silence. Servants whispered that it was cursed; knights spoke of screams at night, of restless spirits haunting the battlements where too many had bled out and died. The air itself seemed heavier here.

The Silverstone heir’s hand found a section of wall. His fingers probed with practiced certainty until they settled on a loose brick. He twisted it—a half turn clockwise, then counter, a full turn, another half. He did several more turn combinations that looked random. The stone groaned in protest, but shifted. Beneath him, the ground shivered.

He crouched low, but a sudden darkness fell. The torch nearby had been snuffed out, no doubt by the Eagle Team.

Asael frowned. Were they discovered? Were there Zuran soldiers nearby?

Sigfred dared not light a torch. A necessary precaution. The night was too fragile to risk a single flicker of light that would lead to their discovery.

But Gideon was prepared. From his coat, he pulled a strange device—a cylinder with a coil of copper wire and a magnet within. He cranked a lever, the magnet spun, and the bulb at its tip bloomed with a pale glow. A marvel of invention, wrought through months of toil by his master Hephastus. Yes, it took him more than a year to craft the yellow bulb into perfection.

Then Lara had given him and Peredur guidance on how to use a copper and a magnet to light up the bulb. When they asked her how they thought about that, she said that it just came to her mind just as their master Hephastus could invent something amazing out of ordinary things.

Sigfred paused for a second as he watched the steady warm light coming from the strange thing that Gideon was holding. But then the cries coming from inside the walls brought him back to his senses.

The faint light revealed a worn cobblestone on the ground. Sigfred crouched low, fingers working the stone until a muted click answered his touch. A section of the ground yawned open, revealing a narrow metal trap door just wide enough for one man to pass.

A stench rose to meet them, dank with mildew, sharp with rot. Dead rats, most likely—but the men did not flinch.

"You first, Gideon," Sigfred said. "You have the light."

Gideon nodded and descended the moss-slick stairs, his strange lamp casting shadows along the stone. One by one, they followed, Sigfred the last. When he sealed the trapdoor, the walls themselves seemed to sigh, resetting into their original state. To any prying eyes above, nothing had ever shifted.

Asael did not ask how they would come out. He was reassured that there should be a way to open the secret passage from the inside.

The passage was claustrophobic, scarcely half a meter wide, hemmed in by the keep’s inner wall on one side and the outer wall on the other. No man would ever suspect such a space existed between the walls.

Sigfred plucked a torch from a niche in the wall, its dry fibers long prepared for use. He lit it carefully and pressed on, leading them through twisting corridors toward the great hall. Somewhere above, muffled cries bled through the stone—anguish, rage, and despair.

At last they reached a spiral iron ladder. Sigfred doused the torch at once. The sulfuric tang of smoke was too great a risk. Gideon’s flashlight flared again, and they climbed, each man’s breath echoing in the hollow shaft.

At the top, Sigfred froze. His hands worked a concealed latch, and with a slow push, the door creaked open. He emerged from the inside of a massive stone pillar facing the wall. The space was so tight that they had to ease through one at a time, armor scraping against the rough stone.

The screams were louder, and the moans of the men reached their ears. Sigfred’s rage clouded his logical mind. He wanted to attack right away but Asael held him back.

They waited until Gideon eased out of the pillar, and he shut the door tight.

A scream tore through the chamber—a shriek not of pain but of fury, a voice venting the injustice of captivity. Muffled moans of men followed. But why did the screams and the moans sound off?

The four bewildered men looked at each other, and slowly they peeped out of the pillar. They couldn’t see everything, so they came out, weapons in hand.

And then what they saw shocked them.

Their eyes widened, jaws slackening in shock. Whatever scene unfolded in that great hall defied belief.