Chapter 3
The Cloth Maids
In a tavern of dark wood and the stench of stale beer, the Rock Division was celebrating. Laughter bounced off the walls as mugs slammed hard against the tables.
At the center of the uproar, Haralf—the Commander—was telling anecdotes in a thunderous voice, making his men burst into shameless laughter.
Haralf, Rock Division Commander (60 years old)
At his side, a woman with messy hair—cheerful and clearly drunk—sang a catchy tune, tapping the table in rhythm.
"Come on, repeat it!" she shouted, laughing. "No one stays quiet tonight!"
That was when the door swung open.
Icy air rushed in, along with the silhouette of a man framed in the doorway: Frodom.
The contrast was immediate. Not only because of his expression, but because of the way he stood still, as if the noise didn't belong to him.
The woman turned and pointed at him with a crooked smile.
"Frodom! Join the party, man!"
Frodom didn't match her enthusiasm. His gaze remained serious.
"It's not necessary, Captain."
Sara, Rock Division Captain (35 years old)
Her voice was enough to quiet part of the revelry.
He crossed the hall with a firm stride and stopped in front of Haralf's table.
"Frodom!" Haralf exclaimed, extending a hand with familiar warmth. "Good to see you, boy! What brings you here?"
Frodom didn't sit. He didn't even smile.
"I have level-two information from Zafiro."
Haralf's face changed in a second.
He rose abruptly, the chair scraping.
"Well… in that case, we'll talk somewhere else." He glanced at those present and forced a smile. "Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen!"
Then he turned toward the singing woman.
"Sara. Come."
Sara gestured to the others as if promising she'd be back, and followed Haralf toward the back of the tavern.
Haralf led them into a separate, more discreet room, where the noise came muffled.
Gina and Fernando were already inside.
The five members of Rock Division sat around a small oak table. The light was low. The air smelled of old wood and spilled alcohol.
Haralf rested his elbows on the table.
"Talk. What happened?"
Frodom didn't waste time.
"Urgent reports came in from Zafiro. They managed to infiltrate someone inside the palace."
Sara blinked.
"Who?"
Frodom held her gaze.
"Amarantha."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Sara was the first to react, disbelief in her voice.
"Amarantha? How the hell did she get in there without being detected?"
Frodom lowered his voice.
"As a Cloth Maid."
Silence dropped like a blade.
Haralf and Gina exchanged a look, and the change in their faces was immediate. It wasn't surprise. It was something else.
Sara frowned.
"A Cloth Maid? What does that mean?"
Gina drew a slow breath, as if she would've rather not answered.
"It means she went in through the worst door possible."
Sara stared at her, demanding more.
Gina spoke slowly, without dramatizing it. That made it worse.
"In Rousth, a cloth maid isn't a maid."
She paused briefly.
"She's a domestic slave… and also an object for use."
Sara went rigid.
Fernando lowered his eyes.
Frodom said nothing.
Gina continued.
"They buy them. They're expensive. Exclusive. Not just anyone can have one."
She leaned slightly over the table.
"They're prepared for months. Not only to clean and serve… but to endure."
Sara opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Gina kept going, in the same controlled voice.
"And don't think they're just any woman."
Sara frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Gina answered with the same calm.
"They're not commoners. They're not ordinary women. They're nobles."
Sara blinked, stunned.
Gina continued, without raising her voice.
"They come from fallen houses. Houses buried in debt. Houses crushed by fines, sanctions, or political mistakes. When a house collapses… they hand over their daughters. Their sisters. Sometimes as a sacrifice to save what's left."
Sara went cold.
"They turn them into cloth maids," Gina continued. "They take away their name. They put a mask on them. Not for aesthetics… but to remind them they have no face."
The room seemed to grow colder.
"And they don't treat them like people. They treat them like furniture. Like assets."
Haralf clenched his jaw.
Fernando, who had remained silent, finally spoke.
"Victor must've known how to move the pieces well to make Amarantha pass as a noble from some house… without leaving traces."
Sara let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
"No… it can't be that…"
"Yes," Gina cut in, without raising her voice.
An uncomfortable silence settled.
Gina continued, as if reciting something she hated knowing.
"Their masters can do whatever they want with them."
She looked at Sara.
"Anything."
Sara swallowed.
"And no one…?"
"As long as they don't kill them," Gina replied. "Because to Rousth, they're not 'lives.' They're investment."
Fernando tightened his fingers on the table.
Gina added:
"And the worst part… is that in front of them, they talk about everything. Business. Wars. Betrayals. Because they don't see them. They don't care if they hear."
Haralf lowered his gaze for a second.
When he spoke again, his voice held none of the cheerful commander from minutes ago.
"They'll do whatever they want to her. They'll use her. Humiliate her. Treat her like a slave."
He looked at the others.
"And while they do it… they'll talk."
He paused, as if the words weighed.
"Everything she suffers in there means direct information from the Sovereigns."
His throat tightened.
"But at the cost of her humanity."
Sara slammed the table.
"That bastard Zeldrin… who does he think he is? The owner of his people's lives?"
Haralf didn't argue.
"I don't agree with his methods."
He said it with exhaustion, not rage.
"But he's been the only one able to deal with Rousth all this time."
Sara looked at him with contempt.
"I don't give a damn."
She hit the table again.
"Men like him are why they see us as murderous rebels. While he exists, maybe we gain something from the shadows… but the way he fights costs blood. Our blood."
Fernando stepped in carefully, weighing every word.
"Amarantha has already delivered information from inside."
Sara looked at him as if he'd spit in her face.
Fernando raised his hands quickly.
"Don't misunderstand me. I don't agree with it."
He swallowed.
"But… Amarantha hasn't been the same for a long time. She's not the girl I knew in Erthus."
His voice lowered.
"She's changed too much. For those who knew her at the beginning… she's unrecognizable now."
He looked down at the table, as if he didn't want to continue, but he did anyway.
"These last few years, ever since she joined Zafiro, she's followed every order Zeldrin gave her. Infiltrations. Assassinations. Everything."
Gina nodded slowly.
"Yes. I've heard that too."
Then she added, without emotion:
"Whatever Amarantha has become… we can't stop it now."
She turned to Haralf.
"She became Zeldrin's dagger in the shadows."
Sara lowered her gaze.
Her voice came out quieter.
"Poor girl…"
Haralf exhaled, like closing a coffin.
"Well. If there's nothing else to say… all that's left is to wait for instructions."
Gina, Frodom, and Fernando stood.
Haralf stopped them at the door, as if trying to reclaim the atmosphere from before for a second.
"You don't want at least one drink?"
Gina didn't hesitate.
"I don't drink."
Fernando touched his neck.
"I'm a bit sick. I'd rather go rest."
Frodom was already standing.
"I have other things to do, Commander."
They left.
Haralf and Sara remained alone in the silence.
And outside, the tavern kept laughing as if nothing had happened.
The Garden of Decadence
Amarantha moved silently through one of the corridors of the Rousth Palace.
The architecture was Roman, but taken to excess: carved marble columns, towering arches, gilded reliefs depicting conquests and idealized bodies, and stone statues lined up like motionless guardians. The place didn't feel like a residence. It felt like a monument to power.
Along the corridor, large planters decorated the route. Exotic flowers—too perfect—as if even nature were forced to obey.
Amarantha stopped in front of one.
With a pitcher, she poured water over the damp soil.
The sound of the water reminded her of a recent conversation with a veteran employee.
"Don't be fooled by the name," the woman had told her in a low voice. "They call it the 'Rousth Palace,' but this isn't a palace. It's a city."
The woman didn't smile.
"A private city. The Sovereigns live here—many of them representatives of their own empires outside Rousth."
She had pointed toward the tallest towers.
"This place is the center. All the feudal regions converge here into a single point. What's decided in Rousth ends up moving all of Pentaros: trade, economy, armies."
She paused.
"And every House you see here has its own dominion. Mini kingdoms. Lands. People. Slaves. Everything."
The present returned without warning.
Amarantha kept watering.
What that woman called "political meetings" was only a façade.
When the Sovereigns closed the doors, power turned into decadence.
The banquets weren't banquets. They were celebrations where luxury mixed with violence, orgies, and rituals.
There was also a private coliseum, hidden within that same city-palace, where gladiators and slaves killed each other to entertain the elite.
Amarantha finished watering the last flower.
Her mask hid any reaction.
And the palace, as always, kept functioning as if all of it were normal.
The Silence of the Discoverers
In the stillness of his quarters at the Erthus base, Hedo Murem worked without rest, drafting coded manuscripts—messages meant to travel safely to Reydem's different bases.
The silence broke as a member of the organization entered.
"Director Hedo Murem."
Hedo looked up. He didn't ask anything. He waited.
The man swallowed before speaking.
"I have information from the Alfarta region."
Hedo set his pen down.
"Tell me."
The messenger let the words out in one breath, as if they burned in his mouth.
"The Gold Division… was destroyed."
For the first time, something like disbelief crossed Hedo's face.
"That can't be possible."
"The reports are clear," the man insisted. "When they arrived at the site, they were all annihilated. The entire operation. Even the commander."
Hedo stayed still.
"Cause?"
The messenger lowered his voice.
"It's believed it was a Freyo. A guardian creature."
Hedo didn't react right away.
He only extended his hand.
"Leave me the report. You may go."
The messenger obeyed, placed the documents down, and left.
Hedo was alone.
The room became silent again, but it wasn't the same silence.
He looked at the report without opening it yet.
And he murmured, in a low, heavy voice:
"We lost our only discovery division."
He stood and began to walk slowly, processing it.
It wasn't just a defeat. It was a closure.
He gripped the pen tightly, still struggling to process what had happened.
He walked to a shelf of filing cabinets and searched, drifting through the documents.
He thought:
"If there's an important seal in Alfarta that we need to investigate…"
"How can we move forward if doing so could send men to their deaths again?"
As he reviewed files and analyzed records, maps…
However, he stopped when he understood the brutal reality.
He told himself:
"There's no point."
"We won't be able to do anything."
"No matter how much I want to investigate what happened in Alfarta…"
Finally, he accepted it with a bitter decision:
"Until we have a way to face the Freyos… I'll have to pause discovery incursions in certain places, until I'm sure I won't be sending soldiers to their deaths."
He fell silent.
And then his thoughts landed in the only inevitable place.
"That's why I needed you here, Amarantha…"
Hedo clenched the report in his hand.
"…but you're not anymore."
The Sanctuary of Silence
In a room sunk into gloom, lit only by a pair of oil lamps whose yellowish glow warped the shadows across the stone walls, the air was saturated with damp, iron, and an ancient smell—as if that space had witnessed the same thing for generations. There were no windows. Only bare walls and a floor stained with traces impossible to erase completely.
At the center of the chamber, a young woman lay bound to a wooden structure shaped like an X, anchored against the wall. They had positioned her with her back to her captors, her face pressed against the stone, forced to stare at nothing but darkness and cold surface.
Her wrists were strapped with firm restraints, far too well placed to have been improvised. Her body was marked with fresh bruises and her clothes were torn—an unmistakable sign that the suffering had begun long before she arrived there.
Her fragility was not in her face—which no one could see—but in the way she trembled. In the softness of her broken voice.
"Please… stop…" she sobbed in a thread of voice. "Please…"
A hooded figure leaned slightly toward her. There was no violence in his presence. No haste in his movements.
"Shh… shh… calm down," he whispered in a low, serene voice, almost affectionate. "You don't need to upset yourself."
The young woman trembled.
"It wasn't me…" she said through tears. "I didn't do anything… please…"
"I know," the man replied naturally. "I know it wasn't you."
She let out a weak gasp, clinging to those words like a lifeline.
"Then…" she murmured. "Then let me go…"
The hooded man fell silent for a few seconds, as if weighing every thought.
"Don't worry," he said at last. "No one believes you acted with bad intentions."
He paused briefly before continuing, in the same calm tone:
"However, the reports indicate you had contact with someone linked to Reydem."
"I didn't know," she replied desperately. "I swear… I didn't know he was from Reydem…"
"I know. I know," he repeated, with measured patience. "I already told you it wasn't your fault."
The relief lasted only an instant.
The hooded man lifted his gaze and gave a slight nod toward another figure in the room: the individual who had brought her there. No words were needed. The gesture was enough.
The man moved toward a table in one of the corners, where several instruments lay arranged with meticulous order. The faint sound of metal being picked up followed. Then the dry scrape of something being set on the wood.
The young woman went rigid.
She couldn't see anything.
But she could hear.
"What… what are you doing?" she asked, feeling panic begin to claw its way through. "You said you wouldn't hurt me…"
The hooded man leaned toward her again, close enough that she could only hear him.
"Yes," he whispered. "I said that."
He paused for the slightest moment.
"I lied."
The man holding the instrument stepped forward. His boots echoed against the stone.
"Please… no…" she begged. "You said I'd be okay… I cooperated…"
The hooded man came close one last time, without touching her.
"It's true," he murmured. "I'm not doing this to interrogate you."
She held her breath.
"I'm doing it because I like it."
Then he stepped away and sat down in a chair placed just beyond the reach of the light. From there, he remained still, watching. He raised a cup of wine and took a slow sip, as if preparing to observe a carefully rehearsed performance.
Without taking his eyes off her, he spoke softly:
"Close the door."
The third man, who had remained by the entrance, obeyed.
When the wood shut, muffling any sound from escaping outside, the young woman's screams filled the chamber, begging for mercy from a silence that did not answer.
What happened after that remained confined within those walls.