"Hello?"
Raven tentatively called out to the soldiers playing dice, unsure if the Nox could understand the common tongue of the Lands Between. While generations of Academy sorcerers had reconstructed the meaning of the Nox script, the spoken pronunciation had been buried deep underground with the Eternal City, lost to time.
The soldiers looked over in unison, their eyes widening. Even through their white veils, their shock was palpable. Dropping their dice, they scrambled to their feet. The lead soldier waved his arm, signaling for Raven to follow him.
Raven followed, assuming the man was taking him to the city's administrators. To his surprise, the soldier strode toward the small plaza, heading wherever the crowd was thickest, as if his only goal was to lead Raven into the heart of the festival.
Raven paused to let a troop of Nox swordsmen riding giant ants pass. They wore fine armor beneath their white robes, their weapons hanging loosely from their saddles. They seemed to be maintaining order for the festival, though they clearly weren't taking it very seriously; every now and then, a swordsman would stop before a shop, lingering for a long time before urging his ant to catch up with the group.
Once the giant ants had passed, the guide was gone, lost somewhere in the sea of people. Raven simply merged with the crowd, wandering aimlessly.
He stopped in front of a shop filled with silk and cloth, noticing that every bolt of fabric emitted a soft, shimmering glow. A Nox man sat inside, using a machine to grind several ant eggs into a pulpy liquid. He poured a handful of powder into the mixture, shook it until it was well-mixed, and sealed it in a jar.
Beside him stood a glintstone-powered spinning wheel, which drew liquid from such a jar. Upon contact with the air, the fluid solidified into shining silver thread. This, it seemed, was the raw material for the Nox's textiles.
Raven watched these shops with interest. He saw a blacksmith forging weapons from a silver fluid metal; nearby, another manipulated a machine tool to polish crystals into smooth, mirror-like surfaces, etching magic patterns upon them and assembling them into a helmet with hundreds of facets. On the shelves of another shop, staves hung in abundance. The owner sat behind the counter, wearing a monocle, buried in the task of inspecting the glintstone at the tip of a staff.
Every Nox citizen was focused on their own life, showing no sign of abnormality. There was only one strange thing: none of them spoke. They moved like actors in a silent play.
Raven could only guess that the Nox Nightfolk did not rely on speech. Perhaps they communicated on a mental level, or perhaps they did speak, but at frequencies too high or low for an outsider to hear, much like the Claymen.
"Did you make all of these staves?" Raven asked the shopkeeper.
The owner snapped his head up from the table as if he had only just noticed Raven. He froze for a moment, then suddenly leapt up, rounded the long table, and thrust the staff he had been holding toward Raven. He held his other hand out, palm up.
"You want to sell it to me?" Raven asked. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't have the money to buy it."
The owner made a series of rapid hand gestures and turned to run toward the racks of staves. He frantically gathered them into his arms, ignoring those that clattered to the floor, and finally trotted back like he was carrying a bundle of firewood. He dumped them onto the table with a loud clatter.
Raven looked on helplessly, fishing a few small Golden Runes from the bottom of his pocket. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I truly didn't bring any money. Look, this is all I have."
The owner lunged forward and grabbed Raven's hand. Upon seeing the objects in his palm, the man looked profoundly disappointed. He pulled out a pale silver coin, showed it to Raven, and nodded repeatedly, pushing the entire heap of staves toward him.
"You're saying... for a single silver coin, I can buy all of these staves?" Raven asked in shock.
As they spoke, other merchants and craftsmen nearby noticed the situation. Ignoring their wealthy customers, they scrambled to pull their finest goods from their shops, clutching them in their arms as they rushed over, their hands trembling with a mix of panic and excitement.
Raven turned his pockets inside out and held out his empty hands, letting them see that he truly had no money. At that sight, tears welled in the eyes of every Nox person present.
"Don't do that," Raven said, overwhelmed by their grief. He racked his brain for a way to help them, suddenly remembering the old silver coin he had kicked away on his way into the city. "You only need one silver coin, right? Wait for me. I'll go back out and find it."
The moment he spoke, the Nox people immediately cleared a path to the city gate. Raven took a few steps, saw the desperate hope in their eyes, and broke into a run. He dashed out of the gates, sprinting along his footprints on the beach until the dull throb from his broken ribs forced him to slow down.
Arriving near the carcass of the giant crab, he searched the sand meticulously. He found it. Picking up the silver coin, he ran back toward Nokstella.
Clang!
Midway back, a solemn bell tolled from the direction of the city, its echoes lingering in the air.
Passing through the city gates once more, Raven came to a sudden halt. The sound of his boots skidding against the stone slabs was jarringly loud in the silent, desolate ruins.
Every Nox person had vanished.
The plaza remained before him, but it was ruined and broken, its cracked flowerbeds choked with weeds. Every building looked as though it had been weathered for thousands of years. The once-bright shops were all tightly shuttered, devoid of any life.
Was it all an illusion? Raven thought, stunned. But an illusion of such scale seemed impossible, and he was certain those Nox people had been physical.
Clutching the silver coin, Raven walked across the plaza and noticed several silvery-grey metal blobs on the ground. They lay there like heaps of jelly; some were even moving slowly.
He had seen sketches of them in Loretta's diary and knew they were the so-called Silver Tears, a species created by the Nox. Unlike Esme, these Silver Tears were failures with low intelligence; as long as one didn't get too close or provoke them, they weren't dangerous.
Bypassing the Silver Tears, he used his memory to find the staff shop. He reached out to push the closed door. Without much force, there was a dull crack of snapping wood, and the door collapsed entirely—it had long since rotted through.
The interior was pitch black. Raven kept his hand on his sword hilt and conjured a small fireball for light. His staff had been swept away by the river; though he could cast Starlight using staffless techniques, it was ultimately inconvenient.
The racks that had been filled with staves were empty. The shop was hollow, save for a single Silver Tear resting on the floor. Raven shook his head and was about to leave when he saw a large cylindrical crystal on the counter. A staff was sealed inside it.
"Lucky me," Raven murmured. With his hand on his sword, he stepped into the room. The Silver Tear remained quiet, showing no intention of attacking.
Picking up the crystal from the half-rotted counter, Raven rapped his knuckles against it, then squeezed with his fingers. He crushed the crystal directly, and the staff rolled into his hand.
It was the very staff the shopkeeper had first tried to sell him. Raven studied it, for a moment wondering if what had happened earlier was truly a hallucination or if he had actually stepped back in time.
Bowing toward the empty chair where the shopkeeper had sat, he placed the silver coin on the counter. He noticed a letter sitting there as well, which seemed to have fallen out when he crushed the crystal.
Using his new staff to cast Starlight, Raven used the glow to open the letter and began to read.
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Elden Ring: The Unborn One's Journey Through Elden Ring(258 Chapter - Ongoing)
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