Chapter 74: A Forgotten Home (Part 2)

The garden path curved gently upward toward the castle approach. On either side, whatever had once been carefully cultivated had long since gone half-wild.

Rosebushes climbed over low stone dividers. Ancient trees spread pale branches over the walkways, their roots pushing up through cracked flagstones. Some flower beds still bloomed in strange, stubborn patches, though the blossoms were uneven and sparse, growing between weeds and dead stems.

It should have looked lovely. Instead, it looked like beauty that had outlived the people who tended it.

Zion passed a large white rosebush near a broken wall and slowed. Several of the petals were stained dark. Not naturally dark.

Crimson.

Blood had soaked through one side of the bush so heavily that some of the lower blooms still appeared tinted red.

He studied it in silence.

The bodies were gone, but the evidence remained. Scattered damage across the grounds suggested a battle had passed through here. A low marble bench had been split in half. One of the stone urns lining the path had shattered, leaving dry soil spilled across the flagstones. Marks gouged one garden wall as if blades had struck it in haste or anger.

The place didn’t just feel abandoned. It felt interrupted. Like life had ended here abruptly.

Zion continued on, more slowly now.

Above him, the moonlight filtered through drifting clouds and silvered everything it touched. It gathered on the leaves. On the stone. On the broken glass still clinging to some of the higher windows.

He stopped again and tilted his skull upward. The moon really was beautiful here. He liked the sorrow of it, the coldness. The way the entire landscape seemed built to receive moonlight rather than resist it. But another thought tugged at him.

He wondered what the place would look like during the day.

Zion opened the advanced floor options, expecting to find a simple night-to-day toggle somewhere inside. Instead, one option near the top caught his attention immediately.

[Unlock day-night cycle for 1,000 Essence?]

He stared at it for less than a second.

"Yes."

The change began almost at once.

The moon faded as the sky slowly began to brighten. Deep blue softened into gray, and a thin line of gold appeared along the horizon.

Morning came gradually, revealing more of the ruined grounds with every passing moment.

He watched sunrise spread over the ruined grounds.

A distant mountain peak caught the light first. Then the edges of the castle towers. Then the upper branches of the trees. Dew shone along blades of grass and spider silk stretched between thorn branches. The white marble of old statuary, dulled and mournful at night, turned softly luminous under morning light.

The place did not become cheerful.

Daylight simply made the neglect easier to see: faded family names carved into old markers, moss filling the cracks between stones, petals scattered across the path, dark stains on the roses, and chipped angel statues that had probably once looked serene.

Everything was still forgotten. But now the neglect felt gentler. Less theatrical. More intimate. As though the land wasn’t trying to frighten anyone. It had simply endured a long time without being loved.

Zion smiled despite himself.

"Wow," he murmured. "That’s beautiful."

He resumed walking. The nearest structure attached to the castle proper turned out not to be a hall or guard post, but a small church.

Its outer stonework had weathered the years better than the rest. The front doors still stood, though one hung slightly crooked. Much of the roof had survived, but several large sections had collapsed entirely, leaving gaps where sunlight now filtered through in broad golden columns.

Zion stepped inside.

The air felt still. Dust motes drifted slowly in the morning light. Rows of pews remained in place, some intact, others split or half-burned. Candles had long ago melted down where they stood, thick streams of wax hardened across metal holders and pooled over the stone floor.

More candles lined the aisles, as if someone had once lit the entire place in vigil.

Some mirrors along the walls had shattered, leaving jagged teeth of glass still set into warped frames. The surviving pieces reflected broken slivers of the church back at him—light, stone, candle flame, ruin.

Faded paintings hung crookedly between pillars. Their colors had darkened with age, but Zion could still make out scenes of winged figures, kings kneeling in prayer, women dressed in pale mourning clothes, and processions carrying lanterns into darkness.

At the far front of the church stood a towering statue of a blindfolded angel. One wing remained fully raised behind her like a shield. The other had collapsed and lay scattered across the floor in fractured white stone, feathers broken into dozens of pieces.

He stood there for a moment, taking it in. Everything felt preserved in a strange way. Not untouched. Not pristine.

But paused.

Like the people who fled or died here had done so quickly, leaving the room exactly as it had been in its final hour.

He could picture enemies here immediately. Not shambling corpses. Not mindless skeletons.

Something quieter.

Undead figures kneeling in the pews as though still mourning. Hollow knights with heads bowed before the altar. Maybe pale attendants standing motionless in the side aisles, waking only when someone approached the front.

Zion filed the thought away but he didn’t linger. The church wasn’t the end of the idea. It was only the beginning of the feeling.

He stepped back outside and continued deeper into the castle grounds, already imagining what might be waiting beyond the church.

Grand halls left in disrepair. Long corridors lined with old portraits. White marble darkened by age. Melted candles gathered along the floors and walls.

And somewhere beneath all of it, the descent toward the royal crypt.

The deeper parts of the castle could feel older and stranger than the grounds above, like the ruin on the surface was only the beginning.

Zion smiled as he walked. For the first time in days, maybe longer, he wasn’t thinking about how to survive.

He was thinking about what he wanted to build.