Chapter 37: Walls Of Helheim

For several seconds, Sigurd forgot about the book lying open on the seat behind him.

His upper body remained leaned through the carriage window as he stared ahead, and the longer he looked, the more absurd the sight became.

Something enormous stretched from east to west beneath the afternoon sky, cutting across the landscape in an unbroken line before winding with the terrain and disappearing into the distance on both sides. Then Sigurd’s eyes adjusted to the distance, picked out the regular shapes along its summit, and the illusion collapsed.

It was a wall. An impossibly gigantic wall.

They were still a considerable distance from Helheim City, yet the fortifications already dominated the horizon. The wall rose high enough that the structures built upon it were clearly visible even from where the convoy traveled.

Massive watchtowers stood at measured intervals, each one broad enough to resemble a fortress by itself, with banners snapping from their upper platforms in the mountain wind. Sigurd could make out tiny movements along the battlements as armored soldiers patrolled above.

At this distance they appeared little larger than dark specks, which only made the size of the structure beneath their feet more ridiculous.

Sigurd narrowed his iron-grey eyes and silently measured what he could. Here, the wall wasn’t protecting a country. It surrounded a city associated with an academy.

Sigurd glanced toward Ottilie and asked, "You knew the city walls were this large?"

Ottilie smiled at the disbelief he failed to completely hide. "I’ve heard descriptions, Young Master, but this is my first time seeing Helheim City as well. I thought the stories were exaggerated."

She looked beyond him toward the horizon and quietly added, "Apparently they weren’t."

The convoy continued forward. With every mile, the wall grew.

Details that had been impossible to distinguish gradually became clear. The stone wasn’t uniform grey as Sigurd had initially assumed. Enormous blocks of dark material formed the main structure, each fitted so tightly that many of the seams were almost invisible from the road. Reinforced sections climbed the exterior at regular intervals like gigantic ribs.

This wasn’t merely a boundary. It was built to withstand something.

That thought made Sigurd’s attention linger on the defenses. Eden wasn’t Earth. Walls here didn’t exist only to stop infantry, cavalry, or siege engines. Ferocious Beasts existed. Demonic Beasts existed.

Martial practitioners could reach levels where stone walls should become inconveniences rather than barriers, and Sigurd had already seen enough destruction from creatures near his own current level to understand how meaningless ordinary fortifications would be against genuinely powerful enemies.

Whatever protected Helheim City had therefore been built with Eden’s standards in mind.

The road broadened again as they approached, merging with several other routes until the traffic around the convoy became a moving sea. Carriages of every shape and size filled the lanes.

Some were decorated with noble crests and escorted by mounted warriors, while others were simple merchant wagons loaded with crates, barrels, cages, and bundled goods. Demonic Beast mounts walked among ordinary animals, occasionally forcing nervous horses away from them.

Travelers moved along raised pedestrian paths on either side of the road, and Sigurd spotted several children around his age surrounded by parents, servants, or guards.

The sound increased with the crowd. Somewhere ahead, a horn sounded from the direction of the gates, followed by the deeper toll of a bell from one of the towers.

Yet the congestion around Sigurd’s convoy never completely closed.

People noticed the crest.

The reaction began with those nearest the leading carriage. A merchant guiding two loaded wagons looked toward the approaching convoy, saw the unmistakable insignia of House Grandel, and immediately pulled farther toward the side of the road.

The carriage behind him followed. Mounted travelers shifted aside, pedestrians stopped crowding the roadway, and within moments the movement spread ahead almost like a ripple.

Heads turned and conversations lowered.

Some people simply moved aside. Others bowed their heads as the convoy passed, while those who appeared connected to subordinate households offered more formal gestures of respect. Nobody needed a guard to shout for the road to be cleared. The crest displayed across the carriages accomplished that by itself.

Sigurd watched quietly from the window.

For most of his childhood, the authority carried by his family name had been something he understood intellectually. He had grown up inside Grandel territory, surrounded by people for whom the clan’s supremacy was an ordinary fact of life.

Seeing hundreds of strangers react simultaneously to a single crest made that authority feel considerably more tangible.

Osric’s words from the day of his departure returned to him. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Inside Helheim, his status wouldn’t win his battles for him. Outside it, however, there was no pretending that Sigurd was an ordinary ten-year-old.

The convoy moved through the opening created before it, overtaking lines of travelers that might otherwise have delayed them for hours.

Then the gates came fully into view.

Sigurd’s attention immediately left the crowd.

Calling them gates felt almost insulting to their scale.

Two colossal doors stood within an opening cut through the wall, each reinforced by horizontal bands of black metal so thick they resembled beams used in buildings. The arch above rose to a height that made the people beneath it nearly invisible.

Sigurd leaned back just enough to look upward. Banners bearing the Grandel crest hung from the walls, each one enormous enough to cover the front of a large house. Armored soldiers patrolled beneath them in disciplined groups, their weapons catching flashes of afternoon sunlight.

Guards inspected merchant wagons, questioned travelers, checked documents, and directed carriages toward different lanes.

Their convoy never joined it.

A gate officer noticed the crest on the lead carriage while they were still approaching. The guards responsible for the central passage moved aside. One raised an arm, signaling for the barrier ahead to be cleared.

Captain Hartwin didn’t need to present documents.

Nobody approached Sigurd’s carriage.Nobody asked who traveled inside.

House Grandel had built Helheim.

The guards weren’t foolish enough to stop a Main Family convoy bearing its crest unless they possessed an extraordinarily good reason.

Hartwin rode at the front as the Grimhorn Warsteeds continued without breaking stride.

The sunlight disappeared.

They didn’t pass through it in seconds. The road continued beneath a stone passage, illuminated by rows of lamps along the walls. Defensive openings appeared overhead and along the sides, positioned so anyone trapped within the passage could be attacked from multiple directions.

Reinforced doors were recessed, suggesting the outer gates weren’t the only barrier an invading force would need to overcome.

Sigurd’s eyes moved constantly.

Every instinct carried from Nikolai noticed the same thing.

Kill zone.

If an enemy somehow breached the first gate, the passage itself became a trap.

He almost smiled. Whoever had designed Helheim’s defenses had been thorough.

The convoy rolled onward beneath the fortress while the sound of hooves and wheels echoed from the stone around them. The noise from outside became muffled, replaced by the rhythmic impacts of the Grimhorn Warsteeds and the occasional shouted order from soldiers stationed within the passage.

Ahead, daylight gradually appeared again.

At first it was only a bright rectangle.

Then it widened.

Sigurd shifted closer to the window.

The first carriage emerged from beneath the gatehouse, followed by the second. Sunlight spilled across the interior of Sigurd’s carriage as his own vehicle approached the end of the passage. Ottilie had abandoned any attempt to pretend she wasn’t equally curious and now leaned toward the opposite window.

The central carriage crossed the threshold.

Light flooded Sigurd’s vision.

His eyes adjusted. Then the world opened before him.

Sigurd’s gaze remained fixed outside as an entirely new scene exploded into view, and before he could properly process even the first impression, a cacophony of sound crashed over him all at once.