The descent ended abruptly, like a sentence cut off mid-word. The mountain trail we had grown accustomed to simply dissolved into an endless, rust-colored plain. The wind turned drier, carrying the taste of dust and scorched grass, and the shadows became short and sharp. Two nights by the campfires—without sirens or the clatter of bolts—had done their work: our recent conversations had settled in our minds, wounds had closed, and a strange word had appeared in everyone’s gait: "Later."
But the road does not love a long silence. On the third day, it presented us with a spectacle worthy of a cheap carnival, were it not for the scent of real blood.
In a clearing directly in our path, two squads were hacking at each other. Blue armbands against red. A filthy, chaotic scramble: axes, curved swords, and choice profanities. A few archers "clicked" from the bushes, turning an already poor tactical situation into complete disarray.
"Stop," I said. Quietly, but with enough weight in that "quiet" to make the squad freeze. "First, we need to understand who is who. Lunging into a fight without weighing the sides is pointless and reckless."
Priorin nodded, his gaze already scanning the battlefield. His Hovering Shield slowly orbited him, a silent sentinel of dark metal. Gellia pressed her palm to her hilt—I almost felt her Dark Blade "smile" in anticipation, but she remained in place, held by the strength of the Bastion’s Belt. Flint mechanically checked the straps of his Boots of Milather.
Now, as we lie on the cold slabs in the cellar of an abandoned temple, shrouded in incense smoke and magical haze, I see the past and the present simultaneously. We are immersed in a vision of what happened three hundred years ago. And it is here, looking at the "former" Hank, that I begin to understand what escaped me back then, on the dusty road to the Crossroads.
Back then, a few weeks ago, it seemed like just another skirmish on the border of the Forbidden Lands.
The red plain, the dry wind, and two gangs—red armbands against blue. They fought with such fury as if they were dividing not the road, but the right to existence itself. We watched from the shadows until he flew out of the bushes.
A hobgoblin in a massive black hat that was clearly too large for him. He brandished a rapier and shouted words that now seem remarkably honest in their simplicity:
"Rorro kill bandits! Rorro is Hero!" he bellowed, plunging into the thick of the fight.
He didn't care for gang politics or tactical advantage. He was a "Hero," and the world for him was black and white. He was immediately surrounded. Eight against one. Rorro spun like a top, his hat miraculously staying on his head, his rapier singing, but the odds were impossible.
"I won't stand and wait anymore," Priorin rumbled, and we stepped from the shadows. His Shield caught the setting sun.
The Green Monk appeared later. Hank. He walked through the fight as if through a morning mist. There, at the Crossroads, I first saw his work: soft touches that made enemies simply fall asleep, losing their will to fight. But my gaze, accustomed to fixing on details, caught his hands.
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Hank wore gloves of dark, matte metal. They looked like a second skin, heavy and functional. At the time, I gave it no thought—who knows what armor wandering masters wear? I didn't yet know who Hank truly was. But I noted that the engraving style was frighteningly similar to the drawings in Alexander Trudius’s documents—the ones I had glimpsed in Vellaris.
Hank passed through the flying steel, touched Flint’s forehead, and said: "Forgive me. Later."
Flint collapsed, unconscious. Hank nodded to Rorro, checked his wound, and vanished into the brush so quickly that even my senses couldn't track him.
A heavy weight hit my chest harder than physical pain. In Alexander’s documents, in those piles of parchment we considered mere boring reports, the objective was encrypted. The Gloves. This was the master key, the missing link, the tool capable of binding the will of Milather together. And we… we simply walked past. We looked for the Wolf’s tracks, looked for bread for the dwarves, while the greatest treasure slipped through our fingers.
But not through Hank’s.
In the present time, there at the dusty crossroads, when the Green Monk stepped out of the haze, reality for Flint shattered. I saw it from the side: his pupils dilated into narrow slits, and his entire flexible Hadozi body became a coiled spring.
He attacked without warning. Without a cry. Without the arrogant bravado he usually used to mask his antics. It was pure, primal instinct. Flint took flight, using the Boots not for running, but for a lethal lunge. His daggers flashed like silver streaks, aiming for the joints of the monk’s armor—the exact spots where the metal of Hank’s gloves met the fabric of his sleeves.
"Die! Die again!" Flint choked out, but it was Krauser’s voice, raspy and full of such ancient pain that the air around him felt frozen.
Flint himself didn't understand what he was doing at that moment. His hands moved on their own, guided by another’s memory. He struck Hank not for what he did now, but for what happened three hundred years ago. For the betrayal that Krauser could not forget even after death.
And Hank… Hank simply caught the blows on his matte, iron wrists. The sound of steel clashing against the "Hands of Milather" wasn't a ring, but a dull, sound-absorbing thud. The monk moved with frightening calm, as if he knew every move Flint would make, every flare of his rage.
Here, in the past, Hank still stands before us without gloves. His face is young; his eyes lack the infinite exhaustion I saw at the Crossroads. He looks at Milather (or someone standing behind us) with a devotion bordering on madness.
I look at his bare hands and realize: it was then, in this temple, that the point of no return was set.
"We missed them," the thought pounds in my brain. "Were the Gloves in the Bastion? Or in the Summer Valley? Or did Trudius intentionally send us on a false trail so Hank could claim them first?"
Flint, in a trance beside me, begins to tremble. His fingers curl, scratching the stone floor of the cellar. He is still there, in his internal battle, trying to comprehend why his body so desperately craves this monk's blood.
"Priorin! Gellia!" I try to shout to them through the veil of the vision, but my voice is drowned in the hum of centuries. "We are hunting the wrong beast!"
In the vision, Hank takes a step forward. He reaches his clean, not-yet-iron-clad hands toward the altar. On the altar lies something hidden by a bright light. But now I know what it is.
It is what should have belonged to us. And what will now become our sentence.
"Krauser…" Flint whispers in his delirium. "He mustn't… mustn't put them on…"
But the Hank of the past is already touching the light. And the Hank of the present—at the Crossroads—is already clenching his fists, and the matte bronze of his gloves begins to pulse with that dark, familiar "Order."
The Missing Link.
Gloves of Milather.
Mechanic Highlight: The Resonance of Betrayal. We’re seeing more of how the artifacts react to the past. Krauser’s "personality override" on Flint isn't just a combat buff anymore; it’s a living memory manifesting as violence.
Questions for the readers:
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Rorro? Is he a true hero or just a hobgoblin with a very large hat?
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The Gloves vs. The Shield/Boots/Sword: If the Gloves are the "Master Key," what does that mean for our current artifact holders?