Chapter 21

Din finds Fotia comforting a shattered Trikao Armenta at the Green Drover. After Tauri warns Din to choose his company carefully and departs, Din escorts Trikao and Fotia to the jail to see Ippeas. Hostile townsfolk jeer Trikao, reflecting rising tensions. Outside the jail, Trikao confides his fears and guilt as a father and servant of Armenta duty, then pointedly asks if a hidden evil is at work.

Screams interrupt them. Inside, Ippeas shouts that Castus complained of a severe headache and was taken to the infirmary by Seriv and a medikker. Din rushes in, finds Seriv stabbed and bleeding, and learns Castus pursued the medikker Evrik toward the lading deck—the route for moving the sick out.

Din sends Fotia to fetch Tauri and to watch for any suspicious piper. Trikao unexpectedly carries the wounded Seriv to safety. Din advances alone into the lading deck and discovers a massive neuro-fungal growth sprouting from Castus’s head. Castus, eerily relentless, attempts to butcher Evrik with a serrated knife, moving with unnatural speed and indifference to injury.

Forced back into the corridor, Din feints, blinds Castus with his coat, severs Castus’s knife hand, and then hacks through his neck, finally beheading him as spores billow. Ippeas screams from nearby cells; Evrik’s fate remains uncertain amid the chaos.

Outside, Tauri arrives with flares already sent to summon Apoths and Orbiis. Din reports Castus’s “fruiting” despite prior treatments. Fotia saw no suspicious piper, contradicting Din’s expectation that the LYSIS tune triggered the burst. The absence of any culprit heightens the mystery and suggests a covert method or unseen agent behind the catalysis.