The sound of his own weapon being drawn was a violation. A greatsword was a weapon of attack, of commitment. To draw it in defense was to admit you had already been outmaneuvered. The steel sang a low, hungry note in the frigid air, a sound Varka usually reveled in. Now it felt like an admission of failure.
He stood shield-side to the broken carriage, with Porthos huddled behind him. A single point of contact, a single point of failure. His body was a fortress, and he was the last man on the wall. The irony was a bitter pill. The fortress was about to fall from within.
Every gust of wind was a physical blow. His focus, normally a broad field of tactical awareness, had narrowed to a pinprick. The slope where the pebbles had fallen. The opposite cliff face. Albedo, a still, pale statue near the horses, scanning, always scanning. And the relentless, grinding pressure in his gut, a metronome counting down the seconds to his utter disgrace.
He tried to regulate his breathing. Slow. In through the nose, out through the mouth. A soldier’s trick for mastering fear. It wasn't fear he was fighting. It was hydraulics.
Then came the second sound.
It wasn't like the clatter of rocks. It was a clear, high-pitched tone that seemed to vibrate in the bones of his skull, emanating from all around them and nowhere at all. It was the sound of a wine glass rim being circled by a wet finger, amplified a thousand times, sharp enough to set his teeth on edge. Porthos cried out and clapped his hands over his ears. Even the horses shied, whinnying in panic.
Varka’s every muscle clenched in a violent, full-body spasm. His soldier’s instincts screamed *unnatural, weaponized, incoming*. His knuckles whitened on the hilt of his claymore as he braced for an attack that was already happening, not on the battlefield of the mountain pass, but inside his own nervous system.
And in that instant of absolute, involuntary tension, the dam broke.
There was no ceremony to it. No final, valiant struggle. Just a sudden, shocking release. A wave of searing heat spread through his groin and down his legs, a traitorous surrender he was powerless to stop. The agonizing pressure that had defined his world for hours vanished, leaving a hollow, sickening void in its place. The high-pitched tone cut out as abruptly as it had begun.
Silence descended once more, thicker and heavier than before.
For a heartbeat, Varka didn’t move. He simply stood, his greatsword held at the ready, as the cold mountain wind began to bite at his soaked breeches. The smell, sharp and ammoniac, rose to meet him. It was the smell of a barracks stable. The smell of defeat.
His mind, which had been a whirlwind of pain and tactical calculation, went utterly, terrifyingly blank. The Knight of Boreas. The hero of the expedition. The Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. He was standing in a puddle of his own making, in front of his subordinate and his most brilliant, inscrutable officer.
He could feel Porthos’s gaze on his back, then feel it avert with the speed of a startled bird. The boy was now intensely interested in a loose strap on his own boot, fumbling with it as if his life depended on it.
Varka did not dare turn his head. He did not dare look at Albedo. The shame was a physical weight, heavier than his armor, heavier than his sword. It pressed down on him, trying to force him to his knees. He resisted. He would not give it that. He would stand.
Minutes stretched into an era. The only sounds were the wind and the nervous stamping of the horses. Finally, Albedo spoke. His voice was exactly the same as it had been before. Calm. Measured. Utterly devoid of surprise or pity, which was somehow infinitely worse.
“They are using resonance frequencies to induce physiological reactions,” he stated, not to Varka, but to the air itself. He had taken out his sketchbook again, not to draw, but to use the stiff cover as a lap-desk, jotting a note with a piece of charcoal. “A non-physical attack vector. Highly sophisticated. Beyond standard Fatui field equipment.”
Varka couldn’t breathe. The words were stones dropped into the silent pool of his humiliation. Albedo wasn’t acknowledging *what* had happened. He was analyzing *how* it had been made to happen. His subordinate’s involuntary collapse of bodily control was just another data point. A curiosity. Evidence of the enemy’s methods.
“The initial frequency, likely subsonic, would have created the rockslide by vibrating the stone along its existing shear planes. That explains the ‘sliced’ appearance,” Albedo continued, his eyes focused on the page. “This most recent tone was in the audible spectrum, targeted—I would hypothesize—to trigger a vagal response. Involuntary muscle contraction, disorientation, loss of homeostatic control…” He paused, tapping the charcoal against the page. “They are stress-testing us. Determining our breaking points. Both structurally and biologically.”
He finally looked up, his pale teal eyes meeting Varka’s across the ruined campsite. There was no mockery in them. There was nothing at all but cold, clear focus. “They did not need to show themselves to compromise you, Grand Master. They turned your own biology into the weapon.”
Varka’s vision swam. He wasn’t the Grand Master. He was a specimen. A failed experiment. The enemy wasn't just watching from the rocks. They were inside his bones, playing his nerves like a stringed instrument. The casual, scientific cruelty of it stole the air from his lungs. This wasn't a military operation. This was a dissection.
The shame, which had been a hot, paralyzing wave, began to cool and harden into something else. Something cold and dense and furious. The pressure in his abdomen was gone, but this new feeling took its place, a knot of glacial rage in his core.
He could feel the damp cloth clinging to his skin. He could feel the chill seeping into his muscles. It was a constant, undeniable reminder of his failure. Of his weakness. He had spent his life building a persona of unshakable strength, of jovial command. An impregnable fortress. And these unseen cowards, with their noises and their tricks, had bypassed the walls entirely. They hadn't stormed the citadel. They had simply flooded the sewers until the foundations gave way.
Slowly, deliberately, he lowered the point of his claymore until it rested on the frozen earth. He took a breath. The air still smelled of ammonia and pine. His smell. His failure. He would not forget it.
Let Albedo analyze his frequencies. Let Porthos stare at his boots. They were no longer the audience to his carefully maintained performance. The performance was over. The stage was wrecked. All that remained was the man standing in the ruins.
“Albedo,” Varka said. His voice was different. The booming warmth was gone, stripped away with his dignity. What was left was flat and hard as anvil steel. “When we find them… I am going to take them apart. Slowly.”
He looked up at the silent, watching cliffs. The physical discomfort was nothing now. It was fuel. The cold in his breeches was a whetstone against which he could sharpen his anger. They had wanted to know his breaking point. They had found it. And in doing so, they had broken the man, but forged a weapon.