Chapter 156 - Chapter XXXI: Espionage [3]

The night was young, and so were the lamps and candles around Bartwood Castle, the central administrative infrastructure in the Gullfordian capital. For the past few months, moss had gathered around the castle's façade. The bare halls and the unkempt courtyard were both silent, like a crypt unperturbed by activities of surface dwellers. While such a castle was built to shelter a noble of great stature, above the rank of its current owner in fact– courtesy of its glorious past when the house it served held the title of Count– it now harbored no more than ten souls, including servants and guards. Such number, of course, would barely suffice to maintain such a large estate, and would never fulfill the needs of its master and denizens. It was so due to the luckless endeavors of said master that he learned to tolerate a frugal existence, much to his own dismay. But unbeknownst to him, another source of dismay might yet to take place…