Jack and Nathaniel had spent another two days with Daniel and Lucy, even with Daniel's healing magic it took them a bit to recover from the hypothermia. When they were ready to go they were given another flask of warming potion, just in case. It turned out that this was entirely warranted, only a few days later they were caught in another snowstorm. However, now due to having a flask that would actually open when they needed it to, the only thing they had to worry about was their armor freezing up. It took them another week to make it out of the snow.

The transition between the biomes was as sudden as it had been on the other side. A few hours of walking later they were back on the road. From there on three uneventful days of walking passed. At a fork in the road Jack and Nathaniel said their farewells and went their own ways. Nathaniel took the left road to Rockhaven Port and Jack took the right road to Rockhaven.

Now Jack was in a plains biome, still on the same road. He had just broken camp so it was early in the morning. Rockhaven's black walls towered in the distance. It was a good thing too, Jack's supplies were running low. He calculated that at most in three more days he would have been forced to hunt for food, fortunately it wouldn't come to that. Rockhaven was only an hour away.

As Jack drew closer to the walls, he got a better look at the city, it somehow looked empty from the outside, it was just a big black wall with no discernable point of entry. He did however also notice the slight distortions of light above the city, presumably the magical wards that had prevented the others from entering.

He continued following the road that looked like it went straight into the wall. As he got closer he noticed that there were no guards where the road ended even though Andy said that there were always guards. This was strange.

A moment later it got even stranger. The distortion above the city flickered and then was gone, at the same time a hole opened in the wall. This was beyond suspicious. Either Fire was playing some sick game with him or something serious was happening in the city. If this was bait, Jack decided that it was worth it to take it. He stepped into the city.

The streets were strangely deserted, from what Nathaniel told him they shouldn't have been. There really was something strange going on here.

The street he was on went directly into the center of Rockhaven where a tower stood, on top of that tower floated what could only be described as a huge ender eye. Before he had any more time to wonder what was happening he heard a deep voice shout at him from a side street.

It said: "You there! Mercenary!"

The owner of the voice was a mountain of a man wearing armor that seemed to be made from the same material as the city itself. Jack involuntarily answered: "Yes?"

The man signaled him to come closer and said: "I am Captain Bedrock and with my authority as Royal Guard captain I draft you into whatever this excuse for a civil war is supposed to be. Now that the formalities are done with, follow me!"

Captain Bedrock started running towards the center of the city at a speed that Jack had thought impossible for someone his size wearing his armor. Jack, still more surprised than anything else decided that it was best not to disagree with a man who not only had more combat experience than him but could probably also crush his skull in one hand. He started running as well.

Carol's living chambers were a mess, ever since the banquet she just hadn't been able to bring herself to tidy up. That was one part of the truth, the other part was that she had been listening. Ever since the banquet the whispers had become more bearable. Maybe bearable was not the right word for it, they were still as painful and mind-numbing as ever but something had changed: Some of the whispers actually started making some amount of sense.

Over the course of the last two days Carol had spent most of her time sitting in a chair and listening for those occasional fragments. She still wasn't able to understand what the whispers were or what they wanted but occasionally images or feelings were conjured up in her mind that she was sure were more than memories, hallucinations or dreams.

Carol's desire for sleep, food or drink had disappeared almost entirely. The longer she listened the more frequent the flashes in her mind became. She had thought about stopping, just finally logging out of the server for a while but after thinking about it, being in her tower was still better.

At the third morning she had carried her chair up to the platform with the eye, which was where she was sitting now.

In a moment where the whispers became quieter and left some room for her own thoughts she thought back to when she had come to the server for the first time. The reason she accepted the invitation was because she didn't have much else left, her thoughts back then were that with a virtual world like this one she could at least live some semblance of a life, and a life it had been, just about two hundred years' worth of life. Carol tried to remember what her exact circumstances were but other than that they were bad she couldn't recall anything. For a few seconds she asked herself if that was worrying, then decided that it was better if she didn't remember.

However there was one thing she did remember in perfect clarity, that being the contract she had to sign to be allowed on the server. It was the only contract she had ever read from start to finish and one particular point was still in her mind.

"Do NOT mess with the eyes!"

She had never understood why that rule was so important, in the beginning she hadn't even know what eyes it was referring to but once she had entered Rockhaven it had become clear.

She stood up from her chair and looked at the eye that floated right in front of her, only one arm's reach away. She had been instructed not to touch the eye under any circumstance, this was probably also an effect of that particular rule. She was content following that rule. Listening was enough, for now.

Suddenly Carol felt something change. The air around her suddenly lost a part of its freshness but also dropped in temperature at the same time. She knew what this meant and fear gripped her heart. The wards above the city were coming down. The fear was pushed away by a sense of purpose, this was where her duty as tower keeper came in. Even if the archmage or even the king fell, she had to defend the eye at all costs… That was what they said, right?

Carol rapidly descended the winding staircase. There was a cupboard that she thought she would never have to open. Inside were an ornamented crossbow and a quiver full of silver bolts. No matter who tried to storm the tower, this would stop them.

The whispers slowly increased in intensity again so Carol tried her best to make it up the stairs. Once she arrived at the top she assumed position above the staircase. Not a second later it happened. She heard noises coming from her front door. Nobody would take the eye from her.