Zefaris had no issues remaining awake for days on end, and she wasn’t physically exhausted, yet she wanted to do nothing more than to pass out. Only now, having ended her work, did she notice the persistent, strangely ephemeral headache, somehow perfectly spread out perfectly throughout the inside of her head. Slowly and deliberately, she gathered the badges of every fallen doppelsoldat she could find, moving their skeletal remains such that they all sat, at rest, leaning against the wall. Then, she moved over to Toza and went through his possessions, finding a curious Fog Storage bag that contained a small fortune in Gelt, though they were of a truly archaic minting, between the imagery and dates. It also contained a variety of filled phials, boxes with herbs, and blade maintenance supplies of every conceivable sort. Zefaris noted the distinct absence of goods for personal comfort besides a small, ivory grooming kit. She took his swords, one by one putting them in storage, leaving the blade which felt like it would chop off her arm if she so much as tried to touch it. It looked downright demonic, glistening red as if it were permanently coated in fresh blood, and was somehow situated well within Toza’s grasp despite him having let it go. Zefaris didn’t want to be responsible if the sword somehow animated its wielder’s corpse, so she thought to just shoot it until it broke, or failing that, to damage Toza’s corpse beyond usability. The sword floated up in front of it and sheathed itself, then slammed itself into the ground right next to Toza’s hand as if to illustrate that it had no such intent.

The motion somehow cut the petals from all the flowers immediately surrounding Toza, and they swirled through the air to form words: “Wait. Here. For. Next. Hand. Waited. Before. Wait. Again.”

Not being in the state of mind to deal with this, Zefaris just left the sword to its likely decade-long wait for a new wielder as she made her way over to the campsite, where Zelsys sat wide awake, poring over a rough manuscript for the next iteration of Sturmblitz Kunst 0.

She sat down, and at that moment, the Remnant Revealing Array collapsed. All at once her pylons went up in bursts of black steam and the formation’s energy collapsed like a giant rubber band snapping into the center before popping out of existence.

“How’d it go? Got an army of ghosts at your disposal now?” Zel asked offhandedly. Zefaris reached inward, grasping for the Inner Phantom, and in that same place, right next to it, she found all her Phantoms, neatly grouped around it. Some may have thought as stars in the night sky - even the Scripture described the Phantoms’ appearance as such - but Zefaris visualized them as soldiers arrayed around their commander, a sight she had seen many times on all three sides of the War of Fog.

“More of a platoon than an army, and I’m not sure how many of them I’ll be able to manifest at a time, the limitations of the method… Really, not sure about much of anything besides how to make the phantoms. Who knows how advanced Toza was in the method, and he did what, a dozen phantoms plus however many phantom hands? Who knows what sort of spiritual strain manifesting a phantom inquisitor will put on me…” Zef said, pulling out the Sword Phantom Scripture to flip through it in hope for some answers. She thoughtlessly leaned against Zel’s side.

“Only one way to find out,” Zelsys said.

“Not exactly in my peak condition, but… I ought to at least try,” Zefaris agreed, sitting upright and flipping through the scripture to reach the section pertaining to actually bringing out one’s Phantoms. A handful of methods were described, from gestural to vocal to ones involving sigils. In the end, they were all means of making the process easier. Zef stowed the scripture and opened her left eye, carving a handful of glyphs in the air before herself as well as on the ground, modifying the lyrics to a nationalistic folk song as the incantation: “Should your flesh be rendered to dust, should all your works be swept away, never shall you rest until vengeance has been had, and those who killed you will never know peace…”

The strain was rather like lifting something after strenuous resistance exercise. The pressure and ache in her head rose as she poured herself into the incantation, only to ease off when the ghostly shape of a gas-masked Ikesian soldier took form; a Sword Phantom. Strain, and thus ache, was still very much present, but Zefaris had no issue handling it even in her current, fatigued condition. The Sword Phantom stood, straight-backed, a hand rested upon the handle of its equally ghostly war-knife. Zefaris willed it to perform a simple sword training form, feeling no noticeable increase in the strain as the phantom moved. Not wanting to push herself, she dismissed the spirit.

Sighing, she allowed the exhaustion to overtake her. Before long she would have to wake again, but for now, she had comfort.

The remainder of their journey to Willowdale transpired without incident.

Colorful, supernaturally fertile fields and verdant forests stretching on as far as the eye could see. That was the sight of Willowdale, one which so starkly contrasted with much of the country.

Zelsys had sent out a message on two particular frequencies early that day; one to alert the sect of her impending return, and another to do the same for Crovacus Estoras. Nine gigantic statues towered outside the city wall, the pedestals for five others occupied by the beginnings of their would-be occupants. The Fourteen Reborn, the city’s vast barrier generator array, to be powered by its four bleeding-edge fulgur-igneic reactors of Kargarian make. The wall itself had been not just repaired, but rebuilt ground-up and expanded in a fair few places. Smaller wall guardian statue-automata had been placed atop for a significant stretch of its circumference, which would presumably continue until the whole wall had a defense line of this sort.