The crippled smith toils endlessly in the keep, along with his mad colleague, Chet. Walls are raised, torn, designed, destroyed. Frustration gets to them repeatedly. Inspiration a illusion, perfection a dissonance. Arkus gave up on living. Nobody even lives in the keep, why does he toil so much? His family of 20 years has split up. Temp is living with Adeon on some remote tropical island, Bran stays with his wife in a large manor, Captain Toov and his wife took to a small plateau keep, alongside with several other order members. Hearing his apprentice Alexei say "I dont like staying here" drove a nail into his heart, the contained darkness poured out of him like a never ending torment. "You're not good enough" "This isn't Krak du Rhoswen" "Useless cripple, cant even get the job done right" "We should have gotten someone else to do the job" The whispers he hears in his head, the unspoken reality of himself. He gave up teaching, smithing, all for this new keep, Ard Kerack, to which he did not even have the luxury to give the name. It was as empty and hollow as his maimed hand. With a roar of frustration, he threw a pick against Temp's new training pit, cracking open a stone pillar. Crumbling slightly, he saw it. Something worth living for.