III
Somewhere deep in the north wing, where the tourist trails ended and a realm of silence and dust began, a stone wall held its greatest secret. It was no different from the others - the same dark gray basalt, the same masonry joints, patinaed with time. But for those who knew where to look, one of the bas-reliefs was more than just decoration. The one with the mysterious arched bridge, the sun woman, and the shepherd pointing through a crack.
As the echo of the last footsteps faded in the adjacent gallery, a barely audible click broke the centuries-old silence. The stone slab depicting an arch slid silently aside, revealing a black hole in the wall. From it, like a shadow emerging from the darkness itself, emerged a tall figure, cloaked in a loose monastic robe with a deep hood thrown over his head, concealing his face, his hands folded across his chest.
The figure paused for a moment, as if listening to the breathing of the castle, and then, with a light, silent movement, merged with the procession of monks moving leisurely down the corridor toward evening service. Not a single brother turned around or expressed surprise. The stranger became part of their procession, his stride matching theirs, his silence their prayerful silence. He was indistinguishable, a ghost melting into a crowd of similar ghosts.
The guides leading groups through these halls would sometimes, when the mood struck, recount an old legend. Long before the castle's first stones were raised, a tribe dwelt in the deep dungeons beneath the hill - a people from fairy tales and nightmares, endowed with knowledge inaccessible to mortals. It was said that the castle was built here for a reason - to erase their memory and seal their power. The monks, nodding, added that the spirits of the ancients still roamed the dark corridors, and therefore a pious person should not wander here alone.
The tourists listened to this with a slight shudder, perceiving it as a colorful horror story. They couldn't imagine that the legend was merely a pale reflection of the truth, and that the ghosts here weren't ethereal, but very real. And that one of them had just emerged from the stone wall and was now walking beside them, maintaining a silence older than the citadel's most ancient walls.