Vieu awakens to the organized chaos of a bustling castrum and the afterimage of a red red moon burnt into the back of his eyelids. It is a reoccurring dream and one he fantasizes a bit of prophecy, sometimes: the thoughts follow like shadows when he’s buried himself in the work-haze of sleepless nights, every waking hour spent hunched at the Lunar Transmitter etching the countless plates and towers of his artifical God into his mind.

Throngs of soldiers walk in and out of the castrum mess hall. The purebloods and conscripts sit separate and even then they are split into castes: tables reminiscent of their very places in the legion. He is no exception: the architectus takes his meal quick and quiet, stood like a statue among the outcasts of Castrum Novum. Perhaps his commanding officers would question why he chooses such a place— such a people, but he prefers them over braggart oens or fawning aans. They are honest, he says. Good company.

The bell rings at last when Vieu is long gone, his mess plate the first to be left at the kitchens. He has already traveled to the heart of the Castrum. Waist-deep in Allagan machinery, his station is at the scientists' feet firing ideas and theories at the architectus magiteci who consider him equal. Still, he is only a jen, they say, and they refuse to let him near the engine in broad daylight.

There is honor in gruntwork, architectus, says a man with dull blue eyes. His brother.

(When did he become so tired? Where did the bags under his eyes come from? They grew up under the same roof, once. This can't the boy he knew a lifetime ago. This is a stranger wearing a familiar countenance, enshrouded in secrecy up to his neck and he knows there's something behind that sad dead expression. What won't he say? What can't he say?

... Not even to him?)

It doesn't matter. The architectus knows different. He knows that they let him into the Transmitter room late at night and under the Light of their Guiding Star they are equals in every form of the word. He's given himself, right? Body and mind. What does he have to do?