CHAPTER TWENTY
The ruins were a wasteland of broken cobblestone walls and fractured yet stout beams of oak that framed what Thomas and the others reasoned had been a magnificent structure that once loomed high above the marshland now reclaiming the lands the keep grounds had once encompassed. Where once gravel paths led penitents, priests, and nuns to a variety of hallowed cells, courtyards, and gardens where prayers and song were the rule of the day, there now thrived dense vegetation that entwined the stunted conifers that somehow survived the saturated soil.
“There’s nothing here,” Siegfried cursed as he turned about looking for some semblance of a structure they could explore. Time, water, and humidity had long reclaimed the area and eradicated what must have taken over a century to
