The train thundered into being, carving its way across a pallid, lifeless expanse.
A merciless wind swept through the world, carrying with it shards of snow as sharp as broken glass. Selu tightened her coat, her gaze drifting toward the witch hunter beside her—complex, conflicted, and heavy with unspoken thoughts. Loyd cast one last glance at the time. There was still enough margin. Still enough to act.
His breathing came shallow and faint. Within his body, the secret blood pulsed and multiplied, knitting torn flesh back together in silence.
Perhaps it was the brutality of what had just transpired—too raw, too merciless. Even now, Selu could still see it, that dreadful scene replaying behind her eyes. She said nothing to Loyd. He, in turn, offered her no words. And so they remained, side by side in the cutting wind, suspended in a long and frozen silence.
Beyond them, the world dissolved into white. Snow fell without end, swallowing all things beneath its endless veil, until the land resembled a boundless ocean of pale oblivion.
This was the coldest stretch of the northern reaches of Ingervig. The wind howled like a living thing, dragging waves of snow across the train's surface, where frost bloomed into jagged crystals along the steel.
By Loyd's reckoning, they had already traveled dozens of kilometers beyond Old Dunling. The towering trees here lay buried beneath the snow, their forms erased. No human presence lingered in this desolation—only the quiet dominion of predators that belonged to the wild.
"Come here, Selu."
His voice broke the stillness. It sounded almost like an invitation—but before she could respond, he had already pulled her into his arms. The blood staining his clothes had long since frozen, carrying a faint, iron stench.
"It's here."
The words brushed against her ear. Then, from beyond the thick curtain of snow, came a long, echoing whistle—low and distant, like the mournful call of some colossal whale.
Another train?
The thought had barely formed when the storm-darkened sky deepened into a suffocating gray.
Then—
A thunderous roar split the world apart.
From within the blizzard, black steel burst forth, tearing through the snow like a beast unchained. Heavy mechanisms ground and locked into motion, steam hissing outward in long, trailing threads that vanished into the storm. It surged forward like something torn from the pages of a forbidden tale—a creature that had clawed its way free from ink and myth.
The tracks beneath it were buried, yet it drove on, throwing up walls of snow higher than men.
It was a train—yet not like any ordinary one. Larger, heavier, its body clad entirely in blackened metal. It moved with the coiled menace of a great serpent slithering across the earth.
For a fleeting moment, Loyd was reminded of the Radiant—the armed train once refitted by the Purge Mechanism. This one bore a resemblance… though its purpose was simpler. It carried cargo.
"The tracks beneath us are nothing but a decoy," Loyd said.
"It won't take us to the true North. It'll stop at a newly built town dozens of kilometers ahead. That train—" he nodded toward the black behemoth "—that's the one that leads where we need to go."
This was the real route.
"Archdeacon Lawrence has allied himself with the remnants. The best way to avoid being tracked is to have no plan at all. Clearly, they couldn't keep up with mine. Otherwise, what greeted me earlier wouldn't have been mere fodder."
"So hijacking this train… that was on impulse?"
"…Let's just say it disrupted theirs."
Loyd didn't answer her directly.
There was something more he chose not to say. Lawrence's uncanny ability to traverse the "gaps" became far more dangerous in crowded spaces. That was why Loyd had chosen, so abruptly, to leave—dragging Selu with him, abandoning everyone else. He needed distance. Isolation.
Out here, far from any crowd, Lawrence would lose his advantage. No bodies to leap through. No convenient vessels.
Within a radius of several kilometers, with only Loyd and Selu remaining, Lawrence would be left with two choices: invade Selu directly—or find a way to kill Loyd first.
Selu nodded, though her understanding was incomplete.
"Then… what do we do next?"
"Change trains."
Loyd's answer was simple.
"Change—"
Confusion flickered across her face, but before she could finish, he swept her off her feet once more—
—and launched.
The world blurred into streaks of motion. Wind screamed past her ears. Instinctively, Selu clung to him, her peripheral vision catching glimpses of the rushing ground drawing ever closer.
Then—
Impact.
They plunged into the snow, sending powder exploding outward. Loyd didn't pause. The moment his feet touched the ground, he broke into a full sprint. His inhuman strength revealed itself in full—swift, relentless, unstoppable.
Only then did Selu truly understand what he meant by "changing trains."
In some ways, this witch hunter was… disarmingly straightforward.
And yet, a strange sensation stirred within her.
She was enjoying this.
It felt almost like riding some slightly unhinged little horse, racing freely across the snow—except this one, she knew, could crush a man's skull between its jaws without hesitation.
Loyd, of course, had no awareness of the thoughts passing through her mind.
He raced forward, choosing the precise moment when the two trains ran closest. To an ordinary person, what followed would seem impossible—but to a witch hunter, it remained within the realm of action.
He leapt.
At the apex of that motion, he struck. The sharp folding blade in his hand bit into a seam along the train's body. Using the momentum, he hauled himself upward, dragging Selu with him, until at last they landed between two connected carriages.
"Done."
He set her down.
Selu steadied herself carefully on the steel beneath her feet, wary of the rushing void below.
"Damn it—what's wrong with this?"
While she was still staring at the blur of railroad ties flashing past beneath them, Loyd cursed under his breath. The key was in the lock—but the mechanism had frozen solid in the cold. He hammered at the door several times before it finally gave way with a reluctant groan.
Outside, the wind howled.
Inside, it was spring.
"Rest for now," Loyd said, shutting the heavy iron door behind them, sealing the cold away. "We've got a long journey ahead."
Selu looked around.
The interior was… strange. More like a storage hold than anything else. Cargo was stacked in every corner, packed tight and silent.
She had expected something different. A train carrying important resources should have been heavily guarded.
And yet here they were—having boarded it with absurd ease. No guards. No voices. Nothing but the faint, constant hum of the engine.
For some reason, it felt like a coffin.
A coffin racing along iron tracks.
As that thought settled uneasily in her mind, Loyd tossed something toward her.
Bread.
"Eat," he said, suddenly grinning, his earlier coldness gone as if it had never existed. "You'll need your strength if you're going to work for me, right?"
The shift unsettled her.
"Bread…?"
Before she could process it, he tossed her a blanket as well.
Selu held it, her expression blank with confusion.
"A blanket too?"
"Maybe even they think the North's a bit too cold," Loyd replied casually, brushing it off.
There was something off about him. Something had changed—ever since moments ago. As though something inevitable was drawing near.
Sensing his reluctance, Selu didn't press further. She moved to a corner, wrapped herself tightly in the blanket, and listened to the low, steady thrum of the train.
And waited.
Outside, the train pressed onward through the roaring snowstorm. Its path diverged from the one before, cutting deeper into the North.
Behind it, countless shadows followed—silent, relentless.
And within the wind, faint as a whisper, came the distant sound of hounds baying—
all the way to the journey's end.