Following behind, Jeanne saw Skadi frozen in place, staring into the dim recess of the cavern as if she couldn't quite believe her own eyes.
Sitting before the cairns was a dried bouquet of wild flowers—withered and drained of color by the passage of time. It was clear that someone else had visited this hidden place recently to pay their respects to the dead.
"How is this possible...?" Skadi murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. "Who would come here to honor them? This shouldn't be happening..."
She was utterly stunned. Had a random traveler chanced upon this secluded spot and left the gift, or had one of her surviving kin found the cairns and laid the flowers for their fallen brothers and sisters?
"Could someone who recognized the symbols have left them?" Jeanne asked, stepping up beside her to peer into the cavern.
Though remote, the cave wasn't impossible to find. If someone understood what these crude stone cairns represented, leaving a simple bouquet of wild flowers was a natural act of kindness.
"That's virtually impossible," Skadi said, shaking her head softly. "This is a ritual unique to the Abyssal Hunters. We have no graves when we die—our bodies must be destroyed so nothing is left behind for the sea. Building these stone markers is the only way we can remember those who fell in battle..."
As the words left her mouth, a sudden realization struck her. If a bouquet of flowers honoring her fallen comrades was sitting here, didn't that mean another survivor from her squad had found this place?
Her heart pounding, Skadi rushed forward to inspect the rough engravings carved into the cairns. If any of the symbols had been modified, it meant that hunter was still alive.
Skadi moved down the row of markers, reciting each name aloud with rising anticipation.
She had never dared to dream of finding another living comrade after meeting Specter. For a hunter who had long accepted her total isolation, this was a surge of hope almost too massive to process.
"Ulpian..."
When Skadi reached the final cairn, her breath caught. A faint, shallow mark had been carved across the weapon symbol on the stone—the precise signal indicating he was still alive!
A radiant smile broke across her usually stoic face. Overwhelmed by joy, Skadi completely forgot she wasn't alone. She burst into a quiet, ecstatic hum, practically dancing on her heels.
"He's alive... he's really..."
Humming a light melody as she turned around, Skadi froze mid-step.
Jeanne and Fafnir were sitting side-by-side on a flat boulder, expressions entirely blank, munching on slices of melon while watching her performance with quiet fascination.
Skadi instantly snapped her mouth shut and dropped her head, her cheeks flushing bright red. The embarrassment of losing her composure in front of Jeanne was almost too much for the hunter to bear, and she stood in utter, mortified silence.
"Hey, don't feel bad about being happy!" Jeanne chuckled, taking another bite of melon. "Let it out! There's nothing wrong with celebrating good news!"
"I'm sorry..." Skadi mumbled, scratching her head awkwardly. "I just... I got carried away. I didn't expect my captain to be alive. But if it's Captain Ulpian, it makes sense that he could track this place down."
She glanced back at the small cairn she had built for her former commander. What kind of secret was he trying to pass along?
If he simply wanted to let her know he had survived, he could have broken the stone marker entirely. Instead, he had left a tiny, easily overlooked symbol in a obscure corner—a mark she only found because her fingers instinctively traced the stone.
It was a hidden message meant exclusively for her eyes. He didn't want anyone else to notice it, which was why he had been so remarkably discreet.
"Your captain?" Jeanne asked, leaning in closer to study the stone. To her untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than a pile of rough rocks.
"What message was he trying to leave you?" Jeanne frowned slightly. Setting aside how Ulpian had tracked this location down—which wasn't impossible given how well he knew Skadi—why go to such extreme lengths to hide a short note?
Jeanne felt that the waters surrounding the Aegir were far deeper and darker than she had originally assumed. Whatever was happening behind the scenes had forced a veteran commander to operate with absolute stealth.
Unable to find any further clues on the surface, Skadi carefully dismantled the stone cairn she had built for Ulpian. Digging through the dirt and loose rock beneath the base, her fingers brushed against something hard—a solid metallic plate.
It was a small token crafted from an unknown metal, its surface etched with a cryptic cipher using a sharp edge. It was unequivocally a private message left for her.
Only someone who knew Ulpian as intimately as his former squad member could decipher the code hidden within those jagged lines.
"Do not... return... beware... our kin..." Skadi read the decoded words aloud, her voice growing heavier with each syllable.
The message her captain had left behind mirrored the warnings given to her by Jeanne and Kal'tsit.
Every single one of them was urging her to stay away from Aegir, and her own captain was explicitly telling her to cut all ties with anyone associated with their homeland. But why?
Skadi fell silent, a bitter weight settling in her chest. Being kept in the dark was a deeply frustrating feeling, even though she knew everyone was acting to protect her.
"Come on, look on the bright side," Jeanne said gently, placing a hand on Skadi's shoulder. "At least you know your captain is out there. Who knows? Maybe one day he'll show up in person and explain everything to you himself."
Jeanne's comforting words lightened the mood. Skadi drew a quiet breath and nodded. Jeanne was right—her captain was alive and fighting to uncover the truth. Why let vague warnings weigh her down when there was hope?
Looking back at the row of cairns, Skadi felt a faint wish in her heart that a few more markers might turn out to be wrong.
Yet she knew that was a futile hope. She had watched most of her squad fall with her own eyes, their bodies torn apart and consumed by the ocean's spawn in the dark depths.
"I guess visiting old places isn't such a bad idea after all," Skadi murmured. She carefully reassembled the small cairn, smoothing the soil over the base to hide any sign that the ground had been disturbed.
If Ulpian wished to keep his survival a secret from the world, the least she could do was help preserve his shadow.
"Let's go," Skadi said, turning to Jeanne with a noticeably lighter expression as she laid her fresh bouquet before the monuments. "It's getting late. We should find a city to stay in for the night."
Seeing Skadi in high spirits, Jeanne nodded, and the group set off toward the nearest urban settlement. Without Jeanne's diplomatic weight, getting an undocumented Aegir like Skadi through the gates would have been a major ordeal.
"Is there an issue with our papers?" Jeanne asked calmly, standing before the city checkpoint as the stationed Inquisitor examined their credentials with a conflicted expression.
"Er... no issue at all. Please enter," the Inquisitor conceded, stepping aside.
Jeanne had presented a personal token given to her by Saint Carmen himself. With an artifact of that authority in her hand, virtually no low-ranking official in Iberia would dare cause her trouble.
Still, the presence of the suspicious, white-haired Aegir woman beside her had caused him to hesitate for quite a while.
In the end, discretion won out over suspicion. His gut told him that picking a fight with someone carrying Saint Carmen's blessing would end horribly for his career.
Jeanne offered a polite smile, motioning for Skadi to follow as they passed through the tall iron gates into the coastal city.
The moment they stepped inside, the sharp, salty tang of the sea hit their noses. Jeanne looked around with genuine curiosity, observing the distinct, weather-worn architecture of the Iberian port town.
As they walked down the bustling stone street, a shadowed figure standing in an alleyway caught sight of Skadi. The stranger's eyes gleamed with a sudden, predatory greed.
"Look at that..." the figure whispered under his breath. "An actual Abyssal Hunter."