He turned around, pulling his heavy hood back over his head. "War is brutal, but that doesn't mean you forget humanity."
He took a deep breath.
"Let's move. The lake is still a few miles out."
______
The night over the lake was dead and freezing. A bitter breeze rolled off the dark water, biting through their heavy traveler's cloaks.
The Cinders huddled closely around a meager, smoking campfire. Suspended over the low flames was a battered iron pot of boiled red beans.
Riko prodded her wooden bowl with her spoon, her face twisted in absolute misery.
"This is literal mush," she groaned, letting her head fall back dramatically. "I am an S-tier Mage in the making at the Ivory Tower, not a...not a This! We had perfectly good smoked bear back at the hut. Why are we choosing wet dirt?"
Across the fire, Kaito aggressively scraped the bottom of his bowl, shoveling the burnt beans into his mouth as if someone were about to steal them.
"Because the smell of roasted meat attracts animals and demons, you idiot," Kaito grunted, swallowing heavily. "You eat what keeps you breathing. If you're going to just cry about it, leave the bowl alone."
Riko narrowed her emerald eyes at him. She immediately pulled her bowl tight against her chest out of pure spite.
"I didn't say I wasn't going to eat it," she muttered, glaring at him. "I'm just saying you don't have to inhale it like a starving alley dog. 'Oh look at me, I'm Kaito, I'm so tough and powerful.' "
Kaito's jaw clenched tight. His knuckles turned stark white around his wooden spoon as he glared through the smoke, his shoulders tensing as if he was about to vault the campfire.
"That's enough." Kian's voice cut through the cold, sharp and authoritative.
He stood up, throwing a handful of dry dirt over the edge of the fire to dim the light.
"Riko, finish your meal," Kian ordered, looking across the camp. "And Kaito, drop it. The sleeping rolls are laid out. We cross the border into Westrealis tomorrow morning, and I want everyone rested."
Eila crouched by the edge of the dark lake, submerging his iron flask. The freezing water bit at his bare knuckles as the heavy metal bubbled and filled.
He stared down into the black water. The moonlight caught his reflection just enough to highlight the jagged, grey scars creeping up his neck, and the dark bags carved beneath his eyes.
'Zamir was right,' Eila thought, his jaw tightening as he pulled the dripping flask from the water. 'I look like a corpse. Is this what divine punishment looks like? Or just a man who forgot how to bleed?'
He stood up, walking back to the low campfire and wedging the iron flask near the glowing coals to boil.
"I am taking the first watch," Eila announced, his quiet voice absolute. "The rest of you, sleep. We marched all day."
A rustle of canvas broke the quiet. Lucio sat bolt upright in his sleeping roll, his hands gripping the thick fabric tightly.
"W-we need to take turns," Lucio stammered, his voice shaking but refusing to stop. "You marched just as long as we did, Eila. Basic risk management means you need rest to repair your torn muscle fibers."
Eila didn't look away from the fire. He just watched the embers burn.
"I don't need it," Eila replied, his tone dead flat. "Vanguard trench protocols. I can stay awake for three days before my functions drop. Go to sleep, Lucio."
Lucio swallowed hard, his knuckles turning white against his blanket. He slowly lowered himself back down, but his jaw was set.
"F-fine," Lucio muttered to the dark, pushing his glasses up his nose. "But I am taking the second watch. That is non-negotiable."
________
The camp woke long before the sun. The forest was locked in a dull pre-dawn grey, the cold air biting sharply at their lungs with every breath they took.
Kaito crouched in the frost, his stiff fingers fumbling with the heavy canvas of his sleeping roll. Suddenly, the thick fabric was yanked right out of his grip. It hovered in the quiet air, snapping sharply as it folded itself into perfect squares.
He scowled, looking over his shoulder. Riko stood a few paces away, one finger lazily raised.
She flashed a sickeningly smug grin at him.
Kaito's jaw clenched tight. He snatched the hovering canvas out of the air, aggressively shoving it into his travel pack without giving her the satisfaction of a reply.
In seconds, Riko compressed the remaining bedrolls, slotting them neatly into the bags.
Eila hauled his own pack over his shoulder, the heavy leather straps settling familiarly against his collarbone. He looked through the dead brush toward the packed dirt of the main road, but he didn't take a step toward it. After Zamir's ambush, the open path was a proven death sentence.
"Keep to the treeline," Eila ordered, turning his back on the road. His boots crunched heavily through the frozen mud as he led them deeper into the shadows.
By high noon, the dense forest finally broke. The freezing morning frost had melted into a thick humidity that clung heavily to their cloaks.
Ahead of them loomed the towering stone walls of Westrealis. But the gates weren't a desolate ruin. They were sickeningly vibrant. Bright, decorative banners fluttered from the parapets, some carriages passed through. The gates were not closed.
"You told us it was a three-day distance," Riko complained, glaring daggers at Lucio as she aggressively scraped a thick layer of mud off her boot against a tree root. "It hasn't even been two whole days."
Lucio clutched his leather-bound notebook tight against his chest, stepping backward. "I-I calculated for Vanguard patrols," he stammered, adjusting his glasses. "But the gates are entirely open. They want the foot traffic."
"Foot traffic?" Kaito growled, staring at a noble family laughing as they stepped out of a velvet-lined carriage. "This was the frontline of the Third Siege. Thousands of Vanguard died in the mud right there. Why the hell are there tourists?"
"Because the war never reached the inner walls," Kian murmured, his eyes narrowing in absolute disgust. "To the nobles in the capital, the Siege is just a romantic story. It's been a year. They come here to gawk at the patched-up trenches and buy fake demon bones. It's a spectacle."
Eila stopped at the edge of the treeline. The heavy scent of roasted almonds and cheap perfume drifted from the merchant stalls by the gate.
His chest violently tightened. He didn't smell sugar. The suffocating stench of rotting marrow and scorched ozone immediately filled his lungs. He stared at a group of children chasing each other with wooden swords over the exact patch of dirt where he had watched a Goliath crush a Vanguard veteran into a bloody pulp.
Eila reached up, pulling his heavy black hood extremely low over his scarred face to hide the tremor in his jaw.
"L-Let's just get inside," Eila rasped, his voice hollow and tight.
As her boots finally hit the hard, swept cobblestones of the main road, Riko let out a dramatic sigh.
"Finally, civilized ground," she groaned, kicking the last bit of muck from her heel. "If I had to walk through that sludge for one more hour, my feet were going to rot." She wrinkled her nose at her own words.
Eila stepped through the massive gates of Westrealis. The original ironwood doors were rotting and deeply scarred by demonic fire, yet someone had carelessly nailed bright, sickeningly cheerful tourist banners directly over the blackened blast marks.
"Wait." A voice rasped from the shadows, sharp and desperate.
Kaito's hands instantly dropped to his twin blades. They turned, fully expecting drawn swords.
Instead, a rusted iron helm was shoved toward their chests. An old veteran leaned heavily against the freezing stone wall. His right leg ended in a splintered wooden peg, and his cheeks were terrifyingly hollow.
"A donation?" the old man mumbled, his jaw twitching uncontrollably in the cold. "For the Vanguard veterans? Please..."
Eila didn't speak. He reached into his dark cloak, pulling out a solid gold Galvron. He dropped it.
CLINK.
The heavy coin hit the rusted iron. The old man's eyes bulged, his breath hitching at the sight of the fortune.
"M-Much appreciated, kind sir!" he choked out, his numb fingers desperately clutching the helm to his chest as he bowed. "This... this will feed so many of us!"
Eila turned away, walking deeper into the city.
The streets were a sickening. Towering stone buildings lay in complete crumbling ruins. Starving refugees huddled in the freezing alleyways. Yet, right down the center of the road, merchant stalls hawked overpriced wine and fake Abyssal Hound's teeth to passing inner-kingdom carriages.
They stopped in front of a heavily damaged tavern. A wooden board was nailed over the door, painted with stark red letters: KITCHENS CLOSED. NO RATIONS.
Kian stepped up to the ruin. He ran a gloved hand over the charred timber of a collapsed house next door, his fingers brushing the deep claw marks carved into the stone.
"The Crown never bothered to rebuild," Kian murmured, his voice tight with disgust. "They just paved over the graves and invited the nobles to watch. Two Great Sieges in a single decade, and this is all that's left."
"T-The swordsmith's forge should be close to this district," Lucio stammered, frantically flipping open his leather-bound notebook. His breath plumed in the freezing air. "I-I have the general city mapped, but the old street signs are completely burned away..."
Lucio led them away from the bustling tourist traps and deeper into the ruined sector. The cobblestones here were shattered, choked with knee-deep ash and jagged debris that no one had bothered to clear in a year.
They stopped in front of a collapsed, blackened stone building. Hanging by a single rusted chain was a heavy iron sign:
"Sohrab's Forge," Riko read the sign, kicking a charred brick. "Well, that's a dead end. I doubt he still works under a collapsed roof."
"We'll have to ask a local," Kian sighed, scratching the rough stubble on his jaw. He turned around to check the perimeter. "Wait. Where are Kaito and Riko?"
He scanned the ruined street. A few dozen paces away, right on the edge of the tourist market, a vendor had set up a makeshift stall over a rusted oil drum.
Riko and Kaito were standing entirely paralyzed in front of it. Thick, black smoke rolled off the searing iron, carrying the overwhelmingly heavy, greasy scent of cheap scavenger meat sizzling in thick animal fat and harsh spices. To a group that had been freezing and starving on the road, the smell was an absolute weapon.
The rest of the Cinders walked over. Riko immediately turned, pointed a demanding finger at the dripping skewers, and stared directly at Eila.
Eila just stared blankly back. "Imara gave you a bag entirely filled with imperial gold," he said, his voice flat. "Use it."
Riko crossed her arms, puffing out her chest with a sickeningly smug grin. "I am an Ivory Tower genius. I only spend my funds with absolute fiscal responsibility."
Next to her, Kaito stared at the sizzling fat. His face was a mask of cold indifference, but his eyes tracked the meat like a starved raven.
"It's scavenger meat," Kaito grunted, aggressively crossing his arms to shut down any idea that he was tempted. "But we are burning calories walking in these ruins. We need the protein. That's the only reason we should stop."
Eila let out a long, exhausted sigh.
Kian and Lucio began nervously patting their cloaks for copper coins, but Eila simply reached into his dark coat. He pulled out a solid silver Sylbron—a coin worth 200 Drams—and casually tossed it onto the vendor's rusted cutting board.
The heavy gold hit the metal with a resounding CLINK. The vendor's jaw instantly dropped open.
"Give us six," Eila said, his voice completely deadpan as he looked at the stunned cook. "Keep the rest. Just tell us where the old swordsmith went."
The vendor frantically grabbed a frayed leather fan, desperately stoking the glowing coals so the fire wouldn't die. The heat flared, biting against the freezing air.
"W-Which swordsmith, kind sir?" he asked, hurriedly laying the raw meat over the rusted iron grate. "There were quite a few here before the Sieges, there were."
"Sohrab," Eila replied flatly. "The one who forged directly for the Vanguard."
Eila didn't look at the meat. His dead eyes were locked on the desolate, ruined street behind the stall. Through the slight fog, he watched the crippled veteran from the gates dragging a heavy wooden cart through. It was laden with heavy sacks of flour and fresh cuts of meat. The Galvor had worked.
"Sohrab..." the vendor repeated.
He paused, using a pair of rusted iron tongs to slowly flip the skewers over the open flame. The animal fat dripped, hissing violently as it hit the scorching coals.
"Heard rumors I did, Sir," the vendor muttered, his eyes on the spitting fire. "He packed up his shop, he did. Lives in a rotting shack by the Lake now."
The vendor picked up the finished skewers, wrapping the ends in a dirty cloth and handing them to Riko and Kaito.
Kian took the lead, navigating them away from the ruins and toward the desolate northern boundary.
The air grew perceptibly colder. The heavy scent of roasted meat was quickly swallowed by the bitter, stinging smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant water.
They broke through a line of dead, white birch trees and stopped.
The Westrealis Lake was barely a lake anymore. It was a depressing crater choked with frozen mud, grey rocks, and dead reeds.
"You call this a lake?" Kaito grunted, aggressively kicking a stone. It didn't skip; it just sank into the freezing sludge with a sad thud.
They scanned the shoreline for the shack the vendor mentioned. There wasn't one.
"There," Lucio whispered, his trembling finger pointing toward a massive boulder protruding from the dark water.
A man sat cross-legged on the frozen stone, staring out at the dead lake. He wore a faded yellow haori, but the right side was stripped down and tied off at the waist.
The freezing wind was biting, yet his entire right shoulder and arm were completely bared to the cold. While the rest of his hunched frame looked frail and dying, that exposed forging arm was thick with dense muscle and layered in decades of burn scars.
"Um..." Lucio took a hesitant step into the mud. "W-We are looking for Sohrab. Perhaps you are..."
The old man didn't move. He didn't even turn his head.
Eila stepped past Lucio, his boots crunching on the frost. "Are you Sohrab? We need a runic blade. I am willing to pay whatev—"
Every trench-hardened instinct in Eila's body violently screamed.
His dead mana circuits couldn't scan the threat, but his physical reflexes flared.
Move. His mind screamed.
But his mortal muscles were too slow. He couldn't even twitch his jaw before the phenomenon ended.
The old man hadn't stood up. He hadn't turned around. That scarred, exposed right arm was resting exactly where it had been a second ago.
Eila just heard the microscopic click of steel seating back into a scabbard.
A millimeter from Eila's throat, the freezing air violently decompressed. A razor-thin line of pure force brushed his skin, drawing a single, perfectly round bead of dark blood from his neck.
CRACK.
Thirty feet behind Eila, a towering birch tree suddenly shrieked. The massive trunk shifted, cleanly bisected at a perfect angle, and crashed heavily into the freezing mud.
The Cinders froze in absolute terror. Kaito's hands were hovering over his twin blades, paralyzed.
The old man was still staring at the dark water, his bared, scarred shoulder completely motionless.
"No," Sohrab rasped, his voice brittle and hollow in the freezing wind. "Get lost."