Morning arrived without the sun. The dead forest outside remained motionless in the freezing ash. A freezing light bled through the thick clouds and illuminated the frozen lake.
Inside the heavy heat of the forge, Eila and the Cinders prepared to march.
Lucio traced a route across a cracked paper map. Kian pulled the straps tight on their meager supply packs. On the cot, Kaito gritted his teeth, wrapping coarse bandages around his injured ribs. The bruising and swelling was almost gone, but the bones had not grown completely till now.
Today, they left the ruins. Today, they began the long walk back to the Capital of Aethelgard.
The biting wind whipped across the dead lake. Sohrab sat motionless on his stone, having abandoned the heat of his forge hours ago. His eyes remained shut, his long, tied hair shifting over his exposed shoulder. He waited in the freezing mud for the fugitives to vacate his graveyard.
"Old man."
Sohrab cracked one eye open. Eila stood beside the stone, his dead gaze fixed on the petrified treeline.
"We move out now," Eila stated, his tone clipped and militaristic. "Your sanctuary is...well, Thank you."
A dry, rattling wheeze escaped Sohrab's chest. The wrinkled lips pulled into a bitter yet refined half-smile.
"A peculiar nightingale, you are," Sohrab murmured, his hand brushing the hilt of his sword. "To harbor no grievance against the captor, nor utter a single complaint toward the cage. You accept that captivity was inked into your destiny long before the spring."
"I don't follow." Eila's voice was stripped raw by the freezing wind. He kept his gaze locked on the treeline.
Sohrab pushed himself off the stone, his heavy boots sinking into the freezing mud. He stepped near Eila and clamped a calloused hand onto the boy's shoulder. The blacksmith searched Eila's face.
"I have forged the very instrument that will likely drag you to your grave," Sohrab murmured, his words slow and weighted. "Yet instead of cursing the hand that sealed your fate, you offer the executioner your thanks."
Eila turned after a brief pause. The blue of his eyes was buried under an apathy.
"I asked for the blade, Sohrab." Eila didn't pull away from the heavy grip. "It won't kill me. Not until the work is done at least."
"A familiar delusion." Sohrab's thick fingers shook against the boy's cloak. "Every marching recruit whispered those exact words. Yet the cedar coffins still flooded the Capital's gates in endless processions. The Crown draped the slaughter in silk, and the kingdom paraded the sickness of death as glory."
"Eila!"
A sharp voice cut through the freezing wind. Eila turned. Riko stood at the edge of the graveyard, gesturing toward the petrified treeline.
"We need to move!" she shouted.
She and Kian dragged Kaito between them. The gruff swordsman was flushed and feverish, fighting to keep his own weight on his trembling legs. His twinblades clattered with every heavy stride.
Eila held Sohrab's weary gaze for one final second. He pulled away from the old blacksmith's grip and marched toward his squad.
Sohrab stood alone in the freezing mud, watching the figures vanish into the suffocating darkness of the dead forest, steering clear of the main road. The old man turned back toward his empty hut. There was the familiar weight of watching another meat walk to the grinder.
"L-Let's stop here," Lucio stammered, his knuckles white around his leather-bound notebook. "The lake ends just ahead. We need to rest Kaito and refill the bottles."
Kian grunted in agreement. He hauled Kaito's dead weight toward a massive oak, propping the feverish brawler against the jagged bark. "Riko, toss me the flasks."
Eila lingered at the treeline's edge. The distant rumble of heavy wooden wheels and the sharp crack of driver whips echoed through the bitter air. Through the gaps in the dead branches, the road was clogged. A procession of armored merchant wagons crawled at a slow pace toward the Capital.
Eila turned back. Lucio was already piling dry, brittle twigs into a mound.
"Don't start a fire," Eila ordered, his dead gaze drifting back to the procession outside the forest.
Lucio froze. The twigs slipped from his trembling hands and clattered into the dirt. "I-I completely forgot—"
His hands shook as he dug into his bag, pulling out a magical orb. He tossed it upward. The artifact hovered, turning as it scanned the perimeter.
Lucio shut his eyes, looking at the orb's feed. "Y-Yes. So many carriages, and heavy guards,"the scout whispered, sweating despite the cold. "They are on the main road. But... I guess the roads will be empty after nightfall, considering the Vanguard curfew."
Lucio snatched the orb from the air, shoving it deep into his satchel.
"I guess we wait." Kian slumped against a root, placing the filled bottles between them. "Hold out until noon, then we push forward."
Eila remained at the treeline, his back pressed against a rotting log. Clementia rested beside him, the blade wrapped in thick bandages to shield the steel from the humidity.
The hairs on the back of Eila's neck prickled. His jaw tightened. His thumb traced the rough cloth wrapped around his hilt, his dead eyes scanning the shadows between the trees.
Nothing.
'Something's wrong...' His mind flared, yet he couldn't find anything.
Midday arrived, but the sun offered zero heat. A pale light bled through the thick canvas of clouds.
"Let's move." Eila grabbed Clementia.
Kian and Riko each slung one of Kaito's arms over their shoulders. The swordsman let out a ragged groan as his dead weight left the ground.
They marched into the rot. Heavy boots sank deep into the freezing mud with every agonizing step. Swarms of ash-flies bit at bare skin, adding another layer of misery to the crawl.
Hours bled away. The pale sun dipped below the canopy, casting long, skeletal shadows across the woods, promising a cold night. The squad collapsed onto the first solid patch of dead earth they found.
"A whole damn day," Kian panted. Sweat and grime plastered his hair to his forehead. "And we haven't even cleared a quarter of the route."
A wet, rattling cough broke the silence.
"Sorry..." Kaito wheezed, his chin dropping to his chest. "Holding you... back."
Kian squeezed his eyes shut, regret twisting his expression. He let his head fall back against a tree trunk.
"Shut up, Kaito," Kian muttered, his voice stripped of any heat. "Nobody's blaming you. I'm just sick of the mud."
Kaito offered a weak smirk.
Lucio's orb finished its sweep. He snatched the glass sphere from the air and shoved it deep into his satchel.
"Perimeter is clear. No Vanguard," Lucio muttered, rubbing his freezing hands together. "We can risk a fire."
Flames crackled to life. They heated the last rations of canned beans salvaged from home. Riko scraped her tin clean in dead silence.
The hairs on the back of Eila's neck stood on end. He shot to his feet. His tin hit the dirt, spilling beans into the mud. His hand locked onto Clementia's hilt. His dead eyes tracked a blur of motion in the high canopy.
"Man..." Kian sighed, bending to retrieve the fallen food. He paused, catching the lethal tension radiating from Eila's spine. "What is—"
"DOWN!"
Eila didn't wait for them to process the command. He slammed his boot into Kian's chest, sending him sprawling into the mud alongside Riko.
A massive, bladed shadow sheared through the exact space where Kian's head had been a fraction of a second prior. The violent wind of the strike extinguished their campfire in an instant.
The entity crashed into the thick trunk of the opposing oak. Splinters and dead bark exploded outward from the impact.
Eila ripped Clementia from its bandages. Bare steel hissed in the bitter air.
Behind him, Kian and Lucio dragged Kaito's dead weight backward into the suffocating shadows. Riko planted her boots, her hands leveled at the settling dust cloud.
Eila pointed his blade at the figure.
"Move, and you die."
Riko locked her aim on the settling dust. Her excessive mana leaked in the air, fracturing the frozen dirt around her boots.
The figure rose from the splintered roots with a graceful motion. An unsheathed wakizashi glinted in the pale moonlight bleeding through the dead canopy.
"Identify yourself!" Riko demanded, her voice tight and echoing through the bitter air. "O-Or I blow your head clean off!"
"A cute threat." The figure stepped clear of the shadows. "Tell me, little mage. Have you ever actually taken a life?"
She reached up and pulled back her hood, revealing a young woman's face—cold, angular, and utterly devoid of adrenaline. She unfastened her dark cloak, letting the heavy fabric pool into the mud at her feet.
"Murder is a frantic thing," the woman murmured. Her dark eyes skipped over Eila and locked dead onto Riko, forcing the S-tier mage to take a heavy step backward. "But true killing is an architecture. You do not just commit it. You measure the weight. You paint over the flaws. And you draft the collapse."
She pressed a hand to her chest. Her black-painted lips parted into a cold, mocking smile.
"Mora Rin," she murmured, angling the wakizashi so the pale moonlight slid down the steel to illuminate her face. "Newest assassin of The Quorum. At your service."