The forest went on considerably longer than anyone had expected.
"Are we there yet?" Lina asked.
"No," the hunter said.
Seven minutes passed.
"Are we—"
"No."
"Hey, Mister, are we in the right direction?" Nina asked the hunter.
"My name is Oliver Jurin. And yes, we are in the right direction."
After half an hour of walking, they finally reached the building.
"There." Oliver pointed.
Southwoult village materialised between the trees like something that had grown there rather than been built — which, mostly, it had.
The forest didn't end so much as transform. The trees remained, enormous and ancient, but their trunks had been carved and shaped over generations into the bases of homes. Rope bridges connected them at various heights, swaying gently in the canopy breeze. Higher up, full houses sat in the wide cradles of branches — walls of fitted timber, windows with real glass that caught the light, smoke rising from small chimneys through gaps in the leaves. The village had three levels: ground, mid-canopy, and high-canopy, each connected by ladders and bridges and a few pulley systems that hauled supplies upward with mechanical confidence. Surrounded by deep forest and the tall mountains.
The deep forest pressed close on all sides.
Lina stopped walking and looked up.
"Oh," she said.
They passed the first marker post — a carved wooden pillar, painted with symbols she didn't recognise — and entered the village proper. The sounds changed immediately: children somewhere above them, a hammer at work, the smell of something cooking that was not mushrooms, the creak of rope bridges shifting underfoot.
And then the staring began.
The villagers closest to the path went quiet first. Then the quiet spread — the way it does in small communities, where nothing moves faster than the news that something unusual has appeared. Heads turned. People drifted to doorways. A group of women near a water barrel stopped talking mid-sentence.
A small boy near Lina's knee stared up at her with enormous eyes.
Then someone said it.
"Angels."
A murmur moved through the small crowd that had begun to form — rippling, wondering, getting louder.
"From heaven—"
"Are they real—"
"Look at them—"
Alice and Lina turned in near-identical slow circles, searching the crowd for whoever the villagers were reacting to. There was no one behind them. There was no one above them.
"...Mama," Nina said carefully.
"Angles?" Alice was still looking around with polite interest. "Are they nearby?"
"Mama. I think they mean us."
Alice stopped turning. "Oh!"
Lina looked at the villagers properly for the first time.
Dark leather clothes. Black, deep red, maroon. Tight and practical, made for climbing trees and moving through the forest. Nothing fancy. Nothing caught the light.
Then she looked at herself. At her mother. At Nina.
Their robes were long and shimmering — mana-woven fabric that glowed faintly at the edges. Even after a night sleeping in a tree, they looked like they'd walked out of a story.
No wonder they're staring.
Oliver leaned close to Alice. "Sorry," he said quietly. "My people never go outside the village. That is why they are superstitious about the outside world."
Alice looked at him. "You called us angels."
"Oh, sorry for that."
Alice smiled and let it go.
The crowd went quiet. Then it parted.
A woman, nearly 30 years old, walked through — solidly built, wearing the same dark leather wear as everyone else, but with a chief's cord at her shoulder and a leather cowboy hat. She moved like someone used to being in charge. Her eyes swept over the three strangers quickly, reading the situation.
"Hey, you Outcasters." Her voice was flat and firm. "What are you doing in Southwoult? We don't take walk-ins here."
Nobody moved.
Alice stepped forward.
The chief looked at her face — and stopped.
Something cracked behind her eyes. All the authority drained away at once, replaced by something much older and softer.
"...Alice?" Her voice had gone quiet. "Is that really you?"
Alice smiled and opened her arms.
The chief crossed the distance in three steps and held on tight — taller than Alice, face pressed into her shoulder, composure completely gone.
"You're here," she whispered. "After all this time — you're actually here."
"I know," Alice said softly, holding her. "I know."
The chief pulled back to look at her properly, eyes bright. "You grew up. You're all grown up." She almost laughed. "Look at you."
Inside the Chief's house. The house sat at the top of a large oak tree — wide and solid, built into the branches as it had always been there.
Inside, Lina looked around the room and then at Oliver.
"Your sister is the chief," she said.
"Yes."
"You didn't mention that."
"You didn't ask."
Lina opened her mouth. Closed it. That was technically fair.
"What's her name?" Nina asked.
"Amelia. Amelia Jurin."
Along one wall of the room, mounted on a wooden bracket, sat a stone.
Lina noticed it the way you notice something that doesn't quite belong — not out of place exactly, but different, pulling at the eye without announcing itself. It was roughly the size of both her hands together, glassy and deep green, curved like a shard broken from something much larger. A sphere, maybe. The surface was etched with symbols she didn't recognise — fine, precise lines that formed no alphabet she'd ever seen, running in patterns that seemed almost organic, like something between writing and weather.
She drifted toward it.
"Are you and your sister adventurers?" she asked, not looking away from the stone.
Oliver crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. "Not me. My sister is the adventurer. She's led four expeditions across four different continents — she's the only person in this village who actually knows what's out there. Most of what you see in this room, she brought back."
"And this?" Lina reached out, stopped just short of touching it.
"That one's different. It wasn't collected — it was a gift. Passed down to our ancestors a long time ago." He paused. "No one in the village has ever been able to read it. We know the symbols are language. We just don't know whose."
Lina leaned closer. The lines were unlike anything she'd seen in World Life — not the angular script of the Order's records, not the flowing marks on the crystal towers, not the ancient symbols she'd glimpsed on the mountainsides. Something else entirely. Something older, maybe. Or from much further away.
"Even our towers don't have symbols like this," she said. "And the towers have everything."
"Our ancestors managed to decode one word," Oliver offered.
"What word?"
He opened his mouth. Paused. "Actually, I'm not sure anyone wrote it down. I just know they understood one word before the elder who was working on it died." He seemed to find this less troubling than Lina did.
Nina had moved to the window. "Have you travelled much? Outside the village?"
"Not really." Oliver's expression shifted — a little wistful, a little defensive, the look of someone who has made peace with a smaller life and occasionally wonders about it. "Most of my years have been in this village and the Deep Forest. But I went to Modavia Kingdom once." His voice warmed slightly. "That trip changed things for me. I met someone there."
"Oh?" Nina said, with the careful tone of someone who has learned to be cautious about where Oliver's sentences end up.
"A young woman. She was — I don't have the right words. Beautiful doesn't cover it. She was the kind of person you see once and can't—"
"Parvat," Nina said, her expression curdling.
"Hey." Oliver straightened, genuinely offended. "I'm telling you about my wife."
A pause.
Nina turned from the window. "What?"
"She said yes. We've been married three years." He seemed unable to decide whether to be proud or wounded. "I'm not some — I don't just go around — I have a wife."
It took Nina approximately two seconds to redirect. She closed the distance, grabbed his collar, and pulled.
"Then why," she said, very quietly, "did you propose to my mother this morning?"
"I was not in my senses—"
"You were conscious—"
"Barely conscious, I had been paralysed—"
"That is not the defence you think it is—"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry—"
Nina released his collar. Smoothed her expression back to neutral. Walked to the door. Paused.
"Your wife," she said, "has my condolences."
She left.
Oliver stood in silence for a moment, rearranging his collar.
"She's very like my mother," he said, to no one.
Lina hadn't moved from the stone.
She was still looking at it — the symbols, the curve of it, the deep green that seemed to shift slightly depending on the angle of the light. Something about it bothered her in a way she couldn't name. Not unpleasant. Just insistent. Like a word she already knew that she couldn't quite remember.
I've never seen this before.
That was true. She was certain of it. She had never been to this village, had never seen a stone like this, had never encountered these symbols in any tower record or her father's stories.
So why does it feel like I have?
She stood there with the thought turning in her mind, trying to find what it was catching on — and then the stone glowed.
Not bright. Not dramatic. A single pulse of light from somewhere deep inside the green, there and gone in less than a second. Like something waking up. Like something recognising her.
"Ha—" She jumped back, heart slamming.
She looked around.
The room was empty. Oliver had gone. Nina had gone. The fire in the corner had burned low, and outside the window, the village sounds had quieted to the late-night murmur of a place winding down. The yellow moon shines as usual.
She was alone with the stone.
Lina turned back to it slowly.
The symbols sat still and dark and perfectly ordinary, as though nothing had happened.
She also left the room.
Outside, Alice and Amelia sat together on a wide branch, side by side, watching the forest below. The village hummed quietly around them — the creak of rope bridges, the smell of woodsmoke, children somewhere in the canopy above.
It was the kind of quiet that old friends can sit in without filling it.
Amelia broke it first.
"So Joseph is gone."
"Yes." Alice kept her eyes on the trees.
A pause.
"Those two inside — they're your daughters."
"They are."
Amelia was quiet for a moment. Then, softer: "How does it feel? Being a mother?"
Alice smiled. Small and real. "Responsible. And happier than I've ever been." She glanced sideways. "Why do you ask?"
Amelia looked down at her hands. A little shy, which was not an expression that sat naturally on the chief of a village.
"Because soon I'll find out for myself."
Alice turned to look at her fully. "Amelia."
"A few months yet." Amelia shrugged, but she was smiling.
"That's wonderful." Alice took her hand and squeezed it. "Do you have names?"
"For a boy — Charles. After his father." She paused. "For a girl, I haven't decided."
Alice thought for a moment. "What about Kina?"
Amelia raised an eyebrow. "Kina." She looked at her. "What naming system did you and Joseph come up with exactly?"
"Why not? You're family too."
Amelia laughed — short, warm, the laugh of someone who hadn't expected to today. "I'll think about it." She shifted, the lightness settling back into something more serious. "Where are you going, Alice?"
"Warkuron Valley."
Amelia went still.
"Alice—"
"I know."
"That place is dangerous. Seriously dangerous. It's not a story — the things that live there—"
"I know," Alice said again. Gently. Firmly. "I have three months. Maybe less." She looked out at the canopy, at the light coming through the leaves in long gold columns. "I'll transform, or I'll die from the curse. Either way, it ends." She was quiet for a moment. "I just want to spend whatever time I have with my daughters. Moving forward. Looking for something. I want them to see me try." She paused. "Whatever it costs."
Amelia didn't say anything for a long time.
When she spoke, her voice was careful, like she was holding something fragile. "Promise me something."
"Hmm?"
"Come back. When it's over, come back and name my child."
Alice looked at her. Then she smiled — full and warm and without any sadness in it at all.
"Definitely," she said.
In the corner of the room behind the window, Nina stood with her back to the wall.
She had heard everything.
She didn't move for a while. Just stood there with the sounds of the village around her and her mother's voice still in her ears.
She pressed her lips together, looked at the sky and didn't let herself cry.
Not yet.
The village was different at night.
During the day, it had been busy, practical — people moving with purpose, carrying things, building things, getting on with the business of living. But at night, the urgency dropped away, and something warmer took its place. Fires lit between the trees. Music from somewhere up in the canopy, a simple melody carried on strings. A group of adults were dancing near the central platform, laughing at each other's mistakes. A teacher sat cross-legged on a wide branch with six children around her, telling a story with her hands, their faces tipped upward in the firelight.
Lina and Nina walked through it slowly, not quite part of it, watching.
"Look at them," Lina said quietly.
Nina looked.
"They're happy." Lina's voice wasn't bitter — just observing, the way you observe something from the outside of a window. "They have a thousand years. They'll dance like this a thousand more times." She paused. "We have a few years. Maybe less."
"Stop," Nina said.
Lina blinked. "I was just—"
"I know what you were doing. Stop."
A beat.
"Sorry," Lina said. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Nina gave her a look. "I am not scared of anything."
"I know, I know—"
"Not even death."
"Okay."
"So don't try to scare me with it."
Lina pressed her lips together to keep the smile off her face. "Mm. Our family needs someone brave like you."
"And someone stubborn like you." Nina's voice softened at the edges. "And our father." She looked sideways at Lina. "You remind me of him, you know. More every day."
Lina didn't answer. She just walked alongside her sister and let that sit with her, warm and a little painful in equal measure.
A small voice caught her attention.
"Flowers! Flowers!"
A girl — maybe six years old — was making her way along the path with a wicker basket held in both arms. The basket was full of white blooms, each one shaped like a bell, petals curling gently at the tips. She repeated her call with the focused energy of someone conducting very serious business.
Lina stopped and crouched down. "Are those lilies?"
The girl stopped. Looked at her with an expression of polite confusion. "These are Dan Dan."
"They look like white lilies to me."
"They are Dan Dan." The girl turned toward a nearby stall — a small flower shop built into the base of a tree, warm light spilling through the open front. "Papa! What are these called?"
Her father looked up from behind the counter. He was a broad, gentle-looking man with round glasses that had slid halfway down his nose. He lifted them, peered at the basket, and settled them back into place.
"Dan Dan," he said, with the absolute confidence of a man who had answered this question before.
"Dan Dan," the girl confirmed, turning back to Lina.
"Alright," Lina said. "Dan Dan." She looked up at Nina. "Do you have any money?"
"These are free." The girl held the basket out. "You are guests. Papa said."
Lina took one stem carefully. The petals were very white. Almost luminous. "Thank you," she said, and meant it.
The girl beamed.
Behind the counter, her father had come to the front of the stall. He was looking at Lina with a wide, delighted expression — the same look several villagers had worn that morning, recognition mixed with something close to reverence.
"You're the angel," he said. "From this morning. Here—" He ducked back and returned with a full basket, both arms extended, smiling broadly. "Take more. Please. All of them, if you like—"
He stepped toward her.
The silver spear came from the side.
It moved faster than sight — a streak of cold mana light, completely silent — and hit him in the neck before anyone could speak or breathe or think. The force of it drove him sideways. His glasses flew from his face and hit the ground, and shattered.
He fell.
The basket hit the path. White flowers scattered everywhere.
For one full second, nothing happened. The world had not caught up with itself yet.
Then the girl screamed.
"Papa—"
Nina moved.
She grabbed the girl with one arm and Lina with the other and pulled them both in, one sharp motion, and her free hand came up—
Snap!
The mana dome erupted around them — pale, translucent, a hemisphere of compressed energy solid enough to be heard humming. It sealed just as the second wave arrived.
Above the village, a portal had torn open in the night sky. Dark-edged, wrong-looking, the kind of opening that shouldn't exist. Through it came the spears — dozens of them, silver and glowing, raining down in every direction. Not aimed. Not targeted. Just falling, indiscriminately, the way a storm doesn't choose what it strikes.
The sounds that reached them through the dome were terrible.
Screaming. Running. The crack of spears hitting wood, hitting stone, hitting things that screamed and then went quiet. The village that had been dancing minutes ago was chaos now — people scattering in every direction, falling, dragging each other away from the light.
A spear hit the basket directly. Petals exploded outward in a white burst.
They drifted down through the air and settled in the blood spreading across the ground, and the white, where it touched red, turned red.
Lina stared at them.
She looked up at the sky. At the portal. In the silver rain still pouring through it, each spear was a line of cold light in the dark. The fires that had been warm a minute ago were catching on the wrong things now.
The little girl was still calling for her father.
Her voice was the loudest sound in the world.
Lina's hand tightened around the single white flower she was still holding.