Far from the Flora town, a huge castle was surrounded by cliffs. Built directly into the steep cliffs was not just a fortress; it was a sanctuary. Multiple waterfalls cascaded down the rock face, supplying the city with water and lending a constant, soothing rhythm to life within its walls. A massive stone bridge, heavily fortified and lined with torches, served as the main entrance, connecting the citadel to the outside world and spanning the deep chasm below.
It was a fortress. It was also, in every way that mattered, a sanctuary.
And at the moment, its lord was somewhere else entirely.
Lord Krioxious stood on the high balcony, hands resting on the stone railing, looking at the sky.
It was doing that thing it did in the hour after dawn — the gradient shifting slowly between deep cyan and living green, the colours bleeding into each other at the edges like ink dropped into water.
"My lord." His advisor, Dameta, stood a respectful distance behind him. Patient. Watching. "Are you sad?"
A pause. The waterfalls kept their rhythm below.
"No," Krioxious said.
He didn't elaborate. Dameta didn't push.
Then boots on stone — quick, purposeful. An Order member appeared in the balcony doorway, slightly breathless, back straight with the discipline that didn't break even when the news was bad.
"My lord." The member's gaze went briefly to Dameta, then back. "The Bennet family has left Flora Town. They crossed the boundary before dawn."
Dameta was very shocked.
"Find them!" Dameta's voice dropped to something controlled and precise. "Send soldiers. Quietly — I don't want the rest of the town to know yet. Go."
"For our lord." The member turned and was gone.
Dameta stood for a moment in the space the messenger had left behind. The waterfalls continued. Krioxious had not moved. His gaze was still fixed somewhere in the gradient between cyan and green, as though he hadn't heard, or had heard and decided not to care.
But his hands had tightened on the railing. Just slightly.
Dameta turned to leave. At the threshold, he paused, not quite looking back.
If even one family breaks, the others will follow. One act of hope is more contagious than any course. And hope, for these people, will only make the ending worse.
He left the thought unspoken. The lord already knew. He always did.
The balcony was quiet except for the water and the wind.
Krioxious stayed.
Far from the city in a forest that had no name on any map they'd seen was the kind of place that made you believe the world was larger than anyone had told you.
The trees were enormous — not tall in the way city towers were tall, but wide, sprawling, their roots breaking the surface of the ground in great arching waves before plunging back down.
It was very quiet. Very still.
On a branch roughly thirty feet up, Lina was deeply, completely asleep.
She was spread out with one arm hanging off the side, her cheek pressed against the bark, her black feathers long since dissolved, and her wings nowhere to be seen. At some point during the night, she had pulled a handful of leaves over herself as a blanket. It had not worked especially well.
"Lina." Nina crouched on the branch above her, poking her shoulder. "Lina, wake up."
Nothing.
"Lina."
A sound that might have been a word, or might have been a complaint, or might have been both.
"I've been awake for an hour," Nina said. "The sun is up. Get up."
One eye opened. It assessed Nina with profound suspicion. Then it closed again.
"Lina—"
"I'm up," Lina said, without moving.
"You are not—"
"I'm up. I'm thinking. It looks the same from the outside."
"Lina! Nina!" Alice's voice floated up from somewhere below, warm and unhurried. "Food is ready!"
Both of them went still.
Nina straightened slowly. "Food?"
Lina was already sitting up, leaves falling off her in every direction, fully awake in the way that only the prospect of a meal can achieve.
They dropped from branch to branch in quick succession and landed in the clearing below, where Alice had set up a small fire on a flat stone — tidy, efficient, the kind of fire that meant she'd been awake long before either of them and hadn't wanted to disturb them. A small pan balanced over the heat, and the smell rising from it was deeply, immediately familiar.
Nina stared. "Mama, where did you get food?"
"These are fried mushrooms," Alice said, with the casual confidence of someone who has never considered that producing breakfast in a nameless forest before sunrise might require an explanation.
"Mushrooms!"
The word came out of Lina with the full enthusiasm of someone who had completely forgotten, for one bright moment. She dropped to the ground beside the fire with an expression of absolute delight, reaching immediately for the Mushrooms.
Alice moved it just out of reach. "Hot."
"I know it's hot."
"Then act like it." But she was smiling. She ladled three portions onto flat pieces of bark she'd stripped and shaped into something roughly resembling plates, and handed them out one by one.
They ate in the green morning light with the forest quiet around them and the distant sound of water somewhere deeper in the trees. Nobody talked. The mushrooms were good — earthy and soft, a little charred at the edges, seasoned with whatever Alice had found growing nearby.
Nina was looking at her mother. "Mother, can I ask you a question?"
"Mm. What?" Alice didn't look up from her food.
"Where are we going?"
A pause. Alice tilted her head slightly — not evasive, just redirecting. "Only Lina knows."
Both of them looked at Lina.
Lina had been in the middle of scraping the last traces of mushroom from the bark plate. She set it down.
"Warkuron," she said. "We're going to find the Stone of Warkuron. Whatever it takes — that's where the cure is."
The forest was quiet for a moment.
"Lina." Nina's voice came out measured, the way it always did when she was working very hard not to sound like she was losing patience. "Warkuron is a story. A children's story — the kind Papa used to tell before bed. If it were real, if the stone actually existed and could actually cure this curse—" She stopped. Gathered herself. "Why didn't our ancestors go looking for it? They had mana. They had wings. They had generations to try. Why did they all just... accept it?"
The question sat over the fire like smoke.
Lina looked at her sister. "I don't know," she said simply. "But I believe Papa. He believed in it. That's enough for me."
Suddenly, Nina senses an unknown presence.
She said nothing further.
Suddenly, a red crystal arrow — shaped to a razor edge and humming faintly with stored mana — tore through the bushes and cut the air between them with a sound like a breath being cut short.
Nina's hand shot up.
The mana shield materialised between the arrow and Alice in a fraction of a second — a pale translucent wall that shattered the arrow on contact, sending crystal fragments spinning into the undergrowth.
Three heartbeats of silence.
"Who's there!" Lina was on her feet, wings half-manifested, eyes scanning the tree line.
Alice was already moving.
She snapped her fingers — one clean, practised motion — and spoke the word quietly, the way you say something you've said a thousand times before.
"Agulha."
The ground responded.
From the soil around them, dozens of tiny mana spheres pushed upward — dark as ink, no larger than raindrops, hovering in a loose constellation. They oriented themselves toward Alice's extended hand like compass needles finding north.
She turned her palm toward the tree line. Toward the direction the arrow had come from.
The spheres elongated. Stretched. Narrowed to fine, terrible points — and then launched, silent and fast as thought, threading between the trees in a tight formation.
Nothing.
The person moved — fast enough that the needles found only air and bark, fast enough that even Alice's tracking was a half-second behind. Branches shifted. Shadow crossed shadow. Wherever the attacker was, they were good.
Alice's eyes narrowed. She shifted her hand — calculating, not panicking. Adjusting the angle. Leading the movement rather than chasing it.
She waited one beat.
Then she redirected her hand.
A few other noodles successfully hit the man.
Thwk. Thwk. Thwk.
Then silence.
Lina stared at the tree line. Her voice had gone very quiet. "Mama, do you kill him?"
"He just paralysed." Alice was already lowering her hand, rolling her wrist like she was shaking out a cramp. "A few needles in the legs and shoulder. He'll feel it for a while, but he won't die from it." A brief pause. "Not from that, anyway."
"Mm." Alice stood over him with her arms folded, unmoved.
Then the hunter's eyes opened.
He blinked twice — the slow, confused blink of a man returning to consciousness while paralysed from the waist down. His gaze drifted upward and found Alice's face.
He stared.
The forest was very quiet.
"...Am I dead?" he said.
Nobody answered.
"Are you an angel?" His voice had taken on a reverent, slightly unfocused quality, like a man speaking from inside a dream he didn't want to leave. "Is the Lord sent you to take me to heaven? You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. The most beautiful thing I have ever imagined. Will you marry me?"
Nina kicked him in the head.
Not hard enough to cause genuine damage. Hard enough to make a point.
"She is my mother."
"Ow—"
"Why did you shoot an arrow at my mother? Did you want to kill her? Who sent you?" She grabbed him by the collar and hauled his upper half off the ground, which was impressive given that the lower half wasn't cooperating. Her face was approximately four inches from his.
The hunter blinked at Nina. Then looked past her at Alice again. Then back at Nina. He appeared to be doing mathematics.
"...She's your mother?" He sounded genuinely astonished, as though this were the most improbable information he had received today, which was saying something given that he was currently paralysed in a forest.
"Yes."
"Is she—" He seemed to hear himself. Seemed to decide to continue anyway. "Is she single—"
Lina hit him.
Not a kick — a proper series of rapid punches to whatever part of him she could reach, delivered with the focused aggression of someone who has been awake for less than an hour, has not had nearly enough mushrooms, and has been shot at before breakfast.
"How — are you — still talking — about this—"
"Sorry, sorry—" He was attempting to shield his face with the arm that still worked. "I'm sorry — I lost my senses — I genuinely lost the ability to think normally — this is not typical behaviour for me—"
"It had better not be!"
"Lina." Alice's voice was calm, patient, and final.
Lina stopped. Breathing hard. Fist still raised.
"Why did you attack us?"
"Training," he said quickly. "For the Chief's Festival. Hunting competition. The target — there was movement in the bushes and I—" A pause. "I may have been aiming before I was fully certain of what I was aiming at."
"You shot at my mother," Nina said.
"Southwoult Town," Alice asked. Not a question — a test.
"Yes, if you are good people. No, if you are bad people," the puzzled hunter said, scared by her question.
"You are perfect for us, we need a stupid like you?" she said with an evil smile. She had an idea to get shelter.