CHAPTER 116

  WHAT THE NORTH KEEPS

  As the journey continued, the road had vanished completely.

  There were no more signs of trade or travel. No broken wagons. No rusted markers or forgotten campsites. Just wind, dry moss, and stone. Sometimes Hans thought he saw ruins in the distance—shapes that looked like towers or temples. When he blinked, they were gone.

  “Are we lost?” he asked.

  Reina didn’t answer.

  He almost asked again, but the look she gave him silenced the question in his throat. Not anger.

  Not even annoyance.

  Worry. Rare on her face. But unmistakable.

  They found shelter in a ravine lined with ash-coloured trees that dripped sap like blood. The horses refused to go further, so they tied them to stone outcroppings and climbed down.

  Reina led them beneath a low overhang of rock and broken roots. It wasn’t a cave. It wasn’t anything natural. But it would do.

  Hans had just sat down when he felt it—pressure, like something enormous had just stepped into the world without a sound.

  He looked at Reina. Her eyes were closed, fingers moving subtly over the blade at her side. Not drawing it. Not yet. But listening.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Quiet.”

  That’s when the smell came. Sweet at first. Like honey. Then it curdled into rot.

  Hans gagged.

  Above them, the ash-trees trembled.

  Then he saw it.

  Something massive, slithering through the mist beyond the ravine. Half-shadow, half-form. It moved like it didn’t care about space or time or logic. Like it had once been a beast and had forgotten the shape.

  Its mouth was wrong. So were its eyes.

  Reina didn’t flinch. Just pulled Hans down beside her and wrapped a warding band of something unnatural around his wrist.

  “No talking. Breathe through your mouth.”

  Hans obeyed. Every instinct in his body screamed to run, to scream, to do something. But he stayed still. Frozen beside her like a second shadow.

  The creature passed overhead, sliding across the rocks like smoke wearing skin. For one terrible second, its head turned.

  Hans didn’t know how long it looked at them—if it looked at them.

  Then it moved on.

  Silence returned, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was aftermath.

  She finally spoke, voice quiet and cold.

  “A Forgotten.”

  Hans wiped sweat from his forehead. “What... what does that mean?”

  “Something that wasn’t meant to live. But does anyway.”

  He breathed out slowly. “Would it have killed us?”

  “No.” She looked away. “It would’ve remembered us.”

  They didn’t sleep that night.

  They barely spoke.

  When dawn broke—gray and sluggish—they climbed out of the ravine and found the horses still alive. Shaking, but alive. Hans whispered a thank you to no one in particular.

  As they rode, Reina broke the silence. “You handled it well.”

  “Well, I was totally not terrified.”

  “That’s not the same as panicking.”

  Hans glanced over. The existence was something that even surpassed an Ancient’s presence. Something archaic. Something out of its time.

  Reina’s eyes, on the other hand, were on the path, but something behind them had shifted. She looked... proud.

  It made him sit up straighter.

  “I’ve trained worse,” she added.

  “You’re such a comforting teacher.”

  “If you wanted comfort, you should’ve stayed in the south.”

  “Was that an option?”

  “No.” That earned him a look. Dry. Almost amused.

  Almost.

  On the next day, it snowed black ash.

  They passed a village—burned, long ago. The corpses were gone, but the fear had seeped into the stones. There was mana, but it was too corrupted to be accepted in.

  Hans shivered.

  “I can’t imagine growing up in this,” he said.

  Reina didn’t speak.

  Then, after a pause: “You get used to not looking at the sky.”

  Hans glanced up. The clouds above churned like bruises.

  They made camp inside what remained of a chapel. Its altar had been defaced with claw marks and broken icons. Someone had scrawled a prayer onto the wall in dried blood. Hans inherently knew many languages, but this wasn’t one of them. He didn’t ask her to translate.

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  That night, Reina cooked. A thin stew from dried roots and bone broth.

  He watched her hands as she worked. Not believing himself. She could’ve been anyone, he thought. A mother in a village. Someone’s common wife. But the way she carried herself—the silence, the constant calculation—told a different story. She wasn’t born for normal life.

  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t become queen?” he asked.

  She stirred the pot. “Do you?”

  “I’m not the queen.”

  “You're something now.”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I didn’t choose any of this.”

  She handed him a bowl. “No one chooses this. It’s the only path for people like me.”

  They sat beside the fire, the walls crumbling around them, the wind howling through broken stained glass.

  Reina stared at the last crust of bread in her hand, half-chewed, then asked, too casually: “So, Theodred. Do you remember any of your parents? You must’ve some memories, right?”

  Hans looked up from the fire. He didn’t know what made him speak.

  “No, I only heard about one.” He said, “My father, for some, he was a godsend opportunity but for some a devil serving the evil. He bit more than he could chew and choked on it.”

  Hans expected her to murmur something—something soft to dress the wound. She didn’t.

  “Who knows,” she responded. Her usual non-comforting reply. “Maybe he could’ve been a great father. Don’t think poorly of people who birthed you, Theodred. All you have is because of them.”

  It hit harder than she could’ve known— because the irony twisted inside his gut like a knife. The woman handing him the bread, the one somewhat consoling him, was also the one who had drawn the blue across his father.

  He took the bread anyway. Her fingers brushed his wrist. Deliberately or not, but her hand lingered a little too long against his wrist.

  “Sleep well.”

  He did. Fell into the dirt like it was a feather mattress in some golden chamber of youth.

  They were still a week from Shadow City. And the North was only beginning to remember them.

  The landscape changed as they rode. The hills burned out into twisted stone, blackened and cold under the open sky. No birds. No echoes. Just the crunch of hooves and the whisper of dead mana clinging to the air like cobwebs.

  Hans pulled his cloak tighter. “So,” he said, what he was curious about for some time. “What is this place? It feels dreary here?”

  Reina didn’t look at him. She just pointed. “Here?” she asked. “ Remember the story I told you about the birth of mana?”

  “Yes.” Nodded Hans nodded.

  “This is where it all began. The birth of mana. Where forces of the Day and Night collided.”

  “Wasn’t that a myth? It usually is, right?”

  “We don’t remember, that doesn’t mean it never happened.” She responded. “You are standing on the very proof of it.”

  Hans looked down. This was the history he didn’t remember, and neither Dietrich, who lived through countless times, ever told him.

  Every time he asked for some meaning of his dreams, Dietrich just shrugged him off, saying, when the times and need come, he will understand.

  Hans was starting to hate that answer.

  “So what should I expect in Shadow City?” he asked, galloping right beside her.

  “Not much of civilians. No nightfall and abundance of mana—so much that you could get intoxicated.”

  “I mean—the level of threats, teacher.”

  “Oh,” she mused, “a knife at your throat in every passing second.”

  “Wonderful! That’s just the way I like it.”

  The city crested the horizon like a scar carved into the world—high white walls, polished obsidian gates, and no sign of dusk despite the hour. He felt it before he saw it: the rush. His aura surged back into his limbs like warm blood after a frostbite. Even his horse lifted its hooves lighter.

  “You feel that?” Reina asked.

  He didn’t answer. He just rose, hovering a few inches above his saddle, grinning like a fool. The horse bolted ahead, drunk on shared power, but their short sprint came to a halt as they came to the city’s massive doors.

  Reina drew her blade. Light shimmered off the runes carved deep into its metal. The gates groaned, then opened without resistance.

  It was supposed to be twilight of dusk, but as the creak of gates turned wide, Hans could see a brighter day inside.

  Hans squinted. “You weren’t kidding about the whole no-night thing.”

  “Here,” she said, stepping forward, “lies the holy lands of Elves, the remnant of the Day tree and the gateway to the most powerful spirit world.”

  He raised a brow. “So… do you report to the Shadow Family now or—?”

  “I’m still the Queen.” Her voice had edges.

  “Figures,” Hans muttered, smirking. “Where to next?”

  She didn’t answer.

  They left the horses at the gate, and on foot they travelled to the centre, where the castle that stood for centuries was. But the path to the centre was littered with broken statues and half-grown roots—and remnants of magic too stubborn to die.

  His eyes fell on the castle: black stone, old as war, its towers cracked by time and still defiant.

  “This was supposed to be the royal palace of time before,” Reina explained. “But our destination is not exactly that.”

  When they came close to it,

  An annoying presence greeted them. It was the usual blond-haired elf, a bit muscular on the sides. Radiating an aura unconsciously. A warlord. Hans had done the homework. He knew every ranked knight by name.

  Martys Clandor.

  The man snickered.

  “I’m still your queen,” Reina said flatly. “Whether you like it or not, brother. Didn’t our mother ever teach you manners—”

  “Oh, I taught him.” The interruption came smooth as poison.

  A woman stepped into the light—elegant, braid-haired, with eyes like frostbite. If age had touched her, it had done so gently. But it was clear who she was.

  She continued akin to a poisoned tongue. “Just not to show respect to those who don’t deserve it.”

  Hans blinked. Yikes. I thought my family was a bit over the top, but hers. He glanced at her. Hers is terrific.

  He expected Reina to fire back. She didn’t. She just stood there, silent. Like every word thrown at her had some sense—or maybe she had made mistakes deserving it.

  Hans clenched his jaw. He wanted to speak. To cut in. But for once, he knew better not to speak in someone’s matter.

  “If you had your fill, mother,” Reina said at last. “I’m going to the spirit world. You agreed. Or do I have to strong-arm my way inside?”

  “I’d prefer the second option, sister. I’d prefer a war,” Martys said, grinning. “Let’s do this properly. I’ll take the throne by blood.”

  Reina turned to her mother. “You want him to rule? He’ll burn what’s left of our land.”

  “Mother!” Martys snapped, petulant.

  The Queen-Mother touched his shoulder with all the affection of someone coddling a favourite child.

  That’s a grown-ass man. Geez. I don’t want to fight Clandor under this sissy.

  Hans almost let his emotions out, but the former queen put her words before him.

  “You drove away your sister,” she blamed. “You made our land split—you even failed to kill that abomination. Martys should’ve gone to kill that bastard—yet you insisted on doing yourself. And now look. He’s still alive. Still walking.”

  Hans blinked. Me? He thought. Are they talking about me?

  He understood he was the topic, but the context was going a foot above his head.

  He glanced at Reina, who hadn’t moved.

  “I kept this world together with everything I had,” she whispered.

  “You only have two months left to abdicate,” Martys inserted, his voice bright with cruelty. “And don’t even think of passing your power to your daughter. I’d rather not kill my niece. Incompetence in the children is what we agreed to justify abdication. This thing,” he pointed at Hans. “That’s only far my generosity goes, sister.”

  Reina’s fist trembled at her side.

  Looking at this unfolding, Hans was surprised and a bit shocked. He had never thought he could see her this submissive.

  Man, nothing lasts forever. I thought she would never bow to anyone. But her weakness is obvious, and this bastard is exploiting it—her children. Even I don’t go this low—I think so. He doubted the last part, but most of that was correct.

  When Hans was struggling in his inner thoughts, Martys closed the distance in a split second, leaned close, and his breath was rancid with confidence. “I’ll correct that mistake of yours first. As the new king.”

  Her eyes met his, steeled resolve. “This isn’t the past, Martys. We’re not superior to Parv anymore.” She warned. “Their heir isn’t soft. He won’t negotiate. He’ll gut you and wear your insides as a trophy.”

  Martys smirked. “You sound proud?”

  She turned her back. “You’re welcome to test him. Come on, Disciple. Let’s leave these delusional people in their dreams.”