The decision to take the mountain pass was made in an instant, and we moved just as fast. The Imperial Capital was occupied territory now; to linger was to be discovered by the Demonkin forces.
I’m surprised we haven’t been caught already.
We were slipping through the capital’s outskirts.
With a party composed mostly of Grand Masters and Masters, concealment should have been simple. Even so, the Demonkin presence felt thin, as if the bulk of their army was massing for a different purpose, in a different place.
Am I missing something?
I turned the question over and over in my mind as we walked. Nothing concrete surfaced, only possibilities so remote they felt like fantasy.
…Am I just being paranoid?
I shoved the unease aside and pressed on toward the mountains.
“We’re almost there.”
The Grand Duke’s eyes were sharp as he strode ahead. Just as he’d said, a hidden path emerged from the gloom.
So this is it.
Before us loomed a colossal mountain range, a wall of rock and ice blanketed in blindingly white snow. A bitter wind sliced at us, a gale of invisible blades.
A Grand Master should be able to shrug off a simple chill, but this wasn’t mere cold. It was a force of nature, a cataclysm of frost.
A groan escaped my lips as the cold sank its teeth through my outer coat. The pass was a place where competing currents of arctic air converged into a perpetual storm.
The biting cold, the shrieking wind, the sheer effort of pulling our feet from the deep snow—any one of them could drain the stamina of a lesser warrior.
Here, all three conspired to grind down even a Grand Master. There was a reason the Empire never bothered to garrison this place.
It felt as if all the cold in the North was born in this one place.
I pulled my coat tighter and spoke to the others. “Brace yourselves. A week of hell is about to begin.”
We were on the threshold of the pass, moments from escaping the Demonkin’s grasp, when a shout shattered the silence.
“Humans! Over here!” a Demonkin scout roared, pointing a clawed finger our way.
Despite our concealed Auras…
They must have sensed Hans.
Damn it. The demonic energy must have affected his Aura control.
No time for blame. I broke into a dead sprint and yelled, “Everyone, run!”
Killing them would have been trivial. They were grunts, nothing more.
The problem wasn’t them. It was the crushing weight of the demonic energy I sensed radiating from the palace behind them—a presence so vast, so suffocating, that to face it now would be suicide.
It had to be the Marquis of Jealousy, the one the reports placed in the Imperial Capital.
I never imagined the Third Prince could have changed this much.
The messenger’s report flashed through my mind as I wove an arrow from pure Aura. I loosed it at the pursuing Demonkin and plunged into the mountain pass.
“Gagh!”
“They’re making for the pass! After them!”
A swarm of Demonkin surged forward, their howls echoing behind us. A quiet escape was off the table. Our only choice was to cross the mountains before they could.
Just evading them won’t be enough.
Now that we’d been seen, the Twelve Nobles would be on their way. With our current strength, we couldn’t handle two of them at once. That left only one path forward.
I have to reach the North through this pass before they do. I have to kill the Countess of Slaughter and awaken there.
It was a desperate gamble, but it was the only one we had. The mountain pass would be just as punishing for them, and the main road would take them two weeks longer than our route.
My eyes hardened as I drew on every reserve of Aura in my body.
“Into the mountains, now!”
As I crossed the threshold into the storm, I made a silent vow.
Fourteen days. Within fourteen days of reaching the North, I would awaken my Mindscape.
No matter what it took.
* * *
“…You lost them?”
A voice, sharp with irritation, echoed through the halls of the occupied Imperial Palace.
The speaker was Leo Fortia, the Marquis of Jealousy. The blond-haired boy stood wreathed in a sinister aura that seemed to drink the light from the room.
“Is that what you call a report?” he snapped.
“W-well, my lord, that is…” The Demonkin before him bowed his head, lips trembling. He had expected a reward for the sighting, not an interrogation. “The truth is… our numbers were insufficient—”
SPLAT.
The Demonkin’s head exploded in a spray of black ichor, its body slumping to the polished floor.
Leo clicked his tongue in annoyance and gestured for an attendant.
“D-did you call, my lord?” A human servant girl scurried forward, trembling.
Without a glance, Leo ordered, “Clean this up.”
“Y-yes, my lord!” She nodded frantically and began dragging the corpse away. It would likely end up as feed for the Darkspawn.
Leo ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “What about the pursuit team?” he asked another Demonkin standing guard. “Are they deployed?”
The guard answered in a steady voice. “Yes, my lord. Three divisions are in pursuit through the pass. Five more are advancing north along the main route.”
“Their identities?”
“Unconfirmed. But based on the deceased state of the Demonkin, we believe it was the Divine Archer’s party.”
Leo grew quiet. The Divine Archer. It was enough to send a chill through most of the Demonkin army.
Ask any Demonkin who had slain the most of our kind, and they would name the Grand Duke of Praha.
Ask who was the strongest human alive, and they would spit the name Enoxia, the Battle Fiend.
But ask which human the Demonkin feared the most…
That would be the Divine Archer.
Benvekra. A human who had reached the rank of Grand Master as an archer. A man whose holy power was a natural bane to their kind.
They’d heard he had gone mad after losing his wife, but that was clearly a lie spun by the fools in intelligence.
“Tsk. I should just execute the entire intelligence division,” Leo muttered. “If the Divine Archer was there, then the others with him must be them.”
“…The ones who killed Lord Pepia?”
“Yes. Frostfang Derek and the other two Grand Masters.” Leo’s eyes glinted. “The Tyrant’s heir and the Holy Archer.”
Roxen, who wielded the sword of Lindal, and the man whose arrows were said to be sanctified. They were almost certainly with the Divine Archer.
The only saving grace was their inexperience. They had only recently become Grand Masters; they couldn’t possibly have awakened their Mindscapes yet.
A Grand Master without a Mindscape is an incomplete warrior. Killable.
If so, this was an opportunity. He could pursue them, crush them, and annihilate the entire North in one swift campaign. After them, no human would be left who could stand in their way.
A slow, cruel smile spread across Leo’s face. “Inform the army. All forces, save for a minimal garrison, will march north. The pursuit team will hound them through the mountains. The main army will take the road.”
“…Should I relay this to the Legion Commanders as well, my lord?”
“The Legion Commanders?” Leo sneered. “Ah, you mean the Twelve Nobles. No. I’ll inform Rohan myself. I doubt you want to become one of his playthings.”
“Th-thank you, my lord!” The Demonkin bowed low, relief washing over him.
Leo’s gaze drifted toward the northern window, his smirk widening. The last lights of human resistance were about to be extinguished.
* * *
“Damn it, they’re still on our tail!” Lancelot yelled, his breath coming in ragged bursts.
I glanced back. He was right. The Demonkin pursuit team was a dark stain against the snow, closing the distance.
“Kill them!”
“Their flesh will feed the Darkspawn!”
A pack of howling hounds. On open ground, they would be fodder. But here, in this frozen hell, we couldn’t afford to stop and fight.
The wind tore at our skin like claws. My fingertips were numb, and every step was a battle against the sucking snow. To think this place could grind down the body of a Grand Master… it was truly one of the world’s forsaken wonders.
“Ignore them,” I said, loosing an arrow over my shoulder. “They can’t keep this pace.”
My words were meant as encouragement, but they were also true.
I looked back again.
“Damn it all! What is this cursed place?!”
Even the Demonkin, with their superior physical prowess, were cursing the Northern Mountains.
They had three divisions’ worth of troops, a logistical nightmare in this terrain. Their supply train and rigid formations were only slowing them down.
Our true enemy wasn’t the pack at our heels. It was the mountain itself.
We have to run for another week.
A week. Easy to say, but seven days of constant movement with no proper food or rest was a special kind of torture, especially here.
Hans is at his limit.
It was our third day in the mountains.
Hans, his expert-rank Aura stretched thin, was on the verge of collapse. Any of us could have supported him, but he had stubbornly refused every offer, knowing that if one of us wasted our stamina on him, we might all perish.
He had made it this far on sheer will, but that will was finally failing.
…No other choice.
I slung his arm over my shoulder, taking his weight.
“…Let me go, sir,” he rasped, his eyes hollow but his spirit still defiant.
Honestly, there wasn’t a single sane person in this entire company.
A dry laugh escaped me. “It’s fine. The nature of my Aura gives me a faster recovery rate. Don’t worry about it.”
“…Still,” he gasped, “you’d be better off without me.”
I scoffed. “Who would follow a captain who abandons his own men?”
“…”
“Silence is an answer. We only have to endure for four more days. We’ll make it.”
I reassured him and pushed onward. Still…
“…I can’t imagine how a place like this was ever formed.”
I shook my head, gazing out at the endless snowfields. A realm forged from every conceivable form of cold, a landscape of pure frost. It felt as if time itself had frozen here, each agonizing step taking an eternity.
To think this was created by nature alone. It’s terrifying.
I was marveling at the terrible beauty of it all when a low rumble began, deep and guttural. The sound grew, vibrating through the soles of my boots until it became a deafening roar.
High above, the mountain began to move.