CHAPTER 115

  RIDERS INTO THE NORTH

  The night passed like nothing.

  Hans hadn’t slept. Not for lack of trying—his mind wouldn’t let him. Yesterday’s conversation in the garden kept looping behind his eyes, twisting itself into new shapes, questions, suspicions. He’d almost convinced himself he’d imagined the tone in her voice. Almost.

  Then came the knock.

  He opened the door.

  Reina.

  Not a messenger. Not a steward in her livery. The queen herself.

  He stared. Words refused him. But something was amiss. He could feel the world still as if only the two were breathing in it.

  She didn’t wait for him.

  “You sensed it?” she asked, her voice quiet as velvet stretched taut. “I’m not surprised.”

  Something cold and metallic caught the early light—she tossed it to him. He caught it reflexively.

  An elven medallion. Swan sigil, Clandor’s crest. Meant to be worn at the waist.

  “Dimensional pocket?” he asked, fingers tracing the etched wings.

  She nodded once. “Throw everything you need there and come out.”

  He followed her into the corridor. The silence outside the room was unnatural and it became clear. The world felt... paused. No footsteps. No wind. No sound but theirs. She was using some sort of artefact to freeze time itself.

  Man, I didn’t know Clandor had this type of technology. He thought coming close to her.

  They moved like ghosts through the palace, hallways stretching longer than they should. She led, and he followed, the medallion already warming against his side.

  They emerged into the garden—the garden. The one from yesterday. Where too much had been said and not enough clarified.

  He looked around. “The transportation circle is here?”

  “No.” She stopped walking. “There’s something we need to do first.”

  With a flick of her fingers, space split like parchment. A new path unfurled—quiet, veiled in the scent of wet herbs and old roots. A second garden nested within the first. Hidden. Older.

  The place rumoured to even revive the dead. That’s how much natural treasure it held.

  Hans hesitated. “Is this...?”

  She stepped through. “Clandor’s real treasure. Not the kind we display.”

  He followed.

  I thought it wasn’t real. I underestimated Clandor too much.

  They entered a place unlike any he’d seen. Low trees—some no taller than a child, others withered to bark and bone. Some pulsed with green life. Others looked one breath away from ash.

  A fountain in the centre spilled silver water. It smelled faintly of something sweeter, something stranger.

  “What are these, teacher?” Hans thought he knew about every vegetation, but he seemed wrong.

  “These.” She paused. “These are called soul trees. They grow together with whom they were planted by. The dried ones —their planter is dead—the young ones are of the children’s while the strong ones are of the people in youth. This place houses the mark of everyone important to me. If you somehow die, the soul tree you plant will die with you.”

  “Is—”

  “No, vice versa. Don’t worry. It’s just the place we are going is a bit troublesome. I need to know your alive status to do something if we separate.”

  “Isn’t North just a domain?”

  “No, it’s not just. It houses the holy lands of Clandor—the remnant of day tree rot there. That’s why all the mana surrounding North is sucked by it. We have to be very cautious there. Use mounts for travel, rest in the ruins. It will take time to reach there.”

  “So what am I supposed to do here?”

  “Open the dimensional pocket.” She pointed. “Pull out the thing I’ve stored there.”

  Hans did as instructed. A small almond-like seed but with several layers of magic spells imbued in it. “Are you sure this is just a seed? It seemed more of an artefact.”

  “It’s both.” She made him follow, then the two young trees. “Plant it here.”

  He crouched beside the patch of earth and pressed the seed into the soil.

  The change was instant. The ground drank it in. Time sped. A sprout burst upward, growing before their eyes into a young tree, a bit bigger than its neighbours. Its leaves shimmered faintly—blue-green, touched with silver veins.

  “Is it done?” he asked.

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  Reina had a warm smile throughout. “Yes, it is done. Keep it a secret. I don’t want this to serve as your life indicator for your hunters.”

  He nodded. “Understood.”

  She looked past him, to the edges of the spell that froze the world. “Time’s almost up.”

  She raised her hand.

  Light fractured the air again—this time, the runes of a transport circle blazing to life beneath their feet.

  As it activated, Hans took one last glance at the garden behind them. The new soul tree stood silently, already bending slightly toward its neighbours.

  The circle flared.

  And they were gone.

  Northbound.

  The wind had changed as soon as they crossed the territory—thin at first, like a strand of silk tightening around the throat. Then it settled in their lungs, heavy and dry, little with mana that tasted of dust.

  No welcome. Just silence, and the land watching.

  The hired horses rode slowly, cloaked in brown and grey, blending with the road and the weather. The forest had thinned out by then—what trees remained looked hollowed, drunk on something unnatural. Their branches leaned in strange directions. As if trying to warn not to come closer.

  Reina rode ahead, posture perfect, cloak drawn low over her face. Even so, Hans could see the way people stared when they passed through the outskirts. She didn’t move like a trader they claimed.

  He didn’t either.

  They were too clean. Too poised. Too... untouched and too small-scale.

  People in the North weren’t like that.

  “You draw attention,” she said, not turning.

  “You’re one to talk,” he muttered.

  Her voice was flat. “I’m disguised.”

  “You’re glowing.”

  She didn’t respond, but he caught the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.

  They stopped under a crumbling arch that once might’ve marked a border. The sigils carved into it were eroded—language half-lost to time. The air was colder now, even though the sun was still out. Mana kept leaking in waves, like breath against the back of his neck.

  “How long until Shadow City?” he asked. Feeling almost empty.

  “Three weeks, if the horses live.” She dismounted. Checked her saddle.

  He blinked. “If they live?”

  Reina didn’t answer.

  They moved through back roads, narrow trails choked with thornvine and memory. No sane person lived in these parts. But sanity wasn’t in abundance this far north.

  On the fourth day, the horses began refusing to step near the old stones scattered across the paths—half-buried markers from some forgotten war. Reina let Hans investigate the first. By the fifth one, she told him not to bother.

  “They’re burial stones,” she said. “The land remembers blood.”

  Hans wrapped his scarf tighter, pulling it up to cover most of his face. “You ever get tired of sounding ominous?”

  “I get tired of people not listening the first time.”

  It rained on the sixth night. Not water—something colder, something wrong. The droplets sizzled where they touched his skin. Not burning, but not benign.

  They camped under a half-collapsed watchtower from the Age Before. Hans tried to light a fire. It took two hours and four curses. Everything was hard with receding mana, harder when their artefact refused to work properly.

  Reina sat cross-legged on a slab of stone, cleaning a blade that looked more ceremonial than practical. It was what she had lent to Hans before.

  “You ever been this deep into the North before?” Hans asked.

  “Many times. They were once my family too. The former queen still lives there with her precious son. It’s their job to protect and serve the remnant of the day tree.”

  “And?”

  She looked up at him. “Hence called the holy lands.” The firelight caught the edge of her face—sharp and tired and ageless.

  Realising his skill was deteriorating, he shifted. “So... do we have a plan for not dying?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Don’t act like a child.”

  On the ninth day, a shadow followed them.

  Hans didn’t see it at first, but the horses started acting strange. Skittish. Quiet. Staring off into the woods too long. Reina kept her hand near her belt.

  They didn’t stop that night. Rode straight through until morning.

  “You saw it, right?” he asked, his voice dry from the wind.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something old,” she said. “Something that remembers me. Or specifically my blood.”

  He swallowed. “Still following us?”

  “No.”

  A pause.

  “...Because it gave up?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t elaborate.

  By the second week, he had stopped asking if they could use magic.

  The answer had come too clearly three days before—when he’d tried to use a basic ward against the wind and ended up vomiting blood.

  The North twisted spellcraft. Fed it back wrong.

  “Is it like this for everyone?” he asked once, when they camped in a dried riverbed.

  He paused, waiting. For a reply that didn’t come. “You told me.” He insisted. “Mana won’t work here, and it turns out to be true. What happens if someone attacks us? We will be powerless—”

  “Yes, so will they.” She said in a sinister tone similar to his human form. “But for not long. The moment we touch holy lands, everything will become normal.”

  Reliving it not fully, he unwrapped it. Dried meat. Hard as stone, but edible.

  “Then why is no one here?” he asked. “This land should be full. Without mana... someone should’ve conquered it.”

  “They tried.”

  “And?”

  She looked out over the broken hills, toward the distant shimmer of something that might’ve been Shadow City.

  “They didn’t come back. This is the domain of unorthodox. They don’t wait for the judge; they execute on the spot.”

  One night, after narrowly avoiding a collapsing bridge made of bones—literal bones—Hans sat beside her under a canvas tarp, soaked and shivering.

  Reina handed him a flask. “Drink.”

  He did. It burned.

  “What is this?” he choked.

  “Whatever kept me alive the first time I came here.”

  Hans stared at the flask, then at her.

  She looked thinner in this light. Not weak, but worn. As if the land itself was taking something from her. Slowly.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”

  He nodded.

  A long silence passed. Rain tapped the tarp like fingers.

  Finally, she said, “You remind me of my son.”

  Hans blinked. “Riftal?”

  “—Yes— I also feel bad for him. Shadow family ambitions started to show colours when he was born. Allynna might’ve felt my presence growing up, even if it was distant but not my son—circumstances had taken him away—I didn’t have the strength to fight the whole world.”

  The wind howled. Somewhere in the trees, something moved that shouldn’t have.

  She didn’t say anything else.

  Neither did he.

  They just sat and Hans chugged whatever was in that flask.