The snowfields seemed to thin when the camp appeared.
Not because there was less white, but because suddenly there was structure to it—shapes rising from the endless flat expanse, smoke rising in thin, dark ribbons into the grey sky, wooden frames and hide tents hunched low like beasts waiting out a storm.
The barbarian camp was not sprawling.
It was dense. Coiled.
Like a closed fist on open tundra.
The riders slowed as they approached, hooves sinking deep into trampled snow that had been packed and repacked by many feet. Bone totems and carved antlers marked the outer line of the camp, their surfaces etched with old runes and red-stained grooves, some fresh, some half-erased by frost.
Kel's mount snorted, breath steaming as they passed beneath a row of hanging charms—strings of teeth, feather, and blackened stone that clacked softly in the wind. The air shifted.
Smoke.
Animal fat.
Iron.
Sweat.
Life.
They entered the heart of the barbarian's world.
Men wrapped in layered furs and rough leather turned their heads as the riders passed. Women with braided hair and arms bare to the cold paused mid-motion—some sharpening blades, some gutting hunted beasts, some weaving tough sinews into bowstrings. Children darted between tents like small shadows, boots kicking up powder, their laughter sharp and brief before they noticed the newcomers.
Kel slid down from the mount with controlled movement, boots landing deep in the churned snow. Landon dismounted behind him with a heavier thud. Reina stepped lightly from her own beast, cloak shifting around her like a shadowed wing.
For a heartbeat, the three of them stood in full view.
Dozens of eyes appraised them.
Men.
Women.
Children.
There was no chorus of surprise. No whispers spreading like fire.
They watched.
Measured.
Then one by one, almost as if a silent signal passed through them, they turned back to their tasks.
As though travelers from distant empire lands were of interest for… exactly one breath.
No more.
Kel watched that with quiet attention.
They've seen many who weren't born here, he thought. Or they've learned early that the world does not pause for strangers.
The leader— the scarred man from before—turned his mount toward the largest structure in camp.
It was not a tent.
It was a low, squat hall built from layered timber and reinforced with thick hides stretched between bone pillars. Symbols were carved into the main supporting beams—worn lines that might have once been sharp, now smoothed by time and touch.
He swung down from his mount with practiced ease.
"You three," he said, glancing at Kel, Reina, Landon. "Come. The Chief should see the ones who walk into storms willingly."
His tone made it clear.
This was not a request.
Kel nodded.
Reina and Landon instinctively fell in step beside and slightly behind him, their hands resting near weapons but not tense. The air around the chief's hall was warmer—not in temperature, but in focus. The camp's peripheral noise muffled here, replaced by the low hum of voices within.
They stepped inside.
The Chief's Hall
The air shifted the moment Kel crossed the threshold.
Outside had been sharp and open; inside felt heavy and contained. Heat from a central firepit radiated through the hall, smoke rising in a controlled column toward a slit in the ceiling. The flames cast light and shadow over the interior—over furs, weapons resting on racks, trophies of bone and claw mounted along the inner supports.
It was not grand.
But it was old.
Lived in.
The ground was covered in layered pelts, worn where many feet had stood. A long, low table sat pushed to one side, its surface bearing scars from knives, cups, and perhaps the weight of tired arms.
And beside the fire, seated on a thick fur, was a girl.
Kel slowed.
Just a fraction.
Her presence pressed.
She was around his age—thirteen, fourteen at most—but her build had the subtle density of someone who had grown with weight in her hands. Her shoulders were strong beneath a sleeveless hide shirt, her exposed arms traced with slender lines of white scars, some old, some newer. A thick fur cloak rested around her shoulders, hanging heavy down her back.
Her hair was white.
Not pale blonde.
White.
Like snow under cold moonlight.
Strands were braided back from her face, decorated with small bone beads and rings of dull metal. Her eyes were a strange, clear grey-blue—cool, and not entirely human in their stillness.
There was a scar across her left cheek, cutting diagonally toward her jaw. It was not deep enough to distort, but prominent enough that no one would miss it.
She looked up when they entered.
Her gaze didn't skip.
She did not start from Kel and move outward.
She captured all three at once.
Then, slowly, her eyes narrowed.
The barbarian leader stepped forward and bowed his head, fist meeting his chest.
"Chief Sera," he said. "As the wind carried—we bring three walkers from the south. One with steady eyes, two who guard his sides."
He introduced them briefly in rough terms. Travelers. Fighters. Mountain-bound.
Sera listened.
Expression unreadable.
Only when he finished did she speak.
Her voice was lower than Kel expected.
Not light.
Not girlish.
It carried the tone of someone used to being obeyed.
"Good," she said. "The mountains watch them now, as they watch us."
The leader nodded.
Then turned, eyes flicking to Kel with a brief, unreadable glint.
Without another word, he stepped back and left the hall, hide flap falling shut behind him.
The room quieted.
Only the fire crackled.
Sera's gaze sharpened.
"Whoever leads among you," she said, "stay."
Her eyes pinned Kel.
"The other two—leave. We do not need more ears than necessary."
Reina's hand curled slightly at her side.
Landon's jaw tightened.
Kel did not hesitate.
He lifted his hand slightly—barely a gesture, but clear to those who knew him.
His fingers moved once.
It's fine.
Reina's eyes flicked to him.
She didn't like it.
But she obeyed.
Landon lingered half a heartbeat longer, then turned wordlessly and followed her.
The flap closed.
Kel and Sera remained.
Firelight danced between them.
Sera
For a moment, neither spoke.
Sera's eyes were on him, unblinking.
Kel met her gaze without flinching, his posture straight, hands relaxed at his sides.
She's young, he thought. But this room bends around her like it does around my father.
Sera finally moved.
Her lips twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Do you plan," she asked, voice slow, "to stand all the way over there and shout at me?"
Kel exhaled once in what might have been the ghost of a dry huff.
He stepped closer.
He didn't rush.
He sat down across from her, leaving only the low fire between them. The warmth brushed his face, highlighting the sharpness of his cheekbones, the faint hollows beneath his eyes.
He rested his forearms lightly on his knees.
No tension.
No laziness.
Balanced.
"Better," Sera said.
She studied him openly now.
As if reading text.
"Three enter my camp," she said. "Two watch you. Stay behind you. Move when you move. So."
Her chin tilted.
"You are their center."
Kel did not deny it.
He simply watched her.
Up close, the white of her hair looked less like aging and more like something drained. Her pupils were slightly too sharp, her skin tone a shade paler than the bronze hue of the other barbarians.
"Why," he asked, "did you send them out?"
Sera's expression didn't change.
"This is talk for leaders," she replied. "Not followers. I do not know if you lead them by choice or by gravity. Either way—we speak as those who decide where feet go."
Her eyes narrowed.
"And I don't want three stories watching mine as it is told."
Kel's lips twitched very faintly.
"You assume I have a story worth telling."
For the first time, the edge of her mouth curved.
Slight.
Sharp.
"You walk toward the mountains with a face that looks like it's already died once," she said. "You have a story."
She shifted, bringing her legs into a more relaxed cross-legged seat. The heavy cloak slid slightly, revealing more of her arms—corded muscle, old bruising.
"My name," she said, "is Sera. Chief of this war-band. Lender of my fire to those who can walk it."
Kel watched her.
"Heral," he replied.
She raised an eyebrow.
He held her gaze.
"For now," he added, almost idly.
Something flickered in her eyes.
Amusement.
Recognition.
"You don't look like a 'Heral,'" Sera said. "But I don't look like a barbarian Chief either. So perhaps we both lie, and both tell the truth."
Her voice dropped.
Less performative.
More… bare.
"You said you go to the mountain," she said. "Not around it. Not past it. Into it."
Kel nodded.
"Yes."
The fire popped, sending a small rain of sparks up the chimney slit.
Sera leaned back slightly, using one arm as support. Her other hand reached up and, without ceremony, untied the front of her fur cloak. She shrugged it off her shoulders, letting it fall.
Kel watched.
Not out of prurience.
Out of quiet, clinical focus.
Beneath the cloak, she wore a sleeveless leather-and-hide top, cut to allow movement. Her back turned slightly as she shifted—and he saw it.
A black mark.
Not ink.
Not paint.
It clung to her skin like something grown there, sprawling across her upper back in a shape that twisted even in stillness. Jagged lines, branching patterns that resembled cracked ice and invasive roots all at once.
Parts of it pulsed faintly—sickly dark, like ink coming alive.
A curse.
Sera's fingers brushed one edge of it absently, in the way someone touches an old scar they know too well.
"I'm not barbarian," she said, tone matter-of-fact. "Not by birth."
She let the words hang, then continued.
"I come from far land. Your empire's maps do not draw it properly. I do not tell you where. Knowing that does nothing for you."
Kel did not press.
Her eyes flashed in brief approval.
"But I will tell you this," she said. "When I was younger, someone promised me power."
Kel's jaw tightened by a fraction.
He knew that script.
"They held something like light in their hand," Sera went on quietly. "Called it a divine draught. Said it would free me from fear. Said I would rise. Said people would listen when I spoke."
Her fingers curled.
The mark on her back flickered.
"They did not say," she continued, voice darkening, "that it would eat me."
She turned fully now, exposing the curse mark plainly to him before pulling the cloak back up around her shoulders.
"Every time I use the power they gave me," she said, "this—" she tapped her back, "—takes something. Life. Warmth. Color. It drinks."
Her white hair gleamed like bone in the firelight.
"This," she added, "is why my hair turned snow when my age said it should still be night."
Kel watched her carefully.
He heard the restraint beneath her words.
Anger, yes.
But also a savage acceptance.
"I did not choose a curse," she said. "I chose strength. The curse came hidden. Like teeth in sweet meat."
She tilted her head.
"You," she said, "walk like someone who has been counting their heartbeats since childhood. Tell me, stranger-not-Heral…"
Her eyes narrowed.
"What hunts you hard enough that you head toward a mountain myth for cure?"
Kel met her gaze.
He could have lied.
He could have wrapped his truth in softer fabric.
He didn't.
"I also carry a curse," he said simply. "More severe than yours."
She did not react outwardly.
But her fingers stilled.
Kel lifted his hand slightly, pressing it lightly against his own chest.
"It takes my life," he said. "Slowly. It strangled my mana. It locked my aura roots. It sealed physical growth. Others called it a death sentence wearing my face."
He spoke steadily.
No bitterness.
Just the cold anatomy of his condition.
"You," he said, watching her, "have power that costs you life whenever you use it. A boost that feeds on you."
His lips curved faintly.
Not quite a smile.
"I have the opposite. A death curse that gives me nothing and takes everything, slowly, in the most painful way it can manage."
Her eyes were sharp now.
Focused.
"And to cure it," Kel continued, "I walk toward these mountains. Because I read—in records older than the empire—that there is a lake in the depths. One that can cleanse any curse carved by hand, spell… or traitor god."
Sera was quiet for a while.
The fire popped again.
Outside, faintly, laughter and shouts from the camp drifted in and out of earshot.
When she finally spoke, her voice had changed again.
Lower.
Almost amused.
"So the myth is not mine alone, then," she said. "Good. I was beginning to feel lonely."
Kel's brows shifted slightly.
"You know of the lake," he said. Not a question.
She nodded.
"I read it in ancient stone-tombs," she replied. "Not here. Before. Long before I came to this camp. Words carved by people who died before your empire even had a name."
She leaned back, eyes drifting to the ceiling briefly.
"They spoke of a place where water remembers what the world forgets. Where curses—" she tapped her back again, "—lose their teeth."
Her gaze snapped back to him.
"You call it a lake," she said. "I call it Scarder. Water that cuts."
Kel's heartbeat slowed.
She knows the same name.
"Do you know where it is?" he asked quietly. "Exact location?"
Sera let out a short, humorless laugh.
"If I knew," she said, "I wouldn't be sitting here listening to the wind drag monsters behind it. I'd be there."
She shook her head.
Snow-white hair shifted, catching the fire's glow.
"The tombs say only this much: it sits behind a door of cold that doesn't melt and within a mountain that wasn't always there."
Kel's eyes narrowed.
Portal. Temporal anomaly. Or phase-layer. Matches the game mechanics…
She studied his expression.
Something like recognition gleamed in her eyes.
"You've read the same things," she said. "Or something close."
He inclined his head.
"Close enough."
Silence stretched between them.
Not hostile.
Weighing.
Measuring.
Two cursed souls, young by years but old by burden, sitting across from one another with a fire between them and a mountain myth above them.
Finally, Sera exhaled.
"I don't know the exact path," she admitted. "Only that heading blindly into the mountain will feed it more bodies than answers."
She paused.
"But I have fragments. Hints. Old routes barbarians won't name to outsiders."
Kel's gaze sharpened.
"And you, Chief Sera of not-here," he said softly, "what do you want in return?"
Her lips slowly curled.
This time, there was a smile.
It was not kind.
It was honest.
"If I share my fragments," she said, "we walk a piece of the road together. Curses side by side."
Her eyes hardened with something fierce.
"If one of us finds that water, the other will know the path exists."
She leaned forward slightly.
"You said you would only tell your truth if mine was honest," she reminded him. "Now I ask you this…"
Her gaze pressed against him.
"Will you walk with me as far as the mountain lets us… or will you try to steal what we both seek and go alone?"
Kel held that question without answering too quickly.
He thought of his father's face in the study.
Of Marine reading his letter with trembling fingers.
Of Reina's quiet resolve.
Of Landon's steady presence.
Of a world that had already written him into its story as a footnote of failure.
He thought of Sera's curse mark.
Of her hair turned white by stolen life.
Of the fact that in this room, he was not the only one trying to renegotiate the terms of existence.
His lips parted.
His answer came out calm.
Certain.
"If you have fragments of the road," he said, "and I have knowledge you don't, then walking together increases both our chances of reaching that water alive."
He tilted his head slightly.
"I am not interested in stealing what I cannot carry out alone anyway."
Sera stared at him.
Then—
She laughed.
Short.
Sharp.
Almost relieved.
"Good," she said. "Then, Heral-not-Heral…"
Her eyes flashed like steel catching ice-light.
"We will see how far two curses can climb before the mountain tries to bury them."
The fire between them crackled.
Outside, unseen, the wind shifted again—blowing colder, harder, from the direction of the peaks.
As if the mountain had heard them.
And smiled.