We were back at the Gilded Thistle when the noise found us.
"Areehhhh… little missy was almost kidnapped?"
Madam Rensha, the receptionist inn owner, leaned over the counter, her round face pulled tight with concern as she inspected Yna from head to toe, hands fluttering uselessly as if unsure where to touch.
"Are you hurt? Anywhere bruised? Gods above, you poor thing…"
Yna stiffened.
Then, slowly, she nodded once.
"I am… unharmed."
Her words were careful. Measured. Still imperfect, but worlds better than when we first arrived speaking like a dead langauge herself.
Madam exhaled sharply, relief pouring out of her. She reached out and cupped Yna's cheek like she was handling something fragile.
"Thank the stars. Thank the stars indeed."
Yna blinked, uncertain what to do with the affection, but she didn't pull away.
I watched silently.
Before I could respond, a roar of voices rose from outside—urgent, excited, wrong.
"They're back!"
"The expeditioners are back!"
Chairs scraped. Cups were abandoned mid-drink. People surged toward the door.
Madam frowned. "That's odd… they weren't due until next week."
I already felt it.
That tightening in my chest.
—
We stepped outside.
I had expected banners.
Trumpets.
A victorious march of steel and song—knights returning from the front, cloaked in dust and pride, grasping glory earned through blood.
Instead—
What came down the road was a death procession.
Men were carried in cloth hammocks strung between poles, their bodies swaying with each step like corpses not yet accepted by the grave. Some stared blankly at the sky, eyes wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Others screamed—low, animal sounds dragged from lungs that no longer trusted the world.
One man had no arms.
Another had no jaw.
A cart followed behind them.
Overflowing.
Bodies stacked, limbs tangled together, faces gray and slack. Dried blood flaked off them in sheets as the wheels jolted over stone.
The smell hit next.
Iron. Rot.
Something acrid that burned the back of the throat—the stench of Blight residue clinging to flesh that should have been buried, not paraded.
People froze.
Children were pulled back by horrified parents. A woman dropped the basket in her hands—fruit spilling across the street, apples rolling into blood-streaked puddles.
No one cheered.
No one clapped.
This wasn't a parade.
It was a warning.
"These are… survivors?" someone whispered.
A soldier passed us, half-carried, half-dragged. His eyes met mine for a fraction of a second.
There was nothing in them.
No fear.
No anger.
Just emptiness.
Dead inside.
My hands shook.
"Yna," I said quietly.
She stood rigid beside me, crystalline hair catching the light, eyes wide and unblinking as she took it all in.
"Don't look away," I told her, my voice hoarse. "Face it."
She swallowed.
"This," I continued, forcing the words out, "is what human lives look like after the First Lie."
Another cart rattled by, carrying pieces of men that would never be whole again.
"This is how humanity survived after the age of gods."
Her fingers clenched around her cloak.
"Remember this sight," I said. "Burn it into yourself."
The march continued.
And as it passed, something shattered quietly inside the crowd.
"In this world, Yna," I finished, my voice barely more than breath,"there is no purity."
—
When I was a noble, knowledge had been a weapon.
And I had sharpened it obsessively.
Ehianara was not a single land—it was a fractured world, split into five continents, each bearing nations, empires, city-states, and forgotten ruins. Different cultures. Different power structures.
One shared enemy.
The Blight.
Born from the First Lie, the Blight was not a plague nor a curse—it was a logical contradiction embedded into reality itself. A cancer of the world, spreading where definitions broke down. Land twisted. Life warped. Time stuttered.
Humanity fought it not with hope—but with delay.
Across history, countless purification magics had been engineered. Not cures. Never cures.
Only suppressions.
Barriers. Seals. Rotational cleansing arrays designed to slow the Blight's advance and reclaim land inch by inch, body by body.
And every reclaimed territory was paid for in lives.
We stood on Assembia, near its heart.
At its center loomed the Mythril Empire Capital—a bastion-city engineered not as a seat of luxury, but as a weaponized metropolis. Walls layered with Axiom reinforcement. Entire districts built around containment protocols. An empire that existed solely to fight back.
To endure.
Assembia and Yrith lay side by side in the far east of Ehianara.
Assembia—the throne of Mythril.
Yrith—the seat of Sunspire.
Separated not by sea…
…but by miles of Blight-corrupted land.
Hazardous. Unmapped. Devouring.
I was close.
And impossibly far.
—
The days that followed did not rush past.
They pressed in slowly.
Heavily.
We worked.
Errands at first—delivering parcels, escorting merchants between towns, clearing fallen trees from forest paths warped by low-level Blight seepage.
Yna learned.
She watched how people spoke. How they gestured. How they smiled when uncomfortable.
Her words grew smoother. Shorter. Less ceremonial.
"You're holding it wrong," she told me once, adjusting my grip on a herb cutter.
I stared at her.
"…You've changed."
She blinked. "Is that… bad?"
"No," I muttered. "Just unexpected."
We fought too.
Minor beasts. Blight-touched fauna. Nothing like the dungeon—but enough to test us.
Her magic was terrifying.
Effortless.
She didn't chant. Didn't draw runes. A thought, a twitch of will—and magic obeyed. Healing flowed instinctively. Barriers manifested before danger registered.
Mine was different.
Structured.
Every spell required logic. Engineering. Balance.
On the surface, magic was easier to shape—but costlier. My Axiom wanted to surge unchecked, compressing inside me like an imploding ocean.
I learned to limit myself, maintaining a controlled output to avoid catastrophic backlash.
Staying grounded wasn't a choice.
It was survival.
—
A month passed.
By then, I knew Silia Town.
Its alleys. Its politics. Its proximity to the Mythril Capital. The military supply routes. The rotation schedules of expeditions.
I knew enough.
That night, I sat on my bed, staring at my wrapped hand.
Yna opened the door softly.
"Pardon the intrusion."
She hesitated, then added—more confidently now:
"Elrin. Lunch is ready. Madam is calling us."
I glanced up. "I see. I'll go."
"Make it fast."
I groaned. "…You've gained an attitude."
She tilted her head. "Is that… bad?"
"…We'll discuss it later."
Over lunch, I watched her laugh quietly with Madam—learning recipes, fumbling with utensils, smiling in ways that felt painfully familiar.
Like me and my mother... Like home.
"Yna," I said suddenly, "tomorrow… we leave."
She looked at me calmly. "For the Mythril Capital."
"Yes."
"I will prepare."
I nodded.
But as I stood, something twisted in my chest.
—
That night, she packed.
I knelt beside her.
"Yna… you don't have to come."
She froze.
"This isn't your burden," I said.
Her voice was small. "Did I… trouble you?"
"No," I whispered. "Never."
...Memory surfaced—her crying in her sleep, whispering it hurts, help.
I shouldn't have dragged her into this.
She looked at me steadily.
"I... will never abandon the man who saved my life."
Then, softer—
"You are… family."
The word struck deeper than any blade.
That night, I realized something.
Some journeys don't allow separation.
And so—
Our road to the Mythril Bastion began.