Nightingale had completely lost track of how long she had been unconscious, but upon regaining consciousness, the harsh reality hit her immediately: her wrists were firmly tied to a wooden pillar.
The same relentless restraint bound her waist and ankles, fixing her to the stake with such brutality that any movement was useless. She writhed, applying all the strength of her muscles in an attempt to break free, but the tightness of the ropes kept her in a state of almost absolute paralysis.
Her next instinctive reaction was to call upon her magic.
However, when trying to access that familiar reservoir of energy within herself, she found only a cold emptiness; the connection to her abilities seemed to have been severed. She was isolated from her own magical essence, making her, in fact, a defenseless prisoner.
Looking down to examine her own body, she understood the reason: hanging around her neck rested a prismatic, translucent stone.
— "I see you have finally awakened." — Cara's voice echoed through the room even before she approached. Walking slowly toward the prisoner, the leader of the witches stared at her. — "What did you think of my paralyzing poison? To be frank, I harbored grandiose hopes for you, Nightingale. However, it is a pity to see that you have failed miserably to meet my expectations."
— "..." — Initially, words escaped Nightingale's mouth. She had to pull air forcefully into her lungs before firing back, her voice heavy with disappointment and revulsion. — "You hid a God's Stone of Retaliation. Cara, are you even aware of what you are doing?"
That stone was, in its essence, the main tool of oppression used by the Church to hunt and chain witches, and there was her former mentor, using the exact same artifice to subjugate her, equating herself to the cruel clerics! What made the situation even more unpalatable was the apathy on the faces of the other sisters around them. They watched the scene with an icy indifference, as if Nightingale's humiliation were the most natural thing in the world.
Damn it, Nightingale's mind screamed in despair, don't you realize you've turned into the exact scum that we witches swore to hate?!
— "This is merely an instrument. A useful tool to discipline rebellious girls who refuse to follow the rules." — Cara countered, her tone devoid of any empathy. — "And you, Nightingale, have proven to be someone who cries out for punishment. Or... Perhaps I should call you by your true name, Veronica? A girl born in the cradle of nobility, who ended up falling to the status of a witch, but who, deep down, never stopped scheming ways to crawl back to the top of the social scum."
— "I have no idea what you are insinuating!" — Nightingale retorted, her eyes flashing.
— "You are a profound disappointment." — Cara shook her head, letting out a dry, harsh laugh. — "When Wendy rescued you from the clutches of those aristocrats, I was convinced that your loyalty to the Witch Cooperation Association would be unshakable, but look at your actions now! Just when we are one step away from discovering the legendary Holy Mountain, you show up trying to sabotage our purpose!" — Cara paused, her mocking smile widening. — "Trying to convince our sisters to hand themselves over to a Prince? Noble captivity has corrupted your soul so much that servility has become part of you. Apparently, you cannot stand the thought of living without licking a master's boots, or worse... Your plan was to sell us like cattle to the nobility, bargaining our lives in exchange for a title and a life of luxury for yourself!"
— "Absolutely everything I did was with the well-being of my sisters in mind!!" — Nightingale swallowed the fury that threatened to overflow. Screaming at a fanatic wouldn't change her situation, so she forced her voice to sound as controlled as possible. — "My only wish is that none of us have to die of cold or pain on the day of their awakening. I want them to be able to live in peace, without the daily anguish of not knowing where they will get their next meal or a warm coat; I never wanted to get in the way of your plans, Cara. But our sisters deserve the sacred right to choose their own path. Border Town is undergoing an evolution; I even brought the blueprint of the steam engine to prove it! It is a device capable of running on its own, with a strength that seems to have no end. With this invention, the water flooding the mines can be extracted mechanically, sparing people from that exhausting and deadly work!"
Mockery took over Cara's features.
— "Is this nonsense what you're talking about?" — With a disdainful gesture, she pulled a parchment cylinder from a nearby pile and brutally unrolled it, displaying it to the crowd. — "Even if I don't understand the pathetic scribbles of this drawing, what person in their right mind would believe that a pile of dead, cold iron can come to life and operate on its own, as if it had a soul? Do you really take us for a bunch of naive children?"
Giving no time for answers, Cara marched over to the brazier heating the room and threw the blueprint directly onto the crackling embers.
— "NO!!" — Nightingale's scream tore from her throat, laden with useless despair. She could only watch, her eyes wide and her heart sinking, as the blueprint that represented the hope of a better future writhed in the flames, turning into nothing but gray ashes and dust.
.
.
.
Outside the cave, the world was a relentless white hell.
William was crouching behind a cluster of ice-covered rocks, his arms crossed over his chest in a desperate attempt to conserve what little heat he still had left.
The wind howled through the leafless trees of the forest, carrying with it snow crystals that cut the exposed skin of his face like tiny glass blades. Every breath he exhaled formed a dense cloud of steam that quickly dissipated in the gale. It was a cold he wasn't used to; a cold that penetrated not only through the layers of wool and leather he wore, but seemed to settle directly into his bones, making his movements slow and painful.
He rubbed his gloved hands together, the sound of the stiff leather scraping sounding muffled under the noise of the storm. His eyes were glued to the dark entrance of the cave, a black hole carved into the base of the mountain that seemed to swallow any light that dared to approach.
Why is she taking so long?
The question hammered in his mind, repetitive and agonizing.
William tried to mentally calculate how much time had passed since Nightingale had silently slipped into that darkness. Twenty minutes? An hour? Two? The problem with that hostile environment was that the cold distorted the senses.
The sharp pain in his extremities made every second of inertia feel like a prolonged punishment, while the tension of not knowing what was happening inside accelerated his heart to an uneven rhythm.
Nightingale was agile, stealthy, and possessed the ability to hide in the Mist. She should have gone in, located Wendy, delivered the message to her other sisters, and come out.
It was a simple infiltration mission, a quick conversation. However, she was still inside.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the snow accumulate on his eyelashes.
William knew what Nightingale's biggest flaw was: her deep emotional connection with those witches. She considered them sisters, and because of that, she often lost her grip on tactical reality. She didn't possess an adequate sense of time for a high-risk operation.
It was almost comical, if it weren't tragic; sometimes, it seemed that Nightingale lived at a different pace. Like in those old stage plays or those illustrated stories—which the youth from his past life would call anime—where characters stopped the world around them to give long speeches about their feelings, ideals, and worldviews, completely ignoring that the clock kept ticking and danger kept lurking.
She didn't have the malice to understand that the time for dialogue is also the time when the enemy prepares the trap.
Did she forget what I said? He thought, anxiety churning his stomach.
Before she left, William had been categorical. He held her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes, warning her of the imminent danger. "Cara is no longer the understanding leader you knew," he had said. "Despair has transformed her. She is cornered, paranoid, and obsessed with the legend of the Holy Mountain. Anyone who opposes that vision will not be treated as a dissenting sister, but as a traitorous heretic, so do not lower your guard, under any circumstances."
But Nightingale had that stubborn smile.
That unshakable belief that truth and reason would prevail if she could just explain everything with an open heart. She believed in the intrinsic goodness of Cara and Wendy.
Did she end up lowering her guard, getting caught by Cara?
The image of Nightingale being taken by surprise began to form terrifyingly in William's mind.
He knew the defensive capabilities of the witches' camp, knew that Cara was ruthless, and what if Nightingale had walked in, confident, stepped out of her Mist to speak openly, only to be met with hostility? Worse yet... What if Cara had her hands on some weapon of the Church? Like a God's Stone of Retaliation? The thought made William's blood freeze colder than the outside wind.
If Nightingale lost her magic, she would be just an ordinary girl in the middle of a camp of hostile opponents. She would be defenseless, tied up, and perhaps already being attacked by Cara.
He reached for the hilt of his weapon, feeling the frozen metal through his glove. The primal urge of his entire being was to stand up, draw his weapon, and invade the cave.
He had training, he had the element of surprise of being armed with technology that those witches couldn't even comprehend. He could carve a path, create chaos, rescue her, and flee into the blizzard.
But, just as his muscles contracted to initiate the movement, rationality, cold and cruel, pulled him back down to the ground.
He was apprehensive and, once again under hypothetical circumstances, completely undecided.
Invading the cave was not just a matter of shooting and running.
The politics and the future of all of Border Town depended on what was happening at that exact moment inside the mountains. Prince Roland needed some of the witches who were in there, even if for the future.
He needed them to come of their own free will, to trust that Roland's domain was a sanctuary, not a new prison.
If William went in shooting, what would the witches see? They would see an armed man, a lackey of a powerful noble, invading their secret refuge with aggression and violence. That would confirm all the fears, all the paranoias that Cara was likely instilling in them.
He would become living proof that Nightingale was a traitor who brought the army of men to subjugate the witches.
And what if... What if the dialogue was working?
This was the part that paralyzed him.
What if, despite her delay, Nightingale was in there, right now, convincing Wendy? What if the delay was merely due to the difficult questions the other witches would be asking? Changing the mindset of an oppressed group took time. It required tears, prolonged arguments, proof, and guarantees. If he went in to "check," he wouldn't be a hero; he would be the intruder who destroyed the fragile bridge of trust Nightingale was trying to build.
William swallowed hard.
The human mind is a complex machine, capable of processing infinite scenarios in fractions of a second.
He remembered the concept of the "butterfly effect," a theory from his past life dictating that a small change in the initial conditions of an event could result in cataclysmic and unpredictable consequences in the future. The flap of a butterfly's wings could cause a hurricane on the other side of the world.
Here, on this frozen mountain, he was the flapping of wings.
If he stood still and Nightingale was about to be executed, he would carry the guilt of her death for the rest of his life. He would have failed her, the Prince, and his own conscience. Nightingale's sacrifice would be in vain, and the alliance with the witches would die in those mountains, drowned in the emissary's blood.
On the other hand, if he went in and Nightingale's dialogue was having a positive butterfly effect—slowly changing the fate of the witches, making them realize that Cara was mad and that Border Town was true salvation—his brute intrusion would ruin everything. He would be the disaster that ruined the timeline where all of them would be saved.
His impatience would be the cause of all their ruin, condemning them to continue following Cara to certain death in the wild nature.
The snow continued to fall, accumulating on his shoulders, slowly turning him into a statue of ice. His legs tingled, begging for movement. His mind was a chaotic battlefield between strategic logic and desperate loyalty.
Should I trust her? He asked himself, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering. Should I trust that she knows what she is doing, even if time is running against us?
But what if Cara's arrogance had already sealed the girl's fate? And what if the blueprints for the Prince's machines—the vital proof Nightingale carried—had been destroyed before they were even understood? William could imagine the cynical face of the witches' leader tearing up any chance of peace.
He knew the look of political and football club fanatics, and they don't debate; they silence the opposition.
The cave remained in a sepulchral silence.
No voice escaped, no scream, no sound of struggle.
Only the deafening noise of the mountain wind.
William pulled in the freezing air, feeling it burn his lungs. His right hand gripped the hilt of his weapon so tightly that his knuckles under the glove must have been white.
His left hand gripped the thick fabric of his coat, and he needed to make a decision. Inertia was draining his life and, possibly, Nightingale's life.
Stand up and invade? The risk of destroying the only diplomatic chance and validating Cara's madness.
Stay and wait? The risk of allowing the woman he was in love with and wanted to protect to die alone in the dark.
The wind blew harder, throwing a cloud of crystalline snow against his face, as if the mountain itself were mocking him.
William remained there, crouching on the boundary between the faint light of the storm and the darkness of the cave, his heart heavy with the burden of two unforgivable choices, completely paralyzed by the fear of taking the wrong step on the chessboard of destiny.