The atmosphere inside the cave had become unbearably dense, permeated with the smell of smoke, cold sweat, and the palpable tension of an imminent execution.
The silence that followed the destruction of the parchment was only broken by the rustling of Cara's robes and the crackling of the embers.
— "My tolerance has reached its absolute limit. This is your final opportunity." — Cara's voice sounded icy, brutally contrasting with the action that followed.
While uttering the threat to Nightingale, the leader of the witches reached out toward the burning brazier and pulled out a long iron skewer.
The metal rod had rested among the coals long enough for its tip to be incandescent, emitting a red-orange glow that cast sinister, dancing shadows across the rocky walls of the cave.
Cara took a step forward, her eyes fixed on the prisoner tied to the stake.
— "If you are capable of swallowing that foolish pride of yours and pleading guilty before all your sisters of the Witch Cooperation Association, confessing loud and clear that your mind was corrupted and poisoned by the lies of the aristocracy, I might consider sparing your miserable life. The beating, however, will be severe and inevitable! After all, physical suffering will be your didactic lesson for daring to cooperate with our sworn enemies." — She twirled the skewer slightly, sparks falling onto the stone floor. — "But... If you decide to maintain this arrogant stubbornness of yours, I will have no other choice but to use this very boiling iron skewer to pierce your traitorous heart. I will pin your body to the campfire, letting you burn to the bone, so that your charred remains serve as a warning and so that everyone present definitely learns from your mistakes."
After delivering the ultimatum, Cara took a dramatic pause, letting the weight of her words hang in the stuffy air. After a long second passed, she tilted her head and whispered with a contained lethality:
— "Do not waste my last offer of mercy. Tell me right now what is your decision?"
To emphasize the threat, Cara brought the glowing iron close to Nightingale's face.
The bright metal stopped inches from her skin, so close that Nightingale could feel the scorching heat emanating from the tip, drying the sweat on her forehead and threatening to singe her eyelashes.
The red color of the iron reflected in her pupils.
If this situation were happening a few months ago, if she were still the fragile and frightened girl she used to be—the Veronica who trembled before authority figures and who lived begging for crumbs of acceptance—she certainly would have collapsed. She would have cried, bowed, begged for forgiveness, and admitted to a guilt she did not possess just to escape the pain and death.
But that girl no longer existed; Veronica had died to make way for something much stronger. She had permanently bid farewell to that pathetic version of her past self. She was no longer a fallen and frightened noble. She was Nightingale, a powerful, free, and formidable witch. The fear of death no longer paralyzed her; facing the imminent end, she refused to bend her spine or betray her own convictions, so she would not surrender to Cara's tyranny!
Without saying a single word in response, Nightingale simply took a deep breath and closed her eyes firmly, preparing her spirit and waiting for the arrival of the searing pain and her last moment in this world.
In that darkness behind her eyelids, she did not see hell, nor did she feel panic. Instead, inexplicably, a vivid image appeared in her mind: William's face. The spontaneous smile and unshakable posture of her Commander, the man who had shown her that the world could be different, who was willing to leave the comfort of the castle to accompany her.
The memory of him brought her immense peace. If she was to die for that dream of freedom, she would die in peace.
— "Enough! Stop this right now!" — A female scream, laden with anguish and authority, tore through the silence of the cave, echoing off the damp walls.
For a fraction of a second, Nightingale hesitated, surprised by the interruption.
The heat of the skewer was still close to her face, but it didn't advance. She slowly opened her eyes, and through the red glow of the iron, Nightingale saw the familiar figure of Wendy breaking away from the crowd of astonished witches and walking firmly toward Cara.
Wendy's face was marked by deep sadness. She stopped a few paces from Cara and raised her hand, pointing directly at her own arm.
— "Mentor, I ask you to look at this, look at the white cloth wrapped around your arm and mine." — Wendy's voice choked slightly, but she stood firm. The white fabric was the symbol of mourning, a constant mark of the suffering they shared. — "We have already been through so many losses, we have already cried for so many cruel and unjust deaths throughout our journey. Do you really want, with your own hands, to add one more sister to this list of mourning?"
Cara blinked, momentarily disarmed by the boldness of her most loyal follower, but quickly the surprise gave way to indignation.
— "What?!" — Cara spat the words, her eyes flashing with blind fury. — "Even you, Wendy? Are you also being manipulated and deceived by the illusions of this traitor? Wake up once and for all! Absolutely everything she said about this place and those nobles is nothing but a pile of poisonous lies!"
— "I... I don't know if it is a lie." — Wendy shook her head from side to side, her shoulders slumped under the weight of that terrible schism. She looked at Nightingale, tied up and defenseless, and then turned her gaze back to the leader. — "I must be honest. I have no intention of leaving with her to this Border Town; my place is here, helping our sisters in our original quest. But... I believe one of the things Nightingale said was absolutely right. We are sisters, yes, but we are not slaves; therefore, we must have the right to freely choose our own path and our lifestyle."
Determined to prove her point, Wendy turned on her heels, with her back to Cara and facing the dozens of witches watching the scene with bated breath. She raised her voice, making it resonate throughout the stone hall:
— "Do any of you wish to leave? Which of you wants to follow her and go with Nightingale to Border Town?"
A dense, sepulchral silence fell over the cave.
None of the witches moved. Some looked away, staring at their own tattered boots or the stones on the floor; others hugged their own bodies, too intimidated by the fear of the unknown Border Town and, above all, by the dread of Cara's retaliation. No one in the crowd uttered a single syllable or took a step forward in response to Wendy's appeal.
— "As you can see, mentor, then there is no problem at all in letting her leave." — Wendy concluded, turning back to Cara, with a tone of voice that tried to appease the situation. — "Since she leaves alone, without taking anyone, our mission remains intact. She has caused no real harm to the Witch Cooperation Association; therefore, I really cannot stand by and watch you kill her in cold blood."
Hearing those words, Nightingale perfectly understood the meaning behind Wendy's speech.
Despite being saved from immediate death, she couldn't prevent a deep and bitter wave of sadness from flooding her heart. Wendy, her savior and the person she trusted most in that group, didn't fully believe her either. Not even Wendy trusted the promise of safety that the prince represented, and that was why Wendy had kept silent earlier, when Nightingale was desperately trying to convince everyone of the truth and desperately needed a supporting voice.
However, there Wendy was, proving she was still the same kind, maternal, and caring witch as always. Even if she fundamentally disagreed with Nightingale's point of view, even if she thought she was deluded, Wendy would still risk her own position to extend a friendly hand and prevent her murder.
Wendy's interruption and her courage in challenging the leader seemed to break the spell of terror that kept the other witches paralyzed.
Shortly after Wendy's comment ended, whispering voices began to bubble amidst the crowd, like the beginning of a storm. The murmur grew, and then some of the witches began to speak openly, taking the side of clemency.
— "Yes... Wendy is right. Since she is willing to return to the secular world and is not forcing anyone, why don't we let her go?" — murmured a voice in the background.
— "The Church and the coldness of pain have already stolen enough sisters from us to fill a lifetime of tears," — spoke Cecilia Selda, her voice choked with emotion, taking a timid step forward. — "Respected mentor, we beg you. Please, think once more about the necessity of such an extreme punishment; let her live."
Hearing her own subordinates questioning her authority and defending the woman she considered a heretic was the limit for Cara's fractured sanity. The veins in her neck bulged, and her face contorted into a mask of pure fury and blind fanaticism.
She raised the iron skewer, no longer to threaten Nightingale, but as if she were willing to attack anyone who opposed her.
— "SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU! YOU UNGRATEFUL IDIOTS!!" — Cara screamed, ranting with a shrillness that scratched the cave walls, spit flying from her lips. — "ARE YOU BLIND?! If I let her walk away unpunished now, what will we do whe-"
Cara's sentence was never finished.
What happened next was too fast for inattentive eyes to follow or for the mind to process immediately.
The air in the cave seemed to be torn by an invisible force.
A sharp sound of displaced air, similar to the crack of a whip in the middle of a hurricane, exploded in the hall.
Suddenly, coming straight from the dark and freezing entrance of the cave, a silhouette projected itself.
William.
He didn't walk, he didn't run; he advanced like a cannon shot. The anxiety and indecision that had paralyzed him outside had converted into pure kinetic energy the instant he heard Cara's low, angry echo.
The butterfly effect was underway, and he decided to be the hurricane.
He crossed the distance separating the entrance from the brazier looking like a distorted blur, a ghostly mass at high speed.
Cara, who had her back to the entrance, screaming at the other witches, didn't even have the chance to notice the approaching impact.
Hitting the target with surgical precision, William used his shoulder and both hands to shove her violently. In his mind, a fraction of a second before the clash, he calibrated the blow.
He knew he possessed brute strength and that, if he didn't hold back, he could easily break Cara's spine right then and there. And he held back. He drastically reduced his strength.
However, even holding back his monumental strength, the impact was overwhelming. Cara let out a dry gasp, all the air expelled from her lungs at once as William's body collided against her back.
The dull thud echoed, and she was hurled forward, her feet leaving the ground completely. The leader of the witches flew through the air for several meters, like a discarded rag doll.
The glowing iron skewer slipped from her hands, falling with a metallic clink far from the crowd. Cara collided violently against the rough stone floor and went rolling in a tangle of dark robes and dust, until she stopped, disheveled and dazed, near the cave wall.
There was a fraction of a millisecond of absolute shock. No one breathed.
William didn't stop to admire the damage; his body was already in motion for the next objective. Taking advantage of the moment he materialized next to the stake where Nightingale was tied, he didn't draw a knife to cut the ropes, as that would take time. Instead, his eyes instantly focused on the object keeping the witch powerless: the prismatic stone hanging from her neck.
The Divine Medallion of Retaliation.
With a ruthless ferocity, William's hand shot toward Nightingale's chest.
He grabbed the prismatic stone.
The cold, repulsive object throbbed with that oppressive anti-magic, and without hesitating, William squeezed his hand with all the strength of his fingers.
The muscles in his forearm swelled and cracked under the absurd pressure. The Church's stone was no match for the crushing force applied.
CRACK!
A loud crack, like the sound of thick glass being shattered under a blacksmith's hammer, echoed through the cave.
The Divine Medallion burst in William's hand, fragmenting into dozens of sparkling pieces that fell to the floor like dirty snow.
In the exact millisecond the stone broke, the invisible barrier imprisoning Nightingale's soul crumbled.
It was as if a gigantic dam had given way inside her chest; the familiar, warm, and vibrant sensation of her magical power rushed through her veins like an uncontrollable torrent, filling the icy void, restoring her strength, sharpening her senses, and infusing her being with the energy of the Mist. Magic was back.
The initial shock of the other witches finally turned into chaos. Seeing their leader thrown away so brutally, the most faithful witches reacted with panic and despair.
— "Mentor!" — Leaf screamed at the top of her lungs, her high-pitched voice tearing the air as she conjured imaginary vines in her mind.
— "MENTOR!" — Windseeker and Catherine bellowed almost in unison, their features contorted with worry, as they ran toward Cara's fallen body, fearing the invading man had killed her.
Some of the more defensive witches began to summon their own powers, the air in the cave beginning to crackle with different signatures of hostile magic directed at William.
The situation was about to turn into a bloodbath. The rope bindings still tied Nightingale to the stake, but for someone with her newly restored powers, physical bonds in a three-dimensional world no longer meant anything. She didn't need knives, she didn't need apologies.
Nightingale didn't waste even a fraction of a second. With a swift movement, she activated her core magic; reality around her distorted immediately, and the straight and crisscrossing lines in shades of black and white—the unmistakable landscape of her magical domain, the Mist—instantly overlaid the rocky walls of the cave, the brazier, the confused witches.
The stake holding her simply ceased to exist in her new perception of space, the ropes becoming incorporeal and sliding off her arms like dissipated smoke.
Totally free from her bonds and immersed in the Mist, she lunged forward. Her hands firmly grabbed William's coat, her fingers sinking into the thick fabric.
— "Let's go!" — she hissed.
Before the other witches' magic could cross the distance, before Cara could rise from the floor cursing, before Wendy could process that a complete stranger had just walked in and turned the world upside down, Nightingale pulled William violently into her realm of shadows and straight lines.
The transition was abrupt.
To the eyes of the witches in the cave, the two simply evaporated into thin air as if they had never been there, leaving behind only the empty stake, the destroyed fragments of the Stone of Retaliation on the floor, and the absolute chaos of an interrupted trial.
Inside the Mist, where the sound of the real world was muffled and distant, Nightingale and William ran.
The world around them was a labyrinth of monochromatic lines and spectral silence.
Nightingale's breathing was heavy, her heart beating erratically from the near-death experience and the adrenaline of the escape, but she didn't slow down.
She pulled William by the arm, passing through the solid rocks of the mountain as if they were thin air, leaving the distant voices of Leaf, Catherine, and Windseeker echoing in the void of a time that was already left behind. The only direction that mattered now was the exit, back to the relentless blizzard of the outside world, where survival would dictate their next steps and the consequences of that brutal invasion would begin to be reaped.