Shadows inside the underground cavern seemed to have grown thicker since the night before, pressing down on the stone hall like a wet wool blanket that made every breath feel heavy.
For years, the witches of the Cooperation Association had viewed these deep mountain tunnels as an untouchable fortress—a hidden world where mortal armies could never reach them. In less than ten heartbeats, a single man had torn that fragile illusion of safety to shreds.
Out beyond the jagged mouth of the gorge, the relentless wind of the Impassable Mountain Range howled through the dark rock passages like a ceaseless, mournful lament for everything they had lost.
Near the center of the main hall, where the iron brazier had been knocked cold during the struggle, a small campfire flickered weakly against the draft. Huddled tightly around those low orange flames sat four women—the four senior pillars left holding the fractured camp together while their founder lay broken in the back alcove.
None of them spoke right away.
Wendy sat on a rough wooden crate with her elbows braced on her knees, staring blankly at the wooden support pillar ten feet away. The thick loops of shipping rope that had bound Nightingale to that timber were still lying in a tangled heap on the gravel, right next to the dull white powder that used to be the Association's only God's Stone of Retaliation.
Across the fire from her, Catherine sat sharpening the steel tip of a heavy crossbow bolt with a whetstone. Every scrape of the stone against the metal was jerky, loud, and fueled by nervous fury. Beside Catherine, Windseeker kept her eyes fixed on the pitch-black mouth of the entrance tunnel, her fingers twitching constantly at her sides as if she expected the air to explode again at any second.
Wait-steps crunched softly against the gravel behind them.
Scroll, the oldest witch in the camp after Cara, walked slowly into the circle of firelight and lowered herself onto a flat stone beside Wendy. In her hands, she held the camp's leather-bound attendance ledger.
— "I just finished walking through all three sleeping quarters with Eyesight and Library," — Scroll said, her voice low, hoarse, and carefully controlled so the younger girls huddled around the distant perimeter fires wouldn't overhear. — "We have a problem. Nightingale wasn't the only one who left through that tunnel last night."
Catherine's whetstone froze against the steel bolt. She snapped her head up, her eyes narrowing into slits.
— "What do you mean, she wasn't the only one?" — Catherine hissed. — "Did that monster grab someone else on his way out?!"
— "Nobody was grabbed, Catherine. There were no signs of a struggle near the tunnel mouth," — Scroll replied, opening the ledger on her lap and tapping two names with a ink-stained finger. — "Lightning and Diana Argus are both gone. Their blankets and their personal bags were taken from their corners."
Windseeker cursed under her breath, her hand slapping down against her knee.
— "Lightning and that fallen baron's daughter?!" — Windseeker spat, her voice shaking with a mix of disbelief and anger. — "Why in the name of the gods would the two of them walk out into a sub-zero blizzard in the middle of the night?! Did Nightingale brainwash them before the council even started?!"
— "Nightingale didn't even speak to either of them before the campfire meeting," — Wendy said quietly, raising her head for the first time. Her soft green eyes were bloodshot andrimmed with dark, bruised hollows from a sleepless night. — "Lightning barely knew Nightingale, and Diana always stayed in the back of the hall by herself. They didn't leave because of a trick, Windseeker. They left because they saw what happened right here in front of this fire."
An uncomfortable, suffocating silence dropped over the four women.
Every single one of them knew what Wendy was talking about, even if Catherine and Windseeker refused to say it out loud.
They had all seen Cara summon a neurotoxin viper to bite Nightingale in the back while Nightingale was walking away peacefully. They had all watched their revered Mentor tie a sister to a stake, hang a despised Church medallion around her neck, burn the Prince's engineering drawing without letting anyone read it, and hold a white-hot iron poker three inches from Nightingale's eye.
— "What Mentor Cara did was harsh, I won't deny it," — Catherine muttered defensively, looking away from the wooden post as she went back to scraping her whetstone against the bolt. — "Still, look at what happened five minutes later! Nightingale brought a mortal man straight to our front door! A man who smashed through our hall like a rampaging beast, nearly killed the Mentor with a single blow, and vanished into thin air! Doesn't that prove Cara was right to suspect a trap?!"
— "Use your head for five seconds instead of repeating slogans, Catherine," — Scroll cut in, her rational, teacher's tone sharper than usual. — "Look at the floor beside that post. That man crushed a God's Stone of Retaliation into dust with his bare fingers. Have you ever heard of a Church templar or a royal assassin destroying their own sacred artifact? More importantly, think about the speed he showed when he came out of that tunnel."
Scroll leaned forward, locking her calm gaze onto Catherine and Windseeker.
— "When he crossed the thirty paces from the entrance to the brazier, not a single combat witch in this room—not you, not Windseeker, not even Violetta—managed to raise a hand before he reached Cara," — Scroll pointed out coldly. — "If that Commander William had come up this mountain to slaughter us or drag us back to King's City in chains, how many of us do you think could have stopped him?"
Neither Catherine nor Windseeker answered. The memory of that sonic boom tearing across the hall made Windseeker's shoulders stiffen involuntarily.
— "Not one of us," — Scroll answered her own question. — "He stood right outside in the freezing storm without touching a hair on anyone's head while Nightingale spoke to us. He only charged inside the exact second Cara screamed and raised that glowing iron to murder Nightingale. And even when he struck Cara from behind to knock the iron away, he pulled his punch. If a man strong enough to pulverize a God's Stone had hit Cara at full strength, her spine would have shattered into twenty pieces on the spot."
Wendy closed her eyes, a sharp ache tightening around her heart as she listened to Scroll's breakdown.
He held back, Wendy thought, her fingers curling tightly into the rough fabric of her skirt. Nightingale told me by the soup pot that the Prince's commander had climbed the mountain only to protect her, and that he was waiting outside so he wouldn't scare the younger girls. Every single word Veronica told me was the truth.
And how had they repaid her?
When Nightingale had begged Wendy to stand beside her and help convince the sisters that Border Town was a real sanctuary where nobody had to die from the Demonic Bite, Wendy had frozen. Paralyzed by years of obeying Cara and terrified of splitting the Association in two, she had kept her mouth shut while Cara called Nightingale a noble whore and a traitor.
By the time Wendy had finally found the courage to step in front of the hot iron, the damage was already done.
Now, Veronica was gone—and she would never come back to this cave again.
— "How is the Mentor's condition this morning?" — Windseeker asked quietly, changing the subject as she glanced toward the dark curtain of animal hides covering the inner chamber at the back of the hall.
As if on cue, the heavy leather curtain parted.
Herb walked slowly out of the inner room, wiping her pale, sweat-sheened forehead with the back of her forearm while carrying a wooden basin stained with dark blood and green medicinal residue.
The young plant healer looked ready to collapse on her feet. Over the past twelve hours, she had drained her Magical Power completely dry twice—using every last drop of her energy to distill high-potency hemostatic sap from their remaining dried roots just to keep Cara from drowning in her own punctured lung.
Walking over to the central fire, Herb set the basin down on the gravel and sank onto her knees beside Wendy, leaning her tired head briefly against the older witch's knee.
— "The internal bleeding in her chest has finally stopped," — Herb murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. — "The gash on her forehead is closed too. However, two of the ribs on her right side are cracked from hitting the rock wall, and her body is burning with a deep shock fever. Even with my strongest willow-bark paste, she won't wake up for at least two or three more days."
Wendy reached down and gently stroked Herb's messy brown hair.
— "You did well, Leaf. Go wrap yourself in a blanket by the side fire and get some sleep," — Wendy said softly. — "Scroll and I will watch over her today."
Once Herb stumbled away toward the sleeping mats, the three remaining women around the central fire exchanged a heavy, silent look.
Two or three days without Cara conscious.
In the past, Cara had hoarded every ounce of authority in the Witch Cooperation Association like a jealous dragon. Every ration count, every patrol schedule, and every punishment had come directly from her mouth. Now, with their leader lying comatose behind a leather curtain and sixty frightened, hungry girls looking toward the center fire for answers, the invisible crown of leadership had dropped straight onto Wendy's and Scroll's heads.
And it felt like a crown made of iron thorns.
— "What do we do until she wakes up, Wendy?" — Catherine asked, her bluster fading now that she was faced with the grim reality of their larder. — "The blizzard outside hasn't let up since yesterday. The foraging teams can't dig through four feet of fresh snow for roots, and our grain sacks are down to the bottom corners."
Wendy looked down at the two white linen mourning bands tied around her left sleeve—the bands for Airy and Abby, who had died screaming in the dark less than a week ago—and then looked out across the cavern at the younger girls huddled together under threadbare blankets.
Twenty paces away, seventeen-year-old Feather was sitting with her chin buried against her knees, shivering so violently that her teeth clicked together even near the fire. Her eighteenth birthday was less than two weeks away now.
For five full seconds, a fierce, almost overwhelming temptation pulled at Wendy's chest.
What if Scroll and I give the order right now to pack the bags and march everyone down the southern trail toward Border Town while Cara is asleep? Wendy thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. If Prince Roland's sanctuary is real, Feather won't have to suffer the Awakening in the snow, and none of the little ones will starve!
Yet the very next second, Wendy looked at Catherine's white-knuckled grip on her crossbow, at Windseeker's fanatical eyes, and at the dozen older combat witches sitting near the back wall who still worshipped Cara like a living goddess.
If Wendy tried to march the camp to Border Town behind Cara's back while the Mentor lay unconscious, Catherine and the hardliners would call it a coup. Witches would draw blades on witches right inside this hall, and the family she had spent five years bleeding to protect would tear itself to pieces before they even reached the gorge.
Swallowing the bitter taste of helplessness in her throat, Wendy straightened her spine and forced her gentle voice to sound calm and steady.
— "Nobody goes out into the storm today," — Wendy ordered quietly. — "We cut the daily porridge rations by a third starting at noon, and we keep everyone inside the main hall to share body heat until the wind drops and Mentor Cara opens her eyes. Scroll, have Violetta and Stone double the watch at the inner bend of the tunnel so the girls feel safe."
Scroll looked at Wendy for a long moment. With her sharp mind, Scroll knew perfectly well that cutting rations in a freezing cave was only delaying a disaster—yet seeing the sheer anguish in Wendy's eyes, the older witch simply nodded and stood up to carry out the order.
Thirty paces away from the central fire, leaning quietly against a rough granite column near the rear cooking pots, Cecilia Selda watched the four senior witches break up their meeting.
On the surface, the twenty-two-year-old former noblewoman—whom the sisters in the camp called Fringe because of the neat bangs framing her pale forehead—looked completely calm, her hands tucked into the worn sleeves of her fur-lined coat.
Inside her chest, however, a cold, relentless survival clock was ticking down every second.
Lightning and Diana are gone, Cecilia thought, her dark eyes narrowing slightly as she glanced toward the empty sleeping corner where the short blonde flyer used to toss and turn at night. Those two were smart enough not to wait around for the roof to fall in.
Last night, when Commander William had burst out of the tunnel, shattered the God's Stone in his fist, and vanished with Nightingale, Cecilia had realized immediately that Nightingale's story about Prince Roland's town was the absolute truth.
She had wanted to run out that tunnel right behind them.
The only reason she hadn't bolted at the same time as Diana and Lightning was simple geography and bad luck: when the panic broke out, Cecilia had been standing right in the front row between Wendy and Catherine, hemmed in on all sides by screaming combat witches. By the time she had backed out of the crowd, Scroll had already sent Violetta and Stone to block the narrow entrance corridor.
Now, trapped inside the cavern as the blizzard sealed the gorge outside, Cecilia looked toward the leather curtain at the back of the hall where Cara lay unconscious, and a cold shiver ran down her neck.
Wendy and Scroll were kind women who wanted to keep the peace.
Cara was a venomous snake.
And Cecilia remembered something terrifying from the night before: right before William had attacked, when Wendy had asked the hall to spare Nightingale's life, Cecilia had stepped forward in front of everyone and begged Cara to take the God's Stone off Nightingale's neck and let her go!
Cara had looked straight at her with eyes full of murder right before screaming at them.
The moment that madwoman wakes up from her fever, she isn't going to forgive anyone who spoke up for Nightingale, Cecilia calculated with icy aristocratic clarity. She was just humiliated in front of sixty girls by an enemy she couldn't touch. To restore her fear over this camp, she's going to purge everyone she suspects of wanting to go to Border Town.
Wait here politely like Wendy, and she would either end up tied to that wooden post herself, or be dragged into the northern blizzards on a suicide march toward a mythical mountain that didn't exist.
I am not dying in the snow for a cult leader's pride, Cecilia vowed silently. The very first chance I get to step outside this cave—whether on a foraging patrol or a vanguard march—I am deserting and heading straight for Border Town.
However, Cecilia wasn't naive. She knew that once the camp started moving again, Cara wouldn't let someone who had defended Nightingale walk near the edge of the column unguarded. There would be a watchdog assigned to her back—someone strong, ruthless, and blindly loyal like Catherine or Violetta.
And while Cecilia's directional Attraction Magic was strong enough to hurl demonic wolves off cliffs if she caught them off guard, beating a veteran close-combat monster like Violetta in a fair fight was impossible.
If she couldn't beat a guard with magic, she needed a quieter weapon.
Letting her gaze drift casually across the dim hall, Cecilia watched exhausted little Herb curl up under a wool blanket near the side fire, falling dead asleep within ten seconds of her head touching her pack.
Three feet from Herb's boots sat the healer's open woven-rush medicine basket.
Cecilia didn't rush. Waiting another twenty minutes until Scroll walked down the outer tunnel to check the sentries and Wendy was busy ladling out thin warm water to the younger girls, the former count's daughter stood up slowly, picked up an empty wooden firewood bucket as an excuse, and strolled unhurriedly past the sleeping healer's corner.
As her skirt brushed the edge of the medicine basket, Cecilia dropped a single piece of kindling, knelt down smoothly on one knee as if retrieving the wood, and slipped two nimble fingers inside the top fold of Herb's leather herb pouch.
She knew the markings on Herb's pouches by heart from helping sort dried plants in the autumn.
Ignoring the mint and yarrow packets, her fingertips closed around a small, tightly tied square of unbleached linen stained with a faint greenish-brown dust.
Inside that cloth was three ounces of concentrated bitter-root powder—a potent natural purgative and nerve-numbing soporific that Herb only ever used in tiny, pinch-sized dilutions when a sister suffered from severe stomach blockages or manic night terrors.
In a tiny pinch, it calmed the nerves.
Dumped whole and undiluted into a single bowl of hot soup, however, that powder would tear through a person's digestive tract with paralyzing abdominal cramps within thirty minutes, followed immediately by a heavy, coma-like chemical torpor that not even a combat witch's willpower could shake off for hours.
Sliding the small cloth bundle smoothly into the deep inner lining of her coat pocket without making a single rustle, Cecilia picked up her piece of kindling, stood up, and walked calmly back toward her own sleeping mat.
Her heart was beating fast against her ribs, yet her pale face remained as smooth and unreadable as carved marble.
Down in the valley, Prince Roland's warm castle was waiting—and Cecilia Selda was going to reach those gates even if she had to poison her own sisters to get there.