Chương 44: The Ones Who Wait

Three figures moved through the woods of Mourning Ridge, already descending well below the higher passes, the worst of the storm finally thinning into an ordinary grey overcast behind them.

"Phew. That was tiring." Vesper stretched both arms over her head, rolling her shoulders with a theatrical groan.

"I want to go back to the Capital already."

"We successfully closed the Abyssal Rift at the northern edge of the peak," Julian said, his staff tapping a steady rhythm against the frozen ground as he walked.

"Fortunately, it was only guarded by weak monsters. Though it was strange, seeing Blood Tribe presence that close to the site. They shouldn't have any reason to be there at all."

"I don't really care why," Vesper said, waving the concern off with one hand.

"They're just a weak bunch of monsters." Valen walked a pace ahead of them, silent, until he stopped entirely.

"Halt." The other two froze at once, weapons already half-drawn on instinct alone. His grey eyes swept the distance, scanning terrain that lay well past the edge of anything an ordinary perception could have resolved. Far off, past a rise in the treeline, a group of people ran in a ragged, desperate line, dozens of Blood Tribe warriors closing the gap behind them.

"Haland! Front!" Doran's voice carried faintly across the distance, already swapping positions to swing his broadsword through the nearest pursuer. Haland took the new position without argument, still hauling a limp, Sable across his shoulders.

"Don't stop!" Aroy shouted somewhere behind them, his own legs clearly failing beneath him even as he forced them to keep moving. The chase was fast and getting faster, every one of them already wounded, already running on reserves that had long since bottomed out. Lidia rode half-slumped against Gareth's shoulder, loosing ordinary bolts now instead of charged ones, her voice thin with exhaustion.

"I've got three shots left. I can't hold them much longer." A Tier 3 elite among the pursuing warriors closed the last of the distance in a sudden, brutal burst, flanking Doran from the side. Doran noticed too late. The crude blade opened a shallow line across his ribs before he managed to shove it back, but the warrior's speed refused to slow, already winding up a second strike aimed squarely at his skull.

"DORAN!" Marlon's voice cracked, useless, his arms still full of Elsie's weight. Suddenly a wave of compressed blue mana tore across the distance and split the warrior clean in half before its blade ever landed, the body collapsing lifeless into the snow. A shape was already in the air by the time anyone turned to find the source of it, grey eyes locked ahead with total, unwavering focus.

Valen landed directly amid the remaining warriors, a single wide slash cutting through three of them before their bodies had finished falling. He raised one hand in a short, precise gesture, and the ground beneath the rest of the horde rippled and surged upward, hurling them bodily into the air.

His blade, already sheathed in a faint, water-slicked current, moved in a blur too fast for ordinary sight to properly track—one wide, arcing slash catching the airborne mass entirely, and their bodies dissolved into a fine mist of vapor before they'd finished the arc of their fall. He landed on both feet without a single wasted motion afterward.

Beside him, a second figure—twin daggers already drawn—closed on the last scattered handful, cutting through them with a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm that made her nearly impossible to track, spinning and leaping with a flexibility that turned the fight into something closer to a dance than a battle. Doran and the rest of the survivors slowed to a stop, staring, as the two figure finished off what remained of the horde in the span of a few breaths.

"Their uniforms," Marlon murmured, still catching his breath.

"Riftwalkers?"

"All of you must be tired," a calm voice said from behind them.

"They can handle the rest easily... none of you need to worry about those creatures." A tall man in mage's robes had already reached the group unnoticed, his hand already glowing with a soft, restorative light directed at Elsie, color slowly returning to her ashen face.

"She channeled a strong divinity spell," Julian said, studying her with quiet concern.

"Something like that costs more than mana alone. But she will be fine after a long rest." Valen and Vesper finished the last of the pursuit and made their way back, Valen sheathing his blade before approaching the group directly.

"Thank you," Doran said, bowing his head in deep respect. Beneath the crushing weight of his fatigue, his senses screamed in warning. The man standing before them was undeniably a Tier 4—and far from an ordinary one.

"Save the formalities," Valen replied, his tone remaining level and unbothered.

"Are you hunters?" Doran straightened slowly.

"No. A search party."

"A search party?" Valen's eyebrows shifted slightly.

"For what?"

"I see... the news hasn't reached you yet," Doran answered.

"Ironvale Camp has been completely destroyed." That caught the attention of the petite dagger-wielder beside the man. Vesper leaned in, genuine intrigue finally shattering her bored facade.

"Wait, isn't that the same mining outpost we passed on our way up the mountain?"

"Yes." Doran's voice had gone hollow.

"It's been weeks ago now, corrupted beasts, the Guardian itself and Blood Tribe warriors attacked it together. We only learned it from survivors fleeing on the road. By the time we reached the camp ourselves, it had already fallen—too many dead, too few left standing. We put together a search party to find whoever might still be alive out here." His hands had begun to shake.

"We were cornered. The horde, and the Beast itself. We barely made it out alive, and that was only because—" The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. His voice broke entirely.

"There's a girl," he said finally.

"She stayed behind on that cliff. She held them off so the rest of us could run."

"A girl?" Valen repeated.

"Yes. a twelve years old girl..." Doran looked up at him properly this time, and whatever pride he had left crumbled beneath the weight of what came next. He dropped to his knees in the snow.

"Sir—please. You have to save her. She sacrificed herself for the rest of us. She might still be alive. Please, I'm begging you... go find her." His forehead pressed against the frozen ground, the bitter cold biting into his skin. The other adventurers stared at the kneeling man in stunned silence. They knew how fierce Doran's pride was—knew how rare and agonizing it was for a man like him to drop to his knees. But every single one of them understood why he had done it.

Sable was already moving toward them as well, her steps unsteady, her voice raw.

"Please. Save her... She's the reason any of us are still breathing. I'll pay whatever you ask, give you anything I have—."

"Excuse me?" Vesper's expression soured immediately.

"We just saved all of you, and now you're asking to save someone?" She crossed her arms.

"It's not that I don't understand wanting to help her. It's that you're asking us to send someone into danger for a girl who's probably already dead."

"Vesper," Valen said, quiet but cold.

"I'm just saying what's true!" she pressed.

"A corrupted Guardian... you all know what that thing is, don't you? A powerful Mana Beast. How exactly is a twelve-year-old supposed to survive that?" Valen said nothing for a moment, his gaze drifting toward the distant treeline they'd all come from.

"How many of you in this Ridge?" he asked.

"All of us who made it this far," Doran said.

"The rest are waiting back at the camp with the wounded, holding until reinforcements arrive." Valen nodded once.

"Vesper. Julian. Escort them the rest of the way to Ironvale."

"Valen—you're actually going after her?" Vesper asked, incredulous. Julian stepped forward as well, his voice more measured.

"Vesper isn't wrong to worry, Valen. You're not obligated to do this."

"I'm not doing it out of obligation," Valen said.

"I simply need to confirm if she's still alive or not. I'll be fine. The two of you need to get these people somewhere safe—they're in no condition to defend themselves if a powerful beast finds them out here." Vesper clicked her tongue, annoyed, but didn't argue further.

"We won't stop you," Julian said finally.

"But that Guardian is dangerous, even for you."

"I know," Valen said simply. They split without further discussion—Vesper and Julian falling into step alongside the survivors, guiding them back toward Ironvale's ruined shelter, while Valen turned alone toward the distant cliff, and began to move. Far in the northern expanse of the Ridge, detached entirely from the rest of the group, a shadow tore through the whiteout. Stelle ran with everything her body still had left to give, which was, by every honest calculation, practically nothing.

Warning prompts flickered faint and amber at the edge of her vision, her mana reserves hovering dangerously near zero. Behind her, the berserk roar of the Guardian shattered the freezing air, its massive frame plowing through snowdrifts without slowing. The beast tore through the forest behind her with a violence that splintered whole trees in its wake, closing distance in bursts that her exhausted legs simply couldn't match for long.

A swipe caught her across the back on the second attempt to lose it, tearing through cloak and skin alike, throwing her hard into a snowbank that did nothing to cushion the impact. She forced herself upright before the pain had even fully registered, because stopping meant ending, and ending wasn't a variable she'd decided to accept yet. [WARNING] [Current reserves: 3%... critical.] She ran on instinct alone by that point, her calculations reduced to the barest. This is bad...

The thought echoed through her mind, cold and sharp. I'm not going to make it if this keeps up. Her chest heaved violently, every ragged gasp for air burning like swallowed fire in her throat. Her vision blurred, grey spots dancing at the edges of her sight alongside the flickering amber warnings of her system. Then, through the blinding veil of white, something caught her eye in the distance.

Through the haze of that single, desperate thought, she saw her—a small, pale, translucent figure standing impossibly still at the edge of the treeline.

"Follow me..." The voice was ethereal, drifting directly into her mind rather than carrying through the howling wind. The spectral figure turned and began to walk into the timber. Somewhere beneath the fog of her battered consciousness, Stelle knew with absolute, undeniable certainty that she was being led somewhere on purpose. Without hesitation, she followed. Ahead, the heavy timber broke apart, revealing the looming, half-collapsed silhouette of an ancient structure.

Vast stone walls rose against the grey sky, their towers long since crumbled into jagged, broken teeth. It was a ruin on a scale she hadn't expected this deep into the wilderness—a forgotten fortress left off every map of the mountain. The ghost girl reached the base of the outer wall and vanished directly into the threshold of a narrow crack in the ancient stone. It was barely wide enough for a body Stelle's small size to slip through sideways. She didn't hesitate.

She twisted through the gap, scraping skin and stone in equal measure, and collapsed onto the far side just as the Guardian's full weight slammed into the wall behind her with a shattering, world-ending crack. The stone held. Barely. The beast roared its fury into the ruin's ancient walls, the sound reverberating down through passages that had clearly not heard a living voice in centuries. But the gap it needed to follow her was far too narrow for its bulk.

For the first time since the frozen lake, Stelle allowed herself the smallest possible margin of relief. Before her eyes focus on what insides. She looked around slowly. The interior was drowned in shadow, bounded by ancient stone and intricately sculpted relief carvings along the walls. Dragging herself deeper into the ruin's dark, silent halls, she sought whatever cover the ancient passages could offer, finally sinking down against a pillar well beyond the reach of the beast's relentless, furious pounding.

Somewhere in the stillness that followed, the ghost girl reappeared. Stelle forced herself upright, her step is silent as she followed the faint, translucent shape drifting further down the corridor. Each time Stelle drew close, the spirit vanished, only to reappear further along—patient, unhurried, and leading her deeper into the ruin's silent heart. The hallways stretched far longer than the structure's outer walls should have reasonably allowed.

Carved stone gave way to something older, smoother, the architecture shifting the deeper she ventured in ways that made her think, distantly, of the catacombs she had once walked through with Corin. She followed the girl through it all, one slow, unsteady step at a time, until the passage finally opened into a vast, echoing chamber. It was a throne room, though nothing sat upon the high sit itself.

The only light came from a single fissure in the distant ceiling, a pale shaft of winter sun cutting down through the darkness to illuminate a lone patch of ancient stone floor. The ghost girl stood in the center of that fragile light, waiting. This time, she didn't vanish. Stelle approached slowly, every step careful and measured to avoid making the slightest sound that might startle the girl away. She came to a halt only a few feet from the circle of light.

The girl remained exactly as she was, translucent and still, her gaze fixed silently on the empty throne. Then Stelle felt it—a heavy, suffocating presence gathering around them both, silent and absolute. Blood Tribe warriors emerged from the shadowed edges of the chamber. Dozens of them stepped into the dim light, encircling the pair in a wide, unmoving ring. They didn't draw a single weapon or utter a threat.

They simply stood in solemn vigilance, as though held in place by something far older than any order or instinct of their own. The ghost girl finally turned to face her fully.

"So long... but you are here," she said. Her voice carried the same distant, ethereal quality Stelle remembered from the village square, layered now with something that sounded almost like relief.

"Finally... after a thousand years." Stelle said nothing, too physically depleted to do more than listen as the weight of those words settled into her, like snow accumulating on a secret that had waited far too long to be uncovered.

"I knew you would," the girl whispered, her eyes locking onto Stelle's cold blue ones.

"I knew you would come back... and save us again."