Chương 139: Chapter 1: No Words to Fix the World

Selena did not turn her gaze from the corner where her emerald fire still danced, revealing the subtle distortion in the air, the presence of that which her eyes, sharpened by horror and loss, could perceive where others saw only emptiness. Her concentration was absolute, a focus of attention so intense it seemed to absorb the light of the surrounding torches. —I feel it almost on my skin —she said, her voice low but clear. It was laden with physical revulsion. —I feel its eyes. I feel how it rests its attention…

like a damp weight. Then, without moving her head, her eyes still locked onto the anomaly, her tone changed. The revulsion transformed into rage; a cold rage carved in the depths of the dungeon. —Your affront —she pronounced. She directed the words to Cassian, but her eyes did not detach from where she perceived they were watching her. —Will be paid. That thing must disappear, it will. Cassian, kneeling in the sand, did not dare to stand up.

A fine tremor, like that of a cord stretched to its limit, ran through his limbs. —Forgive me, Countess —the resonant managed to articulate. The words came out through clenched teeth. —I should not have referred to your companions in such a way. It was… an unforgivable lack of respect. Selena made a gesture with her hand, a sign of pure and absolute disdain, as if Cassian's apologies were annoying flies. But her green eyes, clouded and burning all at once, did not move from the spot.

Then, she pronounced another word. It was mute, a silent verb that consumed another fragment of her essence, but it also drew power from the deep aversion she felt toward the watching entity. The effect was immediate and localized. The air around her, already cold from the desert night, turned supernaturally gelid. A crisp, white frost sprouted from nothingness, covering the stones, the cinches of the saddles, the astonished faces of the soldiers who began to shiver violently.

But the cold concentrated, with terrifying precision, on the empty corner. There, the frost did not merely settle; it accumulated, it thickened, forming an irregular and growing layer over… nothing. Over something so subtle that only the extreme cold could outline its contour: a small patch of frost suspended in the air, adopting a vaguely oval shape, as if it covered an invisible eye or the tilted face of an incorporeal observer. —It makes me want to vomit —Selena spat.

Her voice was laden with a visceral disgust, staring fixedly at the floating frost. —And this damned nobility too. There are no words that can fix the error of a world that lacks human dignity. Words do not return life. They do not heal corruption. They do not kill the specters of a tormented mind. Without another word, without even deigning to look at Cassian, who remained kneeling and pale, she turned around.

She walked with an uneven but firm step, dragging her still dissimilar leg, along with the shadow of her dead, toward one of the empty tents. She crossed the entrance, and the moment the canvas flap fell behind her back, the last thread of will holding her up snapped. She collapsed onto the camp bed, and the darkness, merciful at last, enveloped her. Upon waking, the first sensation was that of a familiar vigilance.

She opened her eyes, one good, the other still seeing the world as if through a dirty, fogged pane of glass, and distinguished the imposing silhouette of Fjora, standing like a statue by the entrance of the tent, her alert profile silhouetted against the fabric illuminated by the desert sun. At the foot of the narrow bed, sitting on a low stool, was Samira. She was not dozing.

Her dark, wise eyes were fixed on Selena, observing every movement, every breath, with the silent attention of a scholar studying a cryptic text. Selena sat up slowly, feeling every muscle protest, every bone remind her of the weeks of tension and exploration of terror. The blurry vision of her eye caused her nausea and a dull headache. With a gesture, she asked Samira for her bag, the same one she had carried into the depths. The scholar handed it to her without a sound.

Inside, among tools and remnants of rations, Selena found what she was looking for: two parchments of fine skin, carefully rolled and tied with leather ribbons. She studied them under the dim light filtering through the canvas. The runes embroidered in the corners were not artistic; they were functional, precise. They indicated restoration of the body. Specialized healing parchments, of a much higher grade than the basic ones.

They had been one of many prior preparations; each of them was supposed to carry at least three. With firm, resolute hands, Selena unrolled the first one. She placed it over her own forehead, across the arch of her right eyebrow. Then, with her index and middle fingers, she began to trace a repetitive pattern over the parchment: an inverted triangle, three times.

Before the eyes of Fjora and Samira, which widened with a rare expression of undisguised astonishment, the parchment vanished, as if the ink and skin dissolved into a mist that was absorbed directly by Selena's skin. A cool, almost electric tingling ran through her eye socket. The blurriness before her vision stirred, like a veil being lifted. The contours of the tent, Samira's face, the details of the fabric became sharper, more defined.

Her vision became perfect again; nothing remained of the slight haze, nor a permanent memory of the trauma, it was functional, clear. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Without a pause, she repeated the process with the second parchment, applying it over the thigh of her thin and uneven leg.

As the parchment disappeared, she felt a deep heat and a sensation of an internal pull, as if the muscles and tendons were being stretched and remodeled from within. When it finished, the leg had not only recovered thickness and muscle tone, coming very close to its previous state, but the new skin was smoother, healthier. It was not a miraculous regeneration, but an accelerated and directed healing, the finest work of a resonant expert in the touch.

Selena exhaled a long sigh, the first genuine physical relief in what felt like years. She looked at her two slaves, her guardian and her scholar, whose faces still reflected the rarity of the act they had just witnessed. —Thank you, both of you. —Her voice sounded irremediably tired, hoarse, as if she had not slept in decades despite having been unconscious. —Remember… not to speak of this to anyone. Anyone who is not… of royalty. It was a weak but necessary warning.

The echo was a state secret, but here, with the demonstration before Cassian, her spoken echo was an open secret; however, the level and nature of these parchments, her ability to use them with such precision, could raise uncomfortable questions. After a frugal but reconstituting meal that the three of them shared in a mostly comfortable silence, they spoke. Of trivial things. Of the dry weather, of the wind blowing from the south, of the quality of the sand in their boots.

A bath of forced normalcy, a delicate tacit pact not to mention the dungeon, the names of Magnor, Astrid, or Alistair, nor the invisible gaze Selena had frozen with her hatred. Then, in a natural turn, Selena switched to Sahric. The musical language of the desert flowed from her lips with a fluidity that surprised even Samira. —How many languages do you speak, Samira? —she asked, without malice, with genuine curiosity born from the desire to pull her mind away from other abysses. Samira did not startle.

A gleam of intellectual pleasure, so rare in her, illuminated her dark eyes. —My lady, I speak Proto-Erahari, the wandering tongue of the Wasteland Winds, Norrun, Tal, and Erahari. She enumerated with the precision of a catalog. —In the Great Library of Al'Miraj, to work as a head transcriber, it was a requirement to master one dead language and at least three living ones of the continent.

Furthermore, a language of the wanderers, the nomads of the desert, was necessary at a minimum to transcribe and translate their ancient knowledge regarding the dunes, the stars, and the secret wells. Many of their speeches are completely foreign to Sahric, my native tongue, in structure and root. That is why I specialized in that of the Wasteland Winds, which, though archaic, shares certain… cadences, a certain logic of space and concepts such as drought, with Sahric. It is less distant.

She delivered the explanation with a thread of proud nostalgia, like one remembering not a job, but a vocation lost in time and sand. Selena rested her gaze on Fjora. Switching to Erahari smoothly, her voice took on an unusual softness, like the kind used to ask about a cherished memory. —Do you know Norrun, the language of the north? Fjora, who was reviewing the edge of a dagger with an absent expression, looked up.

Her voice, always so sweet and melodious, so foreign to her formidable warrior frame, filled the space of the tent. —Yes, my lady. I was brought to the kingdom when I was very small, but the mother tongue… is never forgotten. A tinge of nostalgia, slight but perceptible, clouded the habitual hardness of her gelid eyes for an instant. It was the echo of snowy mountains, of a blurred home but never entirely lost. Selena nodded, a single time, as if she had confirmed a theory.

—Starting tomorrow, both of you will teach me Norrun —she declared. It was not a suggestion, nor a request. It was an order, clear and simple, but spoken with a purpose that went beyond the mere learning of a language. It was an anchor, a new tool, a door to another layer of a world she needed to decipher, but also an escape valve to avoid falling under the weight of her thoughts.

That same night, after a hot broth and forced rest made Selena feel a little more anchored in her own body, they set course to leave; there were no farewell ceremonies. They gathered their few belongings, those that had survived the dungeon and those that had been brought to them at the camp, and without directing a single word to Cassian, whose silhouette could still be seen motionless and pensive before the ashes of his tent after an entire day, they departed.

They rode on a sturdy titanopod, whose carapace had been marked with the same signs of calm used on the journey out. Fjora took the reins with an expert hand, and the great insect, under her firm and serene guidance, behaved impeccably, its multiple legs moving with a hypnotic rhythm through the sand. Upon reaching the advanced outpost, Selena did not want to lodge, nor did she expect to rest there.

The simple fact of being within stone walls made by men, however imperfect they might be, gave her a renewed urgency to move away from the border of the nightmare. They replenished provisions with martial efficiency, utilizing the same robust wagon that had brought Fjora and Samira there. Now, with two titanopods yoked and the wagon loaded, Selena, standing beside the driver, gave the order. Her voice did not sound weak, nor broken. It sounded with the clarity of a decision made in the darkest depths.

—We are leaving this nightmare; I do not want to see the royal capital. We will go straight to Terracanto. A small yearning, warm and human, peeked through the cracks of her emotional armor. It was the image of Kaela. Her friend, the only one who truly believed in her, the tanner she met when she still knew nothing of the world. Time had run swiftly, the four months of winter of snow, of the echo, of horror.

Spring, which was already beginning to tint the roads, would be a necessary balm for the journey, and for the reunion. A smile that did not manage to form gathered strength on her lips.