Medith blinked awake. "I... think I know why a country like yours still had to swallow smoke and ash."

From Haidra’s flinches and stray words, she pieced it together like shells along a tide-swept shore.

They’d ranked near the top among the four great nations, a hawk riding high winds.

Then Regido rose, and your Divine Stone dimmed like a lamp under rain.

The strength you drew from Impado ebbed too, like a river losing its spring.

Others kept climbing, their Stones honed brighter, like blades whetted daily.

You slipped backward, a cartwheel stuck in mud, so power sank to the bottom.

Fall behind, and the cudgel finds your back, as sure as winter finds leaves.

That’s why you were desperate to reach us, grasping at a rope over a ravine.

So when you got the Queen’s arcane intel, you shook like trees in a storm.

"Fate toys with us," Medith thought, bitterness rising like smoke from wet charcoal.

"This forest once packed trunks so tight we had to tiptoe through shadows.

Now a whole rank of warhorses could pass abreast, like a river of iron."

She looked at the charred crust and the thirsty soil, and her eyes went dim.

That day, the two from Rita’s team became a death-wall for the Mountain Bandits, a grim barricade of flesh.

The bandits saw the fire wall swing toward the main road like a red tide.

Then their own buried traps shredded them, armor and pride blown like chaff.

They finally wheeled back into the wall of fire, charging in without a backward glance.

The turn in that chain of events made her want to laugh, sharp as frost.

They rode wordless, the desolation around them smothering talk like damp wool.

"We’re out," Haidra called, a bell note over a windless plain.

Medith and the rest lifted their heads and looked forward, like travelers cresting a dune.

Before them spread a vast, shoreless earth, so wide it pulled a gasp from Medith.

Milia, Phiby, and Iling gaped, mouths unclosed like hatchlings, first time swallowing a view like this.

It was only land, yet it thundered like surf against their chests.

"You haven’t left the forest in a long time, have you?" Haidra smiled, sunlight on ice.

"The world’s broader than you think; this is only a sliver of the continent."

"I... can I ask something?" Iling stared at the endless earth and swallowed, throat dry as sand.

"If the Southern Kingdom sent every soldier, could they fill this whole stretch?"

Her words dropped and crushed the air; the mood sank like a mountain onto the chest.

"Maybe... twice this size," Haidra said, voice heavy as iron.

"The Southern Kingdom is strong... very strong..."

"Ah..." Phiby squeaked, like a startled rabbit bolting for brush.

Weight gathered in Medith’s gaze like stormclouds over the horizon.

The image of a million iron riders surged up again, a black flood across earth.

That day, warhorses ran to the horizon, and the ground trembled like a snared drum.

She had power to break sky and earth, yet couldn’t stop the wheel of fate.

The black reaper speared through her dreams with one thrust and left them in shards.

"Let’s move." Medith said no more and urged her stallion forward like an arrow.

Haidra and the others fell in behind, a stream catching a boulder’s wake.

They took the road toward the kingdom, iron hooves stamping deep wells into the dust.

...

10/18. They pushed three days without a pause, hooves drumming like rain on a roof.

They joked along the way, bright sparks in a gray wind.

The road to the kingdom wasn’t that rough, more ribbon than thorn.

Except for some mountain forests on foot, Medith’s group moved almost unimpeded, like wind through reeds.

Xurenxus City sits in the Eastern Nation’s sphere, a vein running close to the border.

It takes only a few days to reach that edge, which is no surprise.

They manage their lands well, fields combed like hair, roads laid like stitches.

Only recluses like Medith’s clan in deep mountains slip through those careful fingers.

"Your land work’s impressive," Medith said, eyeing the smooth mountain path like a polished snake.

"It’s clear the borders swelled in places, which makes travel a lot easier."

"Yeah, speaking of that, I’ve got a question," Iling chirped, bright as a sparrow on a branch.

"Are the buildings in the Eastern Nation really tall and huge?"

"Hahaha..." Kailon laughed, a drumroll of mirth on open stone.

"Iling, that’s what you’re asking?"

"Hey— I don’t agree," a cavalryman rumbled, voice muffled by armor like a cave.

"Small doesn’t mean shabby; compact can be perfect, heart and lungs all there."

"Give me a snug wooden hut ringed by green sprites, and I’d eat leaves daily, happy."

For days they’d bantered with the sprite ladies, drawing close like moths to lanterns.

Especially Sais; at every rest, they circled her like dogs, tails wagging with cups.

Medith and Haidra were thorns no one dared touch, left on the side to prick.

Soured by that, they kept finding trouble for the cavalry, like wind kicking a fire.

"You there, can you even handle me?" Sais purred, smile like honey on a blade.

"Never mind anything else; one look from me and you’d die, and you’d eat leaves."

The cavalryman flailed with excitement, hopping in the saddle like a monkey in heat.

"Tris, look at yourself," another cavalryman joked, a grin like a slit of sun.

"We’re Royal Guards; try acting like it, or Lord Haidra will get mad."

"Tch, for a smile from Sais the Sprite, even Lord Haidra, I’d— Watch out—"

Tris suddenly kicked Sais aside, a boot like a thunderclap on bark.

Whoosh— an arrow hissed from the shadow and punched through Tris’s skull like a stake.

The shaft was thick, twice normal, and it blew his head apart like fruit.

Thud— his body went stiff and toppled forward, a felled log without a heartbeat.