Footsteps crunched through shattered gravel behind her. Desty turned, and saw Lucimia emerge from the cave, face blank as frost.
No blood ringed her lips as Desty had imagined; chest and sleeves were spotless, scrubbed like polished ice.
“Any luck? Did you find it?” Desty rose, brushing clinging snow like white ash from her coat.
Lucimia stalled, then steadied fast. She coughed twice, voice low. “I tried a little… let’s do it again outside the valley.”
She hadn’t used her power; she ate, confirmed the spark was there, then stepped out into the cold.
She had also pinned down the rules: every activation costs a meal, one bite for one turn at control.
Once you cut the link, the control is over; the next try demands another meal, the way a lamp needs oil.
If your brain can bear it, you can hold the tether, riding the storm without letting go.
You can’t just nibble a single mouthful of raw meat; two or three bites at least, better a full belly instead of a taste.
There’s a neat mechanism, too: charges stack like stones; eat and don’t use it, wait, eat again, it stacks to two.
“Alright.” Desty nodded, snow dusting her lashes like frost.
“Mm.”
Teleportation Magic flared, and both figures vanished like sparks, reappearing on an open patch outside Nach Valley.
Snow fell in thick sheets; flakes wheeled overhead like white moths, and within seconds a cold film layered their shoulders.
With a helpless sigh, Lucimia raised a magic barrier, a clear dome under the whirling storm.
“Snow’s getting heavier,” Desty said, gaze lifted into the gray veil.
“Yeah, and night’s close. I’ll clear a clean patch,” Lucimia said, sweeping drifts aside. “We’ll sleep in the wagon.”
She needed a bare space, a calm seat and steady posture to control the monsters and hunt for the Cross.
Watching the swath widen under magic, Desty ventured, “Wanna wait till it eases? With snow this thick, it’s hard to find.”
“Mm…” Lucimia looked up into the falling white, mind tight as a drawn bow.
Desty had a point—the heavy snow blurs the search; one miss means another meal, even with Reversion on the table.
Her gut said Reversion had problems, a hairline crack in glass; she didn’t dare lean on it too hard.
“But we don’t know how long this snow will last,” Lucimia said, breath a pale plume. “Visibility’s okay now; if it turns blizzard, we’re blind.”
“Let’s start now. The rat swarm and the pursuers trail our backs like wolf shadows. We don’t have time to waste.”
“Eh… can’t we use Reversion? If it gets worse, we revert and control then,” Desty asked, confusion like mist in her eyes.
Lucimia fell silent, words sealed by the cold.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
She shook her head. The last drift vanished, bareness ringed by a swelling ward, clear as glass under snow.
From her Storage Ring she drew the wagon, a wooden block unfurling back into a carriage like a seed into a tree.
She restored the horse from its turtle form, life stretching like thaw, then fed it, warmth in the gray.
She ducked into the wagon, sank into soft cushions like moss, and readied her power.
Desty slipped in as well, half her body leaning through the doorway like a curious cat. “Need me to do anything?”
Lucimia opened her mouth, but Desty carried on, voice quick. “I’ll stand guard outside. If something happens, I’ll report.”
She didn’t wait for agreement; she drew back like a bird and slid out into the white.
What’s up with her? The thought drifted through Lucimia’s mind like a lone feather.
Forget it. Find the Cross first.
She closed her eyes; when she opened them, her pupils burned with red light, twin embers in winter.
Every monster in the valley bowed under her control; her soul felt sliced into shards, riding each beast like a second skin.
“Tch. A little dizzy.” The world rocked like a boat; she steadied herself and began to scan the valley.
The valley split cleanly into three zones: dense forest like a black sea, steep hills like broken teeth, and rivers like silver veins.
She poured attention into plant-type monsters, sweeping the forest with green eyes.
Trees, thickets, caves, ponds: she searched each spot, and found no trace of smoke, only blankets of snow.
“Nothing on the surface. What about underground?”
She shifted into burrowing monsters, eyes tuned to night, senses humming with strange signal waves like distant drums.
“Still nothing.” Her verdict fell like a stone.
Underground matched the surface—no smoke, no Cross—in the forest zone, a silence like a sealed jar.
“Try the hills next.”
She moved into animal-type monsters, even that big serpent from before, sliding over slopes and rock walls like wind.
But regret piled like snow; no Cross, no smoke, not on the hills, not below them, only cold and stone.
“Not there either? Could it be underwater?”
A thin fear pricked her skin like needles; if all three zones failed, then what? Where was the Cross?
Where had Ment hidden it, and by what hand—what lock and what veil?
She turned to the river zone at last, sunk into water beasts, and saw through their cold glass eyes.
Bad news carried in like black water: no smoke trails beneath the skin of the river.
Sure enough, when you feel a bad thing brewing, it usually comes; the opposite rarely does, like sun behind iron clouds.
“Odd,” Lucimia murmured, voice a thread in the storm.
Did we take the wrong road? Is this not Nach Valley?
She pulled a map from her Storage Ring, compared lines and peaks, and confirmed it—this was Nach Valley.
“If we didn’t go wrong, why can’t we find it?” The thought struck her like a bell, leaving her dazed.
Wait. Think, Lucimia.
Monsters carry an instinct for danger like a sixth wind; humans lack it, and monsters drift away from places that bite.
Maybe they avoided the danger zone before she seized control; their visions miss pieces, little pockets like holes in cloth.
And in those pockets, the Cross could be hiding like a needle in snow.
“I can try a flying monster—use its sky view, pair it with the burrowers’ ground view, map the distribution, and flag the blank spots.”
Lucimia adapted fast, mind a blade; she found the snag and chose her next move.
