Morning found Dain with a stiff back, a stiff neck, and the smug chirps of birds drilling into his ears like they owned the forest.

  The ground had been hard and unkind, but, well, he couldn't afford to be picky. At least he had a roof over his head, so he groaned, blinked dust from his still-blurry eyes, and immediately noticed the campfire was dead—just cold stones ringed with ash.

  No wonder it’s so cold in here.

  But I shouldn’t have expected mushrooms to keep the fire alive for the entire night, anyways.

  Cold crept in fast. The winter months were still a month away, but these misty mountain forests were already winter in disguise. He tugged his arms tight and sat up, teeth chattering.

  First order of business: check the Altar.

  It was still behind him, cracked like an old mug but stubbornly whole. He sighed, equal parts relief and dread. If the whole ordeal last night had just been a night terror, he might’ve been spared the lifelong cold hand and the lung-siphoning prosthetic, but then again…

  There was no such thing as a convenient fate, and the Altar had served as a decent pillow.

  Sorry, Belara. Hope you didn't see me using your Altar like that.

  He crawled to his feet, pushed the log barricade aside, and the mist immediately rolled in with a damp kiss. Fresh air spilled in. Blue-tinted sunlight poured through the canopy, and for a moment the world almost looked pleasant… almost.

  From far off still came the faint rise and fall of voices: mostly shouts and rings of orders barked by officers. He thought he even heard the distant thuds of wooden palisades going up. Both Obric and Auraline’s soldiers must be eager to plant their walls at the edge of the chasm, neither willing to look like they’d flinch first.

  Lovely neighbors, but I’d rather not be home when they eventually come knocking.

  He pulled his tunic on—it was dry now, smelling of smoke—and strapped on his satchel. He shoved everything back inside with quick, habitual motions: scraps of herbs, a few leftover kiwi bones, and even the empty potion bottle. It was only when he picked it up that he noticed it wasn’t the same bottle he’d given Belara. This one had fancier grooves around the lip and a narrower neck.

  For a second, he couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of what happened behind the portals—what sort of divinity had access to a near infinite amount of relics—but then he looked at his Altar again and forgot all of it.

  Cracked like it was, it could probably survive five, six more portal openings. After that, he had no idea what’d happen to it. Shards, maybe? He still had to protect it until it ran out of uses, so how could he possibly stroll into an Obric town with a cursed god’s personal mailbox slung over his back?

  … Disguise.

  He slung the Altar’s leather strap over his shoulder like a backpack, then went out to the mouth of the cave. Sunlight threaded through the mist in pale shafts, angled from the east.

  That was the direction of Granamere.

  At least I know my way now.

  But first, he needed disguise materials.

  It took him a while with blurry eyes, but he eventually snagged the shapes with a bit of squinting: wide, triangular leaves jutting from a nearby trunk. They drew him towards them, and their surfaces glistened with morning dew, slightly sticky to the touch.

  “Adhesive creepleaves,” he muttered. “This’ll do.”

  He stripped a handful of them, crouched, and unstrapped his Altar. The large leaves clung to the wood easily, so he wrapped the entire cracked surface in several layers until it looked less than anything divine. He patted it, testing the hold. The sticky dew sealed it nicely. From afar, it’d look like he was just carrying a wrapped shield.

  And considering most Altars are circular and oval-shaped, nobody should suspect I’m carrying one… I think.

  He chuckled under his breath, slung the Altar back over his shoulder, and scanned the cave behind him one last time. The ring of stones was scattered, the ash covered with dirt, and there weren’t any scraps of ‘him’ left in sight. Hopefully nobody would stumble on the cave within the next week and figure someone had squatted here.

  Then he tilted his head east, toward the faint glow of the rising sun, and set a goal for himself.

  Granamere by sundown.

  And if the gods are kind, maybe I’ll find some useful magic materials on the way.

  As he hiked, the early morning hours sharpened into early noon without much to say, unless he counted the steady gnawing in his gut. He didn’t stop moving. That meant no breakfast and no lunch as well. He got his morning drink with a handful of rainwater tipped from a large leaf, and that was about it.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The path he chose to Granamere—‘path’ being generous—was a small forest saddle between the two mist-drowned mountains called the Veil-Twins. The forest itself was known as Elderhush Forest, a place the old men in Corvalenne could scare children with by just saying the name twice and wagging a finger. After all, these woods ate travelers who didn’t bring a proper guide or a proper warrior. He had neither, but he had a cursed arm.

  The Elderhush Forest was also considered the point of no return. He’d gone out to play, explore, and forage in the forests near Corvalenne before, but he’d never stepped foot into this misty forest.

  “I’m not here to redecorate, oh great forest,” he mumbled. “Just through and out, through and out. I don’t wanna deal with blurry eyes come sundown in this forest again.”

  The ground changed as he stepped into the Elderhush. Here, the soil was crunchier, colder, and stiff as old bread. Trees rose huge and old with holes wide enough to shelter three men abreast. The most striking part—and where its namesake came from, of course—was the eternal blue mist that braided through trees and canopies alike, making the air crisp, yet stifling.

  Legends had it that an ancient satyr tribe once resided here—the ‘Drunai’, with brilliantly turquoise fur—until a small band of seekers came upon them and offered them a relic. The relic in question was a passive-type that could release a chilling mist, thus allowing the Drunai to cool their village even in the sweltering hot summer months… but the Drunai were careless. After the seekers left, they accidentally dropped the relic into some crevice on the northern Veil-Twin, and since then, it’d been passively absorbing mana from the mountain to release the perpetual mist.

  Eventually, the mist spread out across the entire forest, and the Drunai had no choice but to flee further north.

  No idea how much of that is true, though, he thought, glancing up at the misty Veil-Twins beside him. They were hardly the tallest mountains on this continent, but he could easily imagine dropping something inside a crack or crevice and never being able to get it back. If there really is a relic like that up there, I’d like to get it someday.

  But maybe he shouldn’t be looking at the Veil-Twins.

  After all, he couldn’t see them, but he could feel them: little pricks along his neck and shoulder blades, like a line of gnats learning to write.

  Eyes.

  However it came about centuries ago, the chilling mist that enveloped the Elderhush Forest was host to a ton of more powerful magic beasts than the ones living in the forests around Corvalenne. Many of them were diurnal beasts as well, so when the pricks on the back of his neck became a little too much to bear, he stopped walking immediately.

  Trying to spot them with these eyes is a fool’s game, so…

  He lifted his prosthetic, raised his palm to the sky, and opened his Bloodlight Eye.

  The purple eye woke up, glaring hard and terrible at the forest around him. He felt it snapping from trunk to trunk in quick, angry jerks as if it were counting heads he couldn’t see—and one by one, the watchful eyes in the shadows recoiled into the mist.

  Just to drive the point home, he thumbed a trickle of mana into his prosthetic and flicked his arm at a nearby tree. The windsphere lashed out, shredding a small chunk of the tree.

  The last of the watchful eyes making his neck prick disappeared.

  … And that’s just one mana’s worth of power.

  He stared at the damage to the tree, still a little shocked himself. Elementum-Class relics were rare for a reason, but no wonder the barawolf cub turned to soup last night.

  He tried to tell himself he’d keep his prosthetic on a short leash, but it was getting really, really difficult to not get excited over a weapon that had much more power than its grade usually promised.

  Every famous seeker needs a signature relic.

  For Orland the Everbright, that’s his Star-Element Gauntlet. For Marosa the Vaultjackel, that’s her Blade of Immeasurable Silence.

  Just in case, he kept his Bloodlight Eye open as he continued through the Elderhush Forest, the glowing eye twitching at every crackle of brush. Given it was a passive-type relic that only cost a bit of his mana regeneration to sustain—instead of costing actual mana like his active-type relic—he didn’t really have to worry about the eye running out of strength. He could just keep it open as long as he wanted to.

  As he pushed on, three, four more hours passing by in a blink of an eye, he eventually stumbled on a small pond.

  The pond was black in the middle, so deep it looked like a plug had been pulled from the earth. Only the gods knew what sorts of monsters lay down in the underwater springs—merfolk would be the worst thing to come upon now—but still he crouched by the edge and scooped handfuls of fresh water into his mouth.

  Gods, this is good. He splashed more onto his face, then washed off most of the dirt, grime, and dried blood still clinging to his body. He should at least look the part of a traveler once he reached Granamere, which, judging by the lay of the mountains, was close. An hour or two more once he cleared this last stretch of the forest. The blurriness in his eyes was also starting to recede; he could see the forest sharper now.

  Wish I’d stumbled upon some magic herbs worth carrying, though.

  If I had some, maybe I could pass myself off as a wandering herbalist.

  Before he could think about what his new backstory was going to be, though, he heard shouts in the distance.

  He immediately bolted up the nearest tree, hauling himself onto a thick branch where he crouched low, scanning the mist. His first thought was another bladebeak kiwi, but he dismissed it almost as quickly. Only the male kiwis were mimics, and they only aped men’s voices—their throats weren’t built for higher tones.

  This voice was unmistakably female.

  He narrowed his eyes, listening hard. About ten seconds later, another shout cut through the fog, desperate and real. Definitely human.

  Ground was suicide if something was hunting someone, so he kept to the branches instead, arms spread for balance as he padded across, then leapt, then steadied himself again. Each hop brought him closer and closer to the shouts until the trees parted just enough for him to see the source.

  Below, a giant bilefrost centipede writhed in a small clearing, its armored body glittering with frost as it sprayed a cloud of mist at a massive stone wall.

  Behind this slab of stone came the shrill, panicked voices of two young girls.