The Villainess Wants To Retire

Chapter 593: Journey to the ruins

Nearby, Jorel stood with a look of profound regret. He was still recovering from the exhaustion of his previous missions, his body not yet ready for the grueling pace Soren intended to set.

Soren walked up to him, noting the slump of the knight’s shoulders.

"I should be with you, Your Majesty" Jorel said, his voice thick with frustration.

"You have your orders, Jorel," Soren said, placing a hand on the knight’s shoulder. "And you’ve always been exceptionally good at following them. That’s why I’m putting Eris’s safety in your hands. There is no one else I trust more to hold the gate while I’m gone."

Jorel’s regret transformed into a sharp, focused pride. He straightened. "I will not fail you, Sire."

At the edge of the group, Aldwin stood like a part of the architecture. The old mage looked like something the morning had consulted before deciding what kind of weather to produce. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

Aldwin approached Soren with an unhurried grace. He wasn’t carrying maps or official decrees, but a single, folded piece of paper dense with cramped, minute notation.

"The temples at the border are not all ruins in the same way," Aldwin said, his voice low. "Some were abandoned by choice. Others were sealed by force. The distinction matters more than you know."

He handed the paper to Soren. "Look for symbols that do not match the period. They should not be there. If you find them, that is your answer. Look for writings in the Old Tongue, artifacts... anything that looks like it was placed deliberately rather than left behind in a hurry."

The old man paused, his eyes searching Soren’s. "Though I suspect that when you find what you are looking for, you will know it without my guidance. You have already heard its mechanisms from the other side."

Soren took the paper, tucking it into his tunic. "Eris," he said, skipping any preface. "If anything changes in her condition, if the children shift, if the fire becomes unmanageable, if the cracking returns, you do not wait. You contact me immediately through the line we established."

Aldwin gave him a long, patient look, the look of a man who had seen too many powerful men blinded by love. "She will be here when you return, Soren. Put your mind to the work ahead and let me do mine."

Soren nodded once. He turned to Eris for a final time. No words passed between them, but the silence said everything.

He mounted his horse, the leather creaking in the cold air. The party moved through the gates and into the grey, pre-dawn mist.

Eris watched until the heavy iron gates groaned shut, sealing the palace. Mira moved to stand beside her in the silence, and for a long time, neither woman moved. freewёbnoνel.com

The first hours were a blur of receding spires. The Frozen Court fell away, its jagged silhouette lost in the morning haze as they pushed north and west toward the border.

Soren rode at the front, with Ryse a half-length behind, his eyes constantly scanning the terrain. Aldric followed, already taking notes on his horse, his back as straight as it had been in the courtyard.

For the first two days, the land was recognizable, the grand imperial roads cutting through white pine forests so vast they seemed to swallow the horizon.

The trees were ancient giants, their trunks wider than rooms, their canopy turning the midday sun into a strange, blue-white ghost of light. The cold of Nevareth’s interior was permanent and indifferent; it didn’t bite so much as it simply existed.

To the east, the Vetharn mountains ran like the empire’s spine, their peaks lost in a perpetual shroud of cloud and ice.

On the second day, Soren noticed it. The snow on the lower slopes was wrong. It wasn’t the depth or the temperature; it was the quality. It sat against the rock with a terrifying stillness, too settled, as if it hadn’t shifted in a decade. He observed it but said nothing.

By the third and fourth days, the road descended into deep valley systems where the rivers ran dark and sluggish under thick ice.

"The rivers are wrong," Ryse said, riding up beside Soren on the third evening.

"I know," Soren replied.

"The trees too," Ryse added. "In the eastern groves... did you see the frost patterns on the bark?"

Soren nodded. He had seen them. The frost was symmetrical, forming perfect, geometric lattices that followed a logic alien to the weather. It was the specific wrongness of something governed by a mechanism, not nature.

"Should we be concerned, Your Majesty?" Ryse asked, his voice devoid of his usual levity.

"Not yet," Soren said.

By the fifth day, they were rising again, traversing cliff faces of black stone that dropped hundreds of feet into nothingness. Usually, from these heights, one could see the change in the land where Nevareth ended and the border began.

Soren saw only fog. It wasn’t the seasonal mist of the valleys; it was a wall of white that sat motionless at the border line, as if it had been placed there by a hand. It was exactly what Aldwin had warned him about, something deliberate.

The silence on the cliffs was absolute. The wind, which should have been a constant roar at this altitude, was gone. The world was holding its breath. Even Aldric stopped writing.

On the morning of the seventh day, the road narrowed. The maintained imperial stone gave way to older, jagged paths cut by feet that had been dust for centuries. The white pines vanished, replaced by darker, gnarled trees whose branches interlocked overhead to form a tunnel of grey wood and old ice.

The light filtered through in narrow, lonely columns.

Ahead, the fortress was visible. The tree line changed, and the land shifted from the familiar grey of Nevareth to something older than either empire. This was the disputed territory, the land between both nations where only Nevareth had successfully maintained a claim.

And after that territory lay the ruins.

Soren stopped his horse at the edge of the dark wood. He looked at the fog sitting at the line between worlds. In his mind, he heard it again, the grinding, rhythmic thrum of the gears he had heard in the void.

The landscape didn’t just look different. It felt like it was listening.

"We camp here tonight," Soren said to the group. "We cross at first light."

No one questioned him. They looked at the wall of fog ahead and began to unsaddle their horses in a silence that felt like a prayer.