Chapter 8

Although Kraft repeatedly insisted he was completely fine, Ryan still insisted on spending the night hunched over the table in his room. When he woke the next morning to blinding sunlight and the shrill creak of wooden axles, he saw Kraft already pulling open the window.

Kraft had slept poorly the night before, tossing and turning in the dark for most of it, wanting to get up and do something but afraid of disturbing Ryan’s rest. Yet when he rose in the morning, he felt no fatigue, and even avoided the usual discomfort of waking early.

He glanced at the snow outside the window. The snow had not visibly melted; a few scattered footprints dotted its surface, adding a touch of human presence. He turned back to Ryan, stretched out in front of him, and his stiff bones crackled comfortably with the motion: “Couldn’t be better—feeling this alive after surviving is wonderful.”

“Ah, true enough,” Ryan yawned. “Don’t forget about that pit.”

After finishing breakfast of flatbread and dried meat, packing their meager luggage, and throwing on their cloaks before mounting their horses, they set off on an impromptu journey.

Of course, before leaving, Kraft followed Ryan to the home of the doctor they’d seen yesterday. With some reluctance, he pulled a black silver coin from his purse and handed it to the doctor as payment for yesterday’s treatment. He also clarified that he had lost all interest in the pillar—everyone could simply fill the hole back in and plant crops on it next year as usual.

That reluctance stemmed mostly from a shortage of pocket money—three parts, at most—and seven parts from his lack of faith in the doctor’s work.

But this minor annoyance vanished quickly once they officially set out. The period after a snowfall, though brief in winter, was still quite pleasant: no more blinding snowstorms obscuring the path, forcing them to concentrate constantly to avoid getting lost on the narrow trails, nor the usual dust storms on dry earth that required them to wrap their cloaks tightly around their entire bodies.

The joy of riding through snow thrilled the otherworldly part of Kraft’s soul. He now existed in a state of overlap: familiar with horsemanship, yet newly enchanted by riding through snow. He could savor the novelty without being distracted enough to be thrown from the saddle.

After leaving the small basin where the village lay, the two rode at a steady, unhurried pace along the streamside trail.

The long-missed bright sunlight dispelled the gloom within the spruce forests on either side. Thick layers of snow clung to the branches, casting dappled light that sparkled like sequins.

The forest’s fierce, dark side was hidden beneath layers of white and overlapping veils of light, revealing itself instead as clean and captivating.

To locals, this was a rare winter sight; to Kraft, it had the cinematic quality of a film, no less stunning than his first viewing of The Chronicles of Narnia. In that moment, he felt like a character from some game, riding horseback toward a battlefield to fight giants and mythical creatures.

He even began humming a tune to accompany himself. Unfortunately, the two souls together could not produce a voice capable of singing—the beautiful, stirring melody existed only in his own mind. Even Ryan, who had no musical taste at all, found the tune unbearable. He pulled away from Kraft, maintaining a distance where he could no longer clearly hear the singing, yet still keep him within sight.

………

“So, what should we buy when we get back to Wendeng Port?” After amusing himself for a while, Kraft spurred his horse to catch up with his cousin ahead. “Where did you find those stone eyeballs last time? The runes carved on them actually had a certain charm—Grandfather loved them.”

“...” Ryan wanted to say that he’d simply bought them cheaply from a stonemason he knew, choosing one of the man’s practice pieces and letting him freely carve whatever he liked on it.

No one knew whether the stonemason truly had talent, but Old Wood adored those eyeballs, and Master Anderson also thought Ryan had good taste.

Now, one of them must be wrong: either the stonemason—who couldn’t hold his liquor past three cups—was some hidden genius lurking in Wendeng Port; or Old Wood and Anderson’s so-called study of anomalous phenomena, namely mysticism, was utterly meaningless.

Ryan’s silence didn’t bother Kraft. He felt unusually energized, so full of vitality that he wanted to pay attention to every sound, every branch he passed.

Even if Ryan didn’t hear him, or refused to answer, he could just talk about something else.

“What did you think of the axe I brought back last time? They said it came from the ice plains across the sea, and that it was used by those who worship pagan gods among the ice dwellers.”

In Kraft’s current view, the axe—which had cost him five full royal silver coins—probably only resembled an ice tribe artifact in its crude shape, and was stained with some unknown black residue.

The captain who sold it to him claimed the stains were from blood sacrifices and couldn’t be wiped away. But now, the otherworldly part of his soul utterly rejected that explanation—he was merely using it to start a conversation. He desperately wanted to absorb some information, anything at all, like the urge to occasionally check one’s phone for new content.

“Uh, if they liked it, that’s fine,” Ryan crafted a more diplomatic reply. “I don’t think we need to expect much from it. Master Anderson won’t have any special expectations either.”

If Kraft truly wanted to surprise Grandfather, Ryan could let him rest at the inn for a few days while he went to find the stonemason himself. This time, he planned to find a strangely shaped stone hand or foot and let the stonemason carve freely. Continuing this way, he hoped to assemble a full series for the castle’s collection before next winter.

Kraft didn’t let the topic drop. Once it ended, he quickly opened another, asking about Wendeng Port Academy: how many scholars there were, what they studied, all sorts of things he’d never cared about before, spilling out from his curious mouth.

But Ryan was a rough man, whose only goal in life was to become a knight, and who didn’t even begin learning to read until much later than Kraft. Though they shared the same teacher, while Kraft was learning from Anderson how to write characters into messy scribbles, Ryan was still struggling to understand basic ledgers.

Though Ryan had visited Wendeng Port far more often than Kraft and always delivered letters from Anderson to the academy’s colleagues, these topics hit his knowledge blind spots. He knew only that the academy was dominated by scholars of humanities, law, and theology, and that its medical division was rumored to steal corpses for evil experiments.

Of these, the most familiar to Ryan were the horror stories about the medical college circulating in taverns: organs soaked in pungent fluids, terrifying books illustrated with flayed corpses, and madmen whispering forbidden knowledge around dissected bodies late at night. Even Ryan himself found these tales chilling—and he hoped they’d scare Kraft off.

To his surprise, the boy grew more excited with every detail, pressing for specifics: What did the fluid smell like? What organs were inside? Did the medical college allow outsiders to visit?

To silence Kraft and preserve his image as the worldly older cousin, Ryan, after draining his limited knowledge of the academy, shifted topics and began telling stories about the ship captains he knew in Wendeng Port.

These men, who spent more time on water than on land, were the most captivating figures in taverns. Their tales spanned from the kingdom’s southernmost reaches to Wendeng Port in the north, and even farther to the vast, frozen ice plains. Their authenticity was dubious, yet they offered a scope of experience unimaginable to landbound folk, and with their trophies—fangs, bones, and other relics—they held a deadly allure for the young.

The story Ryan planned to tell was one he’d heard from a ship captain he knew—a bottom-of-the-barrel tale he was certain would shut Kraft up for good.