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 before the window. Outside, the snow showed no clear signs of melting; a few scattered footprints dotted its surface, adding a touch of human presence. He turned back, stretched out in front of Ryan, and his stiff bones cracked comfortably with each movement: "Couldn't be better—feeling alive after surviving is wonderful."

"Ah, yeah, that's true," 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 swinging onto their horses, they set off on an impromptu journey.

Of course, before leaving, Kraft followed Ryan to the home of the doctor from yesterday and, with some reluctance, pulled a black silver coin from his purse to pay for yesterday's consultation. 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 contained about thirty percent regret over his dwindling pocket money and seventy percent disbelief in the doctor's work.

But this minor annoyance vanished quickly once they officially set out. The period after a snowfall, clear and bright, was still quite pleasant in winter: no more blinding snowstorms obscuring vision and forcing them to concentrate fiercely on narrow paths to avoid getting lost, 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 layered state: familiar with horsemanship, yet newly enchanted by riding through snow. He could savor the novelty without becoming distracted enough to be thrown off.

After leaving the small basin where the village lay, the two rode steadily along the trail winding through the stream valley.

The long-missed bright sunlight dispelled the gloom within the spruce forests on either side; thick layers of snow clung to 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 now as clean and alluring.

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 this moment, he felt as if he had become a character in some game, riding horseback toward a battlefield to confront giants and mythical beasts.

He even began humming a tune to accompany himself. Unfortunately, the two souls together couldn't produce a voice capable of singing—the beautiful, stirring melody existed only in his own mind. Even Ryan, with 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 after we return to Venden 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 those eyeballs were simply a cheap find—he'd picked up a stone-carving practice piece from a mason he knew and let him freely carve whatever he wanted on it.

No one knew whether that mason truly had talent, but Old Wood loved those eyeballs, and Master Anderson also thought Ryan had good taste.

Now, one of the two must be wrong: either that mason—who couldn't hold his liquor past three cups—was some hidden genius lurking in Venden Port; or else Old Wood and Anderson's so-called study of anomalous phenomena, namely the occult, was utterly meaningless.

Ryan's silence didn't bother Kraft at all. He felt unusually energetic, so brimming with 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 still talk about something else.

"What do 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 kingdom silver coins—probably only matched the ice tribe's characteristics in its crude shape, and was stained with some unknown black residue.

The captain who sold it claimed the stains were from blood sacrifices and could never 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 open his phone to check for new content.

"Uh, if they liked it, that's fine," Ryan crafted a more diplomatic response. "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 mason himself. This time, he planned to find a strangely shaped stone hand or foot and let the mason carve freely again. He'd continue this way, aiming to assemble a full series for the castle's collection room before next winter.

Kraft didn't let the topic die. After it ended, he quickly launched into another, asking about the Venden Port Academy: how many scholars there were, what they studied, all sorts of things he'd previously cared little about—questions spilling endlessly from his curious mouth.

But Ryan was a rough man, whose only goal since growing up was to become a knight; he 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 he'd visited Venden Port far more often than Kraft and always carried messages from Anderson to the academy's colleagues, these topics hit his knowledge blind spots. He knew only that the academy's majority were 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 tales circulating in taverns about the medical college: organs soaking in pungent fluids, terrifying books illustrated with flayed corpses, and madmen whispering dreadful knowledge around dissected bodies late at night. Even Ryan himself found these stories chilling—and he hoped they'd scare Kraft off.

To his surprise, the boy grew even more excited, pressing for details: What did the fluid soaking the organs smell like? What specific organs were inside? Did the medical college allow outsiders to visit?

To silence Kraft and preserve his image as the well-traveled cousin, Ryan, after draining his limited knowledge of the academy, shifted topics and began telling stories about the ship captains he knew in Venden 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 Venden Port in the north, and even farther to the colder, vast ice plains. Their authenticity was highly questionable, yet they offered a breadth of experience unimaginable to landbound people, reinforced by tangible evidence—fangs, bones, and other relics—that held a deadly allure for the young.

What Ryan intended to tell was a bottom-of-the-barrel story he'd heard from one of the captains he knew—he was utterly confident this tale would shut Kraft's mouth.