"For a year…" Her voice was low, guttural, the words dragged from a place deep inside. She tightened her grip until the leather hilt pressed white against her knuckles. "…for a year I had to watch people unravel. Watch them rot from the inside out with fear."
She stepped forward. The sword trembled in her hand, not with weakness, but with rage contained by sheer will.
"They grew desperate. And desperate people…" she hissed through her teeth, "…will always find a way."
Her lips curled into a scowl as she twisted her blade in her palm, letting the steel catch the dim light.
"They started with their own."
Another step. Her boots dug into the dirt, leaving sharp impressions.
"Then they realized…" she lifted her head, eyes burning, "…it doesn't have to be them."
Her other hand rose, slow and deliberate, sliding her second sword free with a soft rasp of steel. Her movements were measured, ritualistic, like she was building a case with each gesture.
"Travelers. Visitors. Stragglers on the road. A merchant whose only crime was stopping to rest." Her words spat out like venom, her steps matching the cadence of her list.
She paused mid-step, her breath sharp, ragged. Her eyes didn't leave him.
"Old. Young. Women. Men." Each word was an accusation, heavy, carved into the air between them.
With a final step, she lifted the short sword and leveled it at his chest, the tip trembling not with hesitation, but with the weight of what she carried.
"It doesn't matter."
Purple fire licked along the blade, crawling hungrily up the steel, casting her face in flickering shadows. Her voice deepened, breaking into something guttural.
"As long as the blood is not their own, the village will be safe."
The flames hissed louder, and for a heartbeat, it looked as though the fire wanted to leap from the sword to her very veins.
Keiser scoffed as he forced himself upright, ignoring how Muzio's battered body screamed at him. He stepped close enough for her blade to graze his skin, the edge nicking his cheek. He didn't flinch.
"So that's it? You stand here for a year--observing, pickpocketing, skulking in the trees, chasing pyre bugs--and just watching?" His voice dripped with mockery. "A princess reduced to a forest rat."
Her face twisted, jaw tight, teeth grinding. "Watching?" she spat. "I planned every day. I executed plans every day. I bled every day to keep both sides alive--the villagers and the outsiders."
Her sword blurred in a sudden arc. Keiser jerked back, not at her, but at the dull thump of a snake's body hitting the ground beside him. Its head had been neatly severed--he hadn't even known it was there.
"I let them believe," she snarled, shoulders heaving, "that if they sacrificed strangers--fed them to the forest--they'd be safe. What they didn't know was that I took those people. Hid them. Led them elsewhere. Away from the beast."
Keiser's laugh was sharp, bitter. He shook his head, eyes narrowing. "So you dressed up a slaughter in lies, and called it salvation. Congratulations. You've kept the village scared and complicit, all while they keep feeding your farce. And you--" his lip curled, "you keep pretending you're the savior."
The princess's grip trembled on her blade, knuckles pale, flames crackling at the edge of her skin. "It wasn't me--" her voice cracked, then rose, feral, "STOPPP!"
Lenko flung himself between them, breath ragged, hands spread wide. "Just--stop!" His eyes darted from Keiser's bloody grin to the princess's burning fury. "Do you hear yourselves? You're tearing at each other while the real enemy waits to chew us alive!"
He glared at her first. "And you--stop trying to prove you're stronger by scaring the people who are supposed to stand beside you." Then he turned to Keiser, eyes sharp. "And you, stop acting like every word out of your mouth has to be a blade."
For a heartbeat, the clearing rang with silence, broken only by Lenko's labored breathing.
The princess raised her chin, staring him down as if daring him to falter. But Lenko didn't move, didn't shrink. He held her gaze until, with a huff that trembled at the edges, she lowered her sword. The violet fire guttered, withdrawing into her skin, leaving only the faint smell of smoke.
Lenko glanced back at Keiser.
Keiser froze under that look. Suspicion. Confusion. Anger. And something else--something he couldn't quite place, something that burned and pressed all at once. For a heartbeat, Keiser thought Lenko might spit it all out right there. Instead, the man's jaw flexed, and silence stretched between them.
"...Can we go check on those people?" Lenko asked at last. His tone softened, almost careful. But the way he looked at Keiser--it was deliberate, like he was trying to will him into making amends, into proving something.
Keiser looked away. "Yeah," he muttered. His voice lacked its usual bite, though he tried to hide it. "Like you said--better to show than to talk about it."
She flicked him a glance. For the briefest moment, her eyes held something startlingly plain--acceptance, maybe even the faintest admission that all of this had been a little foolish. But of course Keiser wouldn't give her the satisfaction of pointing it out.
"Still though," he scoffed under his breath, trailing after her. "you're not good with words."
She grumbled, "I'm working on it. Just… shaking off my beast-core's influence." Shifting her swords as she strode ahead.
Lenko let out a sigh, the sound almost like a man unclenching after holding his breath too long. He followed, his shoulders finally easing.
But peace never lasted long.
Keiser was already regretting it--regretting the half-answers, the evasions, the stupid way she had circled around them instead of just answering. He could have pressed harder, provoked her into honesty, torn the truth out instead of all this circling. But now… now it was too late.
The regret was still gnawing at him when laughter burst out ahead.
Lenko's laughter.
Keiser lifted his eyes to see him spinning with a child, their joined hands flaring wide as they stumbled in a crooked dance around the firepit. The flames licked at the haunch of a wild boar--taken down cleanly by the Princess herself on the way here.
The scent of roasting meat curled thick into the air, mixing with smoke and the sound of voices. People--the very people who should have been gone, lost, erased--were here.
Alive.
Children running barefoot on stone, women stringing herbs across the fire, men kneeling to carve at bark for kindling.
Keiser stared.
At first, when the princess led them to it, the pyre bugs were already fading, their faint glow swallowed by the brightening sky. The sun had risen more than just a sliver over the horizon now, its gold and crimson stretching long across the jagged hills.
What looked, from a distance, to be nothing more than a wall of stone loomed before them -- rough, uneven, and unwelcoming. It seemed like the end of the path, a dead stop carved by the mountain itself.
But as they drew closer, Keiser narrowed his eyes. On one side of the rock face, the formations bent and curled in strange ways. From afar it might have been dismissed as weathered stone, but here, the shapes came together with eerie precision. Jagged ridges arched like a muzzle. Two sharp spires jutted skyward, crooked but unmistakable -- the ears of a fox.
Lenko tilted his head, unsure, when the princess stooped and picked up a simple pebble from the ground. She brushed the dirt off with a casualness that unsettled him, then placed it with deliberate care upon the statue's ear -- the one rough stone that gave the shape its point.
The earth shuddered.
A groan rolled through the ground, deep and ancient, vibrating in their chests. The rock face cracked with a thunderclap, fissures of light spreading like veins across the wall. Birds exploded from the treetops nearby, startled into frantic flight, their cries sharp against the grinding roar.
Lenko stumbled back, wide-eyed, his hands clenching at his sides as dust and pebbles showered around them. He glanced at the princess, but she stood calmly, unflinching, as though she had seen this countless times before.
From the widening crack came a stairway, hewn from the same stone yet impossibly smooth, descending into shadow. The air that spilled out was cool, damp, carrying the scent of earth and the faint murmur of voices below.
And then they saw it.
Beneath the mountain, hidden away where no map could mark it, was an underground settlement. Tunnels opened into broad chambers lit with scattered lanterns, their glow reflecting on pools of water carved from natural caverns. Dozens -- no, perhaps hundreds -- of people moved within. Faces weary but alive. Men, women, and children. The missing. The disappeared.
Every one of them saved by the princess.
That very princess handed him a freshly roasted slab of meat, set neatly on a broad green leaf still damp with dew. Then she sat down beside him without a word.
For a while, they just watched. The air carried smoke, laughter, and the crackle of firewood as the people spoke and sang to one another -- strangers drawn together, yet somehow at ease. It was a strange kind of joy, born not from wealth or abundance, but simply from being alive here, together, in this hollow carved out of the world.
It wasn't the capital. The capital's happiness was brittle -- built on coin, on bargains, on the thin comfort of having just enough to scrape by. This… this was different. These people had nothing, and yet they smiled as if it was enough.
Keiser lowered his eyes to the meat. He ate without hesitation. He never wasted food. He couldn't waste food. That was something drilled into him long before.
But as he chewed, his voice slipped out, low and rough.
"You can't stay here forever and play at this farce."
The princess turned sharply, her eyes flashing in disbelief.
"I'm not planning to," she shot back. Her tone was cool, but her fingers tightened slightly around her own leaf-wrapped portion. "And besides--don't act as if I was the one who staged the farce first."
She clicked her tongue, glancing toward the laughing crowd. "I told you already. They convinced themselves. They said the Forest of Sheol cursed them, that it was stealing their people. That's why their numbers dwindled. They were already terrified before I ever set foot here."