The Cursed opened his eyes.
Bloodied zombies were standing all around. A magical mirage covered the area.
The Ice Queen and her generals were sitting on horses.
The Cursed threw one zombie rider to the ground and climbed onto his horse instead.
"I was dead."
"So was I. We were killed," said the Ice Queen.
"But now we came back to life. Is this your magic?"
"No. I don't have such magic."
"Then who brought us back to life?"
"But we didn't come back to life. Look around. We are intact and in the same state as we were before we went to Territory 77. Something transported us back in time. And only our memories remained to preserve the events of our deaths."
"Then what magic transported us through time? Could it be one of the Light-Haired's abilities that I received when she died, and now it has activated?"
"But you didn't kill her."
"There was an explosion. Her death could have counted as me killing her. After all, I survived."
"Be that as it may, the Herald gave me the wrong coordinates. Instead of ending up away from the sorceresses' squad, we ended up right in the middle of it."
"The Herald?"
She raised her hand, and an icy corridor formed ahead of them.
"Let's go."
She moved forward. The Cursed followed her. The generals remained behind.
They rode into a majestic landscape beneath gray skies. A tall castle stretched its towers toward those skies. The castle was built from a dark material. Looking at it, the Cursed doubted that it was stone.
"Your attack dogs aren't following you."
"This is a special place. Only the Great Leaders of Cold and those they choose to bring with them can enter here."
Black streams rose into the sky from the towers of the giant castle.
"It looks like something unpleasant has happened."
They climbed the dark staircase and passed through tall open doors. They went through a dark corridor.
In the large hall, capsules were arranged around the entire perimeter in gradually rising rows, from the floor toward the walls. Almost all of them were closed. Only the lids of some were open. People with their eyes closed lay inside the capsules. Black streams were stretching from the tall arched doorways toward the open capsules, like black, constantly swirling tornadoes, and swallowing their heads.
"The Heralds," said the Ice Queen. "They travel through their visions across secret and unknown lands and transmit all the coordinates needed for military operations to the Great Cold. And they were always accurate. Mistakes were either impossible or corrected. But this time, something went wrong."
She quickly approached one of the open capsules. A black tornado was swallowing the head of the person lying inside. She grabbed him by his jumpsuit and pulled him toward her.
"What the hell? Why did you give me the wrong coordinates?! We were killed there!"
The Herald's head emerged from the black stream. A mixture of suffering and strange pleasure was frozen on his face. The black tornado raged at the back of his head, trying to seize his entire head again.
The Herald barely opened his eyes.
"Is that you, Queen? Good to see you... That creature infiltrated us back then. It gave the wrong coordinates. At first, it lived only in the brain. Now it has come to take over my body. Help me."
He closed his eyes again and sank into his wonderland.
"I'm going after him," said the Ice Queen. "We need the correct coordinates of the place."
"I'm coming too," replied the Cursed.
He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she placed her hand on the Herald's chest.