Kiyokazu Lazar — POV
We kept running after Viktor pulled his hand away and moved on ahead of us.
We ran for so long that I couldn't find the words to describe exactly how long it had been. Time stretched thin in this cold. Every second felt like a minute, every minute felt like an hour. The cold didn't ease up for even a moment.
The wind bit hard. Both from outside and from within.
As soon as Viktor pulled his hand away, the warmth vanished and the cold returned, not even waiting few seconds for us to catch our breath. There was no escaping it. Nor could it be resisted. It was simply there, pressing in on us from all sides at once.
The snowy trail stretched ahead of us and kept stretching, without the slightest hint that it would ever end. It looked the same as it had at the beginning. It gave nothing away.
The only thing that kept changing was wind. In one moment blowing from the left, then from the right, then straight from the front, cycling through constantly. The trees swayed with it and the snow just kept falling from the sky.
"How much further?" Kieran spoke, to no one specifically. His face was bright red.
"I don't know," Luiz answered. "This trail just keeps stretching out."
"Darius said it was about three kilometers."
"Maybe Darius lied? Maybe it's longer than three kilometers?"
"I really hope that's not the case Lazar, because this cold has become unbearable to endure."
"I completely agree with you Luiz," Kieran said.
We were still in the same formation. Luiz at the front, Kieran behind him and me at the back. We ran at a steady pace, fast enough to cover the distance, but also slow enough not to burn out completely and have to stop. Stopping meant no movement, which meant our body heat dropping, which meant freezing all over again.
„Huh?"
As we ran, I watched Luiz and Kieran ahead of me and noticed both of them were acting strangely. Luiz had started breathing harder and slowing slightly. While Kieran's breathing was getting harsher with every step.
„If we keep going like this, we won't make it."
"Hey, Luiz."
"What is it?"
"Let's switch."
"What?"
"You've been in front this whole time, blocking the headwind so it doesn't hit us. We should swap. Let me go first."
"There's no need, Lazar. I can keep going."
"Don't pretend to act tough now Luiz," I replied. " You're completely red, and your lips have turned a bit blue."
He went quiet, still running.
"I might not be as strong as either of you. But I can be your shield right now. It's the least I can do after everything. After all I owe you for stepping in when Kaien went after me."
"You don't owe me anything," he answered quickly. "I told you that already, back inside." He exhaled, his breath visible in the cold air. "I'm not like Viktor. I'm not going to ask you or Kieran for anything in return."
"Luiz..."
"Because when I actually need something from you, I'll just ask. It's that simple."
"I agree with him," Kieran added from the side. "I wouldn't try to put either of you in my debt either."
"Guys..."
"Though I am worried about you too, Luiz," Kieran continued. "Lazar's right. It'd be better if you two swapped places for a bit. We can keep swapping every now and then."
"Alright then." Luiz slowed until I caught up to him, then he slapped me on the back and laughed. "You're the captain now. Lead the way."
I nodded.
"Got it."
"Now we're really like a team, aren't we?" Kieran asked.
"Shouldn't you say like soldiers'?"
"It's all the same thing."
After we swapped places, we covered a fair distance. Now I was in the lead, with Kieran second and Luiz behind us. As soon as we switched, I felt and fully grasped just how hard it had been for Luiz all this time. The wind was hitting me straight in the face, colder and stronger than when I had been running behind him. He had endured it all without a word.
Viktor was nowhere in sight. Not ahead of us, nor behind us. He had already moved far ahead.
I suppose creating heat from his own body made a real difference. Unlike us, who were shivering just trying to stay upright.
But we weren't the only ones struggling. There was four other people visible ahead of us, and I could hear footsteps behind us too. Some were slipping on ice that had formed where others had packed down the snow. Some ran faster than us and passed. Others kept with our pace.
And some fell.
A loud, dull thud would cut through the howling wind and the sound of our own breathing. You would hear the sound of boots losing their footing, followed by an impact loud enough to grab your attention, whether you wanted it to or not. Immediately after that impact, a voice would be heard. Weak. Exhausted. Barely able to form words. Then, a cry for help. And after that cry, nothing but silence, the kind of silence that makes it unmistakably clear that help is not coming.
I didn't look back. Or rather, I didn't want to look at what was happening behind us. It felt as if I wasn't allowed to look back, because whatever sight awaited me wouldn't be anything I'd want to see. Besides, it wasn't a smart decision to make right now. Especially since I was now the one leading our little group toward our goal.
What happened to them? Will they be okay? Will they survive? Will anyone help them?
Those questions raced through my head in the moments after each fall. Just running past someone lying in the snow, keeping your eyes forward while those questions bounced around your head, was enough to eat you from the inside. Not like physical pain, but something else. Something that didn't have a clean word for it.
My hands were shaking. The cold threatened to overwhelm me at any moment. I could hear my own heartbeat. The voices of others around me, people feeling exactly what I was feeling, some already down and some still pushing left a bitter taste at the back of my mouth that slowly became nausea, then turned into slight dizziness.
I kept my eyes on the path below my feet. I ran past each fallen person without lifting my head.
I couldn't pass them with my head up.
I simply couldn't.
But why do I feel this way? Others passed them with their heads held high. Why can't I?
When I finally decided to look up, it happened again. Another one went down.
It was one of the guys from Link's group. The one I had shaken hands with before any of this started.
He was about thirty meters ahead. He hit his knees and dropped into the snow, then he looked back. When his eyes found mine, he kept looking. His black eyes stayed on my face with something in them that I couldn't name. It was not fear, not anger. Something more like a question.
"Don't look at me…"
"Don't..."
I kept repeating it to myself as we got closer to him, but still. His gaze didn't wanted to get off from me.
Something swelled inside my body. An urge, telling me to go over there and help him back up.
I slowed down. Then I moved toward the center of the path where he had fallen.
I don't understand why. He wasn't someone I knew well. We had only shaken hands once. When Kaien had grabbed me, he hadn't stepped in. He just stood there watching, unwilling to get involved unlike Luiz who did. He wasn't someone I had any special reason to help.
And yet I stopped beside him anyway…
"Why?"
His hands were ice-cold. His lips faintly blue. His face red, his brows drawn together. And worst of all, his breath wasn't producing any steam. It was cold, the same temperature as the air around him.
"Lazar." Luiz had stopped beside me. His red eyes were steady and fixed on me. "We can't carry him. Not in this cold."
"I know," I said, looking down at the guy's face.
"If you stop here, you might not be able to start again," he said, then looked down at the fallen one ahead of me. "Just like him."
"I know," I said again. "But what do we do with him? We can't just leave him here."
Luiz and Kieran stood beside, looking at me holding the guy's hand, then at him in the snow.
"We're leaving him behind." Luiz said, after a brief pause. With no hesitation in his voice.
"What?"
The moment those words landed, the guy squeezed my hand. It wasn't strong grip, he didn't have the strength for a stronger one but it caught my attention. I looked down at his hand around mine, and then at his face. His black eyes were tearing up. Whether it was from the wind or something else, I couldn't tell.
But it was a painful sight to see.
"We can barely move ourselves," Luiz continued. "We can't carry him, and we can't bring him along either because he'll only slow us down, with every delay that we do, we will freeze even more."
I looked at Kieran. He was staring at the ground with his eyes closed, not saying anything.
"We have to leave him, Lazar. We don't have a choice. We have an order we must do."
Kieran's eyebrows lifted slightly. The corners of his mouth dropped as well. He looked like he was frowning and sad at the same time. Like there was genuinely no other way.
"Kieran. Say something."
"Luiz is right, Lazar," he answered, in the same flat tone. "There's nothing we can do for him."
"So does that mean we are going to just leave him here?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
Both of them said it the same way. I looked down at the guy who was still staring up at me, then I moved to pull my hand free. His grip tightened for a moment barely, just a reflex then it loosened. I set his hand aside gently.
I stood up. Looked down at his face from above. Then I felt a touch on my left shoulder.
"Let's go, Lazar. We can't stay here for too long."
They started running slowly. I followed a moment later, keeping my eyes on his face for as long as I could before the distance made it impossible. He looked devastated. Demoralized. And... I don't know how else to describe it…
I forced my eyes shut, turned forward, and ran.
As I moved back into the formation beside Kieran and Luiz to take the front again, I glanced at both of them. Kieran had a visible sadness on his face, lost somewhere inside his own thoughts, eyes on the ground. Luiz kept his head up and his expression level, but when I looked at his eyes I caught a sliver of something that didn't belong to that flatness. Regret, maybe. He looked away before I could be certain.
I stepped out in front and took the lead again.
"Is this the right choice?" I asked myself as I ran.
"He won't survive. There's no way, not in that condition."
"You were ready to step up on the battlefield and help a comrade in need. You didn't abandon him. You rushed to his side and gave everything you could. For that reason alone, I won't punish you collectively."
Darius's words kept echoing through my mind.
"I abandoned a soldier on the battlefield…"
"I went to him, but I did nothing. I couldn't help him, and in the end I just left him there. Just like that…"
"I broke the rule… I'm no different from Kaien right now."
"I deserve to be punished."
"If only I were like… Viktor... If only I could generate heat from my body the way he does, I wouldn't have had to leave him behind. I could have done something for him."
"I could've helped him…"
Luiz and Kieran helped me when things were hard for me, even when I wasn't in a life-or-death situation. And I couldn't do anything for him. I can only leave him behind and watch him slowly die out there.
"If only I were capable of it."
"If only I could—"
"Hey, Lazar! Snap out of it!"
"Huh? Luiz?"
"What's with that look on your face? Stop thinking about it. There was nothing we could have done for him. Don't blame yourself. We all accepted that outcome. It's not just you."
I stayed quiet and dropped my eyes back to the trail.
"We're all responsible for this. But this is a fight."
"A fight?"
"This was never just training. Not even from the very beginning. This is a matter of life or death. Hunter or prey. If you think like prey, you'll end up the same way as him."
"Luiz, don't go too far with this."
"This isn't going too far, Kieran. These are just facts he needs to hear and accept. You have to be a hunter to survive here. He should have known that the moment he accepted the invitation and came here."
"Just breathe and keep running. Even prey has to leave its own behind in order to survive. That's how it works with animals, and it's exactly the same with humans. Don't fool yourself into thinking it's different with humans."
"Luiz..."
Take Viktor for example, he can generate heat from his body. He's superior to us in this regard, and he gets to choose whether he wants to walk with others or not. Likewise, he can choose whether to help others or not."
"He only helped us 'inferiors' to put us in his debt. Do you really think we're special to him, or that he did it just because he thinks we're special to him? Even Kieran, whom he calls his favorite? Of course we don't matter to him. He's superior to others and can choose what he wants to do. It's the exact same with Darius."
"So don't go thinking you're the only one to blame here Lazar! I'm to blame too, and I feel just as much guilt as you and Kieran do. But the ones most at fault here aren't us inferiors. It's the superior ones who refuse to help those weaker than themselves. Viktor went ahead of us long ago, he could have warmed him up just as he did to us, but he didn't because he's a 'hunter,' not prey. We have to think the same way if we want to survive this."
THUMP-THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.
"Hunter..."
"To be a hunter or prey."
"Help those weaker than me."
As I tried to process what he was saying, a memory pushed its way into my head without being invited. The troll. His hand around my throat. Me, unable to do anything. That was what prey looked like. That was what I had been.
But would anything change if I became a hunter? Would I be able to stop things like that from happening? Would it change the gross look I had seen that day?
I didn't know the answers. I wasn't a hunter. But if I wanted to find out—
"THEN I WILL BECOME ONE!" I shouted.
"THAT'S THE SPIRIT!" He shouted back, and when I glanced at him, there was a wide, genuinely proud grin across his face.
We covered even more distance after leaving behind that guy from Link's group. Ever since Luiz gave that pep talk, we started moving much faster. A sudden surge of adrenaline rushed through my body to the point where I couldn't even feel the cold as much, and my body began to warm up.
That was precisely how we managed to cover the distance. When the cold got to Luiz or Kieran, they would huddle against me from both sides, arms wrapped around me the way a child wraps around a parent who just got home. It was incredibly awkward. They pressed into me from every angle and invaded every last bit of personal space that I had.
In those moments I felt like a teddy bear that could move.
People who ran past us stared. Some who still had the energy to do so laughed.
It was an embarrassing sight for all three of us, I have no doubt about that. However, no matter how others looked at us, it was our salvation against this extreme cold that refused to let up.
Right now I was in one of those moments. Luiz was hugging me from the front, his face pressed against my chest. Kieran was doing the same thing from behind. Both of them were freezing to the touch, and every time their cold bodies made contact with me it felt like someone was pouring ice-cold water down my spine.
"I feel like we're really close," Kieran said, still holding onto me.
"Maybe, because we are?" I replied.
"I didn't mean like that. I meant the end of this trail Lazar."
"Ahahahaha!" Luiz burst out laughing.
"I can't believe all that rambling from before got you this fired up, Lazar."
"I took it seriously."
"Well, that's good because I was being serious too. I just never expected this particular outcome." He paused. "You're basically like a stove. Though your heart is beating extremely fast, are you okay?"
"Yeah."
I looked back down the trail.
Come to think of it, this is the closest physical contact I have ever had with members of the same gender as me.
"Shall we keep going?" I asked, wanting to get out of this situation as fast as I could.
"I can keep going," Luiz said.
Kieran nodded.
When they got off from me, we started running again after that brief warmup stop, until the path took a sharp bend to left.
The moment we passed it, the forest opened up and vanished. A wide clearing stretched ahead, appearing out of nowhere. The snow here sat at the same level as the trail, and in the far distance, massive black mountains were visible above the tree line. Easily going over thirty meters in height. A few large boulders rose from the ground and altered the terrain slightly here and there, but otherwise it was open ground, snow-covered, surrounded by trees on every side.
On the left side of the clearing, logs of varying thickness had been stacked in rows. To the right, near the center, stood a group of people I recognized from the room.
Most of those people were familiar faces that drew most of attention in the room, but standing in the center of that group was a figure grander than any of them.
That figure was none other than Darius himself. Standing there with his arms crossed.
As we approached, Kaien was among the first to notice us and stare. I cannot say he looked pleased to see us. The green-haired guy stood not far from Darius, talking to him about something. And Viktor, with hands in his pockets, began walking slowly toward our little group.
"Yo rabbits. You finally made it," he called out, glancing at all three of us.
"I thought I'd have to go back and get you on that trail," he said, looking at Kieran.
"No need for that, Matchstick. Like I told you, something like this will never be enough to bring me down."
Viktor looked at me for a moment, then stepped closer until he was just one step away.
"Interesting," he said, looking at my chest. "Maybe you're not completely useless after all, weakling."
"Back off from him," Luiz intervened, shoving him with his right hand.
"WHAT IS GOING ON OVER THERE?"
Darius's voice cut across the clearing. He was looking straight in our direction.
Viktor immediately raised his hands in the air and closed his eyes.
"Nothing, sir. We were just talking," Kieran said.
CHEOR.
A sound like a soft whistle was heard, and Darius appeared before us in an instant. He was looking straight at Luiz, with an expression suggesting he could crush him with his bare hands at any given moment if he chooses to do so.
He hadn't crossed the clearing. There was no crossing involved. In one moment he was there, and in another he was here, in front of us. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
He looked straight at Luiz's eyes.
Luiz was visibly unsettled, but he didn't step back. Instead his red eyes held Darius's directly. It was a direct look at each other, eye to eye.
"No fighting unless I permit it," Darius said, his voice completely calm.
Immediately afterwards, that same whistling sound rang out again, and Darius vanished. The snow where he had been standing scattered in all directions, settling on our boots.
He was back in the center of the clearing beside that green-haired guy. Both of them now looking at us.
It had all happened in under three seconds. I couldn't track his movement. I couldn't even process what I had seen until it was already over. In one moment he was across the clearing, then he was directly in front of us, then he was back where he was standing before. He was faster than my eyes could track, let alone comprehend his movements.
A cold sweat broke across my skin instantly. Whatever warmth I had been generating began to go out inside me. My hands were shaking.
Three seconds.
I looked at Kieran who was standing to my left. His hair was standing on end and his face wore the exact same expression I imagined mine did.
I swallowed. Exhaled slowly through my mouth until my heart settled back toward something normal.
"Well, I'm done with your little group anyway." Viktor lowered his hands back into his pockets and turned, walking back toward the main cluster.
"And yeah." He paused. "Weakling. Don't push yourself in among the strong. Try doing something on your own for once. They won't tolerate you forever."
His comment, and that smug he wore while saying it really got under my skin.
I clenched my fists and watched his back as he walked toward the others.
"Ignore him, Lazar," Kieran said. "He doesn't know what happened on that trail."
While Kieran said that, Luiz finally let out a long breath and looked back at us.
"Unbelievable."
"What?"
"I made sure to push him when Darius couldn't see it. And yet he somehow spotted it anyway."
We all looked at each other.
"His vision is really something else,"
"Well. People wouldn't call him 'The Ruler' for nothing," Kieran replied.
"EVERYONE, OVER HERE!" Darius's voice cut across the clearing.
We began gathering together.
A guy with spiky black hair ended up standing to my right. He didn't pay me any attention at first, and I didn't pay him any either. Then he glanced at me from the corner of his eye once. Then again. Then once more.
"Dude," he whispered, placing one hand over his mouth, "don't tell me you find me attractive."
"No. I am just looking."
"Okay…" he said, glancing at me for one more time.
There were about ten of us in line, and others kept arriving from the snowy trail behind us as we gathered. Some came alone, some in pairs or small groups just like ours. Some moved when they got here. Some sat down in the snow the moment they arrived and didn't move at all, just sat there with their heads down, breathing.
Eventually I spotted Link walking in with Sass beside him.
I couldn't bring myself to look at him, because that guy we had left behind on the trail was from his group. And he wasn't arriving either.
It was a horrible thing to know. That he could have been standing here with us right now, if only I had been able to do what Viktor had done.
"Where the hell is that fire to warm us up?"
"What is this place?"
"The wind is blowing harder here than on the entire trail!"
Others were complaining to Darius as he stood there looking at them with his arms crossed, head slightly raised.
"You lied to us!"
"SILENCE!" He barked it and everything went quiet. "Did you really think this was going to be so easy? Didn't I told you from the very start that a soldier of Nivalis does not feel the cold?"
"Well I can't do that. I'm a human, not a troll," the guy next to me muttered. "I don't have fur."
"That sounds like your problem, not mine," Darius replied. "I'm a human too, and I don't have fur either, so what, am I going to do? Brag about it now?"
"You can always go back to that room and quit. No one is forcing you to do this if you don't want to. Or better yet, I can cut you out myself if you're too embarrassed to do it on your own."
Silence settled over the clearing.
"How many people are we still missing?" he asked, looking at the trail"
Nobody answered immediately. People began looking around and counting.
"Four went back," someone called from the far side of the group.
"Two are still on the trail," another voice added. "They should get here soon."
Darius nodded once.
"Those who went back are done. They won't be joining us by tomorrow. As for those two who are still on the trail, we'll wait until they arrive. Or rather, if they arrive at all. Once they do, we are moving on."
And so we waited.
We stood in that open clearing while the wind cut through every gap in our clothing, slowly freezing all over again after everything it had taken to get this far.