Chapter 92: Sereth
The path up the mountainside was narrow, and the fog got heavier the moment he started moving through it.
Visibility dropped fast. Within a few minutes, he could barely see ten meters ahead, the thick white pressing in from every direction and turning the mountain into a series of suggestions rather than solid things. Rocks appeared out of nothing and disappeared back into it. The sound of his own footsteps came back at him strangely, absorbed and returned in the same breath.
He kept moving.
The climb was long.
He traveled up the mountainside for what felt like a significant stretch of time, the fog unchanged, the path beneath him the only thing that felt real. Then, through the white ahead of him, a warm glow.
Not lightning. Not the cold light of the system. Something older and quieter, the particular warmth of an actual flame burning somewhere close. That meant someone was there, possibly his next battle.
Ren gritted his teeth.
"Let’s do this."
He moved toward it.
The fog thinned slightly as he got closer, enough that her shape came through before the details did. A lady, not a dragon like Aragath, a lady. Though he felt the same connection he did with Aragath, he was certain she had some sort of dragon connection or blood.
She was seated beside the flame, a stunning figure under her cloak that made him slow down involuntarily, her form striking in a way that registered immediately and completely. She was definitely a beauty. A large witch-like hat sat on her head, its brim dropping a shadow over her face, and a veil covered her mouth below it, leaving very little to work with in terms of reading her expression. But everything below the hat and the veil was something else entirely.
’Damn, she is something else. I’ve not seen her face, but I can only imagine how beautiful it must be,’ Ren thought, and then dragged his attention back to the matter at hand.
She was roasting meat over the flame, turning it slowly, humming something quiet and tuneless to herself.
[Sereth — The Mage]
The system placed her name in front of him and went quiet again.
Ren stayed where he was.
He did not step forward. He looked at her for a long moment, reading the space around her, reading her posture, reading everything he could from the distance before he committed to closing it. Something about the ease of her, the complete absence of tension in how she sat beside the fire, made him more cautious rather than less.
"You’re not going to attack me?" he said finally.
She didn’t look up.
"Aragath has been a loudmouth ever since we started working together," she said, her voice unhurried, like she was continuing a conversation that had already been going on before he arrived. "You would think after all this time he would have learned when to be quiet." She turned the meat. "He was always the weakest of all the captains. Not by a small amount either. And yet he never once considered yielding to anyone about anything.
"He was resilient, the type to refuse that hard work could lose to talent. That was one thing I deeply admired about him. He taught me how to never give up and keep moving."
She said it the way you said something about someone you had known for a long time, the particular warmth that came from knowing someone’s faults completely and finding them endearing rather than frustrating. The closeness of a friend. The warmth of a sister.
Then something moved across her face, there and gone, a flash of something heavier beneath the warmth. Pain. Regret. The specific expression of someone touching a memory they had not finished making peace with. Her breathing somehow formed cold fog in this warm environment.
She looked back at the flame.
"I know what we are here," she said, quieter now. "A sliver of what we actually are. Just enough to defend what is at the top. Not real, not fully." She paused. "But I would give anything to go back to the way things were."
She said it to the fire more than to him, and he let her say it without responding.
A moment passed.
She took the meat off the flame and bit into it, unhurriedly, then set it aside and got to her feet in one smooth motion. She turned and looked at him directly for the first time, and even with the hat and the veil covering most of her face, the weight of that look was considerable.
"If you pass through me," she said, "and you make it to the top of that mountain, I need you to make me a promise."
Ren said nothing, waiting.
"Come find me," she said. "My real self. I am still alive out there, I believe that. Whatever is happening to us here, wherever here is, I believe the real me is still somewhere in the world." She held his gaze. "No matter what it takes. No matter what comes between now and then. Promise me you will come.
"I know it is weird to ask a stranger this, especially a person that I am meant to do my very best to stop right at this moment, but I will still ask for your help."
[Optional Side Quest: Find Sereth]
[Reward: Unknown]
Ren read it and did not take long.
’She wants to find herself outside the trial? She must have existed then, but how sure is she?
Do I agree to this or refuse? Tch, what’s the gain in refusing? If I can find her, I’ll get to know more of this master they all protect. Sigh, there is no need to refuse.’
"I promise," he said.
Something shifted in her expression behind the veil. A smile, brief and genuine, the kind that carried more weight than it showed.
Then it faded.
She stepped back, creating distance between them, and when she looked at him again, the warmth was gone, and something else had taken its place entirely, focused and serious and ready.
The flame behind her burned steadily.
The fog pressed in around the edges of the light.
The battle was about to start.