Elian's fingers dug into my shoulder, his whole body shaking as he looked like a man who had seen too many deaths.
"Forget about that Woods, Leo,"
he rasped in a low whisper.
"You won't make it in time, and she'll be gone before you even reach the border."
"Dead? What are you talking about!?"
I shoved his hand off, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs as a wave of nausea hit me.
"You're the High Healer, so use your magic or a potion to heal her!"
"I am being realistic!"
Elian shouted back, his face turning a pained shade of red.
"By the time you reached that forest, you'd be coming back to a cold corpse, so choose if you want to save her or just play hero."
I choked on the thick air, my mind flashing to an image of Alisa being eaten away by that black mana.
"Fine,"
I hissed through trembling lips.
"Tell me the plan or I'm leaving anyway."
Elian reached into his heavy robes and pressed a freezing, rusted iron key into my palm.
"Go to my old village two days south and look under the floorboards of my old clinic for a prototype of the Soul Exception."
"A prototype?"
I gripped the metal until it bit into my skin.
"Is that enough to save her?"
"It's just a temporary patch that might buy her a week or two,"
Elian said with eyes full of pity. "But that's better than her dying tomorrow, isn't it?"
A week felt like a lifetime right now, so I turned to bolt for the stables to find the fastest horse available.
"Don't bother,"
Kael's cold voice rang out from the hallway where he stood with his arms crossed.
"The horses are already dead, Leo."
I stopped and blinked in confusion.
"W-what?"
"They're all dead," Kael repeated with a mask of indifference.
"You're lying just to slow me down!"
I snapped, running past him down the stone corridor toward the stables.
I burst through the doors, expecting the sound of hooves, but I was met with a suffocating silence instead.
My eyes went wide as the color drained from my face.
"What... the—"
The Duke's black chargers were slumped in their stalls, ruined by black, pulsing veins crawling across their necks.
Their eyes were wide and clouded with a milky rot, proving the Inquisition's curse was killing everything within the manor.
"Happy now?"
Kael asked from behind me, not even breaking a sweat.
"The Holy Mana doesn't like competition, so it cleared the stables for us."
"We'll walk or I'll run,"
I whispered, but Kael just growled that I'd die of exhaustion before leaving the city. He pointed toward a massive,
lumbering wooden box on wheels waiting at the estate entrance.
"That piece of junk?" I screamed, my panic turning into pure rage.
"Kael, she's dying and that snail-paced wagon is a death sentence!"
"It's the only thing left with four working legs and wheels,"
Kael said, dragging me toward the Merchant's Coach by my tunic.
"Get in now or stay here and watch her die."
I stumbled into the dark interior where an old driver just grunted as we climbed inside.
I expected it to be empty, but a pregnant woman and a little girl were huddling in the corner looking terrified.
"Sit down and stay quiet,"
Kael muttered, dropping onto a hard wooden bench.
Creak. Thump. Creak.
The wagon moved agonizingly slow, and I could hear the horses breathing heavily as the little girl began to whimper.
"Can't we go faster?"
I whispered, but Kael just started sharpening his dagger with a steady, rhythmic sound.
I leaned my head against the vibrating wall, trying to stay quiet despite the screaming panic inside my head.
Please wait a little longer, Alisa, I thought, closing my eyes. Don't let this slow box be the reason I- ....nevermind that..
The wagon hit a bump, making the pregnant woman gasp as she clutched her belly.
I stared at the floor, tuned out from their lives and their struggles.
Every bump in the road felt like a personal insult to the ticking clock in my head.
We eventually reached the outskirts, arriving at the same village where my nightmare first began.
We were back at the start, but I was trapped in a cage of slow-moving wood and losing the race.
The sun began to dip behind the horizon, painting the sky in messy streaks of orange and deep purple.
I couldn't take my eyes off it. Even from the back of this cramped, rattling wagon, the view was insane.
The mountains in the distance looked like jagged teeth biting into the clouds, and the forest was a sea of endless, dark green.
Back in my old life, the most "nature" I ever saw was a high-def wallpaper on my dual monitors. Seeing it for real? It was like Paradise. I stared at the passing trees for over an hour, watching the way the light caught the leaves.
I didn't feel tired at all, I felt like I was finally seeing the world I had only ever played in.
"You're gonna burn a hole in that forest if you keep staring, kid."
I blinked and looked over. Kael was watching me with a look of pure judgment.
"Seriously,"
he snickered, leaning back against the wooden slats.
"You look like you've never seen a single tree in your entire life. It's a plant. It has leaves. Move on."
"Oh, shut up!" I snapped, my face heating up immediately. "I'm just... checking for monsters. You know, being a professional?"
Kael snorted, clearly not buying it.
"Right. A professional scout who hasn't blinked in sixty minutes. You look like a tourist."
I rolled my eyes and tried to change the subject before he made fun of me again.
"Whatever. Since you're so 'experienced,' how many dragons have you actually killed? Like, real ones? High-rank species?"
Kael tilted his head, thinking it over.
"Dragons? You've been reading too many fairy tales. Real dragons are rare. I've taken down a couple of Wyverns and a Lesser Drake during the border skirmishes. They're mostly just overgrown lizards that smell like rotting sulfur."
"Only Lesser Drakes?" I teased, feeling a bit of payback. "I thought the Duke's 'Star' would have a hoard of dragon hearts by now."
"Kill one and tell me how 'lesser' it feels when it's trying to melt your face off," Kael grunted.
We talked for a while longer, mostly him grumbling about annoying monsters and me trying to fish for game secrets. But he yapping about elf girls and I cut his topic so many times maybe 1k times as the hour passed, the conversation died down. finally that bastard just womanglazer.
The sun vanished completely, leaving the interior of the wagon in deep, suffocating shadows.
That's when I noticed it.
The little girl across from me was staring. Every time I turned my head, she would immediately look away, clutching her doll so tight her knuckles were white.
She looked like she wanted to say something—like there was a secret burning a hole in her tongue—but she couldn't bring herself to speak.
I glanced at her mother, the pregnant woman. She was out cold. Her head was lolling to the side, her breathing heavy and rhythmic.
Then I looked at Kael.
My heart skipped a beat.
Kael was asleep, not just napping, but deep asleep. His arms were crossed, his chin was on his chest, and he wasn't reacting to the bumps in the road at all.
This was the guy who could hear a twig snap from a mile away. He wasn't supposed to be sleeping like this in the middle of a dangerous trip.
Something was wrong. The air in the wagon felt heavy, almost sweet, like old perfume.
I looked toward the front. The rider hadn't moved an inch. He hadn't spoken, hadn't whistled at the horses, nothing. He was just a dark silhouette against the moonlight, sitting perfectly still.
My skin crawled. I tried to calm myself down. It's just a long trip, Leo. People get tired. Don't be paranoid.
But the little girl was still watching me. She looked terrified.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a small piece of strawberry bread I'd swiped from the manor's kitchen.
The sweet smell of the fruit filled the cramped space. The girl's eyes went wide, her nose twitching.
"Hey,"
I whispered, trying to sound like a normal, non-creepy human being.
"You want some? It's better than the dry crackers the driver probably has."
She hesitated, looking at her sleeping mother, then back at the bread. Slowly, she reached out and took it. Her fingers were small and trembling.
"It's okay,"
I said, giving her a small smile.
"I'm Leo. What's your name?"
She took a tiny bite of the bread, her expression softening just a little. She looked at the floorboards before whispering a single word.
"Liora."My heart stopped. My eyes went wide, and I felt a chill run down my spine that had nothing to do with the night air.
Liora. That name. I knew that name.
In my previous life, I had spent hundreds of hours staring at the lore screens of the game.
I tried to force my brain to work. Think, Leo, think!
Liora wasn't just some random NPC name.
It was tied to something big.
Something late-game.
Was she a future hero? Or was she a catalyst for one of the 'Bad Ends'?
I searched my memories, sweating.
I remember a quest... 'The Silent Daughter.' No, that wasn't it.
It was something about a village.
A village that disappeared in a single night?? wasn't it? no, How could I forget something importan?
"Liora..." I repeated, the name tasting like ash in my mouth.
She looked up at me, her eyes filling with tears.
She leaned forward, her voice a tiny, broken breath.
"Please... don't let the man with the bells come back."
The wagon hit a massive pothole, but Kael didn't wake up.
The driver didn't move.
That was weird, I thought
I gripped my seat, the iron key in my pocket feeling heavier than ever.
I wasn't just on a clock to save Alisa anymore.
I was trapped in a wagon with a ghost-story girl and a driver who might not even be alive.
"Liora," I whispered, leaning in.
"Who is the man with the bells?"She didn't answer right away.
She just pointed a trembling finger at the driver's back.
In the silence of the night, I heard it. A faint, metallic tink.
The sound of a tiny bell ringing under the floorboards.