The first rays of dawn were just struggling to pierce the dense canopy of the Great Kira Forest when Lucas and Roya finished packing their camp. The air was damp and cool, filled with the scent of ancient wood and rotting leaves.
"If we keep up a steady pace," Lucas announced, leaning lazily against his sheathed sword, "we should reach the border of Vael before noon. From there, it's open road."
Roya nodded, hoisting the heavy bag of supplies onto her shoulder. A dull ache still lingered in her head from yesterday's explosive breakthrough with her Aether, but her spirit was high. She was ready to be out of this suffocating forest.
They set off, navigating through the massive, ancient trunks. The Kira Forest continued to prove its weirdness. They passed small, still ponds where the 'Azure Alligators'—the ones Garm had served as skewers in the tavern—floated silently like blue logs. Weird, parasitic trees that shaped themselves into perfect, massive balls sat atop larger trunks, looking like gigantic emeralds on pedestals.
Time passed in a rhythmic crunch of boots over twigs.
As noon approached, Roya's initial eagerness began to wilt under the heat and humidity that settled in the woods. Her strides grew shorter, her breath heavier. The scenery hadn't changed in hours.
She looked to her side to complain, but the words died in her throat. For the first time since she'd met him, Lucas looked genuinely troubled.
His usual smug expression was replaced by a furrowed brow, and his sharp eyes were constantly darting around, scanning treetops and rock formations with growing annoyance.
"Hey," Roya began hesitantly. "Is something wrong?"
Lucas didn't even look at her. "What? No. Nothing is wrong. Keep walking."
His dismissal was too quick. Roya went quiet, but the seed of doubt was planted. She kept her eyes locked on him as they continued for another hour. The sun was definitely past noon now, the heat intense.
Suddenly, Lucas stopped, throwing his hands up in a dramatic gesture of defeat. He let out a massive, exhausted sigh, his entire posture slumping.
"Yep. We are officially lost."
Roya froze, unable to process the words for a moment. "What? What do you mean, lost?"
Lucas turned around, waving a hand nonchalantly. "Hey, no need to panic. Relax. I've been lost in this forest before. I got out eventually."
Roya stared at him, her jaw dropping. "You... you have been lost here before? How long did it take you to find the way out last time?"
Lucas's gaze drifted toward the treetops, whistling a tuneless note. "Well, you know, the forest is so dense, and there aren't any proper roads, so it naturally takes a bit of time to navigate..."
Roya's eyes narrowed into sharp slits, looking at him with utter disbelief. She cut him off. "Tell me truthfully, Mr. Azure Dragon. How long were you lost?"
Lucas winced slightly, looking defeated. "Not very long. About... two days."
"Two whole days?!" Roya's voice cracked. "What is wrong with you?! Why didn't you tell me you are this bad with directions? We should have brought a map, or a compass, or something!"
Lucas immediately regained his smug look, leaning closer to her. "Oh, is that so? If you're so good with directions, why don't you find the way, brat?"
"Because this is my first time here!" she snapped. "How could I know the—"
"And this is my second time being—" Lucas cut himself off mid-sentence, his eyes widening slightly before he immediately shut his mouth, turning away quickly.
Roya caught it. She leaned in front of him, her voice dripping with accusatory shock. "Wait. Did you just say it's your second time here? As in... you've been lost both times you've entered this forest?"
She slapped her forehead with an audible thwack, sliding her hand down her face. (What am I going to do with this guy? He's a combat genius but an absolute toddler at navigation.)
After a few moments of internal screaming,
she slapped her cheeks lightly to shake off the panic. "No. There's no point in sulking about it," she muttered to herself, her resolve returning. "It's up to me to find the way. We can't be stuck in here for two days."
Without another word to him, Roya looked around, identified the brightest part of the sky, and started walking purposefully in that direction.
Lucas just shrugged, muttered a lazy "Whatever," and followed quietly behind her. He didn't seem worried in the least. He seemed perfectly content to let her do all the work.
They kept walking through the afternoon. Roya leading, Lucas humming to himself. Sweating heavily under her burden, Roya began to feel a creeping dread. (Why does it feel like we are more lost than before?) Every massive tree started to look identical.
Eventually, exhausted, she flopped down under the roots of a colossal, sprawling oak tree to rest. Lucas sat beside her, not even breaking a sweat.
"No need to worry," he said casually. "It's not like getting there late changes anything."
Roya looked at him miserably. "I know, I guess. But I just want to get out of this forest. I can't even sleep properly because of those weird snakes with twelve legs and toxic bugs."
Lucas smirked faintly. "Anyway, let's camp here tonight. We will try again tomorrow."
The next morning, the forest felt even brighter, the gaps in the canopy seeming larger. Roya was packed and ready, determined to undo their mistakes.
After walking for a few minutes, navigating through heavy bushes, Roya's eyes caught a flash of bright color ahead.
"Lucas! Look!" she pointed eagerly. "A Red Rabbit! It's actually cute! Let's catch it for dinner, please!"
She immediately took off, pushing through a dense thicket of tall bushes, chasing the flash of crimson.
Lucas stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wide. "Hey, wait! Roya, stop!"
"What do you mean?" Roya called back over her shoulder, ignoring him. "Did you forget? This forest isn't normal! A red rabbit fits right in!" She disappeared into the wall of bushes.
Lucas ran after her, his hand flying to his sword hilt. "Roya, wait! Even in this forest, a red rabbit is not normal!"
Roya was already deep in the massive thicket, the rough leaves scratching at her shirt. She turned her head back to argue. "What do you mean, not normal? If the chickens are blue, the rabbit can be—"
CRUNCH.
Her boot came down on a thick, dark vine, making a loud, wet snapping sound.
Instantly, the atmosphere changed.
A massive, deafening roar erupted, not from a beast, but from the air itself. A terrifyingly strong gust of wind hit them both head-on. It was like a physical wall slamming into them.
"Aaa! What's this?!" Roya screamed, her hands flying up to block the dust and leaves.
"Stay close!" Lucas yelled, positioning himself directly in front of her, his boots digging into the soil as the wind threatened to launch them backwards. The force was too powerful to even open their eyes; the roar was deafening.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, the wind vanished. The roar fell silent.
Roya slowly lowered her arms, her ears ringing. She cautiously opened her eyes.
"Oh my god..."
Before her, the cramped, dark Kira Forest was gone. Instead, the view expanded into a scene of terrifying, heartbreaking beauty.
It felt like heaven and hell had simultaneously decided to exist in the exact same spot.
A colossal, breathtaking lake stretched out before them, filling the horizon. Its waters weren't blue, but a deep, stunning, liquid crimson, reflecting the bright, perpetual afternoon sky like a giant pool of blood.
Around the lake's bank stood ancient, towering trees with trunks as white as bone, and massive leaves that were the same violent red as the water. The ground beneath their feet was a soft, carpet-like grass that was a brilliant, vivid pink.
The air felt impossibly light, yet heavy with a sweetness that smelled like a thousand types of blooming flowers mixed with the copper tang of metal.
It was a place where color had gone mad, a land of pure art and creeping dread. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, and her stomach clenched in instinctive primal terror.
Lucas finally spoke up, a rare hint of genuine shock in his voice. "What the hell is this place?"
Roya's mind instantly clicked back to the old tales from Old Man Bael in Hibi Village. Her blood ran cold. (He wasn't lying... he was actually telling the truth...)
"It's... it's the Crimson Lake," Roya whispered, her voice trembling.
"What lake?" Lucas asked.
Ignoring him, Roya ran forward on the soft pink grass and touched the water's edge. It was cool, and despite its color, completely clear on her fingertip.
Lucas followed behind her, more cautious. He noticed something behind them. The massive bushes and trees they had just fought through to get here had vanished. In their place was an impenetrable, dense, claustrophobic wall of dark purple vines, filled with jagged black spikes.
Roya stood up and looked around. The area was saturated with Aether. It was thick in the air, humming around the water, making the grass look like it was faintly glowing.
"Hey," Lucas asked, looking around the impossible landscape. "It looks great and all, but do you have any idea how to get out of here?"
Roya looked at him blankly. "How would I know?"
Lucas sighed, his worry vanishing as quickly as it came. He sat down on his back on the soft pink grass, looking relaxed. Roya began pacing the banks, her clinical mind looking for structural clues, weaknesses, landmarks. Nothing.
After a while, Lucas sat up. He glanced at the sky. It was still a perpetual, bright afternoon.
"Hey," he called out to Roya, who was examining the bone-white bark of a tree.
"It's probably been at least an hour since we got here, right?"
"Yeah," Roya replied, wiping sweat from her brow. "Probably more than an hour."
"Then why," Lucas gestured to the blinding sky, "is it still afternoon? In the Kira Forest, it would have been evening by now."
Roya paused, looking up. The sun hadn't moved an inch.
Panic returned with a vengeance. She marched back over to the pink grass and just flopped down beside him, defeated. "What do we do? I saw an old boat further up on the lake's bank, but it looked broken..."
Lucas stared across the crimson water. "I have heard about places like this. Magical Realms. Secret dimensions that exist outside of normal time and space, with their own ecosystem and rules. I had never actually seen one, though."
Roya snapped her head toward him, eyes bright with hope. "Then wouldn't you know how to get out of here?!"
He looked at her lazily. "Well, I wasn't really interested in studying when I was younger, so I don't know the specifics. But I know one thing about these Realms: you must fulfill a certain 'condition' to get out, or you could be stuck in here forever."
"WHAT!" Roya screamed, grabbing his shoulders. "How can you be so nonchalant about this?! We could actually die here! Forever!"
Roya released him and looked across the lake again, her eyes narrowing against the glare of the crimson water. Far, far away on the other side, barely visible through the weird red haze of the landscape, something massive sat on a hill.
"It seems like a house?" Roya said. "Or... a castle?"
Lucas squinted, following her gaze. "Yep.
Definitely a castle. We probably have to go there to get out of this place."
Roya looked horizontally at the expanse of blood-red water. "You mean... we have to cross this lake? How?"
Lucas pointed lazily over his shoulder to where Roya had mentioned earlier. An old, ancient, weathered boat was pulled up on the pink grass.
Roya stared at it. It looked ready to turn to dust if touched. "No way! We are not getting in that! It's almost broken down! We are gonna drown for sure!"
Lucas stood up, dusting off his pink-stained clothes. "Well, that's the only way it seems," he sighed, walking toward the boat. "If we drown, we drown. Let's go."
Lucas shoved the boat into the water, and to Roya's absolute horror, it actually floated. He stepped in with a practiced balance.
Roya stood on the bank, trembling with an irrational fear she'd had since childhood. She had never been on a boat before.
Lucas rolled his eyes and offered her a hand. "Come on! Get in."
Roya looked at his strong hand, then at the blood-red water, then at his hand again.
Hesitantly, she took it. Her grip was cold and sweaty. Lucas gave a firm pull. She misjudged her balance, lunging forward into the unstable craft and almost falling right on top of him.
She pushed off his chest quickly, scrambling to the farthest possible front of the boat, as far away from him as she could get.
Her entire face was bright red, and she stared intensely at the opposite shore, refusing to look at him.
Lucas chuckled faintly, picked up the weathered oars, and began rowing.
The little boat cut silently through the crimson water, the only sound the rhythmic splash of the oars. As they neared the far shore, the details of the colossal structure became clear.
It wasn't just a castle; it was massive, silent, and incredibly grand, with a huge, empty garden stretching before it.
Roya had seen nothing like this grandeur in her life in Romero. She was lost in awe.
"What the hell is that?"
Lucas's voice, usually lazy or smug, now sounded sharp and alarmed.
He was staring directly down, into the deep, crimson water of the lake.
Roya looked over the side, into the blood-red liquid.