“You were going to the forest’s edge—why?”

  The young elf stood before her, her voice was as gentle as the breeze that brushed against Lina’s face. Her hair gleamed under the sunlight, glinting like an onyx gem. Behind her was a group of men and elves, most of them broad-shouldered, muscled, and bearded, cutting wood for the village’s needs.

  “Livia, stop chatting with your girlfriend and fetch us some drinks!” a lumberjack shouted from behind her.

  Livia turned and barked back, “I will—when you finally pay my damn wages in shingles instead of wood!”

  Her voice shifted instantly, coarse and sharp like that of an old wife scolding her husband. The change shocked and amused Lina alike; hearing such a rough voice from someone so young and captivating felt like watching a comedy play she’d once attended.

  “Haha… I’m just gathering herbs for Aila,” Lina said.

  “Well… But you are new here, you could get lost! How about I accompany you instead?”

  “The hell you are Livia. Come back to work quickly, we aint paying you for flirting!” A lumberjack barked.

  “You aint paying me at all you old sow!” Livia shouted back.

  “It’s okay Liv, there is also a debt that I Korrn has graciously put on my shoulder, so it need to do this as soon as possible.”

  “Oh yeah, you’re right… Well, the edge of the forest isn’t that far.” Livia pointed toward the treeline, her finger tracing between trunks mottled with sunlight. “Just follow the hunter’s path past the three birches that grow close together. After that, you’ll see a moss-covered boulder shaped like a wolf’s head—keep left of it. The trail dips a little, and there’s an old cedar split by lightning; that’s your halfway mark. From there, it’s a straight walk until you reach the fallen oak bridge over the creek. The border’s just beyond it.”

  “Right,” Lina muttered as she turned away, trying once more to recall the order. “Birch… cedar… oak… or was it wolf first? Gods…” She sighed, rubbing her forehead.

  Lina’s ability to memorize anything was haphazard at best. She could recall basic magic incantations in an instant now, but only because Albrecht had loomed over her during every lesson. Whenever she failed to memorize something, he would assign an even harder task. In a way, it improved her ability to remember spells—but spells only.

  “Haha… Let me make a simple map for you.” Livia conjured her storage rune. She took a quill and a piece of paper, then began sketching. In a few moments, she had drawn a simple yet detailed outline of the landmarks and the path Lina needed to take to reach the edge of the forest. “Here you go,” she said, handing Lina the map.

  “Thanks, Livia. You’re the best.”

  “Hey, little girl.” A lumberjack came over. His hulking figure towered over Livia, making it even more amusing to think that she had scolded a man twice her size earlier. “You said you need to pay your debt to that pig of a tax master?”

  “Yes…”

  “I see… and you’re able to make some potion?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay then, me and my mates here need something refreshing, since our dear Livia couldn’t tell the difference between grass and cabbage. Make some potions for us later—we’ll pay you.”

  The lumberjack turned to Livia with a grin. “In shingles, of course.”

  “You damn geezer! You’ve never paid me in shingles, and yet the instant you find a pretty girl you instantly—”

  “Haha, okay, herr. I’ll see what I can do,” Lina said quickly as she left Livia and the lumberjack to their bickering.

  Seeing their familiarity reminded Lina painfully of her own village. At first, even the adults there had avoided her because of her Faintborn blessing. Yet after she kept bothering them day after day, they finally relented and treated her with the same warmth she now saw between Livia and the lumberjack.

  The memory sank deeper, pressing against her chest. She could no longer experience that kind of closeness. Everyone around her now wore white cloaks, always busy with research, never seeing her as anything more than a subject. Only Halwen was different—though that was to be expected; he was her uncle, after all.

  Would they have treated her differently if she’d tried harder to connect with them?

  Then her mind turned to Vierna. From what Lina knew, she had never experienced anything like that. Being born in a town must have been even harder for her. If it had taken so much effort for Lina to be accepted in a small village, then what hope would a girl like Vierna have in a town? Did she ever have anyone who looked at her as more than just a Faintborn girl?

  Then again, another thought caught Lina’s attention. From what she knew, Rolbart rarely used money for transactions; they traded mostly through barter, exchanging necessities. That meant whatever the lumberjack possessed was likely for something truly important—things they could only get from town. And yet they still wanted to help her, to pay a debt that didn’t even exist, once she was done with her mission.

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  She knew exactly what would happen to Rolbart when the mission was over, and seeing how real everything felt only made it harder to ignore. The thought frightened her—but she shook her head, forcing it aside.

  She followed the map Livia had drawn for her, walking beneath the shade of the trees. The black leaves of Schattwald Forest drifted lazily in the air, and yet the sight wasn’t as eerie as when Lina had first arrived.

  If anything, Rolbart reminded her of the girl she’d been before the facility—before revenge—the simple healer who once hopped along forest paths, giddily planning her next prank.

  It had been almost two years since she last saw her village, and she doubted she would ever see it the same way again. Even now, stopping to reminisce brought with it the smell of burned flesh and blood, corrupting what should have been fond, nostalgic memories.

  If only the Imperium didn’t exist, if the war had never happened—this could have been her everyday life. No schemes. No betrayal. No burden of spying on those who trusted her.

  And yet that would mean never meeting Vierna—the girl who had saved her from despair. The thought brought another kind of sorrow to her chest. If she could choose, which path would she take? The peaceful one, or the one that led her to Vierna? She couldn’t decide.

  Finally, she reached a clearing. The trees fell away, giving rise to what seemed like an endless field of flowers. Their scent drifted gently through the air, tickling her nose and stirring something tender—comfort and childlike longing, emotions she hadn’t felt in ages. The sun hung directly above her, its warmth tempered by a cool, steady breeze that swept through the meadow and toyed with her hair.

  The simple beauty of it all stole Lina’s breath. She hadn’t thought herself capable of wonder anymore. For so long, her world had been painted in gray, black, and sterile white—the cold slabs of the research facility, the forest of stone houses in the town. But here, for the first time in years, color returned to her vision, fragile yet alive.

  Then her gaze shifted. Beyond the field, towering at the horizon, stood the Schattwald Forest. Its trees rose like an obsidian wall against the sky—immense, unbroken, ancient. Every inch of it was black: bark as dark as burnt iron, leaves gleaming like wet onyx, vines coiling across the trunks like barbed serpents. Even the air above it seemed dimmer, swallowing sunlight rather than reflecting it.

  The longer she looked, the more her comfort unraveled. The gentle breeze no longer soothed but carried a strange chill, and the scent of flowers turned faintly metallic on her tongue. Schattwald did not simply stand—it loomed, alive and watchful, as if the forest itself were waiting for her to draw near.

  The rebels live there? She thought as it was clear that Schattwald forest didn’t like outsider even again someone living inside of it.

  Lina quickly snapped herself out of it. She traced a rune in the air.

  “Aufdecken.”

  A yellowish ripple hummed out of her, scanning the perimeters for anything suspicious or harmful for Lina. It didn’t detect anything, yet Lina do it two more times to be sure. When she confirmed that she was the only sentient being there she finally went to work.

  She pulled Aila’s journal from the storage rune. Aila borrowed it to her not realizing that it was probably a mistake on her part. It seems that Loran’del didn’t tell her anything about Lina or Vierna probably out of fear of being called paranoid, he was still trying to salvage his image it seems. Yet it made Lina wondered, what actually Aila and Loran’del discussed back then.

  “Let’s see… Fengworth Flower could be found…” Lina read aloud, her finger tracing the faded ink on the page. The text described it as a rare herb that thrived in the shaded hollows near the forest’s edge—usually beneath overgrown ferns or tangled roots where sunlight barely reached. Its petals were said to shimmer faintly like polished silver, each laced with thin veins of violet, and its stem as dark as ink.

  Lina looked around, checking the place described in the book. Some time had passed, but despite her best efforts, it seemed the spot mentioned wasn’t on Rolbart’s side of the forest at all but on Schattwald’s. Deciding that the flower was probably just a bit harder to find, she went toward the black forest.

  She gathered other herbs along the way, placing each into her storage rune. Dawnwillow, Ashmire Bloom, and Veilfern were abundant here. It seemed no one ventured this far anymore, likely out of fear of Schattwald Forest.

  When she had collected enough of those and several other plants, she approached one of the massive black trees for a closer look. According to the book, the Fengworth Flower grew beneath deep shade, so she stepped a little farther into the forest.

  After a few minutes of searching through tangled roots and uneven ground, Lina finally caught a glimpse of it. It was not far from the forest’s entrance but half-hidden beneath a curtain of hanging vines. The air there was cooler, damp, and carried the faint scent she remembered from when Loran’del had mentioned the flower extract.

  Her eyes sweeping over the ferns and dark roots. Nothing moved. The air remained still, too still, and yet she could swear she had felt warm breath near her ear.

  She shook her head quickly. “Just nerves,” she murmured. The black trees always seemed to echo things that weren’t there.

  But then the voice came again. This time it became clearer.

  “Lina.”

  The second call was clearer, smoother, like silk sliding over glass. It wasn’t frightening this time. If anything, it sounded kind, familiar, like someone she had known long ago. Her heartbeat slowed. For a moment, she almost smiled, though she didn’t know why. The edges of her vision blurred faintly, the black trees pulsing with a dull rhythmic glow.

  “Lina, come here.”

  Her breath hitched. The voice was close now, gentle, coaxing. It reminded her of Vierna. Brushing her scarred face and whispering words of acceptance. The sound threaded through her thoughts like warm water through frost, loosening something deep inside her chest. She turned, not out of will but out of instinct, eyes half-lidded as if in a dream.

  Something shimmered deeper within Schattwald’s shadow, where the light refused to settle. It wasn’t a figure yet, only a pale suggestion of movement among the trunks. Her feet shifted before she realized it.

  The forest seemed to sigh. The air grew thick, humming softly with a rhythm that matched her pulse. Each step she took dulled her senses—the smell of earth fading, the weight of her satchel forgotten. The light from her rune flickered, then dimmed.

  And when the last trace of color vanished from her eyes, Lina no longer questioned where she was going. The world had narrowed to a single voice, tender, loving, irresistible.

  “Good girl.”

  Lina smiled and walked toward the welcoming voice, despite not knowing whose voice it was.