Everything happened too suddenly. I didn’t have the ti, didn’t have the privilege to make sure Axel was alright. All I knew was that my head slamd against a tal piece on the opposite side before it fell back onto sothing soft, sothing warm, which I could only assu was his chest.
After that, there was nothing. Pain and darkness, swirling together until even the pain left, and there was only the dark. And then not even that.
But after a while, the darkness returned, gentler this ti. And inside it, I found a dream.
My mother was alive. My father was never away. Silas had a sister complex that drove crazy and Rin was best friends with Axel, the four of us were inseparable. A world where I’d awakened as a Legend and Axel had awakened as a Sovereign, and our parents stood behind us, proud, so proud, the way parents are supposed to be.
Axel’s father was the Ruler of the Earth dinsion. His mother never disappeared. He was royalty, walking slowly and steadily in his father’s footsteps, and I... I was his betrothed.
It was warm. All of it. The kind of warmth that only exists in places that were never real.
The dream shattered when the cold bit into my bones and the pain in my head returned, dragging back alongside Axel’s voice, shouting, calling my na from sowhere I couldn’t reach.
My eyes flung open and I lunged up halfway, gasping.
I was surrounded by a silence that felt loud.
I wasn’t in the transport. That was the first thing that registered. And I wasn’t on the path of the transport either.
I was in a room. A small one, barely furnished. I’d been lying on a straw mattress that slled faintly of dry grass and sothing earthy. A wooden shelf stood in the corner, rough carpentry work with visible splinters. A clay cup sat on a table beside it, and a flat board mounted to the wall held a lantern, its golden light was the only thing filling the space with any warmth.
I stood slowly. My head throbbed with the effort, spreading a dull pulse that synced with my heartbeat, but it was bearable. After pulling myself upright, I walked to the entrance and gently swept the straw curtain aside with my hand.
The world beyond made stop.
My eyes went wide, then narrowed a second later as I tried to take it all in. There were people, a lot of people, moving with purpose through what looked like the ruins of a settlent that had been torn apart by the storm of Undefinition and stitched back together by sheer stubbornness.
So were climbing. So were constructing long wooden structures, standing on the edges of cliffs and hamring planks so tall that others had to stay down below to hold them steady. Ladders. They were building ladders.
’Wow...’
Constructing ladders like that required real skill in wilderness survival. We’d been taught the basics at the academy, though I doubted I rembered much of the construction thods.
I rembered very little, actually. The cooking module had been the worst. Making stew from the bones of Undefined didn’t exactly sound like sothing a healthy person should be doing.
There were other structures too, other people. The whole place had been pulled together into sothing resembling a mountain village, ruins repurposed with wood and trees and whatever else they could find. Rough, but functional. Soone here knew what they were doing.
"Ma! Ma! The pretty lady is awake!"
My head turned. A little boy was shouting right next to , bouncing on his feet. From the inside of another patched-up ruin, its walls reinforced and roof sealed with that sa rough carpentry, ca a woman.
She reached her son first, ruffling his hair with an easy hand, then reached for mine. Her grip was warm and her smile looked relieved.
"Young lady, how do you feel? Does your head still hurt?"
I touched my forehead when she spoke. The pain was slight now, almost ignorable.
"Not so much..." I studied her as I answered.
Brown eyes, kind face, she seed to be in her forties, wearing a mismatched combination of clothes, her hair pulled back behind her head with beads. Everything about her projected warmth.
Which was exactly why I couldn’t let my guard down.
In a mont like this, Axel’s warnings echoed perfectly. Trust is a luxury, don’t spend it on strangers.
I slipped my hands away from hers and fixed her with a level gaze.
"Where am I? Where is Axel?"
She studied with concern. "Young lady, you’re in the wilderness. You were brought back by King and his Raiders. You were the only one he brought back and we did not et this Axel person you ntioned."
A frown pulled at my brows as she spoke, but I held my composure.
"Can I et this King?"
She looked past and bowed slightly.
"My King..."
I followed her gaze before turning fully.
A gentlemanly voice answered from behind . "Ayesha, how many tis must I tell you not to refer to as King? My na is Marcel. I don’t want that to beco a thing around here."
He moved his gaze from her to , then offered a small smile.
"You wanted to see ? Do you mind a walk?"
I glanced back at Ayesha, who gave a warm look, her eyes following Marcel with sothing close to admiration.
He was young, couldn’t have been more than a year older than . he had deep, rich dark skin and pale green eyes that seed to glow faintly, especially against the dark surroundings. He moved easily, confidently, in a way that made people watch him without being told to.
He walked forward, and we climbed a series of rocks leading upward. He was nimble despite a slight limp, barely using his hands. It got difficult for to keep pace at certain points, but the heights weren’t unscalable. Just enough to make work for it.
He finally stopped on the highest cliff, and from there, the full picture opened up beneath us.
The cliffs we’d been climbing were like stairs, rising in tiers around the settlent, with even taller cliffs and mountain ridges walling in the formation from behind. Between the tiers, ruined buildings had been joined together with wood and living trees, converted into shelters and workspaces. People moved through the levels, so hauling timber, others pouring water into a groove that had been carved into the stone at the center of it all.
A village... built from wreckage and will.
He looked at evenly.
"You’re an Undefined, aren’t you?"
I flinched. The word landed like a slap, instinctive and cold.
But he added almost imdiately, turning his head back to the settlent below.
"These people... are like you. All of them are also Undefined."
’Huh?’
A deep frown creased my brows.
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