HTWBB Chapter 5

There was only one way to bring them both through.

If the resistance proved too severe, she had intended to abandon it—but Abel settled for a slight furrow of his brow, and nothing more.

At that wordless permission, Rietta took his hand without lingering. It was not a pleasant arrangement for her either. Until the magic she had laid over him stabilized, there was nothing to be done about maintaining this pointless contact.

She set aside the stray thoughts and wrapped her magic around him like gauze—layer after thin layer, the way one might swaddle something in fine muslin.

When she pulled out the last of what remained, a feeling came: the interior going hollow.

Sweat began to gather at her brow. The exhaustion arrived sharply. The hand holding his went slack on its own.

"You are not what you appear, Rietta."

Abel's gaze moved to her hair. The dry violet of his eyes traced her slowly, without urgency.

The hair that had been unevenly colored was changing—rapidly. It looked like ink being poured onto itself, or like a process of eliminating something that had never belonged there. The change did not take long. What remained of the brown washed out—and in its place, coral in full, vivid color.

"It's done."

At the same moment she finished, she opened her eyes. The voice coming between her lips had sunk lower still, raspy enough to be difficult to make out.

The spent magic was a loss. But it had been worth it. Whatever quality of difference Abel carried, that subtle sense of wrongness—it hadn't disappeared, but it had been absorbed into the surrounding environment to a workable degree. Whether it was the appearance, or simply some rearrangement at the margins.

She nodded at his question—is it done—and pulled the joined hands. He came along without resistance, looking down at his arm, at his chest.

She stepped through the doorway without hesitation, still holding him.

He seemed to falter for just a moment. This time, as expected, nothing blocked him.

"Nothing has aged here."

The interior beyond the closed door was dark enough that only the places where candles burned were legible. But even by that alone, it was clear: the dust that should have accumulated across centuries was entirely absent.

"A place like this can't age."

Given the path they had taken to get here, rust or cracking would have been the stranger condition. Rietta looked over what the candlelight revealed—ceiling, walls, floor.

On both walls, ornate candlestands of considerable age were fixed at even intervals. To the right of the entrance, an empty lamp had been left behind as well.

She had moved toward the old lamp before noticing that the candles lit themselves when she approached the stands. She left the lamp alone. The candles, however, extinguished without warning whenever she moved beyond a certain range—making it difficult to examine either the path behind or the path ahead. Going back would mean losing too much of what time they had already spent.

Rietta began walking at a measured pace and listened.

Aside from two sets of footsteps, the silence was the kind that pressed against the ears. No sign of anything living.

"What was the problem?"

Abel, who had been quiet throughout, spoke without warning. The joined hands remained joined.

"Something like sacred energy in this place, most likely."

"Which rejected me."

"Probably."

"I can't make sense of it."

Rietta opened her mouth, then closed it.

You appeared to be identified as a demon beast or a magical aberration. That was not something she could say aloud. A cursed object of some kind was possible—but there were too many other causes she could point to.

Demon beast summoning. Or being, in actual substance, a demon beast or aberration. After the great catastrophe, most demon beasts and aberrations had vanished—which gave weight to other possibilities. But the Rietta of right now had neither reason nor capacity to attend to any of this.

The silence resumed. After a short interval, Abel continued. A different subject.

"You asked why I was looking for the necklace."

"I did."

Pak!

A small sound—Rietta looked down at her feet.

Abel had pulled her back sharply. He was standing on something. It looked like compressed black smoke, moving in the manner of an insect. Something like a suppressed scream seemed audible, faintly.

He lifted his foot slightly, then brought it down in the manner of an execution.

Every movement stopped. The smoke loosened without resistance and faded, sinking into the floor as if absorbed.

"I've lost something."

"The necklace?"

"No. But it may have taken on a different form."

"That must be old."

"The days are not few."

They kept moving. Something resembling smoke appeared several more times—and in each instance, was dealt with by Abel's hands in moments.

Underfoot, in open air, overhead—each one would slide into view and draw closer without sound, and it grated.

When Abel had crushed them five or so times, Rietta pointed at the next one.

"Are these spirits of some kind?"

"If I'm right, probably. Contact with them won't cause serious harm."

Beyond this, there were no traps or mechanisms of particular threat. Somewhere, a faint magical current was detectable—but no aggression in it at all.

The corridor itself was the more unexpected thing. Given the overall size of the building, they should have reached the opposite end already. Yet no end was visible—and the faint magic saturating all of this seemed to be the cause.

Abel, who had been walking beside her in quiet for some time, spoke again.

"Why did you come this far?"

"Commission."

He tilted his head, slow.

"Only that?"

"You seem to think there's more."

"Well…"

Their eyes met. He gave a brief, angled smile. His eyes still did not smile at all.

"Someone who handles magic so freely and uses a nymph half-blood as a guide—it's difficult to think of you as an ordinary treasure hunter."

"Is it."

She answered briefly and stopped dead.

Without warning, the darkness ahead went bright.

She pulled Abel with her and stepped back two paces. In that interval, all that had happened was that their eyes met and she blinked. Until that moment, the dark corridor had shown no end.

Rietta looked at the open space, the size of a small reception hall.

Empty—emptied completely—with nothing inside but a single door, standing alone the way the entrance had stood.

The magic hadn't moved at all.

She turned back toward the door. Its surface was covered in elaborate recessed carving—the work of a craftsman without question. Their footsteps struck the high ceiling and returned, hollow.

Abel, who had been following a step behind, moved ahead of her. Rietta examined the door from behind him.

It stood fractionally open—a narrow crack.

The interior was invisible. Only darkness blacker than night filled the space inside.

"This seems to be it."

"Assuming it isn't a trap."

Tracing the path they had come: they had been circling the same area. Arranged so that no one could approach the place where the treasure was stored without being drawn through the same loop, again and again.

Rietta looked at Abel.

The tomb revealing itself fully and without warning—no preceding sign—was strange. He seemed to have arrived at the same thought. He nodded.

"Even if it's a trap, we have to go."

She had anticipated this from the moment they entered. If anything, the absence of hidden mechanisms and aberrations everywhere was the stranger thing.

This time as well, Rietta pushed her arm into the black space first.

Nothing caught. But the arm she had inserted was invisible, as though submerged in black water. She kept moving and leaned her body through.

And when she was completely inside the dark—every sound disappeared.

Abel's footsteps following. The faint noise of birds from somewhere outside. Gone. The quiet pressed on the ears like something physical.

Melian tilted his head back and looked at the sky at an angle. The moon had been up for some time, and the summer dawn stars had long since embroidered themselves across it.

Rietta, who had vanished into the sunset, had not returned. The boy considered waiting a little longer, then shook his head. His role had been to guide, after all—everything after that had depended entirely on Rietta's goodwill.

For now, he had to leave, as she had said. Waiting in Helron, they would be able to meet without missing each other. Assuming she returned without forgetting him.

'I won't say nymphs find mountains dangerous.'

How had she known. Melian flew down the mountain, thinking of Rietta. However marked the physical changes might have been, reading bloodline from that alone was impossible.

She had something no one else knew. A secret impossible to guess at.

By the time he reached the midpoint, Melian's clothes had shrunk by another hand-width. The brown curls rippled between the trees standing quiet in the stillness. With no need to keep to easy ground, his pace grew faster and faster.

The boy let the magic he had absorbed so fully settle back down, very slowly. Coming down the steep slope as if sliding, his stride shortened and his body grew smaller.

Melian stopped on the path where it leveled out and checked himself. The body of a child of eleven or twelve—the same as when he had first met Rietta.

"Rietta…"

The boy let out a breath with a complicated expression. She was well-known enough in enough ways that real worry was not warranted. But it was impossible not to think of her.

Melian struck both cheeks sharply and closed his fist. First, Helron. Rietta's reason for not naming the Luemmasa inn specifically would be the 9th Knight Order.

He arranged his face into something childlike and resettled Rietta's bag on his shoulder. He wouldn't be telling the truth if he said he didn't miss the grown body—but in an era when most other species had been wiped out, walking around in his true form was too dangerous. He had already learned that lesson once, at great cost.

The boy let out another breath and turned his steps toward the village lying wrapped in silence. The waiting had begun again.

Movement had become heavy, as if a weight had been attached. The air in her chest was going slightly short. Somewhere in that interval, she realized: the hand that had been holding Abel's was empty.

She closed her fist and opened it again, twice. She raised her hand close to her eyes.

Not even a faint outline. Dark in every direction, the way blindness is dark.

"Abel."

The voice that came out was muffled. Sealed, deadened.

She gave up looking for him.

She moved her legs, heavy as they were, by force. The world was entirely black on all sides, as if suspended in open air—but the path here had been a single direction, and moving forward would have to be enough.

How long had she walked, with the sense of direction and time both gone.

From behind, a reddish light began to bleed through.

"Rietta."

A voice calling her name, from close by.

A voice she had not forgotten for a single moment.

A hot summer wind crossed her cheek.

The sunset at this time of year has a persistence the other seasons lack—even after the red sun disappears, the remaining orange-red fringe stays, burning across the sky.

Rietta watched the sunset falling across the rice paddies, green layered on green. It was burning as if someone had set fire to it. Sweat tracked down her cheek and fell onto her hand. Tap.

A basket full of grapes was hooked over one arm. The tips of her fingers on the other hand were sticky from the grapes that were no longer there. Somewhere inside her mouth, slightly delayed—the sweet-tart taste of grape burst.

"Rietta."

A voice that was exactly that sweet.

Summer in this place, the first she had ever spent here, was excessively hot. That alone was enough to make her face flush without walking any particular distance, and her heart beat at a pace slightly faster than usual—as if she'd been running.

She rubbed her damp fingers halfheartedly against her skirt and only then looked up.

A small laugh grazed her ear.

"Did you go to the fruit stand?"

Warm eyes folded gently. The deep reddish-gold hair looked redder still, saturated with sunset. Rietta smiled back and nodded.

"Yes. They said this time of year is when they're best."

"Your fingers will taste like grape again. Come here."

He came close and slipped the basket from her arm. Then—naturally—he wrapped his hand around her empty one and swung it lightly, back and forth. The grip was a little strong, but not uncomfortable enough to pull away from.

Another hot wind came through. It lifted the sweat from her skin as it passed.

Rietta slowed her pace a fraction. The path back to the house where they were staying was still some distance away—she had to consider the stamina of the man walking beside her.

"Is there another fruit you like, besides grapes?"

"There isn't really anything I dislike."

"There must be something that suits your taste particularly."

"I don't know anything besides grapes. I haven't eaten much."

"What grows in autumn? We could start there."

He seemed pleased. A long, inconsequential exchange about fruit followed. Rietta gave short answers and watched the scenery.

Beyond the wide paddies, the sea—the sun already swallowed. Somewhere in front of it, a small number of shops and residences. A small fishing village with nothing that could be called a local specialty—but Rietta had come to like this place quite well.

"Rietta. I have something to say."

The long sunset had nearly gone, and the purple of night was beginning to bleed through like ink. They were close enough to see the roof of the cottage where they were staying.

The man stood beneath a great tree and turned to face her.

Rietta looked up and met red eyes.

He held the tips of her fingers and was quiet for a long moment. The tops of his ears had gone red.

"I think you already know…"

When she looked at him directly, the red spread outward to his cheek as well. A manner completely at odds with his usual self—the self that could read as arrogant, confidence so entire it verged on presumption. He moved his lips two or three times, hesitating, before he continued.

"I hope your feelings are the same as mine. What I mean is—"

His hesitation kept cutting the sentence—and only then did she notice his clothes. Instead of the loose-fitting clothes she was used to seeing on him, he wore a shirt pressed crisp and flat, and trousers to match. His hair had been combed and smoothed into clean order.

Sweat had gathered at his neat forehead in the heat that refused to break.

Rietta touched her own cheek, brushed by the wind.

It should have been warm.

"Won't you come to the capital with me?"

The shy manner was a lie—the expression now was certain to the point of not having anticipated refusal at all. Jewel-bright eyes held her, without wavering.

Rietta blinked slowly.

She wiped the sweat from her face. She spread her hand and let it sit in the path of the wind.

The understanding came quickly.

She knew what the man in front of her wanted as an answer. She knew what expression and what response he was waiting for.

"You'll definitely come to love it there."