MHHC Chapter 153

The Crossroads

Before following Donovan into the dark, Adelheid hid the horses somewhere safe.

She gave them both plenty of hay rather than tying their reins to anything.

If something went wrong, freedom of movement would serve their survival better than being bound to a post…

She stopped mid-motion, the travel bag half-lifted from Hazel's back.

The realization arrived without ceremony: even unconsciously, she had been acting like someone who harbored no expectation of returning.

"…Stay safe. You can run anytime it gets dangerous—all right?"

When she came back to herself and murmured the words while patting Hazel's flank, the mare lifted her dark eyes and looked at her.

It was only a fleeting moment, but ever since she'd begun working with will, she'd occasionally had the strange impression that Hazel was genuinely listening to what she said.

"We must go now, Your Highness."

At Donovan's urging, Adelheid quickly shouldered her bag and moved to his side.

Somehow—she couldn't have said what he had done or how—where there had been nothing but open field only moments before, a staircase now descended into the earth.

She bent carefully and peered down into it.

Dry air moved through the dark, narrow throat of the passage below. She listened for unpleasant smells, for terrible sounds—anything—but the silence held nothing beyond itself.

Donovan descended the steep, broken steps in a single stride and looked back at her.

"Stay close behind me. If you sense even the slightest wrongness down here, leave without looking back." A pause. "I would consider it an honor if you used me as bait."

"What a frightening thing to say." Adelheid's expression grew serious. "Don't say that—not even as a joke."

Donovan matched her gravity precisely.

"I mean every word of it. In any circumstance, you must put Your Highness's life before mine."

"…"

"If you won't promise me that, I won't move a single step from here."

She parted her lips to argue, but before that unyielding furrowed brow, every protest dissolved. He looked fully prepared to hold the standoff for the rest of his natural life.

Of course, a promise made was only as binding as the one who kept it…

When Adelheid gave a single nod, Donovan narrowed his eyes with open suspicion—but he pressed no further.

He split wood with practiced efficiency, wrapped oil-soaked cloth around one end, and fashioned a torch.

While he worked, Adelheid drew from the heavy bag what she would need: a bundle of medicinal herbs, and the dagger.

"There's airflow," he said, taking her hand to help her down the last of the crumbling steps.

A hopeful sign. At the very least, it meant the passage connected to somewhere—that whatever lay at its end was not sealed.

Once they'd descended fully, a narrow tunnel continued ahead of them.

They walked for some time before the tunnel opened without warning into something vast—a corridor, columned and cathedral-like, stretching away in both directions.

Massive pillars stood ranked along either wall. In the torchlight, the whole of it bore the unmistakable imprint of a very old palace, or perhaps a temple whose name had been forgotten.

Donovan swept the torch carefully across the space, voice low.

"It's too clean. No sign of anyone having been here recently."

He stopped and ran his palm slowly along the nearest column.

"And this architecture… it looks like the ruins of an ancient royal palace. The old Nürnberg royal family's crest is carved into the base of each pillar."

"The Nürnberg crest?"

"If these truly are the old palace ruins, they should have been found further south. According to history."

Something shifted behind Adelheid's eyes. She bit her lip.

It was true—the gap between the palace and the forest had seemed so much greater than this when she'd glimpsed it in those fragmented dreams. But memory borrowed from a dream was not the same as memory lived. It was incomplete. Full of spaces she couldn't see into.

"Could it be a trap?"

"I can't say yet. Let's press forward for now—if something goes wrong, we turn back. The real concern is the torch." He looked at the flame. "How long the light holds is everything."

"I think I can solve that."

A look fixed itself on her face—what are you thinking?

Adelheid drew a slow breath. Using magic openly in front of someone other than Valentin still felt strange to her, as though exposing something that had lived in the dark so long it had forgotten what light felt like.

She stood with both palms cupped together and closed her eyes. She coaxed her mana forward, slowly, and from within her hands dozens of tiny clusters of light bloomed upward like rising sparks.

Donovan's face went completely slack. His mouth opened.

"Lord have mercy."

She held her concentration and carefully opened her cupped hands.

The bluish clusters of light scattered into the dim space—and the underground palace came alive.

It was beautiful, impossibly so, like hundreds of fireflies taking flight all at once into a summer sky.

Adelheid lifted one of the drifting lights on her fingertip and asked, rather self-consciously:

"Will this help at all?"

True to the northern temperament's deep susceptibility to superstition, Donovan nodded with a face the color of chalk.

More visibly undone than she had ever seen him, he fumbled his way toward speech:

"Surely—surely you're not—really a d-demon, are you…"

"Do I look like a demon to you?"

"No, but…"

"This is all I can manage for now. It hasn't been very long since I could work with mana at all."

The honest answer drew a hollow laugh from him—somewhere between incredulity and awe.

"It resembles sacred power at a glance, but this color… even this much would be enough to start another heresy trial. And yet you hid it so perfectly all this time…"

He let out something between admiration and dread. Adelheid fidgeted and pressed her hands together tightly.

"I trust you'll keep this between us."

"What exactly do you take me for…"

He looked at her sidelong with something that wasn't quite reproach.

"In any case—I'm relieved Your Highness didn't set out without any preparation at all. This special power is why you said you could find where His Grace is."

Donovan recovered from the initial shock with surprising speed.

There was even something lightened about him, she thought. Perhaps he had been carrying quiet doubts about the nature of what she could do, and having it confirmed—however strangely—was its own kind of relief.

Either way: the path before them was now brilliantly lit, and their pace began to quicken.

The further they walked, the more Adelheid found herself seized by a strange, insistent sense of déjà vu—a wrongness she couldn't fully place.

'How odd…'

The certainty kept returning: this palace ruin didn't belong here. Donovan was right—it should have been further south, and moreover, this corridor had never existed underground. She had seen that much, even through the distorting glass of borrowed memory.

She was still turning this over when she nearly walked directly into Donovan's back. He had stopped without warning.

"What is it?"

"The path splits in two."

"In two?"

He stepped aside to let her see for herself. The passage forked, both branches extending into identical darkness.

"We choose one. Don't even consider separating."

"Give me just a moment."

Adelheid closed her eyes and drew her breathing inward, slow and careful.

It was her first time manifesting authority before anyone other than Valentin, and her nerves showed at the edges—but she could not step back from this. There was no other way.

She attempted resonance the way Valentin had taught her—patient, layered, coaxed rather than seized.

She reached for the memory of having done it herself, just once, through her own will alone…

Valentin.

Too little focus? Too much awareness of Donovan standing behind her? She had followed the same method exactly, yet the will refused to stir.

Adelheid clasped her hands and focused again.

Mana that burned and writhed rose from somewhere near her navel, coiling slowly upward until it wrapped around her heart.

Held inside that strange heat, she reached toward him with everything she had.

Where are you? Please answer me.

She had been so certain the will would answer. And yet—laughably, cruelly—it did not move.

As though the memory of past success had been a trick she'd imagined.

Adelheid caught her breath and bit her lip. There was no room for despair. She would simply try again. And again. Until it worked.

She was gathering herself to make a second attempt when Donovan let out a sound—something between astonishment and alarm.

"Y-Your Highness!"

At his urgent voice, Adelheid's eyes snapped open.

The clusters of light that had been floating all around her had begun to move—drifting, purposeful, luminous, guiding themselves toward one of the two paths.

The sight of it pulled a sound of wonder from her before she could stop it.

"It seems Your Highness's… special ability is indicating the way. Is that correct?"

Why did she feel it then—that sudden, sourceless unease?

She wasn't certain: had she succeeded in resonance, or had Valentin sensed her and answered? The difference mattered in ways she couldn't yet name. Adelheid reached out and caught Donovan's sleeve, gently.

"…It's correct, but it might be dangerous."

"Rather a belated warning."

Donovan smiled faintly and adjusted his grip on the torch.

"Forward it is. We flee the moment it becomes dangerous."

He started walking.

Adelheid followed close behind. She couldn't have said how long they walked. Rather than light appearing ahead of them, the mist around them only thickened—slow, accumulating, swallowing the edges of everything.

She glanced back over her shoulder, unease gathering in her chest. For the past few minutes, she had been aware of a presence behind her—someone unfamiliar, someone she couldn't place.

"Donovan, wait—"

She reached out to stop him—and felt the ground shift beneath her certainty.

In that single unguarded instant, the mist had thickened past sight. And Donovan was gone. Not ahead of her. Not behind her. Simply gone, as though the passage had swallowed him whole.

"Donovan?"