Opening his eyes, Shaden knew that he’d done something wrong.

“Where are you going!”

“Come back!”

Putting the shouts of his comrades behind him, Shaden began to run towards the fallen beastmen, filling each step with power so that his body soared across the landscape, creating puffs of snow. His heart was climbing up to his throat, and he felt a shiver go up his arms and neck—the shiver of realization. All the while, he could hear muffled shouts behind him, but they failed to reach him. His eyes were on the fallen bodies, those who had been shot over and over until all of them had fallen—and he’d only been able to stand there stupidly, unsure of what to do.

This was a real world. He’d decided on that. But stress had made him wish that it wasn’t and he’d become desensitized during the past couple of months, and it had led to this. A massacre which he had brought into action, deaths he could have prevented.

Please, please be alive—

He gritted his teeth and finally landed a few paces away from the scene of death. Bare rock had been exposed with warm blood, and the snow was a slush of crimson, bits of raw pink and deep red spluttered over the white. There was no movement. Only the wind howled in his ears, and the faint feeling of warmth was already fading, cooled by Winter’s breath.

Not a single one alive. Shaden desperately scanned the bodies, but when Nicar had ordered them to stop firing, he now knew it had been after she’d confirmed everyone’s deaths through their detection magic. All dead, so quiet, so still, so cold. He awkwardly sprinted back and forth, his boots being soaked in blood, squelching with every step. Circulating was keeping him from heaving uncontrollably, but the back of his head felt tight; the odor of flesh and feces was seeping through the wind from the pile of the fallen.

Shaden took steps back from the scene of the massacre and sat down on the snow. His bottom would get wet, but he didn’t care. He wondered what the heck he was doing in the middle of a kind of war that was going on, killing those that looked like innocents. He felt numb. The smell was worse than the horse pens down in Nafar.

“Shaden!”

He didn’t move. He numbly stared at the dead, imagining them being alive just a few minutes before. This was a real world, wasn’t it? And there they lay, unable to live again.

A sharp sensation filled his cheek, and he realized that he was looking sideways now. Touching his cheek, suddenly feeling irritated, he turned to the man before him with a small frown.

“What are you doing!” Pillen roared, clenching Shaden’s collar, almost lifting him. “You do not enter the battlefield until you are told! What if the other squadrons still had their rods pointed at you? Are you out of your mind?”

Shaden blinked. It wouldn’t have mattered to him anyway.

“Sorry,” he said weakly.

“What were you trying to accomplish?” Pillen scowled. “Shaden, you promised you would follow orders. Answer!”

Shaden felt something well up inside of him. Not shame, not from being berated, but from the whole absurd situation.

“I didn’t know you would massacre them all!” Shaden said, getting up from the ground. Pillen’s grip loosened, and Shaden moved back to free himself. “Look at them. They’re all dead.”

Pillen’s confusion was apparent. “What did you expect?”

“We could capture them,” Shaden muttered. “Get information out of them.”

“Capture them! And who would do that?”

“The soldiers. You’re supposed to be the elite soldiers.”

“Shaden.”

Shaden looked up.

“Shaden. Look at our weapons. Look at our equipment.”

He did. They had blasting rods, a knife each, and ropes they would use to climb and descend.

“We have ropes.”

Pillen looked at him like he was spouting nonsense, and he sighed deeply, putting a hand over his face. After a few seconds of silence, he lowered it and knelt before Shaden.

“I know you’re sensible. Let’s say we did capture them—all of them without any casualties on our side. What would we do?”

“Get information,” Shaden replied. “Then we could put them under confinement.”

“Who would look after them?”

“A part of the soldiers.”

“A loss in our numbers. What would the prisoners eat?”

Shaden’s train of thought slammed into a halt. The food the soldiers had, but they were already running low.

“I could catch a lot of animals.”

“Two days before you told me the animals nearby were scarce. These are beastmen. They eat like starved wolves. They would eat their own kind. Without food, you would be starving them to death.”

“We could let them go.”

“Letting the enemy go when we are attacking their homeland?”

They were escaping. They were refugees. If they had talked this through, they might have found another solution. But the more he tried to think of an excuse, the more ridiculous his thoughts sounded to him.

“A single one of them could send us to our graves with the right information,” Pillen spoke. “A group of them would maul us down. In the mountains, only our rods keep us on equal footing on them. They have claws, fur, muscle, and stamina that exceed ours. Without weapons, we would be the ones being massacred. Do you know why our family has been tasked with defending the border until now? The beastmen can smell us, and they have better eyes. Only our magic gives us the upper hand.”

“But you have me,” Shaden said. “I could single-handedly restrain all of them.”

“It’s possible. We may have it easy this year. But how about the next, and thereafter? This is a trial, Shaden. It is not meant to be easy. Why suffer through complications when the safe, efficient solution is at hand?”

“Because now, they’re all dead.”

Pillen’s face softened, and he placed a hand on Shaden’s head. “You are inexperienced. Don’t think of them as people, Shaden. They are lying, deceiving animals who will repay good with evil.”

Shaden was about to argue when an image of Ronar and Prem passed through his mind. They had been stealing before, and it hadn’t been once that beastmen had tried to steal from them when they had dropped Prem off at the beastmen city next to the Hyla River. It was one of the reasons why their time there had been shorter because it had been unpleasant and cold. Eilae had hated it.

But he remembered Mistillia. Their encounter had been rough at the beginning, but they’d become friends. He could never think of her as not being a person.

Shaden kept silent, unable to answer. From the corner of his eye, he saw the others emerging from the snow, coming towards their location. Pillen looked back, sighed deeply, and motioned to Shaden to follow him.

“We will have to go see the captain,” he stated. “Nicar will decide what to do with you.”

As they neared Nicar, they passed some soldiers, all of whom Shaden had seen at least once around the fort while helping out with all of the chores. Some sent him disapproving looks, accompanied with grunts and comments of scorn that Shaden’s ears picked up.

It didn’t make him feel any better. He knew that acting out of order was unacceptable, punishable by death in extreme cases, but his emotions had gotten ahead of him. Cold-blooded killing wasn’t what he’d wanted or expected. There had been no children amidst the pile of bodies, but had there been—

He doubted they would have stopped. After all, Nicar had shot him down simply because he’d been a threat. What the residents of the fortress valued, what they believed was right—it had splashed his face like cold water, waking him up from his excitement for battle. What had he expected? Shooting the beastmen in a cool fashion and making a name for himself?

He’d felt their mana. He’d felt their life. And when he’d seen them on the ground, it had been so still, so empty and cold.

Nicar was in a discussion with a few other men, and her eyebrows lowered slightly when she saw Shaden and Pillen approaching. With a wave of her hand, her subordinates went ahead of her while she stood still, waiting for Shaden to stand before her. He did, feeling lightheaded. Why was it so cold?

“Shaden,” she breathed.

He couldn’t meet her eyes. He knew that he’d done something wrong. He’d agreed to be under her command, and he’d broken his promise.

“Shaden,” she said again. “Look at me. Why did you go into the line of fire?”

Shaden raised his head. Her face looked blank like a mannequin, and the only sign of life was the mist that formed before her when she breathed. He couldn’t believe how apathetic she appeared when she’d given the order to massacre a group of people.

“I thought, maybe I could save the beastmen,” Shaden answered, feeling sick in the stomach. “But they were all dead.”

“You—would you save the beastmen?”

“They were unarmed. They looked like refugees,” he replied.

Nicar and Pillen exchanged glances.

“They are the enemy. All of them,” Nicar told him. “They do not need saving.”

Shaden didn’t turn away this time. In defiance, he kept his eyes fastened onto Nicar’s, refusing to budge.

“I visited the beastman country before. I have a friend who is a beastman. You can’t—”

Nicar suddenly lowered herself and put a hand over Shaden’s mouth, her eyes darting left and right.

“You cannot say that,” she spoke in a low voice. “I know that you’ve traveled the world, but this is Bughast.”

“Why?” Shaden asked. “Why all the hatred?”

“They are savages,” Nicar said. “Their history with us runs deep and long.”

“I know,” Shaden said. “Bughast was once a larger country, but when the beastmen came up after being driven by the elves, they occupied most of the north. But that was centuries ago.”

“Why is he here?” Nicar demanded, turning to Pillen. “Did you not prepare him for what was to come?”

“My apologies, Sister,” Pillen bowed. “He is here not for hunting, but as a magic-user.”

“Does he not know how to shoot the blasting rod?”

“He does. He’s very good. But he thinks of the beastmen as people.”

By this point, Shaden was frowning deeply. It rubbed him the wrong way when Nicar addressed Pillen when he was right in front of her as if refusing to acknowledge his existence. Did she have to do that? He’d thought that he had earned some respect, but now, it didn’t exist.

“A Limen that is not a hunter, but a utility tool,” Nicar muttered. “It is nothing like the tales I heard as a child. You are just a frail boy, afraid to take a life. I do not know why you are here. Squad Leader Pillen, he is in your hands. Good work spotting the enemy.”

Nicar left, not giving him a second glance. Shaden’s fists were clenched now.

“I was the one who spotted them first!” he called out to her. She didn’t look back. He felt a wave of heat rise to his face, humiliated and angry that he didn’t know how to properly argue against Nicar. He’d thought that they’d reached an understanding, but now he could see that all of it had been shallow.

Bring the whole mountain down on them. The scary thought crossed his mind, and for a second, he thought about conjuring a terrifying blizzard that would incur bone-chilling frost—

“She’s saying that for your sake,” Pillen said.

He couldn’t believe it. “My sake?”

“Yes, your sake,” Pillen said. “How much longer will it take for you to understand? If you simply follow orders, your thoughts can follow later. Understanding comes with experience. But you question, and question, and question—constantly!”

“I’m not here as a subordinate!” Shaden argued. “I came here to learn.”

“You’ve learned our gift. Then you asked to be here so you could learn more about us and our lives. That is what you told me, that you would agree to follow.”

“And I did!”

“Obedience means submitting until you are freed from your duty!” Pillen exclaimed, striking his own chest, mist spluttering from his mouth. “Of course you will be humiliated, called out, and rebuked. Do you think you’re the only one? Do you believe that you are the only one with questions? All of us do. Complaints—we all have them! But we endure. We keep silent because that keeps order. And those that do not are spurned. You—you have always been an exception. Can you not see that?”

You have no idea that I’m the one who's trying to keep myself from leveling the whole place, Shaden wanted to shout, but Pillen’s words were bitterly true, and it hurt him. How could they expect him, who’d lived most of his life in a civil world, to comply with such brutish ideologies? He’d tried to learn—he had been able to endure, but cold-blooded murder? The smell still seemed to linger on his clothes, despite the cold numbing his senses.

“It’s not fair,” Shaden said quietly.

Pillen looked at him for a few more seconds, looked at the sky, then turned around. “The others are waiting for us,” he stated. “Like it or not, we need to keep moving.”

“Right behind you,” Shaden said audibly. He’d given up on using sir.

Wordlessly, they ran through the snow. It was a short while before they rejoined the group. Pillen’s face was darker than usual, and the squadron noticed it, making the already quiet atmosphere even quieter; no one spoke a word and only moved through hand signals. Shaden obeyed, but he knew he’d messed up again.

He had been so proud of himself, being the first to spot the beastmen. He’d wanted to prove to them that he was capable. And now, not even an hour later, he felt miserable, wanting to quit again.

But time moved on.

“Your punishment will be postponed,” Pillen said to him when they had set camp for the night. “Get some rest. Today is the beginning. You will see worse.”

“Punish me now,” Shaden demanded, not wanting to hold any debts. “How can I act properly when you’re always making me an exception?”

“You will freeze to death,” Pillen growled. “I cannot let you die for such a stupid reason.”

“For my sake, because I have to learn,” Shaden insisted.

Pillen pursed his lips. “If you tire tomorrow, you will become a burden.”

“I won’t.”

“Fine!” Pillen snapped, loading his rifle. Pointing towards the summit of the nearest mountain, he fired, and the metal ball zipped through the snow, vanishing into the darkness. “Strip naked and fetch the ball, and you will be forgiven.”

“Leader,” Gel said, “that’s impossible.”

“Then he can give up. Gel, Patran,” he motioned. “Enov, watch the others.”

Patran gave Shaden a worried look before departing with Pillen to go report to the main camp. Their silhouettes faded into the background, and Enov turned to Shaden, crossing his arms.

“Well, kid?” he said. “What will you do?”

Shaden immediately began to take everything off, throwing it aside. He noticed the bitterness of the wind right away, but the pain eased when he circulated, forcing his body to become warm. The others watched in disbelief while he folded his clothes and tossed his belongings into his tent.

“No one will come after you if you don’t return,” Enov warned. “Don’t be foolish.”

“I’m not,” Shaden bluntly replied.

“Don’t let your pride kill you,” Geloi said. “What you are doing is suicide.”

“It’s not.”

Hinz only scowled at him while Dilli nervously darted his eyes between Shaden and Enov. Shaden looked in the direction where the bullet had been fired. He hadn’t been able to set a marker on it.

“See? There’s nothing on me,” Shaden told the men. “If I return with a bullet, you’ll know that I succeeded.”

“Return when your fingers and toes feel like they’re being stabbed with a thousand burning needles,” Geloi cautioned. “It will be too late after then.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Shaden nodded. He began to run through the snow, feeling the flakes fall on his skin.

“Even your magic won’t last long! Don’t underestimate the north!” Enov called from behind him. Shaden didn’t look back and quickened his pace instead.

He felt strangely free. There was no one to judge him in the wild, no one to tell him that he was wrong. No one to watch him, no one to punish him but nature. He shouted into the howling wind, filling his lungs with ice-cold breaths, feeling alive. Concentrating his mana within himself, he spread it far and wide, making it a giant sphere with him at its center, detecting everything within it.

It was harder than he had thought, trying to locate a single bullet. It was much worse than those ‘find the character’ books that were the size of four sheets taped together. He continued to spread his mana out in a radar-like fashion, and only intense circulation helped him concentrate on the sheer amount of input he was getting—the individual rocks, the piles of snow, the animals underneath it, and random things in between, including human bones which he ignored. Still, something like a metal bullet would be distinct among the rocks.

He shivered. Feeling somewhat exposed, he conjured a simple covering from his shadow. It felt soft to the touch and silky as if trying to make itself comfortable for him. It was more than once that Shaden had thought of it as alive; the way it shifted properties to fit his needs was automatic. Of course, he could manually change the hardness and shape, but the silk-like texture he was feeling right now wasn’t his doing.

“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know what you are, but maybe you could cheer me up right now. Or give me hints where the bullet is.”

The shadow didn’t reply. It never did.

It was pitch black now; the moon and stars were barely visible through the snowfall. But he had no problems navigating at this point. The situation was training in itself, and he wondered why the Nieuts didn’t do anything similar to it. No…Pillen had taught him how to shoot a target with his eyes closed but he had advised against it. It didn’t matter to him anyway. As Shaden, he was good at whatever he learned.

And still, he was messing up. He didn’t understand why. Small, stupid mistakes everywhere.

Maybe he’d escalated the argument. Had he simply apologized, it would have ended there. But he asked too many questions.

He bit his lip. Only the constant howling wind and rapid mana flow kept his thoughts from coagulating too much into stressful lumps. So he focused on the environment once again, looking out for the bullet that had flown who knew how far into the mountains.

“There you are!”

He cried in satisfaction, sensing a foreign sphere that had come into the edge of his perception. He was sure it was the bullet by the size of it. Locking on, he turned his area of detection into a thinner line, focusing on the bullet to make sure it was the one. It was definitely a bullet. How long had it taken him? It was hard to tell, but he’d counted well over five thousand seconds.

It took him a few more minutes to finally reach where the bullet had fallen. Snow had piled over it, but one scoop with his hand revealed the cold bullet. He rolled it around in his fingers, letting out a short laugh.

It was a small victory for him. Not a satisfying one, but a win nonetheless. But against who? Pillen?

He stared into his hand, feeling down again. Everything Pillen had said was right. He didn’t fit here where the values were twisted and cruel. And for a moment, he'd believed that he’d adjusted as if he’d become a part of them…

He wasn’t going to quit yet. At the end of all of this, he’d show the whole fortress something unimaginable and so mind-blowing it would bring everyone to their knees. He hadn’t decided yet, but a giant fireball sounded nice. The silly, imaginary paybacks were fun to think of, except that he could make them a reality.

Shaden sighed. He didn’t know what he was doing here.

Just for the heck of it, he searched around for any animals he could bring back to the camp. He’d sensed a few in the barren landscape, including a bear of some kind. When he woke it up, the bear growled and lunged at him in the dark, but he quickly snapped its neck, making its body go limp.

It was a sizable bear, slightly taller than an adult human. The bear’s carcass towered over him, but it would be easy to carry it over with his magic. He could have tamed it and ridden it back, but he’d never liked killing animals he’d connected to.

But otherwise, there was no hesitation for him in killing an animal. He’d hunted plenty before. Maybe it would be like that with killing people—the first would be the hardest and the ones that followed would be easier. Maybe he just had to get over it.

Yet, this was a real world.

It would be so simple for him to think of it as a dream with no consequences. Who could stop him if he wanted to wipe out a town? Even if formidable enemies came, it would be fun. He’d be able to use all of his offensive capabilities. He could make himself a tyrant and make nations tremble before him.

It was the relationships he’d formed that stopped him. What would his parents think? His brother and sister? Lytha? Mistilia? The people of Danark? Eshel, Keyga, Eshon, Shaya, Eshan, his grandfather—and Eilae? Would they approve, or would they consider him crazy?

He wasn’t close to snapping. Nowhere near. But being alone in the north was forming small cracks in his mind. He wanted someone to trust, but no one was on his side.

Everything felt so needlessly complicated.

When he arrived, a blasting rod was pointed at him—it was Hinz. In the darkness, all the man would be able to see would be the large silhouette of the bear behind him. Shaden felt mana condensing within the weapon.

“It’s me,” he called, dragging the bear behind him. He lit the air around him with his free hand, and Hinz lowered his weapon after seeing him.

“You’re alone?” Shaden asked. “I thought it was two people in a group.”

“One is enough,” Hinz grunted.

“Really? Who decided that? Did Enov tell you to?”

The man frowned and eyed the bear behind Shaden, motioning to it with his weapon. “What’s that?”

“I thought we’d need some meat,” Shaden shrugged.

Hinz didn’t continue the conversation, so Shaden tossed the bear next to the smothered fire. Putting the bullet between his fingers, he raised it so that Hinz could see.

“Hey, I brought the bullet,” he called. Hinz gave him a single glance with no reply. Then he turned his head towards the darkness again.

“Where’s Dilli? I thought he was paired with you,” Shaden asked. “You know, you can’t look in both directions.”

“Go sleep,” Hinz grumbled.

After berating him for all the mistakes he’d done, the man was making a mistake himself. If he reported this to Pillen, there was no doubt Hinz would be rebuked.

Shaden snorted, opening the flap to his tent, and headed inside. He released his circulation, enjoying the fatigue that crept over his body. He shared a tent with Pillen, but the man hadn’t returned. Using some magic, he made himself comfortable and snuck into his bedroll, letting out a sigh.

First battle—a complete disaster.

He blinked. Would he get used to it? If he killed someone, would that make him feel better and give him the determination he lacked? He shivered, horrified at the thought, but curious nonetheless.

No one would know if he killed someone. Even if the Nieuts knew, they did the same—they wouldn’t think of it as strange. No one else would have to know, and when he finally returned to the people he cared about, he could forget about his crimes. A dark past…a sealed, evil memory that edgy protagonists carried around with them…

Was killing wrong? Lytha had killed, maybe his father, definitely his grandfather. It wasn’t that strange by this world’s standards.

If he explained it as a kind of virtual dream world, his friends would understand as well. Rhyne liked to wreak havoc in games. It really wasn’t that strange.

Maybe next time, he would make better decisions. Real, unreal, right, wrong—in the end, he was the one who decided. He’d been given unfathomable power—for what? To enjoy himself, right?

Shaden flinched when something dark crossed his vision. Then he realized that his eyes were closed. He raised an eyebrow. It was his shadow that had moved by itself. Reacting to his thoughts.

He didn’t know why it had stopped him before.

“What are you?” he whispered. “You’re the one who decided the order of where I should go. Guide me or something.”

There was no reply.

⤙ ◯ ⤚

When he woke up, he was still alone. It was dark, but he didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. Besides, his toes were cold, so he wanted to move around to warm his body. There was no need to dress as they slept with everything equipped, so he crawled outside, his feet sinking into the piled snow.

Pillen was already awake, seated on a boulder to the side. In his hands was a document—likely a map—that he was inspecting.

“You’re up early,” he commented, seeing Shaden approach. Shaden noticed Enov yawning beside his tent, leaning on his blasting rod.

“No point in sleeping more,” Shaden replied, rummaging through his pocket. Finding the bullet, he went to Pillen and handed it to him. “I found it.”

“......Good job,” Pillen sighed. “You really did it.”

“You don’t suspect that I might be lying?”

“I was briefed by Hinz,” Pillen said, pointing his chin at a mound of snow. “The bear was unnecessary. Something as big as that will leave tracks.”

“I know,” Shaden nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

He spent that dark morning skinning and chopping the bear into roastable portions, creating a fire out of the mana crystal that was inside of the beast. It wasn’t enough, so he made more. Fire from magic was great in that it didn’t create smoke and didn’t die quickly in the wind. He made an earthen mound around it then fetched his pan from his bag, letting everything heat. A few moments later, the meat was sizzling, vapor gushing out into the wind.

It was good that the wind was blowing west. Pillen wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise. The smell would alert the beastmen.

The bear had a strong stench, and it woke up the other members who emerged from their tents.

“Where’d the bear come from?” Patran asked, seeing the carcass.

“It was the boy,” Hinz replied, sitting down on the lump of dirt that Shaden had created. Despite his reluctance to talk to him, Hinz ate everything Shaden hunted.

They had a quiet breakfast, and Shaden buried the leftovers deep within the earth. Now that he looked at it, it was wasteful.

“We’re regrouping with the others at noon sharp,” Pillen briefed the others after they’d packed everything. “They found encoded documents on the beastmen as well as packets of poison. It is not clear what their plan was, but we suspect that it may have been to contaminate our food supply. It was good that you found them, Shaden. The captain thinks highly of you.”

Shaden felt his heart sink. The beastmen hadn’t been innocent.

They marched on, and Pillen told Shaden that he didn’t have to use his detection magic. It would tire him further. Shaden felt fine, but it was true that trying to perceive everything around him was a headache from time to time. So he simply walked, enjoying the scenery as it was.

When they regrouped, they all remained hiding behind boulders and rocks while Nicar and the squad leaders under her discussed what they would do. After some time, it was decided that they would descend the mountain; they’d received approval from the Commander.

It was the technique that only the Nieuts could use. By connecting to each other, they could send pulses of mana—a type of morse code of the fortress—back and forth. It was one of the greatest advantages they had. But the communication would only work if a Nieut was among the soldiers, which was the reason why the Commander wanted Pillen to remain in the military…

“It’s Anor,” someone breathed.

The Beastmen’s Country. They were still very high up, but the land flattened in the distance below them, producing dark trees whose leaves were topped with snow. Squinting, Shaden thought he saw birds flying around as well as moving dots in the distance—animals.

They carefully moved down the mountain, avoiding the steep drops. The thick snow made it difficult to see underneath their feet so they would poke their blasting rods into the ground before they stepped forward. It looked uneventful until Gel noticed that the dot in the distance looked humanoid, which Pillen confirmed. They were told to wait until he finished communicating.

“It’s strange,” he commented. “Last time, there were more conflicts along the way. We’ve only seen one group so far.”

“Good for us,” Enov grunted. “Those animals must be running with their tails between their legs.”

They continued downward. By this point, Shaden could see the other squadrons on the side of the mountain, all going down in unison.

“Wait,” Pillen said, looking backward. “The captain sensed something up there.”

All of the others stopped as well as they looked around for potential enemies while squatting. Shaden looked towards the top of the mountain. The sun’s glare made it hard to see, so he squinted.

“Did you feel that?” Gel said softly.

Geloi furrowed his eyebrows. “What did you feel?”

“A rumble. Must have been my stomach.”

Then they all felt it. The groan of the mountain, shaking the earth beneath them.

It was white. It was powdery. It was as if the clouds were falling, thick clouds that were silent, quick, and inevitable. Winter’s deadly breath, coming straight towards them.

Pillen opened his mouth, his face wild with urgency,

“Take cover!”

Shaden’s eyes widened.

“Avalanche!”