Chương 38: When the Heart and Mountain Trembles

The morning at Ironvale Camp began the way it always did, it's loud with the ordinary business of survival. Pickaxes rang against stone somewhere deep in the eastern shaft, the sound carrying up through the mine's mouth in a steady rhythm.

Above ground, a line of workers hauled loaded ore carts along worn wooden rails, their breath fogging in the cold morning air, while three adventurers near the camp's southern fence hoisted the carcass of a mountain elk into the back of a supply wagon, arguing good-naturedly over whose shot had actually taken it down.

"Left shoulder," insisted a broad-shouldered woman named Reya, wiping frost from her crossbow with a practiced hand.

"Clean through. Yours barely grazed it."

"Grazed it hard enough that it stopped running," her partner shot back, grinning through a beard crusted white with cold.

"That's what matters." Near the camp's center, a boy no older than twelve named Tomas, the foreman's nephew, sent north for the season to learn a trade his father hoped would keep him further from actual danger than mining ever had—struggled to drag a small crate of raw ore toward the sorting shed, muscles straining against a weight he hadn't quite grown into yet.

"Ha! Good work!" his uncle called over, laughing warmly.

"Your father's going to be proud, hearing his son's turned into such a hard worker!"

"Thank you, uncle haha," Tomas said, a little embarrassed, though he kept dragging the crate anyway, determined to finish what he'd started. It was an entirely ordinary morning at the camp. Thud. The sound arrived first, distant, low, and heavy enough that the ground itself seemed to flinch with it. Conversation faltered across the camp, heads turning toward the treeline to the north, the same direction the sound had come from. One of the miners resting near the edge of camp squinted toward the trees.

"Hey," he called out, uncertain.

"Something's moving out there." A second thud followed, the rhythm accelerating with the terrible, unhurried certainty of something that had already decided exactly where it was going.

"That's not an avalanche," Reya said quietly and already reaching for her crossbow. It wasn't. The treeline exploded outward as a giant beast charged through, snapping full-grown trees with violent ease. The snow exploding outward in a wave that reached the outer fence before anyone had finished registering what they were looking at. Half its massive body remained pale beneath matted fur.

The other half had split and blackened, violet corruption pulsing beneath skin that no longer resembled skin at all, weeping light from fissures that ran the length of one entire arm. For one full second, the entire camp simply stood frozen, staring. Then someone screamed, and the world came apart.

"T-That's the Guardian! I-It's... it's been corrupted!" The corrupted beast's first strike caught the sorting shed dead center, timber and stone exploding outward in a spray of splinters and dust. Tomas didn't have time to run than turning his head toward the sound, and then he simply wasn't there anymore, the crate of ore he'd been dragging scattered and buried beneath the wreckage.

"TO ARMS!" someone bellowed from the watchtower, the alarm bell beginning its frantic, useless clanging a half-second later.

"EVERYONE, TO ARMS!" Reya raised her crossbow and put a bolt cleanly into the creature's exposed shoulder. It didn't slow. It rounded on her instead, closing the distance in two massive strides, and she barely managed to throw herself clear of a blow that tore a trench through the frozen earth where she'd been standing a heartbeat before. Miners scattered in every direction, some sprinting for the treeline, others diving for whatever cover the scattered wagons and equipment sheds could offer.

The adventurer with the frost-crusted beard drew his blade and charged, screaming something wordless and furious, and the beast swatted him aside without so much as breaking stride, his body crumpling motionless against the side of a supply wagon. And then, from the treeline on the camp's opposite side, a second wave of chaos arrived.

They came in silence, which somehow made it worse—pale, wiry shapes vaulting the outer fence in great, bounding leaps, bluish skin bared to the cold, white hair streaming behind them as they descended on the scattering miners with brutal, terrible speed. Bone-tipped spears found flesh with practiced efficiency. A woman running for the treeline went down without a sound, a warrior already past her and moving toward the next target before her body had finished falling.

"BLOOD TRIBE!" someone screamed, the word cracking with disbelief.

"They're attacking too—why are they attacking too?!" There was no time left to answer the question. There was barely time left to run.

The camp dissolved into a chaos with no clear front, no single direction that meant safety—corrupted violence tearing through one half of the compound while the tribe's warriors cut through the other, the two threats never quite meeting, never quite coordinating, but somehow worse for it, forcing every desperate survivor to choose which death seemed marginally more survivable and gamble everything on the choice.

Near the mine's entrance, a small cluster of guards formed up in a rough defensive line, javelins leveled toward the oncoming beast.

"Hold!" their captain shouted, voice raw.

"Hold the line, we cover the shaft, we—" The coprrupted Guardian didn't give them the chance to finish forming it. It crossed the remaining distance in a single bound and crashed through the center of their formation like they were nothing more than an inconvenient wall, three men gone before the rest could even break and scatter.

The captain went down beneath a follow-up blow that left nothing recognizable behind, and the survivors fled for the mine shaft in a screaming, disorganized rout, some of them making it, others cut down from behind by warriors who had already circled wide to cut off exactly that escape route. Reya found herself pressed against the side of an overturned cart, reloading with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, watching the camp burn and scream around her.

A shadow fell over her a half-second before a blade found her exposed side. She didn't have time to scream. Just a sharp, startled breath, and then nothing at all, her crossbow slipping from fingers that had already stopped answering her. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The fires spread quickly after that—an overturned lantern here, a shattered forge there, the dry timber of the camp's structures catching easily in the cold, dry air, black smoke rising to join the chaos, an entirely ordinary mining camp hour ago. By the time the screaming finally began to thin, there was very little left standing to scream from at all.

The Guardian stood at the center of the wreckage, corrupted violet light pulsing slow and steady beneath its ruined flesh, indifferent to the fires spreading around it, indifferent to the scattered handful of Blood Tribe warriors still moving through the wreckage with silent, methodical purpose. Somewhere beneath the smoke and the ruin, a single wooden sign, scorched but still legible, swayed on one remaining hinge above the shattered gate. Ironvale Camp — Established under Kingdom Charter — All are welcome.

It creaked once, twice, and finally tore free entirely, falling into the snow among everything else the morning had already taken.... Three days had passed since Stelle first learned the function behind a levitation spell, and she had spent nearly all of them exactly the same way—seated at the small table in her room, etching Runes into stone with clinical precision, testing each one, and watching each one fail in some new and slightly different manner.

She placed the latest attempt down and began channeling mana away from her hands, watching the stone lift a few inches off the table. It held for exactly one second before shooting sideways through her open window and striking with unfortunate precision towards the neighboring house.

"What in the—" a man's voice bellowed from outside.

"Who threw that?!" Stelle leaned just far enough to one side of the window frame to see without being seen, one eye tracking the furious man now stalking the street below, searching for whoever had assaulted his home with a stone.

"Show yourself!" he shouted at no one in particular.

"Whoever you are!" She withdrew quietly, closed the window without a sound, and settled back onto the edge of her bed, pulling up her system's readout instead. [System] [Rune Code No. 52: Failed.] [Advanced Rune Arts syntax required to properly construct a levitational object.] For the last three days, she had tried to reverse-engineer the underlying theory of Sierra's demonstration into a working Rune of her own, using nothing but the basic Rune fundamentals she'd absorbed from the village archive as her foundation. Sierra had shown her the technique exactly once, granting her a single demonstration before politely, and then less politely, declining to repeat it.

Stelle had knocked on her door more than once since then, hoping to catch some overlooked detail her archive might have missed the first time. Sierra had obliged her twice more before finally locking the door and pretending not to hear the knocking that followed. Stelle hadn't pushed further after that. She'd simply let the matter rest, planning to try again once enough time had passed to make the request seem reasonable again. In the process, she had also learned that Sierra is just an easygoing person.

Her easy, playful manner was, if anything, the more consistent version of her—and Stelle had, tested the edges of that patience more than once, deliberately, curious whether irritation would eventually win out. Sierra simply refused to raise her voice at her, no matter how persistently she was provoked. Is it because I'm weak and not a threat to her? she wondered, still turning the question over when a knock sounded at her door. She genuine surprise and hadn't registered anyone approaching at all.

"Hey. Little thing." Sierra's voice, muffled through the wood.

"Why haven't you been coming by my room anymore?" Stelle understood immediately why she hadn't noticed the approach. It was Sierra. Rising from her seat wearing her plain white dress, her left arm severed and exposed. She opened the door to find Sierra standing in the doorway, her face looked irritated. Stelle think for a moment, wondering the cause of the sudden visit. I stopped being persistent. I assumed that was the outcome she actually wanted.

Sierra's gaze dropped to Stelle's own left side, and whatever irritation had been sitting in her expression melted away all at once.

"I was just checking on you, honestly," she said, softer now.

"I half expected someone had kidnapped you again."

"I'm fine, Lady Sierra. I was only resting."

"Well. Kids like you should rest properly, then." Sierra crossed her arms loosely, glancing past Stelle into the room beyond.

"Aren't you going to invite me in? You've spent almost two days trying to talk your way into mine. Seems only fair I get the same courtesy."

"You can come in." Sierra stepped inside without further comment, glancing around the modest space.

"Smaller than mine," she observed.

"And noisier. Are you sure you're comfortable here?"

"It doesn't bother me."

"Good to know, then." Sierra's attention finally settled, her eyes again landed on Stelle's left arm ended.

"Now that I can actually see it clearly... your arm. Something cut that off, didn't it?"

"Just an old injury," Stelle said.

"Is it related to why you are hiding from the authorities?"

"You could say that."

"What did you actually do? are you a criminal or something?" Sierra looking at her with curiosity than suspicion.

"It's complicated," Stelle said.

"Someone wanted me to join them. I refused."

"That's all? They hunted you down and did that to you, over a refusal?" Sierra's voice sharpened with genuine indignation.

"Are they out of their minds?" Stelle only sat, fingers brushing lightly over the scarred edge of her arm. She understood well enough that everything that had happened to her was, in some sense is a consequence of her own choice. She wasn't entirely innocent in any of it. But she also knew, with the same cold certainty that it had still been the right choice to make.

"Poor thing..." Sierra's voice gentled further.

"You know, you could live in the Capital, if you—""I'm fine. I can handle myself." Stelle knew that relying on herself was always the safer choice. She had already revealed enough to Sierra, more than she usually would. There was no need to hand her any more leverage. Sierra studied her for a long moment, as though trying to work out something she hadn't quite pieced together yet, before finally exhaling.

"Stelle. This is only advice, take it or leave it. Not everything gets solved by one person working alone. You might manage it eventually—but it'll cost you far more effort than it needs to, and whatever you build that way will come out flawed more often than not." She gestured vaguely, taking in the room, the failed Rune stones scattered across the table.

"I'm not saying living alone is wrong. I'm saying it isn't wrong to have someone stand beside you while you figure something out. Like right now. You're trying to build a levitation Rune, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you ask for it specifically and try to remade the concept from scratch? Just ask me directly what kind of Rune actually fits what you're building. I can help with that properly. Rune work isn't some simple pattern anyone can puzzle out alone, no matter how clever they happen to be." Stelle looked over at the stones scattered across the table, each one etched with a different failed pattern from the last three days.

She had been trying to bypass the actual function entirely, relying only on what the knowledge she build alone, without ever properly questioning whether everything was even correct. Her first prototype, after all, hadn't shown a single malfunction—so she'd simply assumed the foundation beneath it was solid enough to build on indefinitely. She had only been awake for a short while, measured against most things. She still didn't fully understand why people needed each other to survive at all.

A person could find their own food in the wild. Fight their own battles. Seek out their own knowledge, given enough time and patience. There was a great deal a single person could accomplish, entirely alone, if they were simply willing to work hard enough for it. And yet, over and over, people still chose to draw closer to one another anyway. Her mind drifted back to Oakhaven. Even there, she realized that she had never truly relied on herself alone, not entirely.

Vira and Rakan had helped her, offered things she'd never actually asked for. Corin had helped her, in his own transactional way, long before she'd understood what he actually wanted in return. The Vanguard had given her a home, however temporary, when she'd had nothing else to call one. She looked up at Sierra again. The woman had already helped her far more than necessary. It was an act Stelle truly didn't understand. What was the purpose of taking on a burden if you gained nothing from it?

A question she not yet found the perfect answer. Sierra softly placed a hand atop her head, her touch surprisingly gentle.

"No need to overthink it," Sierra said, her expression softening.

"I know you'll understand eventually. For now, just let me help you." Stelle looked into her genuine eyes. Feeling no malice or hidden motive behind the gesture, she simply allowed the woman's hand to rest atop her head.

"Then... please help me."