"I need to ask you something." Cel's voice came quiet in the mist-shrouded landscape.
Her masked face tilted slightly, attention focusing with that patient grace she always carried. "Of course, Chosen One."
The words felt heavy in his throat. Not because they were difficult to speak, but because asking them felt like crossing some invisible line.
"What are the Cursed?"
Silence answered him. Not uncomfortable - just present. Selina remained perfectly still, her expression unchanged.
When she finally spoke, her voice carried something that might have been regret. "I am sorry Chosen One, that does not lie within my authority."
Cel's jaw tightened. He'd expected the answer, but disappointment still settled in his chest anyways.
"Fine." He forced his breathing to steady. "Then can you at least tell me this - do they pose a threat? Are the stories true about them being... wrong?"
"Some stories hold truth. Others are born from fear and misunderstanding." Selina's gaze remained fixed on him, unreadable behind the mask. "The Cursed are as varied as any other human. Some deserve the exile they receive. Others do not."
The honesty in those words struck deeper than any evasion would have. Not a judgment. Not a defense. Just simple truth, delivered without embellishment.
"That doesn't help me know which category Raven falls into."
"No," Selina agreed softly. "It does not."
Cel's fingers curled against his palm. The logic felt wrong somehow - incomplete. If the Cursed were just people, varied like anyone else, then why mark them at all?
"You said some don't deserve exile." The words came carefully, each one weighed. "If the Cursed were just people, varied like anyone else… then why do the gods mark them with corruption? What is that mark, really?"
Selina remained silent for a long moment. When she spoke, that same note of regret colored her voice. "I am sorry, Chosen One. That too does not lie within my authority."
The mist shifted around them, curling through broken earth and small flowers that reached toward moonlight.
Cel stared at the ground, trying to organize thoughts that refused to settle into anything coherent. Every question led to another, each answer revealing how little he actually understood.
Selina's voice came gentler now, almost hesitant. "Chosen One..."
He looked up.
"Please be careful." The words carried weight that made his skin prickle with instinctive unease - a subtle shift in her posture, an emphasis that suggested something beyond simple caution.
His chest tightened. "Of what?"
"That is all I can say." Her tone had returned to its usual serenity, but something lingered beneath it. A warning wrapped in silk. "You should rest now. Your body needs sleep."
The finality in her voice made it clear - this conversation was over.
"Alright," he said quietly. Then, after a pause, "Good night, Selina."
The words felt strange leaving his mouth. He hesitated. "Do... do priests even sleep?"
A soft sound escaped her - gentle and musical. A chuckle, quiet but genuine.
"We do not need to sleep." Her voice carried warmth now, the tension from before easing. "But I appreciate the kindness nonetheless."
Something in her tone made his chest feel less tight. A small comfort in the midst of unanswered questions.
"Sleep well, Chosen One." Her serene smile deepened slightly. "May the Moon Goddess light your path."
The familiar words wrapped around him as he closed his eyes and reached for the world beyond.
Pain greeted his return - dull and persistent, radiating from wounds that Cinderward's manifestation couldn't erase.
Cel opened his eyes to broken stone ceiling, moonlight filtering through gaps where the structure had crumbled.
Raven's silhouette remained near the entrance, back turned, surveying the wasteland beyond with that same careful vigilance.
Cel's mind wanted to churn through everything Selina had said - and more importantly, what she hadn't said. But his body overruled him, dragging him down into sleep before he could form another coherent thought.
The nightmare came as it always did. Golden light. His father's rage. Blows that fell like judgment while his family did nothing to help him.
Cel gasped awake.
His hands clawed at the ground beneath him, fingers finding only ash-covered stone. Sweat coated his skin despite the morning chill seeping through gaps in the walls.
The nightmare clung to him like oil, coating his thoughts with remembered pain that felt more real than the broken ruins surrounding him.
His breathing gradually slowed. Steadied.
Movement drew his attention.
Raven stood near the entrance, silhouette dark against the crimson light filtering through crumbled stone. He wasn't looking at Cel - just standing there, keeping watch as he had been all night.
Aware, but not intruding.
Cel pushed himself upright, testing his balance. His hands were steadier now, the nightmare's grip loosening with each deliberate breath.
Raven glanced back at him, expression unreadable.
"For your notice," Cel said quietly, "you also mumble in your sleep."
The words came out more defensive than he'd intended - a justification for weakness he shouldn't need to explain.
Raven's lips quirked slightly. "I know."
The simple acknowledgment settled something in Cel's chest. No questions. No pity. Just mutual understanding between two people haunted by things they couldn't escape.
"Ready?" Raven asked.
Cel flexed his right hand experimentally. The fingers responded - not perfectly, but better than yesterday. Sensation was returning in slow increments, the frostbite damage gradually receding.
"Yes."
Raven nodded once, then moved through the archway without further discussion.
Cel followed, emerging into crimson morning light that painted the wasteland in red tones. The mountain rose larger on the horizon now.
Perhaps another day of walking. Maybe less.
They fell into rhythm - boots crunching against ash-covered earth, silence pressing in from all sides. The same endless landscape stretched before them, broken only by scattered obsidian, ruins and the distant mountain.
Selina's warning circled Cel's thoughts, refusing to settle.
'Please be careful.'
Careful of what? The Cursed in general? Raven specifically? Something else entirely that he was too ignorant to recognize?
The ambiguity gnawed at him. But dwelling on unknowns wouldn't help. Not now.
His gaze tracked to Raven's back - the confident stride, the way he moved through this dead world like danger was an old acquaintance rather than a constant threat.
Whatever secrets Raven carried, whatever had earned him that mark of corruption, Cel would learn eventually.
Or he wouldn't.
Either way, the mountain awaited. And with it, the slim hope of finding a rift that led back to their world.
Time passed in silence, marked only by the rhythm of their footsteps. The crimson sun remained fixed on the horizon, unchanging
Cel's throat had grown tight over the past hour, each swallow requiring conscious effort. His tongue felt thick, papery. The black medicine coating his wounds seemed to pull moisture from his skin, leaving him parched in a way that went beyond simple thirst.
He'd been ignoring it. Pushing through the discomfort the same way he'd learned to push through everything else.
But when Raven slowed ahead of him, then stopped entirely, Cel knew the issue had become unavoidable.
"We need water," Raven said, not looking back. His voice carried that same flat pragmatism it always did, but something in his posture suggested urgency beneath the calm.
Cel came to a stop beside him, scanning the wasteland. Ash. Stone. Nothing that even hinted at water.
"There are fissures," Raven continued, his crimson eyes tracking across the landscape with practiced assessment. "Cracks deep enough to reach underground waterways. Rare, but they exist."
Cel weighed his options in silence. He'd kept Frostmark hidden deliberately - Selina's warning still echoed in his thoughts, cautioning him to be careful. Revealing his abilities felt like showing his hand to someone he didn't fully understand.
But searching for water in this endless wasteland was uncertain at best. They could wander for days and still find nothing.
The risk of revealing his gift was smaller than the certainty timewaste.
"I have another source," Cel said finally.
Raven's attention shifted to him, question implicit in the tilt of his head. "What do you mean?"
Rather than explain, Cel knelt and pressed his left palm flat against the ash-covered ground.
Cold erupted beneath his hand.
The familiar burning sensation - vicious and sharp - raced up his arm as frost spiraled outward in delicate patterns. The ash beneath crystallized instantly, forming a perfect circle of ice that shimmered with pale blue light.
Raven went still, his gaze fixed on the frost circle.
Cel pulled his hand away, fingers aching from the cold. The frost remained, etched into the ground like divine scripture written in winter.
He reached down and broke off a chunk. It came away with a sharp crack, the fragment glittering in his palm.
Then he brought it to his mouth and bit down.
The crunch echoed across the silent wasteland. Cel chewed methodically, breaking the ice into smaller pieces before swallowing. The cold traced a path down his throat, settling in his stomach with surprising weight.
When he finished, he looked up at Raven.
The young man stood frozen, staring at the frost circle with an expression Cel couldn't quite identify. Not disgust - not the revulsion he'd shown when Cel had eaten raw meat. Something else. Something that looked almost like... wonder?
"You can create water," Raven said finally.
"Ice." Cel gestured at the remaining frost. "But yes."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Raven moved - slow, careful, like approaching something that might vanish if startled. He knelt beside the frost circle, one hand extending toward it.
His fingers hovered just above the surface for a heartbeat.
The moment his skin made contact, Raven flinched - a subtle jerk of his hand.
"Cold," he said flatly.
Raven lifted the ice to his mouth. His teeth closed around it—
And nothing happened.
He tried again, biting harder. The ice held firm, refusing to crack under the pressure. His jaw muscles flexed with effort, but the fragment remained stubbornly whole.
Frustration flickered across his features. He pulled the ice away, staring at it like it had personally offended him.
"It won't—" He tried once more, applying enough force that Cel could see the strain in his neck. "—break."
Something twitched at the corner of Cel's mouth. The sight of Raven - the same person who'd faced a Defiled-rank creature without flinching barely a day ago - now locked in a battle of wills with a piece of ice, was absurd enough that a laugh threatened to break free.
He swallowed it down.
"Here." Cel reached over and plucked the ice from Raven's hand.
He closed his fist around it.
The ice shattered instantly with a sharp crack, fragments spilling between his fingers. He opened his palm, revealing a dozen glittering pieces small enough to swallow safely, and held them out.
Raven stared at the crushed ice in Cel's hand, then up at his face, then back to the fragments.
"That's..." He paused, seeming to search for words. "You didn't even try."
Cel looked down at his own hand - at the fragments resting in his palm, at the ease with which he'd destroyed something Raven couldn't even crack.
His assessment had been wrong.
The thought arrived with uncomfortable clarity. When he'd tested Frostmark's durability, when that single punch had shattered the frost, he dismissed the ability as fragile.
But it hadn't been the frost that was too weak.
It had been him that was too strong.
The Moon Goddess had forged him a body whose strength outstripped his ability to control it. A body that made even simple movements violent.
And he'd used that strength to judge divine ice, never considering that the flaw lay in his perception rather than the gift itself.
Shame flickered through his chest. Another failure of understanding. Another moment where his ignorance had led him to undervalue something precious.
Raven was already eating the crushed fragments, his movements careful as he swallowed the smaller pieces. When he swallowed, something in his posture relaxed slightly - the tension of dehydration easing.
"Make more," Raven said quietly.
Cel pressed his palm to the ground again.
Frost bloomed outward in spiraling patterns, beautiful and intricate. He broke off chunks and crushed them methodically, creating piles of fragments that Raven gathered with cupped hands.
They ate in silence - the crunch of ice against teeth the only sound in the vast emptiness surrounding them.
When they finished, Cel's throat no longer felt like sandpaper. The tightness in his chest had eased. Even the throbbing of his wounds seemed less insistent.
Raven stood, wiping frost residue from his hands onto his dark clothing.
"That changes things," he said, gaze tracking toward the distant mountain. "We can go straight."
Cel pushed himself upright, testing his balance. His left hand flexed experimentally - the cold from creating frost had left it stiff, but nothing worse.
They fell into step together, boots crunching against ash-covered earth.
Raven walked in silence for a long moment, his expression thoughtful in a way Cel hadn't seen before.
"A useful gift." He glanced back at Cel. "Your goddess must favor you highly."
"The Moon Goddess chose me," Cel said carefully. "I don't know about favor."
"Still." Raven's pace slowed. "To grant such a gift... your priest must be no ordinary guide."
Raven's hand landed on his shoulder.
The contact was light, almost casual - but something in the timing made Cel's attention sharpen.
"What rank does he hold?" Raven asked, his crimson eyes fixed on Cel's face.