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Chapter 28 - The Long Road East

The sun was beginning to dip into amber light when I asked the question again, this time quieter.

"Do you really think I'll be fine there?"

Perephone didn't stop walking. Her eyes remained fixed on the winding trail ahead, her silhouette long and shadowed against the sloping road.

"You can tell when someone lies, right?" she replied.

"Yes."

"Then you'll be fine dealing with people.""Because in Cindral, everyone lies. Some with words. Most with silence."

She wasn't trying to comfort me.

Just telling me the truth.

That was Perephone's way—and honestly, it helped more than anything else would have.

The journey eastward turned difficult quickly.

By the third day, the mountain winds grew harsh and cold, the path twisting through jagged ridges and cliff passes. Wild creatures prowled the edges—nightcloaks, bone-snakes, and once, even a silent, pale-eyed ridge warg that watched us from afar before vanishing into the mist.

"If it charges," Perephone muttered, "strike under the jaw or through the ribs. Eyes are too armored."

"Have you fought one before?"

"Three. Killed two. Ran from the third."

"Why run?"

"It had a mate."

We camped in half-ruined shelters and hollowed-out watchtowers left from old border conflicts. I cooked when I could, failed a lot, and endured Perephone's endless critiques.

"You'd think a spirit of hope would at least know how to boil water," she teased one evening.

"She doesn't cook for me."

"Clearly."

But training never stopped.

Every morning, she made me run formations across rocky slopes. By midday, we fought with blunted weapons—sometimes with her, sometimes with summoned illusions of past enemies. By night, she made me meditate while keeping my aura masked, forcing Solviel's light into near dormancy.

"The Academy won't just test your magic. They'll test what you don't show."

"You're making me weaker on purpose," I gritted, soaked in sweat.

"No," she said, handing me water. "I'm sharpening you."

Once, on the seventh night, bandits tried to attack our camp.

I didn't sense them at first—not until Perephone threw a rock at my head.

"Duck."

Two blades flashed through the trees.

They didn't make it five seconds after that.

Perephone crippled one with a single knee to the chest and slammed the other into a tree trunk with the butt of her lance. Then she turned to me.

"Your kill."

"What?"

"They tried to kill you. I'll handle one. You finish the other."

I hesitated, looking down at the one pinned, groaning and bloodied.

"He's barely conscious."

"So?"

"This isn't war."

"No. This is your test."

I looked at the man's face—scarred, wild-eyed, trembling.

I looked at my hand, where light was beginning to gather around my fingers.

"Solviel…" I whispered, but she didn't answer.

In the end, I left him alive.

And Perephone didn't say a word the rest of the night.

The next morning, as we packed up, she finally spoke again.

"You'll be fine in Cindral," she said. "But if you're not—make yourself fine."

"I didn't kill him."

"I didn't expect you to."

"Then why—?"

"Because I needed you to see that mercy isn't weakness. But hesitation? That'll get you killed."

I was speechless.

The silence between us was louder than the crackling fire we had let die down hours ago.

Perephone finally spoke, voice low and edged with something between warning and understanding.

"You see, Luna… sooner or later, you'll need to take a life to protect your own. Or someone else's."

I looked down at my hands—still trembling faintly from the night before.

"I know that," I said quietly.

Perephone didn't move. She only watched me, arms folded beneath her cloak.

"Yet—"

"But still," I cut her off, meeting her eyes. "I wouldn't kill a helpless enemy."

The words hung in the air between us, as if I'd drawn a line on the road we walked.

She exhaled slowly through her nose, the corners of her mouth curling upward—not in amusement, but almost in pity.

"Hmm… well, you're right," she said. "Now."

"But when war comes," she added, narrowing her gaze, "you'll have to let go of that resolve. Or it'll break you first."

I didn't answer.

Not because I disagreed—But because a part of me feared she was right.

And a deeper part of me feared that I'd prove her right too easily.

"But… you have killed before, Luna."

Her voice was flat, unflinching.

I froze.

"Wha—"

"Not by blade," Perephone continued, brushing ash off her cloak, "but by action. By consequence."

She looked at me—not with judgment, but with the kind of honesty that scraped at the bones.

"You exposed eleven corrupted priests when you were four. They were erased from the Order not long after, weren't they?"

I didn't respond. My throat had gone dry.

"Don't look so surprised," she added, almost gently. "I was there."

"But I didn't… I didn't want them to die."

"Doesn't matter," Perephone said. "They did."

I turned away from her, the distant mountains blurring into fog at the edge of my vision.

"That's not the same," I whispered.

"You're right. It isn't."

She stepped closer, voice dropping just above a whisper.

"It's worse."

"With a blade, you see the end. You choose it. But when you speak truths that shatter worlds, you leave others to deal with the fallout."

"You were four, Luna. And you've been carrying death ever since—you just never had to hold the weight of a body in your hands."

Silence again.

Only the soft creaking of leather straps and wind pulling through pine.

Then:

"What matters," Perephone added, more gently now, "is why you choose to act. Or not act. And whether you're ready to live with the weight it leaves behind."

After that night, neither of us spoke much.

The road turned softer—less jagged, more traveled. We followed a forested route winding down into the foothills, past decayed border stones and old shrine pillars crumbling under ivy.

By midday, the scent of smoke and roasted wheat clung to the breeze. Somewhere nearby, a forge clanged like a heartbeat.

"There's a village ahead," Perephone said, adjusting her cloak. "Good place to rest. Might be our last until the capital."

I nodded, still chewing on her words from the night before.Not by blade… but by action.Worse.

The village was nothing like the high temples or mountain sanctums.

Thatched rooftops. Mud-walled homes. Children running barefoot through puddles. A stray spirit blinked lazily from the chimney of a bakery—one of the minor air-kind, just watching.

People looked at me as we passed.

Not with reverence.

Not with prophecy.

Just… curiosity.

Maybe the golden trim of my cloak gave me away. Or maybe it was the way I looked too clean to belong.

We settled at a small roadside inn.

It smelled of baked beans and pipe smoke, and the owner—a round-faced woman with weathered hands—welcomed us without a second glance.

"Two cots upstairs. One stew between ya. No fighting in the corridor," she said, sliding us a key.

"You always get this kind of treatment?" I asked Perephone.

"When you're old, dangerous, and don't look like royalty? Yes."

She paid with old silver crowns, coins stamped with the seal of the Mourning Era. I wondered how many wars those coins had passed through.

That night, I sat outside by the inn's rickety fence, watching the lanterns flicker through the mist.

The stars here didn't shine as brightly as they did above the temple.But the sky still held them, just the same.

Solviel had remained silent since the road.

"Are you ashamed of me?" I asked the air.

No answer.

But I felt her stir. A soft, almost imperceptible weight behind my ribs. Her sorrow was still there—dimmed, but present.

"I was once made to choose between destruction and humility," she finally said, barely audible."You chose restraint. I once could not."

I touched the silver lance beside me.

"You still see what I do as weakness?"

"No… but the world will."

A bell in the distance chimed once. Then twice.

The innkeeper called lights-out.Perephone was already asleep.

I stood slowly, brushing off dust from my cloak.

Four days to Cindral.

And I still didn't know who I wanted to be when I got there.

The morning came with a scent of ash bread and boiled root stew.

Inside the inn's small wooden dining area, light streamed through stained-glass shards patched together from older buildings—most likely scavenged from forgotten temples or border ruins.

The innkeeper served us breakfast without a word:Thick brown porridge, black bread crusts, and two soft-boiled eggs sitting in cracked ceramic cups.

"Not exactly temple fare," Perephone said as she broke her bread.

"It's warm," I replied. "That's enough."

We ate mostly in silence. Around us, a few travelers murmured to each other—farmers, traders, one man with a harp slung across his shoulder, humming to himself while staring at nothing.

No one paid us much attention.

And I liked it.

After breakfast, Perephone decided to remain in the inn's courtyard, checking the wear on our supplies. I stepped out alone, walking through the village's narrow pathways.

The stones were crooked. Chickens ran wild through muddy alleys. Children darted between stalls, laughing over trinkets. The smell of dye and smoke came from a fabric stand where a woman stirred paint with her bare hands.

I slowed at a mural painted on the side of an old stable. It depicted a large winged figure—half-burnt, its hands open over a wheat field. At the bottom were the words:

"We owe the sky nothing, yet it feeds us still."

The villagers lived with less—but smiled more.

There was no prophecy tied to their names. No expectations.Just small lives made meaningful by choice, not destiny.

"Is this what peace really is?" I wondered aloud.

Solviel didn't answer.

But the warmth in my chest felt like agreement.

I bought a red woven charm from an old woman sitting on a blanket of sunflower petals.

"For travel," she said, pressing it into my palm. "To keep wolves away. Real or otherwise."

"Thank you."

"You've got sadness in your eyes," she added. "Whatever waits for you—meet it with teeth."

When I returned to the inn, Perephone had already packed.

"Done wandering?"

"Just observing."

"Good. You'll be doing a lot of that in Cindral. But you won't have the luxury of standing still when eyes start turning."

I nodded.

As we left the village, the innkeeper waved once. The children from the market shouted "Safe travels!" as we passed by.

For the first time, I didn't feel like the Vessel of Solviel.I just felt like Luna.

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