Five crystalline bears, white as freshly fallen snow, marched steadily toward the horizon.
Alice was a Wendigo sorceress, and when Yuel had asked her the other day, she had confirmed that they truly could track down Swore.
Now, their journey had begun—not for discovery, but for the hunt. To find Swore... and to kill him.
The method they used to follow his trail was, admittedly, strange. A faint blue thread was looped around Yuel's neck, stretching endlessly toward the horizon. When Yuel had reached to touch it, his fingers met nothing—it was, of course, no physical rope.
It was an illusion.
A thread spun from memory itself, pointing the way to Swore.
They followed it through a snowy expanse where the trees resembled taiga pines, though they were not quite the same—only imitations born of this strange land.
The world around them was a vast plain, blanketed in an endless sheet of snow. Where normally the cavern ceiling of Undergarden would be visible above, here a heavy canopy of clouds concealed it.
Strange creatures roamed the white fields—dhunes. Many of them blended perfectly with their snowy fur, while others huddled together in tight clusters, like penguins bracing against the cold. Yet, they were no penguins, and from such distance Yuel could not discern their true form.
"Doesn't matter… we're after Swore. They're irrelevant," Yuel told himself.
At first, the rope seemed to extend toward the horizon without end, but after a long march, its destination became clear. It led toward the colossal northern wall of Undergarden, the very boundary of the Frozen Hollows.
Undergarden itself was divided into five regions, each stretching in a cardinal direction. At their limits, one would encounter vast walls—at least, that was what humanity believed. Only the Verdant Requiem's wall had ever been seen by human eyes, but many scholars suspected that similar walls stood deep within the other regions as well.
Whether there were five regions or more remained uncertain. No one had ever proven otherwise.
But Swore was there—at the northernmost edge of the Frozen Hollows, by the great cavern wall.
From a distance, Yuel, Alice, and the other Wendigos could already see it looming upon the horizon.
The thread of illusion pointed straight toward it. Swore was there.
As they pressed forward, Yuel's thoughts drifted inward, toward the echoes of the past...
Years ago, Yuel had been just an eight-year-old child, living with his family in June—a city nestled within Undergarden.
Their home was near the heart of the city. He had a good family. It was within those walls that he had first learned of the concepts of right and wrong.
Though his parents' faces had long since blurred in his memory, one thing remained etched into him: that night, the sorrow in his father's expression. Not anger—never anger. Pure grief.
His father had taken him into a small room, closed the door, and what followed was something Yuel would forever be thankful he had not witnessed with his eyes. He had only heard it.
The sound of his family dying.
He stayed there through the long night, trembling in silence, until morning came and the guards arrived. No alarms rang—Undergarden had no such technology—but Yuel knew they were law enforcers.
The door was already open when they entered. Yuel had been forced to face reality.
It was that day he learned that good and evil meant nothing. Only victory mattered. And he had lost. He had lost everything.
If he didn't want such tragedy to repeat, what should he do? Many might have said: grow stronger. And at first, Yuel believed the same.
But in the orphanage, where he endured endless bullying and was treated as less than human, that belief began to rot.
His father had been a Troth disguised as a man. Because of that, Yuel was half-blooded. His very existence was cause for scorn.
And so he began to wonder: if humanity rejected him, perhaps the Troth would accept him?
He ran away from the orphanage, still within Undergarden, in the city of June—close to the Inksworn Depths.
For eight years he searched for the Troth within those abyssal caverns, but he never had the strength to go far enough. He never found them.
And then Luo gave his life so that Yuel might live.
When Yuel returned to humanity, he thought, at last, he had found true companions—Aria, Shiro, Onur. Together, they dreamed of a bright future.
But that future was a lie.
Onur and Aria had died. Shiro had turned against him, venturing deep into the Frozen Hollows to grow strong enough to kill him.
And himself? What was left for Yuel?
Aria had been a time traveler. Before her death, she had said humanity would need a Stage 0 to survive.
Could that role fall to Yuel? Was that his purpose?
He didn't know. He couldn't know. And in that moment, the voice of Null echoed within him.
"Idiot. Can't you wander without purpose for a while? Do it. Even if you don't want to, a purpose will eventually find you. For now, just focus on living."
"…Thank you."
The words slipped past Yuel's lips before he realized it. Alice and the other Wendigos glanced at him strangely, having heard him speak to no one.
"Ah—it's nothing. Just thinking aloud. Did we arrive?"
"Yes," Alice replied. "The thread leads to one of the breaches in Undergarden's wall. Swore must be hiding within. Ready yourselves."
One by one, they dismounted from the crystalline bears.
"Are the bears coming with us?" Yuel asked.
"That is for you to decide," said Gave.
After a moment's thought, Yuel answered, "Leave two behind. The rest follow. They'll be useful in battle."
They pressed into the cavern's maw, their footsteps hushed, the cold wind howling at their backs. Snow gave way to jagged stone, the ground slick with pools of melted frost.
The warmth here hinted at something dangerous—perhaps a Titan whose bloodline carried fire or heat. But their quarry was not such a creature.
It was Swore.
Yuel, Alice, five Wendigos, and three crystalline bears descended into the cavernous dark.
In Yuel's hand, his staff pulsed with orange light, illuminating the path ahead. This glow came from Starlight, the Church he had chosen, and its gifted core ability: Light. He could also conjure searing white flame to brighten his path, but that consumed far more mana. Besides, Light could be used not just to illuminate—but to blind. A sudden flash, a moment's blindness—that could mean survival.
They moved carefully through the silence, past shallow pools glimmering with reflections. The hush of the cave pressed against Yuel's mind, unsettling him.
And then—
In the distance, beyond the glow of his staff, two faint red lights appeared. Dim at first, but growing clearer with every step.
They were eyes.
Swore's eyes.
From the shadows emerged a towering Fenrir, its fur streaked black and white, its gaze burning blood-red. Vines coiled around its body, blooming with crimson flowers. Once, in his battle with Yuel, Swore had exhausted his entire reserve of blood. But now, after advancing a stage, he seemed to have replenished it.
He had noticed them. Slowly, deliberately, he advanced.
Perhaps his sluggish movements were the lingering curse of Yuel's whispers—thousands of voices gnawing endlessly at his mind, deafening him with madness. Yet still, Swore was cunning. Perhaps he was slow not from weakness, but from caution, wary of the one who had cursed him so long ago.
Step by step, he closed the distance.
Yuel seized the moment. Raising his staff, he conjured four orbs of light, sending them to hover in different corners of the cavern. No longer would they fight swallowed in shadow.
Alice fell back, preparing her magic. The three crystalline bears charged forward, and the Wendigos followed, their arms twisting into blades.
The bears would stand as shields. The Wendigos as blades. Alice, the support. And Yuel himself—the spear to strike the fatal blow.
That was the plan. At least, it was.
But they had forgotten one thing.
Who it was they were facing.