As soon as they reached the main road leading to the outskirts of the valley, the mist swallowed them up almost immediately.
It was a dense, cold white blanket, where even the horses' breath was lost before reaching their eyes.
Silas, looking nervously from left to right, instinctively pulled on the reins, searching for landmarks... but there were none. The world before him had become cotton wool, silence and dampness.
A feeling of oppression, the source of which he could not determine, assailed him. Nevertheless, he shook his head and exhaled deeply.
This was not the first time he had travelled through a misty area. In the Wrighton domain, the woods surrounding the hills were often covered in mist after heavy rain or depending on the season.
Silas, having accompanied his father and some of the estate's kind inhabitants on several picking trips, had learned to find his way in a mist... more or less.
So finding himself in this cotton-white world was not so different.
The mist remained mist. And was nothing more than that...
Mist.
The one they were walking through was no different from any other fog. Just denser, cloudier, quieter, more unsettling...
...More oppressive.
'No! This is no time to let yourself be overcome by childish fear. Besides, Mireille is right here. And she's not afraid of anything... especially not a little fog.'
As if to reassure himself, the teenager narrowed his eyes and looked around for his maid.
In front of him, Mireille was moving forward. However, Silas froze for a moment when he saw her.
Mireille was striding forward, but her posture was abnormal, too straight, too stiff.
Despite his few years of existence, Silas recognised this immediately.
This frozen posture was not that of someone who was extra vigilant. No, it was something else.
An old tension, a fear that knots your muscles and prevents you from reacting properly.
The young man knew this well, since he had been subjected to this same feeling several times, in particular since the arrival of Mael, the fake butler.
"M-Mireille... are you all right?"
She did not answer. Or rather, silence was her answer.
The servant's horse was walking slowly, but her gloves were clenched so tightly on the reins that the leather creaked. After a long minute of silence, a breath escaped her, barely audible.
"...This mist..."
"Yes? This mist... What about it?"
"..."
Silas waited. But a sharp noise coming from the left disrupted his train of thought for a moment. His maid stared, or at least turned her head, in the direction of the sound.
Finally, Mimi shook her head.
"No. Nothing... It's just fog."
She lifted her chin, as if forcing herself to look straight ahead — even though the horizon had become a milky wall.
"...Young master, don't stray too far. Stay within earshot." Mimi finally said, with a semblance of gentleness that came out of nowhere.
However, she quickly realised that it had come out in a harsher tone than she had intended.
A tone that recalled her former life — not that of a servant enjoying her days playing the role of an ordinary, incognito girl at Wrighton Manor, but that of a senior officer in the Velenisian army.
...Her past life.
Mireille closed her eyes, her mind flooded with images she wished she could never see again.
"...The Mistwalkers..." she whispered without realising it.
"Mistwalkers? What are they?" asked Silas, his tone suddenly heightened with curiosity.
Mireille flinched. It was a slight movement, but almost impossible to ignore for Silas, who had been watching her for years now.
The maid said nothing for a moment.
"I... Um... It's nothing... And this mist is just ordinary mist." She replied with a smile.
"I see..." Silas replied simply.
"Yes... Ordinary mist. Nothing more." Mireille repeated softly, as if to convince herself.
But Silas sensed that there was another truth buried in the brief silence that preceded her answers.
They continued for a few more minutes, until the path widened and a cold breeze rose from the valley, carrying the scent of damp grass and ancient stones.
There, Mimi stopped. The servant squinted and scanned the whiteness stretching out below... and her lips trembled for a moment.
She closed her eyes and exhaled, then suddenly spun around. Her gaze met that of the young nobleman.
"Young master... I... I need to tell you something."
Silas, surprised by his maid's unusual behaviour, simply nodded.
Mimi closed her eyes again and swallowed. At that moment, a creaking sound was heard. After a short moment of silence, she took a deep breath and sighed.
Then she opened her eyes.
"I imagine that by now, you've already figured out that I have a past involving the military."
"Yes, but... that... that's not a problem, if you don't want to talk about it." Replied Silas, shifting uncomfortably on his horse.
Mireille smiled slightly.
"No. It's fine. I need to tell you about it... Just in case."
Silas nodded. In his teal-blue eyes, the sparkles of anticipation began to light up.
"During the war, I was Captain-Commander of the 4th Elite Knight Brigade of our kingdom's army..."
Turning her head, she looked again at the misty whiteness stretching out below. Then she continued.
"My troops and I had been assigned to the western front, in the plains of Noveria... at the time, it was the scene of the bloodiest battles..."
"Oh, I remember that. My father told me about it. He said that, according to news from the royal palace, the losses there were horrible, numbering in the thousands."
Mireille looked at him and allowed herself another small smile. But this one exuded a violent melancholy.
"Horrible is indeed a word that can describe the hell that was unfolding on the plains. But the real problem, the cause of the greatest number of casualties, was not so much the deadly fighting between two armies."
The maid suddenly tightened her grip on the reins, making the leather of her gloves creak loudly.
"... The real killer was the mist."
"Huh?" Silas spat, surprised by this difficult-to-digest information, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Mireille let out a rare little laugh, which sounded melodious, contrasting with the horror she was about to describe.
"Yes, the mist... It came forward just like that. Without a sound. Without wind. But unlike the one we are in now, it was blackish and gave off an aura of death."
She swallowed with difficulty.
"...The creatures it released were anything but alive. And those who entered it, or were swallowed by it, did not come out human. I still remember the screams of young soldiers being devoured alive, the nauseating smell of decay that emanated from that mist, the hellish creatures that emerged briefly to wreak havoc in our ranks..."
Silas felt a shiver run down his spine. He approached his horse slowly, not daring to touch her.
Mireille closed her eyes. Her lips trembled, her hands tightened around the reins, her teeth chattered.
But she continued.
"The worst thing was not so much that the mist and the creatures inside it were killing our soldiers. No. The most outrageous part was that all those who had been killed by the Mistwalkers became Mistwalkers themselves..."
Mimi's eyelids were closed and clenched so tightly that it was as if she never wanted to open them again. Her voice trembled.
"Our comrades... Our brothers and sisters in arms with whom we had spent months, even years for some. These people with whom we had fought and gone through many trials..."
Mimi's voice broke. A single rebellious tear managed to escape from her closed eyes and cascaded down the maid's cheek.
"…We were helplessly reduced to facing their corpses as they transformed into abominable creatures..."
A small, unwanted sob found its way into her breathing — which even surprised Mireille herself. It was the first time Silas had seen Mimi in this state.
The young woman finally added:
"That day, the battle was decisive. We won. But at what cost? We couldn't even give our fellow soldiers a proper funeral... the Mistwalkers had taken everything from us... And the mist had taken everything from me."
Silas felt a lump form in his throat, and an excruciating tightness gripped his chest. Still, he forced himself to speak.
"I-I... I'm here, Mireille. You're not alone."
She swallowed a nervous, almost bitter laugh.
"You're the one who should be afraid, young master. Not me."
The young boy remained silent for a few seconds.
"Yes... I'm afraid." Silas admitted simply.
However, he patted his protector affectionately on the shoulder.
"...But I trust you. And... if you move forward, I'll move forward too."
A long silence followed. Then Mireille sighed loudly and nodded imperceptibly.
"Very well. Let's continue." she said.
Silas smiled slightly.
He had just found his companion again.
***
They ventured together into the misty valley. And as the morning light became an unreal halo around them, figures appeared in the distance — half-devoured by the mist, like an illusion.
Roofs, then clearly, houses.
A village.
In the heart of the valley, a few small isolated hamlets — each connected to the others — lay nestled in the white blanket, silent as if everything there were holding its breath, and forming a greater village.
Mireille inhaled deeply, banishing the last traces of tremor from her voice.
"We'll stop there, young master."
Silas swallowed.
"Then... let's see if anyone still lives there."
As if in anticipation, the mist seemed to tighten around them, inviting them to enter the village.